kill this design: Mardi Gras 2024
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- sarahfailin
Hey y'all-- I'd love your feedback on the draft design for our Mardi Gras 2024 poster. The illustrator I hired made us this. Obvs needs some touching up, and we haven't picked the color scheme yet. Some things I see are:
- Banner is too tall on the bottom side / too short on the top. Told him to move the "And Mardi Gras Festival" text outside of the banner.
- The 2024 at the bottom left kind of disappears.
- Letter spacings in the title banner need to be adjusted.
- Not sure I love the jester guy being black and white...
- We still need to pick the right color scheme
- sarahfailin0
We're thinking about doing it with a gold frame around it like so. I'm not sure how well it will look printed.
These all have a more monochromatic color scheme:
- it's collage, obvs. you don't see that much in posters, so I kind of like the novelty.sarahfailin
- sarahfailin0
And again this is for the poster for Sacramento's Mardi Gras parade. Don't ask me about the beam (vertical line) shooting up from the downtown area.
- addtl. text would go at the bottom under the illustration. or maybe above it too for the date.sarahfailin
- CyBrainX0
I hate to be this negative but there are a lot of issues. The gold frame doesn't speak New Orleans or Mardi Gras at all. It's too refined and not in the style of the poster. The character needs a lot of work. Despite that, it's probably what the focus should be in the composition. Right now it's a side note in a mish mash of mushy things that could be any location on earth except maybe the boat. I think there's a bridge there but don't understand the top parts. It should probably be gone completely since I don't think there are any memorable bridges in New Orleans. I agree the 2024 needs to be more prominent, probably near the type at the top. The scroll art needs a lot of work. At least the level of quality of the main type.
- Agreed on the character work, and honestly it's too busy. I'm guessing the purple and black is a Kings thing?garbage
- The Jester and date need more prominence, imho. Right of Jester is just.. too muddy. I know they're making room for the skull, but something isn't working.garbage
- If cityscene is important, have a skull jester on the horizon. You could have the sunbeams be the jester hat tassels or whatever they're called.garbage
- cherub0
I don't know how you fuck this up so bad every year Sarah.
This is your Mardi Gras palette.
If you can't stick to this, or get reasonably close you shouldn't call it Mardi Gras. Instead say, "Mardi Gras inspired" or something lol.
Here is a blog I found by someone who is also a bit confused over the palettes, however there are 2 palettes that are actually correct. Or maybe 1.5 because the first one has a minor flaw.
https://avemateiu.com/10-mardi-g…
#1 I disagree with the black, and this is also what is wrong with your first design. You should keep black to a minimum, it is like the anti-Mardi Gras color. Again, look at that image above that I posted. Ignore the pink and white house in the background. What do you see? Tons of extremely loud and vibrant purple, gold, and green. That is your Mardi Gras palette. I get that you are trying to put a goth theme for your festival bcuz it's Sacramento, but you can express goth in other ways.
So #1 is half correct.
#6 These are the Mardi Gras colors I remember growing up 2 hours from New Orleans. 100% accurate, use this one.
The other palettes are ok-ish I guess.
Notice that NONE of them except for the last one #10 use two shades of green. This is why your first image doesn't work, you're using THREE shades of green, not to mention that ugly blue for the river.
Back to your design. I recommend drop the red, the pink, and the white. Those are not Mardi Gras colors and they clash with the rest.
My whole issue is with the colors. As far as the non-color related aspect of the design, I'm digging it. I'm not a designer but I'll take a stab at design critique below.
Maybe instead of all that busyness off to the right of the Jester that is representing Sacramento, you could make it OVERLY simple. Like have a genuine purple, gold, and green jester using palette #6, then have him overlooking a green plain, with a purple river, and move the gold dome near where downtown currently is. Then put the white date letters where the dome was and drop the scroll idea. Also, I'm not sold on the font for your banner. The fleur de lis is good tho, keep that.
I'm also not sold on the skull sun. How about just a Mardi Gras gold colored sky.
Again, if you fix the colors this isn't so bad, I just think you need to condense some things to simplify it a bit. But I'm a photographer, not a designer.
Hope it wasn't overly harsh. Keep working and I'm sure it will be fine.
- thanks cherub! I lived in new orleans for 8 years. we're just doing things with a bit more sacramento flavor. I like that site with the MG color pallets.sarahfailin
- I disagree that using a palette that doesn't look like barf would cause people to think you are trying to "be New Orleans" as u said down below in 2b.cherub
- On the contrary, I think it would cause people to appreciate the fact that u put some thought into the design, and that's more likely to leave a good impressioncherub
- So in essence, I'm saying you can do both. You can put your own spin on Mardi Gras AND put a little more effort into the design part. They aren'tcherub
- mutually exclusive.cherub
- Also, so far it seems like you are EXTREMELY RESISTANT to changing what is clearly a bad design, so why ask for advice?cherub
- I'm gonna accept some design clients and when they don't like my design I'm gonna say, "You just don't get me man, I'm putting my own spin on it. Sorry, nocherub
- revisions."cherub
- i_monk1
I don't anything about Mardi Gras, but it's really easy to overlook the jester figure and focus on the bridge and dome. Your illustrator needs to understand basic composition and contrast.
- monospaced1
The illustrator is using a sailor Jerry style tattoo type and it simply doesn’t fit the occasion to me.
- sarahfailin0
hey y'all! I actually just saw these notes from all of you and so they haven't been incorporated into this draft. but I'm thinking about it and also thinking about what I can get out of my illustrator.
- sarahfailin1
I appreciate you all taking time to give me your opinions, even if I totally disagree with some of them! ha.
to answer some of your questions:
1) this illustrator's style is just generally sloppy/folk arty. for what I'm paying him, I can't ask him to do a lot more. but he doesn't seem to mind me cleaning up his crap for him. His sailor jerry letters are all over Sacramento, kind of like Dr. Bob is in New Orleans (the "be nice or leave" guy if you know what i'm talking about).
2) this isn't new orleans mardi gras, this is Sacramento Mardi Gras! and the things depicted make sense for here. I totally understand if y'all don't understand what they are.
2b) Just an additional note, when New Orleans does Mardi Gras, it celebrates itself. It doesn't try to be anything else. And we're not trying to be New Orleans, even if we use some of the tropes. We're trying to make the core concept of MG live here, which means celebrating our place, our culture and our things.
3) I'm interested in what you all think I can do to make the jester more prominent in the design without changing the ink/lines of him. I kind of dislike his black-and-white bits, but if I change those colors, he blends in even more... any thoughts?
4) obvs adding the informational text at the top and bottom does a lot to inform you. I can see here that my spacing needs some work. Got any other notes for me on it?
- sarahfailin2
And if y'all wanna get a 30 second taste of what this parade *IS* check out our promo video here: