Self Taught.

I have been given the task of designing the posters and promo cards for Hops for Pops, the charitable beer festival we are putting on in June (June? I think.)

Normally when I do an ad or poster thing I steal my ideas from somewhere else, which I'll be sure to do again. Usually when I do an ad or poster thing I steal images from somewhere else, which I'll be sure not to do this time around for legal reasons.

The inspiration for posters comes from all over the place - things I've run across and liked, half finished photoshop tutorials, current events, whatever images I can steal online...



That was where it all kind of started - The HGB logo was very much influenced by the Heineken logo (some might say ripped off).

Of course the current Heineken bottle-use logo is a little more stretched, but... same idea.



I don't think Heineken has full legal rights to circles - at least I hope not - so I've always assumed we're in the clear.



This image and corresponding photoshop tutorial led to a couple of ideas. The New Year's poster used the background ray of light sort of thing originally - though the rays I created were lightning bolts, actually.. then I started throwing things on top of that...


A shot from 28 Days Later


Bart Peterson's City of Indianapolis Logo

Add some hand-drawn flames and some Photoshop layer burn and dodge tricks and you've got an event poster.





I also used the Polaroids on a background idea from that tutorial for the first header in the big site redesign.

These images should look strikingly similar. Hopefully, anyway, since I was pretty much just following half the directions.




Instead of the hands on wrench thing, I did a hand on a Schlafly tap handle. Instead of the airplanes, I put wings on a keg... and then I threw in some black stars to fill space.

Of course these never end up exactly the same - when you're messing with colors and levels you usually want to change it up at least a little bit.

I thought the following poster ended up really pretty great... the inspiration kinda carried through the whole design.




Of course my favorite bit was turning Big Car's regular old Mustang:



Into a convertible.



Putting the Kennedys in the Mustang was a little tricky, and the perspective is all wrong, but I was happy with the results anyway. It may have been in poor taste, but I suppose that's nothing new...



This Oktoberfest poster, which seemed to be popular with the warped minds of HBG, ended up in this version:



I didn't really want to offend anyone, anyway.

One of my favorite posters was this one:



Well, you can see where I got that idea.

These last three were all me minus inspiration and the little things I've picked up in tutorials - I think the difference is obvious.



So this Hops for Pops poster? A poster that will be used in ads and businesses across Indiana? That'll take every trick I can come up with.