I also wanted to share this poster I made for Oxfam’s music festival Oxjam to promote ‘The Goonies’ film night. I struggled to give it an 80s feel but I’m happy with the outcome. Go watch it if you can!

Thank you Helen of Lionheart Mag for thinking of me!

I chose Lolita and  the iconic heart shaped sunglasses (that funnily enough don’t actually appear in the film) and instead of showing her with the glasses I showed what she would see through them. The type is a nod to genius Pablo Ferro’s title sequence for Dr Strangelove (also by Kubrick and Peter Sellers).

The prize is 50 tickets for X-Men: First Class (!) and two tickets a month for the rest of the year plus a framed print of the poster and being part of the exhibition. Wish me luck!

To every single person affected by the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan on March 11th:

In between juggling my internship and uni I’ve been to the ‘Archive Live’ V&A Friday late which was a bit disappointing (they used to be amazing and inspiring events and seem to have taken a turn for the worse since the summer for some reason), a Russian avant-garde talk at the British Library, the Sapphires at the Barbican that was a lot of fun and really recommend to anyone into girl groups from the 1960s, been to a lovely Restaurant where we dined in the same room as Gilbert & George (!), took a day trip to Brighton, attended the mind blowing Open Books exhibition at the RCA about ‘books about books’ and marvelled at their publication/catalogue by Hato Press, went to a couple gigs and finally finally made it to the Norwegian Wood poster exhibition at the Curzon Cinema in Soho.

I had never been to their gallery space before and was surprised to find it so busy on a tuesday night, the bar was buzzing and it was completely packed. Seeing my poster up there full size with the rest was the greatest feeling in the world, thank you to everyone who took the time to vote for it, really really appreciate it. And thanks to my friend Vivi who helped take these pictures:

So I was very excited when I heard Don’t Panic had an online competition to design a film poster for Norwegian Wood, the film based on Haruki Murakami’s novel. I started getting into the story straight away: the characters, their surroundings and what they’d be exposed to visually. Set in 1960s Japan, I looked into posters from the period and found this amazing collection on Aqua Velvet (more on Sandi Vincent’s absolutely amazing flickr) these are my favourite. Bold, colorful, to the point:

First rough playing around with the idea of origami love triangles, one of the main plots in the story. Decided to incorporate their faces to make it more relevant and introduce the actors, each coloured face made out of the other faces’ colours all mixed in a seemingly ordered chaos:

Final design and the different colourways. Struggled to decide which colour to go for and when I asked a good friend for advice he said that it was not about what worked in the design but what worked in the story. So true!

So I went for the pastel orange, half manic half sedated. If you have a minute please vote for me HERE!  The top ten posters will be displayed in central London at Curzon Soho independent cinema between March 4th and March 25th 2011. It’s my birthday on the 2nd so it would be a lovely present too. The winner will also be distributed in Don’t Panic packs nationwide, imagine that!.

Feedback, as always, very very welcome!

The rules were clear: choose one quote from this list and design an A4 poster in one hour or less. As a bit of inspiration Pentagram’s Campaign for The London Design Festival 2009. Definitely a challenge. I really liked Steve Rogers quote ‘Designing a product is designing a relationship’ which I believe is true for many aspects in design. After much deliberation (those precious minutes!) I decided to go with the red from Pentagram’s campaign and a typeface very close to my heart: Clarendon Condensed.

There are many things that could improve given more time but all in all I’m happy with the idea for the final poster and, if anything, I had too much fun with this. Hope the fine people of LDF have another challenge soon!

Over 100 entries were submitted and I’m very happy that my design was included in the selection on LDF’s flickr set. Have a browse and check out the other entries, some really good stuff. Winners will be announced next week, wish me luck!

I based the colour palette on a very traditional vintage christmas card :

The initial idea came from one of my all time favourite Christmas songs, Elvis’ very cheeky ‘Santa Claus is Back in Town’ (maybe only second to Bobby ‘Boris’ Pickett’s Monsters’ Holiday). I never really had a white Christmas growing up in Barcelona and reindeers are not very common either so all that sort of imagery is a bit alien to me. I was determined to keep it simple and avoid cliches as much as possible:

The type was always meant to be replaced by hand lettering and at this point I showed the design to some friends for advice not mentioning it was supposed to be a design for a Christmas card. They didn’t see it. It was too simple, the red was not red enough to make the connection with Father Christmas and it did not give any hint or clear message. Good advice. I tried to take it in and make the message a bit more obvious, changed the format to a square, lost ‘Back in town’ and replaced it with typographic elements. Now, this is where all went a bit wrong and cliche. Very wrong and cliche:

Cringe. I decided to start again with the man in a very bright red suit, changed the brown to a darker tone and the perspective of the figure. Plain and simple, I’m a lot happier with these two:

I then considered my friends advice and added a festive touch.There is one more detail that I’d like to change but this is the version I’m sending to the printers for a quote, hope to get them printed this week so I can send them out asap. Any ideas, criticism or advice always welcome and if you’d like one send me your address so I don’t forget!

I think this was a challenge for me and I’m glad the outcome is not as busy and feminine as the rest of my work but still very much my style. Joy!