First Night Monterey
Overview
First Night Monterey is an annual celebration of music and arts on New Years Eve. For this project, I created a promotional poster and two button designs for the event.
Design Process
Ideation
I began with creating thumbnail sketches of elements relating to the festival such as New Years, Monterey, celebration, art, and music. I knew that I wanted the design to be simple yet effective. With this in mind, I drew up a sketch that focused on the moon and water to convey “night” and “monterey”. I then came up with a color palette and potential designs for the stars in the background.
First Iteration
I made my first iteration based off of my sketch. I included balloons in this design to convey the idea of celebration. After getting client feedback, I took out the balloons, as Monterey is a National Marine Sanctuary and balloons can be considered hazardous to the environment.
Final Product
My final poster and adult button designs followed my sketch heavily. I stuck with my initial idea of a minimalist approach to avoid busyness, and I removed the different style of stars from the bottom of the poster for the same reason. For the youth button, I wanted it to be easily differentiated from the first design while staying true to the original style. To do this, I added a more colorful gradient background and made the moon the main focus. I included gradients and texture in both designs to give them more depth.