Chromeo Poster NYE San Francisco 2015

Coming off the 2014 TBD Music Festival I was beat. Exhausted. I had taken on more involvement that year and it culminated in a breakneck weekend in late September designing a full-color digest guidebook, handling curation, printing, and distribution of that year’s artist series of custom posters, and then getting giant blow-ups of said posters from our beer sponsor and zip-tie-ing up about 36 of them onto the chainlink perimeter of the festival. I was bushed. I was beat. I was empty. Enter Eye Heart SF. I had met some of their guys backstage at TBD and they had liked the poster I designed for Justice in the artist series. We exchanged info and the week after TBD while I was still licking my wounds they hit me up asking if I could come up with something for their New Year’s party. “Sure”, I said. “What’s your turnaround like?” “We need it next week.” Of course. My mental tank was empty but it was too good an opportunity to pass up. Plus I’d get to make something for Chromeo.

The Concept

Fortunately, with no time to think or second guess myself I gave myself over to self indulgence and it made all the difference. Using the party’s waterfront location as a jumping off point I thought, “what about Chromeo riding a giant robot serpent over the Bay?” In a normal scenario, I would have had time to talk myself out of this idea but with no time and nothing to lose I figured “what the hell?” I aimed for a 70s retro schoolbook style, all rounded corners and friendly shapes and colors. More than anything I wanted people to see this and for it to cheer them up just a bit. They might not laugh or smile, but they’d be warmed a bit. Not only was this poster a huge hit, the promoters actually had their set builders turn my giant serpent into a living reality that graced the stage where Chromeo performed.

The serpent head above Chromeo during their set NYE 2014/5