JUSTICE POSTER 2014

DJ SET AT TBD FEST SACRAMENTO

This Justice poster (2014) was a first for me. I had illustrated a few gig posters at this point, but never with drawn portraits. There were several times I nearly gave up from frustration and retreated back to my normal modes and comfort zones of decoupage and photosampling, but I’m very glad I stuck it out and made it all the way to the landing.

This was my contribution to a poster series I curated for Sacramento’s nascent TBD music festival in 2014. Since this was a DJ set (their only performance in the United States in 2014, in fact), it gave me the spark and freedom to do something a bit more fun and different, where I worked the cassette mixtape and spinning record into the overall composition.

From the band’s trademark monoliths of towering Marshall stacks to the statuesque glowing cross that acts as centerpiece to their live sets, it’s all meant to give the feeling of being in that crowd when the first beat drops. I wanted the composition to bow out from and back into the horizon like a fisheye lens, but without distorting, as if all these elements were tumbling out at you.

This was a very popular poster, and I was thrilled to see people walking around the festival all weekend with it rolled up in their bags. The ink used has elements of dayglo luminosity to it, giving the prints themselves a kind of science fiction sheen.

That same festival weekend led directly to another favorite: some of the Eye Heart SF crew saw this poster backstage and hired me a week later to design their Chromeo New Year’s Eve poster.