Summerfest
ILLUSTRATION · CUSTOM TYPE
Summerfest, located in the heart of downtown Milwaukee, is one of the largest music festivals in America. It features multiple pavilions with different artist lineups sponsored by different companies. American Family House, sponsored by American Family Insurance, had their event planning company reach out to me to create gig posters for some of their artists, as well as their full lineup poster and the promo poster for their final celebration at American Family House.
The only creative requests for the posters was that they feature the color palette that Summerfest uses for the festival’s branding, and that they tie back to the artist, otherwise I was given free reign to explore different creative ideas. I tried to make sure that each poster felt visually distinct, while also incorporating similar colors, textures and colors to make them recognizable together.
Am Fam Jam
On the last day of Summerfest, the American Family House would be hosting a final celebration called the Am Fam Jam. Since it would need to get information across very quickly, I decided to split the poster up into sections that I could fill with the info about the party, as well as illustrations of the music and energy that people could expect.
Summerfest Lineup
For the full lineup of the American Family House, I wanted to tie the poster back to the city of Milwaukee. There were a lot of different artists that we needed to feature, as well as a lot of cool features of the city. So designing a stylized cityscape with different local buildings and the names of the artists lettered onto the sides of buildings would create a fun visual blending those two things together perfectly. Take a look for the Milwaukee domes, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Hoan bridge, and Coakley Brothers water tower as well as other Easter eggs.
The Struts
With the more urban rock and roll sound of The Struts, we landed on a poster concept that would show a stylized perspective view of a city skyline, with some of the buildings shaped as the letters of the bands name.
Lindsey Stirling
In this poster, I wanted to make sure to feature a connection to nature, as well as Lindsey's signature violin. I decided that a Monarch butterfly would work well with the color palette that had already been decided on, and the pattern on its wings would be a great way to incorporate the information about her act as well as her signature instrument.
