I'm a part of a queer underground collective; I do all the graphics. I designed the logo, all the posters, motion graphics, and collateral. Lotion is the name of the collective, but events are under different titles and are meant to reflect the music that'll be played.
Underground dance culture in the U.S. (and abroad) has a varied aesthetic when it comes to marketing, but there's a common thread when it comes to the best of it: the poster should push the envelope like the events themselves. The poster is apart of the curated experience.
I designed the logo to have a certain level of whimsicalness. It needed to be grouped with a diversity of aesthetics: every event and poster will have a different vibe depending on the artists playing.
For the motion graphic, the artist, Phase Fatale, is a resident at the famous club Berghain, in Berlin, so we wanted that feeling of being in a dark, foggy room with dynamic lighting. The music is from the aforementioned artist and would be blasting, of course, just like the actual event.
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Here are some select process captures to see how I achieved the final results.
Lotion is meant to conjure thoughts of nourishment. Night Routine was the first event thrown by the Lotion collective. The music was more on the dark techno vibe. I created the background and lotion-esque splash in Midjourney, the title and artist names in Illustrator, and then brought them together in Photoshop. We elected to not have the lotion be too on the nose.
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Toner was the second event and the vibe was more "booty-shakin'" music. I wanted the liquid to look like actual facial toner and would elicit a lighter tone, as well. Blue and yellow were the main color palette. I created the shapes/background in Illustrator, got the splash online in a pack of them, and brought them into Adobe Dimension. This is just a teaser too announce the date; we usually follow up with the poster a week or so later. After Toner, I started doing motion graphics to announce the date.
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This was the first draft of the design. I interwove the splash with the artist names... but there was too much yellow and the text was not legible enough. I was definitely exploring at this point... I went through a few variations at this stage.
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For the third event, and second Night Routine, I made my first foray into Blender. I created the text shapes in Illustrator and brought them into Blender to mash them together to animate. The artist is a pretty big name in the underground dance scene so we wanted a slow reveal.
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This is the first draft of the fourth event, a summer daytime party. We wanted the title to literally come out of a sunscreen bottle. For the grid, I was inspired by the famous Müller-Brockmann Beethoven poster. In Illustrator, I customized the type to look like a flowing liquid, designed the sunscreen label for the bottle, created the artist names, and the background. I brought them into Adobe Dimension to put it all together.
For the final design (seen above): We give out branded fans for merchandise, so one of the members of the collective thought it would be interesting to integrate them into the radial design, I added a subtle paisley pattern as a kind of allegory for grass, and then manipulated the typography to fit with the dynamic layout.
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