Zombie Fridays
This was my second commission for M.J.Myers, heading the group Red Lights at Midnight (RLAM) hosting a month worth of events at the Zombie Shack in Manchester, featuring new artists every week, these events were known as Zombie Fridays. Although we turned away from the comic book theme from the previous project SEEN HERE, we maintained the use of the switching colour schemes, this time to indicate the changing line up weekly. The Tiki head here was part of the venues original brand, which the artist generously shared with me for this project. Due to the underground, indie grunge feel to the Zombie Shack, I wanted to maintain this visual consistency through the promotional posters, feeling like an advert has just been torn down, revealing the Zombie Fridays poster, from decades before.
Thirsty Things
Although the event occurred earlier than Zombie Fridays, Thirsty Things would be the last poster set in this contract. Thirsty Things was at the venue, Thirsty Scholar, upstairs from Zombie Shack, the same building and use the same Tiki head motif in their branding. I had less creative freedom here, due to the venue host wishing to enter their own text for artists joining events at the last minute. This did lead to some text feeling out of place on the black poster, but it was an exciting new challenge to set up a template document for future use with easily accessible functions for the clients to easily either text and if needed even colour scheme for future events.
The Journey
Initially I had discussed with the client, the idea of having a VHS feel to the promotion, he always waned the idea of retro/urban. The ‘glitch’ as well called it, did offer lots of potential but didn’t feel right for the vibe of the venue as it felt much too technologically heavy like a DnB rave, as opposed to very raw vocals and instrumentals. This can be seen above along some other early drafts of the ‘Tiki head’ poster series, from much more vibrant, to much more decayed than the final product.
