Sisters of Sal were a local Seattle improv theater group that I created a few posters for. They were doing a series of performances at two venues over three months. I decided that I wanted to create a matched pair of posters, and focus on two-color compositions, since I find them daunting.
The top poster was assembled from four different sources - the red background, which was a halftoned texture distilled from a 1950s Galaxy magazine; the giant mushrooms; and the crowd, which was from two different sources, kluged together. I find the idea of people rioting in a miasma of red spores before the giant mushroom forest pretty amusing. I wonder what the mushrooms did to piss the townspeople off. There's a story in there.
The bottom poster I really enjoy. The same Galaxy halftone texture is used. Added to that are an image of some centuries-old Arabic calligraphy, overlapped with falling people, which I think were taken from a detail of an old Harry Stephen Keeler book. I think. I like how the black images break the red plane at the top. Someone commented to me that it reminded them of those barrels of plastic monkeys that hang off of each other. You remember those. I know you do.
Typography is all gridded out and feels pretty early modern with a bit of art nouveau. The typeface is, I think, Berliner Grotesk, which was designed by Erik Spiekermann in 1979, but based on early 20th century typefaces coming out of the Berthold Foundry in Berlin.
