NC Travel Poster
The Goal
The goal for this design was to create a vector-art poster that showcases the scenery of the North Carolina Mountains. My client wants to bring more tourists to the area as they feel that showcasing such beautiful scenery will be a story to tell for years to come.
The Client
The client is a tourism board who specifically represents NC. They focus on promoting tourism and highlighting the attractions of the state. The main goal that they have for this campaign is to create visually appealing posters that showcase the diverse landscapes of NC, influencing those who look at it to travel to the different regions of NC.
Thumbnail Sketches
When starting my designs, I always take the route of sketching them out first as it assists with visualizing ideas and brainstorming new ones. My idea was to portray the landscape of the Grandfather Mountain as best as possible, and using colors that would remind one of nature. This was the 3rd batch of 6 that I created, which I then took the bottom right thumbnail and decided to start finalizing it.
Rough Sketch
After creating my thumbnails, I took the version which captured the landscape the most, and decided to start revising it to make it better overall. I wanted to fill the screen with enough elements to portray the beauty of the mountains, but I did not want it to become overwhelming. In order to capture the beauty, I made sure to include the mountains, sun and clouds, a lake, and some trees.
Digital Rough
Once I created my rough sketch, I knew it was time to start bringing my idea into reality by moving the design over to Adobe Illustrator. I started by roughly capturing the environment using the pen tool as well as shapes in order to assist me with creating this scenery. In my rough sketch, the water felt a bit too open so I decided to add a canoe to assist with the idea of bringing tourists to the area.
Final Version
With a more polished rough, I was able to engulf the scenery perfectly into one image by including simple things such as mountains, the sun, a man on a canoe fishing, small patches of land, and a lake that reflects the scenery. This design represents me as a designer as I was able to overcome numerous design challenges and push myself past my comfort zone to conclude with a beautiful scenic view of the Grandfather Mountain.
Summary
Overall, creating this design was one of the most satisfying feelings. I was originally inspired by national park posters as they tend to be vector art, and I have always been amused by such work. Being able to create such beautiful imagery using custom vector shapes and proper usage of gradients was the main goal and by doing so, I believe this will cater to the target audience in the best manner possible.