For 2015, I have the honour and challenge of designing all of the promotional materials for PechaKucha Night Winnipeg. One of my favourite events in Winnipeg (and not just because I help to organize it), PechaKucha Night Winnipeg is now in it’s sixth year. Over the year’s we’ve been able to celebrate a wealth of Winnipeg talent, guaranteeing our audience an eclectic source of creative energy and inspiration. So my goal was to visually represent that in the promo pieces.
As the main focal piece, I decided to illustrate the words “Pecha Kucha”. The style of illustration was inspired by an exploding word sketch that I created last year. I started by setting the type on my Mac, and then moved to the kitchen table with layout pad and pencil. Once I had the shape roughly down on paper, I started inking by hand, refining the shape as I went along. I considered colouring it by hand as well, but changed my mind as I want to be able to adjust the colouration for future 2015 events. So I ended up adding the colour in Photoshop, refining the illustration over the course of a few nights until I was happy with the final result. After completing the illustration, the first promo piece that I designed was the poster. I then moved on to web and social media graphics, postcards, playbill, etc.
As is our PechaKucha Night Winnipeg tradition, the promo pieces will be changing and evolving for each of our 2015 events, so keep an eye out! Who knows where the creative will go?