RIGHT NOW, I am in the middle of rolling out the re-branded publicity for this year’s series of varsity sporting fixtures between the two universities in town. For the last few years, they have been using a design based around cartoon characters. It was nice, but a bit too cute for the epic gladatorial bloodsport rivalry that is the varsity contest.
So this year we decided to give the promo material more edge - focusing on the confrontational aspect of the series by using photos from previous years clashes. And clashes is the right word - when I was selecting the photos to be used in the posters I went through thousands of images depicting blood, sweat and tears; but mainly blood.
I kept the orange, black and white scheme from previous years as it is an established identity, then added dramatic images cut out from the photos and re-coloured them to add some extra punch (no small task against the loud orange background).
The combination of bold colours, simple layout, stark type and dramatic image creates a poster with plenty of impact and communicates the information nice and quickly, as all good posters should.
There is a whole series of these covering ten events in the pipeline. I’ll add photos once they are back from the printers.
I’d be interested to hear from any other designers who have worked on varsity or sporting tournament publicity - give me a shout in the comments.
