Richard Swift

A poster made a couple of years ago for a local show promotion — although Richard Swift is hardly a local act (consider this a music recommendation).

This one is (obviously) built around an old print of a Kentucky Tavern liquor bottle. Since this project was pro bono and essentially client-free — they would have been happy with anything — I treated it as an opportunity to experiment with some texturing and faux-print simulation.

Clearly the off-register type combined with the hard drop shadows and the halftoning is pretty absurd, but that was the idea. I like taking worn styles as far away from their Adobe-generated origins as possible, but at the same time, it’s fun to create printing errors and worn styles that would never actually have existed. Sometimes overloading on flaws is the only way to make something look organic enough when you’re building it with a computer to begin with.

Looking back, the “Richard Swift” type holds up, but the rest is too distorted and could use some balance. Also, the glow around the black starburst is a touch too Photoshop-generated. And the world doesn’t really need any more starburst-style price stickers. Hindsight.