10th Annual Harvey Milk Festival
My roles: Illustration, poster design, t-shirt design
The Harvey Milk Festival (now known as the FabAF-IFF Music & Arts Festival) is an annual festival in Sarasota, FL that uplifts and celebrates the LGBTQ+ community. The event includes live music and dance performances, visual arts, film, and historical exhibitions. I designed and illustrated the poster and t-shirt for the 2019 festival, which marked its 10th anniversary.
That year, they were showcasing an exhibit called Before Harvey: An Exploration of LGBTQ+ History. The client approached me stating that they "wanted to help others envision a world where these pioneers could be together." The poster needed to celebrate some of the major figures in queer history. Pictured from left to right the poster depicts: Angela Davis, Marsha P. Johnson, Harvey Milk, Rita Mae Brown, and Cleve Jones.
That year, they were showcasing an exhibit called Before Harvey: An Exploration of LGBTQ+ History. The client approached me stating that they "wanted to help others envision a world where these pioneers could be together." The poster needed to celebrate some of the major figures in queer history. Pictured from left to right the poster depicts: Angela Davis, Marsha P. Johnson, Harvey Milk, Rita Mae Brown, and Cleve Jones.
Final Poster Design
Design Process
The beginning stages of the design process were dedicated to sketching out different concepts for the poster and figuring out how to depict the historical figures together. One of the initial ideas the client had presented me with was changing out the people in an iconic photo to Harvey Milk and the others, so that they'd be together in a family portrait style. I also played around with the image of the group walking down a road to capture the idea of progress and how they were pioneers of LGBTQ+ rights in America.
Poster concept 1
Poster concept 2
After discussing with the client and settling on concept #1, I sketched out a more detailed version and started working on color thumbnails based on the color palette that they had provided.
Client provided color palette
Because the final poster design was going to be reused for various print and promotional materials for the festival, I then cleaned up the illustration and vectorized it. Below were some of my final explorations that I provided the client before the final design was chosen.
T-Shirt Design
