Design Process of a poster

"Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality overcomes everything." - George Lois

I had one issue going into the designing of this poster, I had incredibly limited time, as I also had an essay to write that I'd only partly started at this point. The other issue was the fact that this poster was supposed to reflect the ideas from the essay, which, again I had no idea what ideas were in it. But, I have this new creative outlook on life, and with that a sheer stupidness and yearning to fail, apparently..

The first few sketches were pretty horrific, and definitely not things I'd usually share on a public blog. But, I want this blog to be honest and reflect the real creative process for those of us who don't believe in creativity, who don't think they can be creative, who have been told that some people are creative and other aren't, creativity has nothing to do with how well you can draw or paint or sculpt, it's a process and a constant development of ideas.

I was thinking about creative space, the importance of fuelling creativity through a space or place, I drew a little studio space and it reminded me of a cardboard box, and in turn, that conversation that seems almost tradition now that you have on Christmas morning when kids open their brand new three foot £200 castle made of the same plastic your milk comes in, and after two minutes its in the corner, neglected with the rest of the miscellaneous bits of plastic brought by Santa, and the kids, their playing in the boxes that the toys came in, and it's followed, usually by an elderly relative saying "All these toys to play with, and they'd rather play with the cardboard box", which almost instantly is followed by an uncle in the corner saying "I'm just gonna get ya boxes next year", this is usually followed by the mother replying to the elderly relative "it's always the boxes, funny that.." I'm just wondering how many of these people have ever wondered why. It happens to almost every family all around the world, and it's always left at that.

Cardboard boxes are just cardboard boxes, but to a child, untainted by the boxes of the world, they can be anything in their imaginations, a car, a space ship, a robot head, a dolls house, a fort..

What this Christmas box tradition should tell people is that toys are really shit.

Anyway, that's something for another time..

I drew some boxes..

I drew these boxes in the hope that something would emerge. no luck.

Quickly running out of time I tried desperately to work out what I was actually trying to achieve here..

Taking inspiration from the Netflix documentary Abstract: Art of design and the Cas Holman episode, My boxes actually made their way through my thought process and became the main part of the idea, I'd make a wall of cardboard boxes, being a creative material, the poster would be painted directly onto the boxes.

And so was born the Poster Fort...