This is one of my versions of a Little 500 poster inspired by the graphic designer and artist John Alvin. When going into this project, I knew I wanted to choose an artist that would challenge me. I love movie poster and theatrical poster design, and I wanted to choose an artist whose style I liked but have never tried. John Alvin came to mind because he created come of my favorite movie posters, specifically the renaissance Disney posters such as “The Little Mermaid” and “Beauty and the Beast”.

There were a few aspects of Alvin’s designs that stood out to me when looking over his portfolio. I noticed much, if not all of his work, was very art based. Many of his posters seem either illustrated or even painted. I feel that he paved the way, in a sense, for the stereotypical Marvel “floating head” poster since many of his work includes the busts of characters/actors, as can be seen in his “Batman Forever” poster. Additionally, his designs often feature centered type and imagery, as well as vignettes and darker silhouettes. I wanted to use these ideas in my posters and it lead me to my person favorite, which can be seen above.

Initially, I tried a more artistic approach and drew a bike in procreate that I used for different renderings. I felt not entirely satisfied with my first few attempts, so I tried to approach the Little 500 poster as if it was an action movie like the one’s Alvin designed for. I found Adobe stock images of cyclists and used the Filter Gallery and “posterize” feature to make the stock images more artistic. I added a vignette to the sides to make it seem dramatic and put textures on the background because many of Alvin’s designs had a lot of artistic detail in the background. This influence was definitely a challenge for me, but I feel like I learned a lot through this project especially.