For my Little 500 Poster I was inspired to design like the artist Otl Aicher, a German graphic designer. Originally I took a lot of inspiration from his 1972 Olympic posters which where very bright, colorful, and primarily photo-based. However once I researched a bit more into his work I was really inspired by his graphic work and wanted to challenge myself to create a more illustrative poster.

Aicher’s Christkindmarkt Poster (1947) is where I took the majority of my inspiration from. I liked the simplicity, colorfulness, and how there’s a lot of movement which is perfect for a Little 5 poster. In my design, I decided to change the composition up and add more shapes emerging from the bike path. I decided to make the squares more flowy and dynamic, representing the fabric of the jerseys used. Red and candy stripe jerseys represent the team that raises the most money for the IUSF’s philanthrophy, Student Helping Students, yellow represents the team who won last years’ race, and green represents the team who got the fastest qualification time. I also found it appropriate to add some checkered finsih-line flags as well as the color blue. While blue doesn’t have significance on race day jerseys, it is still a flag that is seen in the IUSF logo. I wanted to add more stars and shapes to my design as my own stylistic choice, I feel like it adds to the sparkle and fun that is surrounded around the greatest college weekend in the world. For Typography, I decided to use a bolder, simpler font than the one that Aicher used because I wanted it to balance with all the colorful elements I used. I feel like the typeface I used still has that retro-feel and also doesn’t clash with the rest of the poster.

Compositionally I am very happy with how this turned out. If I were to go back and make any improvements, I think I could have played around with stylizing the little 500 bike more, making it more artistic and less vector-esque. I believe adding some texture would be beneficial for the look of the poster as well.