Early this year I started working with the board of STL Design Week (Sept 24-30). It has been super fun hanging out at DK studio as the rest of the committee goes through the madness of coordinating a whole week of events this September.
There was a couple of challenges for this poster. Basically because is an “event of events”, each of them with their own theme, crowd, approach. So, I decided to come up with a character announcing what was coming up, rather than an specific abstract metaphor (which was a really hard thing to do for such an abstract concept as Design). The whole point of a week of Design related events is to inspire and engage our creative community, while reaching out the “design enthusiasts”. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to represent the city of St. Louis somehow, but I needed something bold for the graphic punch.
I started thinking in the landscape of a city, and drew some wind vanes coming out of the roofs. Each wind vane would represent each event; and a big colorful one will carry on the composition, leaving some room for the arch to show up a little bit. Wind vanes comes in all sort of shapes, so it wouldn’t be difficult to illustrate little icons according to the nature of each event.
Wind vanes indicates direction. When the wind blows, all the wind vanes in a City are aligned pointing out in the same direction. I liked that idea of different entities “aligned” towards a common purpose. I started to think in Design as a way to “align” things. Then the wind vane rooster came up as an universal icon for excitement, brand new days, energy, awakening… A colorful wake up call that makes you smile
Carlos Zamora 