You see them everywhere around town, a colourful part of Wellington’s urban landscape – the street poster. But what goes into creating a street poster? How much work goes on behind the scenes?

Recently we were asked to create the poster for the Downstage play The December Brother. After reading the script, the key was to find something to visualise the play’s theme. We focussed on the jumper worn by one of the more well known characters, a symbol of the person and the events of the play.

Our first task was to find the jumper, affectionately named the ‘christmas jumper’. After searching though Cuba Street’s thrift stores, we found ourselves in Waitangirau (Porirua) at SaveMart. There we found an abundance of christmas jumpers, enough to make any fashionista feel ill. After searching through racks upon racks, we found the exact jumper we were looking for.

Next up was the photo shoot, working with the actor and photographer to help get the perfect image.

Back at the studio, it was time to get into action and apply some Photoshop skill to totally rework the photo. As you can see below the before and after transformation of the work.

Crucial to the impact of the poster is the title graphic. As we were going to ‘knit’ the title into the jumper, we couldn’t just use any old font, so we created our own. After counting the stitches across the jumper, and using an old faithful grid pad, a font was created made up of small ‘v’ like stitches. Again more photoshop magic was needed to take the title and make it look like it was actually knitted into the jumper.

The final step was to add the secondary info (date etc) onto the poster. This text shouldn’t over power or look like it was just slapped on using a Microsoft Word text box. Taking inspiration from another jumper, we used the patterns and colours to frame the text, creating a subtle reference to the character and events of the play. And here it is the final poster – ready to be pasted up around the streets of Wellington.

The Downstage Season brochure featuring The December Brother.