Saltmarsh Folk Festival · 2021
Three-color posters for a coastal folk festival
A main poster, six stage posters and a tote bag for a small coastal folk festival, printed on a local risograph in three ink drums.
- Client
- Saltmarsh Folk Festival
- Year
- 2021
- Role
- Illustrator and print designer
- Duration
- 6 weeks
- Services
- Poster illustration
- Merchandise
- Print production
The problem
Saltmarsh is a volunteer-run festival on an estuary, with about 2,500 visitors and a budget that comes from tote bag sales as much as ticket sales. The previous year's posters had been produced with a free template, and the organizers felt they looked like every other weekend event on the town noticeboard.
The posters were printed at a local riso studio with three drums available that month: teal, fluorescent pink and yellow. Paper was A3 recycled cream. Six stage posters had to be distinct, share one visual language and leave room for a lineup that would not be confirmed until two weeks before print. The tote bag had to be screen-printed in a single color.
Process
- 01
Walking the estuary
I spent a day on the marsh with a sketchbook, drawing the things that make this festival specific: wading birds, the tidal clock on the harbor wall, the old ferry slipway that becomes the main stage. Thumbnails for the main poster tested whether the music or the place should lead, and the place won.
- 02
Overprint color scripts
With three drums, the extra colors come from overprinting, so I mapped every overlap before drawing: teal over yellow gives marsh green, pink over yellow gives sunset orange. I printed a test sheet at the studio to see how the fluorescent pink behaved on cream stock, then adjusted the plan so faces never landed on muddy overlaps.
- 03
Hand-drawn separations
Each color was drawn as its own grayscale layer with a brush pen and scanned, with type set in a flexible block so the lineup could drop in late. I kept stage posters on a shared template of marsh horizon and sky, swapping the bird and the color dominance for each stage. The tote design reduced the main poster to one teal layer.
Selected images
Outcome
All 400 numbered prints of the main poster sold at the gate, and the tote bags sold out on the Saturday afternoon. The organizers have reused the stage poster template for three festivals since, swapping in new birds I draw each spring, and the riso studio now sells the leftover prints as part of its annual show.
- 400
- numbered prints sold out
- 3
- ink drums
- 3 yrs
- template reused since
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