New to Palo Cedro: a summer flea market!  This design wasn’t that challenging, except for the challenge of keeping “clutter” out of it… i.e. images or clip art of “flea market finds” or piles of “yard sale” junk.  I just wanted some natural background to suggest the location in the country, and I had to have a cute little mascot to represent the title.  I actually found him on google images, and drew the tag hanging from the string on the ‘R’ in market.  The background and the wooden sign are both vector stock from vecteezy (my fav site).

I hit the nail on the head (so to speak) with this design, the client approved it immediately, she loved my mascot flea, and thought the hanging tag was a “fabulous” idea!  I printed a bunch of these 11×17 posters, and I have seen them plastered all over town!  I also converted the entire thing to greyscale & printed a bunch of flyers on various astrobright colored papers.  She (the client) was so happy, she said she wants me to do something similar for the upcoming “Certified Farmers Market” in Palo Cedro. Yae!

Poster with Full Bleeds

I love doing posters, especially when I have a lot of creative freedom.  This is the 3rd year I have gotten to do the posters and printed media for the Palo Cedro Christmas Celebration event.  It’s a lot of fun really… the whole center of town is packed with people walking around, there are bon fires in the rocks (put on by the fire dept), there’s wagon rides, and every business has free stuff and food to give away.  Sue Kossol from Palo Cedro Eye Clinic has been the organizer of this event for the last several years, and it’s amazing what one person can do with a little spreading of the word!

This project features the logo used in the last 3 years (so its kinda branded to the event), and this year I thought the poster needed to be a bit more elegant.  The last 2 years I had my assistant designer do this project, and I wasn’t happy with either of them.  I wanted to put my own touch on it this year, so I included some vector poinsettias, and a fun curve with the red box at the bottom.  I kinda threw the vector gingerbread cookies in at the bottom by the entertainment because it felt like there was something missing there… but I’m not sure if I like them with the poinsettias.  These vectors were all downloaded at Vecteezy.com (see my links menu), with the exception of the vector wreath in the logo, that sucker cost me $10 from istock.com!!!  Well, it’s what the client wanted 2 years ago and my designer back then didn’t know about all the free vector sites out there… oh well.  So this project will get printed on 12×18 100# cardstock, and I will cut it down to the bleeds so it’s finish size will be 11×17.  I’m really into the red this year for the holidays, and I put a hint of a gradient on this poster’s red box just to make it a little richer.  Feel free to leave your comments, suggestions, constructive criticism, etc.