80's Surf Contest Design Blog

80’s Surf Showdown Blog

For this project I was given the task to create a poster for the 9th annual Esteem 80's Surf Showdown. The theme of this competition was the 80’s. Naturally I decided to make a an 80’s themed poster for the event.

There are 5 different divisions for the competition but I chose the Twin Fin Heat. On my poster I wanted to represent the 80’s aspect through my color choice of the pinks, blues, and purples. These are all very bold and vibrant colors that represent the 80’s. For my poster design I have a black and purple gradient in the back so it is not bland and boring.

I have my text following the color scheme of the whole poster which is the blue and pink. I chose to make the name of the competition and gradient of blue and pink to make it more interesting and stand out more. I put the date underneath the name and I chose to make the text blue with a pink outline that transitions to a blue glow through various effects such as glow and drop shadow. I then put the location underneath the date in pink so that that the information as well as the color would flow. In the middle of the poster I put the place the contestant received(1-4) and I chose to make the color a blue and pink gradient that is mostly blue and start fading to pink at the bottom. This makes it pop out more and adds more design to the place a contestant received in the competition. I then put the Division underneath that just above the visual design.

My visual design consists of a breaking wave and a silhouette of a surfer walking towards it with his surfboard to represent the surfing aspect of the competition. I felt that the silhouette was better looking than an actual picture because it looks nice with the wave and it shares the color of the opposite side of the gradient.