Concept
An Earth Day postcard made through digital collage using photos from the Library of Congress. The message expresses a sentiment for preservation or conservation and made through hand-lettering.
Mockups for the first critique
Detail Shots
Digital File
Process
The photographs for this project were all sourced from the Library of Congress’ archive. The three concepts were: A Get Well Soon postcard for mother earth inspired by nurse and angel illustrations, an advertisement for solar power inspired by a vintage bread ad, and a goldmine of scientific illustrations sparked a postcard that compiled the strangest creatures with the message “Keep Earth Weird,” playing off of “Keep Austin Weird.”
During the photoshop collage process I used masking, content aware fill, and the heal tool quite a bit. The handlettering was done in Procreate using several different references which were also from the Library of Congress.
Because the postcard was going to be printed on metal plates on letterpress, the designs needed to be converted to either threshold or bitmap. Bitmap offered more control and I tested the different options for each collage. I used diffusion dither for Keep Earth Weird and Get Well Soon and halftone for Solar Power.
The Keep Earth Weird card was the most interesting, but the type needed to be more interactive with the collage. In the final version, the text warps around the surrounding objects and uses the textures of some of the creatures. A bevel and emboss effect gives the text dimension.
The final product was printed on polymer plate and then printed on letterpress.