A lot of time, thought and discussion goes into every Freedom party we throw. There's the selection and booking of the guest DJs, ideas for gimmicks such as thumb drive give-aways, plus press releases, printing... you get the idea. The one job that I really look forward to every time is designing the poster and flyer. It's my only creative outlet for the process and one I take very seriously.
We have a few guiding principles when it comes to each design. Firstly, it must have relevance to the holiday the party falls on. Secondly, it must contain a positive message relevant to our community, whether hidden or explicit. Finally, it must leave the viewer thinking “Wow! That looks cool, I wanna go to that!”
So far we've held 4 Freedom parties and our poster designs keep getting better and better. For our first party on Merdeka Eve we used a stencil on wall image of people holding up placards that spelt out FREEDOM. It's a call to action to the gay community to stand up and demand their rights.
For Valentines Day we used an image from the Japanese anime series Dragon Ball Z in which the two main rivals appear to be engaged in a loving embrace. The message of course being that love conquers all. The success of this image has compelled us to use the imagery of anime in all future poster designs.
Today, I thought I'd take the time to tell you a little about the process we went through to create the very striking image for FREEDOM: MAYDAZE. The first thought that came into my head when I began was Soviet Russia and the May Day military parades in Red Square. You know, goose stepping soldiers, enormous rockets and armaments of all kinds... Very homo-erotic, whether or not the politburo were aware of it at the time.
So I started looking for images online that could inspire me. From Soviet propaganda to Mao, I searched high and low. But a lot of what I saw wasn't really speaking to me. The vast majority on offer were of a drawing style more in keeping with the 1950s than present day, with pastel colours I just didn't think would appeal to our community.
After much googling I found this image and was immediately struck by its bold colours and defiant tone. This was more like it. Confident, liberating and inspiring; The hallmarks of Freedom.
The next step was to adapt the image to our needs. We'd just finished working with Vio (an excellent local artist I have no hesitation in recommending) on some safe sex images and commissioned him again to create our Freedom: Maydaze image. What we wanted was an anime style of characters and Vio had proven himself very capable in this respect. He came over with his drawing tablet and I briefed him by saying “Your goal is to create an image that says 'Gay workers of the world unite for FREEDOM'. This is what we came up with.
Satisfied that we had the seed of the image, Vio went away and refined the drawing further, separating the elements and bringing definition to the characters.
To express the diversity of our community we created a businessman, a construction worker and a hairdresser. They seemed like broad enough characters while still maintaining a typically gay identity. To reinforce the “People Like Us” imagery, they were all given identical faces. They stand at attention, defiant, not willing to be pushed around. Inspiring stuff.
Next came the cityscape. Gay men all over the world are attracted to the big cities as it provides us with a form of protection. As Bernadette in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert said, “We all sit around mindlessly slagging off that vile stink-hole of a city. But in its own strange way, it takes care of us. I don't know if that ugly wall of suburbia's been put there to stop them getting in, or us getting out.”
Eventually we felt that having three gay men in the image was not inclusive enough. What about all the women who come to Freedom? From fag hags to lesbians and even straight men (yes, some aren't so freaked out at the idea of being in a gay club). So to broaden our potential market we replaced the business man with a fierce, power suited business woman. After all, Freedom for gay men means freedom for everybody.
Lastly we coloured the image using the same colour palette from the original. Red, yellow, black and white. Bold, high contrast colours that leap out at you. You simply can't ignore it. A few tweaks like adding searchlights and it was ready for typesetting.
In keeping with the Soviet theme we used a font called Kremlin that has the effect of making English letters look more like Russian letters. Recognising that it could be difficult to read the smaller print, we flipped over the Rs and used a different N in the information at the bottom. You can see the result of our labours at the top of this blog.
The posters are plastered all around Marketplace now and flyers will be distributed around the regular spots in the coming weeks.
It's a great joy to create these images for Freedom. It gives us a platform for expressing our ideas and providing a little bit of inspiration to our community. They make our parties distinct and thought provoking, not merely a place to pick up a shag for the night (though that is not discouraged). It sure beats the glitter, sequence and stiletto images our community is usually saddled with. One things for sure, when you see a Freedom poster you know the party is going to be different, unique and above all, special.
See you at Freedom: Maydaze
- Matt
