Other than design, one of my personal passions is motorcycling. Growing up, my father rode motorcycles and I have always been around them. I have vague memories as a young child of going along to motorcycle shows at the NEC in Birmingham, loving being surrounded by all these fantastic machines. Along with this hereditary love for motorcycles has come a great interest in racing of the two wheeled variety. When it comes to bike racing there is one event that stands head above the rest, the Isle of Man TT.
The Isle of Man is the oldest time trial road race, dating back from 1905. The heritage of the race interests me greatly. I am a huge fan of racing from yesteryear, loving the simplistic style of the bikes both mechanically and aesthetically. This combined with my love for vintage graphic design, shortly following an exciting weeks racing from the island inspired me to create a poster design for the event.
My aim was to create a design that was reminiscent of the great road racing of the 1960’s. For me this era yielded some really beautiful looking bikes and brilliantly simple design. I wanted to create a poster that looked authentic from the period, emulating the airbrushed style of the time. This posed the challenge of creating simplistic shapes, emphasised by subtle shading hinting at detail. Applying filters and textures helped greatly to age the piece and hide the digital methods used to create it. Typographically I have tried to be faithful to design of the time, using a block sans serif alongside a hand styled script adding flow and emotion to the text.
As Fathers Day is just around the corner, I am planning on getting a nice framed print done for the old man who passed on the obsession to me.
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