Daniel Kryshalovich

I explored different variations for my final poster. I explored readability, placement and font selection, compositional balance and hierarchy, colour scheme, small details, and how effectively I conveyed the atmosphere and mood of my festival. This is how I ultimately came to my final poster design for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.

I created imagery thumbnails and sketches of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and tried to capture the mood and atmosphere of the chosen festival in my drawings. The Ferris wheel, crowd, music and stage, palm trees, cacti, desert mountains, and vibrant fiery sunsets are all integral symbols of Coachella, so I used these in my thumbnails to further refine and generate potential compositional ideas for my poster.

I worked on this collage keeping it simple and minimalist. I used cutouts of relevant pictures from magazines and green paper, then created an interesting composition from what I gathered.

I conducted secondary research online and on websites like Pinterest and Cosmos, looking for inspiration and ideas from other existing posters. I examined previous official Coachella posters, as well as AI-generated posters for this festival, and posters from other festivals and themes that caught my eyes and attention.

I had the opportunity to experiment in the campus photography studio. I used gel plates, striped film, plastic pieces, and interesting foil-like fabric. I tried to work with colours associated with the Coachella festival and texture. The result was some rather rich, bright, and interesting photographs that I could later use for my festival poster.

One of the exercises for experimenting with colour, hierarchy, and balance was to make a mini-simple mood map of my chosen festival using coloured paper and geometric shapes I cut out. In these works I tried to convey the vibe and atmosphere of Coachella by choosing relevant colours and the rhythm of geometric shapes.

Thus, creating both analogue and digital mood boards helped me better understand and feel the spirit and atmosphere of Coachella, as well as better understand what I potentially wanted from my future poster.