Last week I shared the poster I did for National Lampoon’s Vacation with Mondo. It looks like this:
The reception has been great and I’m really happy with how it came out, but this wasn’t my first idea. So today I’m lifting the curtain a little and figured I’d prattle on about the process behind this design.
1. Initial Concepts
So this may not look like much but basically I watched the movie and made notes the whole time. That left column is a list of visuals that pop up throughout the movie and elements that I considered including. There’s also a bunch of stuff unrelated to the film but the top right was an early idea to show Chevy Chase close up in a touristy shirt but I never pursued that.
I wanted to get in as many references as possible and in working up ideas I thought about doing a kinda retro-styled map that would feature elements as well as show their travel path.
Early notes mentioned that the references were getting lost in the irrelevant stuff (mostly the objects in states that they didn’t visit) so I revised.
I kept the composition but lost most of the unnecessary stuff in favour of populating the entire map with elements from the movie. The crew still wasn’t quite feeling it so I did a quick colour study to see if that would help…
I’m not gonna lie I still love this direction but completely understand that it wasn’t iconic enough for the movie and didn’t fully tell their story. As much as I wanted to make this happen, it was time to lay it to rest and work up new ideas.
This sketch was a bit more loose than the map but got the basic idea across. There’s something I like about the motion of the cars and the text but I sent this at the same time as the other concept and the latter won out…
It was just so silly! The tone was there and my need to put in as many references as possible could be met through all of the luggage so we refined this and explored a few revisions.
One thing everyone liked in the map was the caricatures of the Griswolds so one idea was to introduce them into the luggage and tell a little story with that. I wasn’t feeling the pseudo-kidnapping vibe of the aesthetic (though it is tonally consistent with the movie) so we went another direction.
We Occam’s razor’d it and simply put the family in the car. This kept the momentum as well as show the Griswolds. Now that the rough sketch was ready, it was time to look at colour.
2. Colour Studies
Even though Mondo can offer a lot of colours in a single print (usually 6 or 7) I still find working with a limited palette to be tricky. I explored a lot of different tones with this and the first wave looked something like this:
I loved the pink and yellow values of the top left but agree that the balance in the 2nd and 4th studies worked a little better so we refined those.
I took out some of the green from the background and even tried it with the pinks and yellows from round one cause I’m stubborn like that.
The rather complimentary palette on the right won out and it definitely worked the best at representing the objects as they appeared in real life (the red Kool-Aid and Wally World hat, the green watermelon, etc.)
With that all set, it was time to get down to business and render the concept.
3. Final Artwork
I’m not sure how others prepare their files but I work with the separations right away. Working in Photoshop means I keep each colour to a separate layer and this means I generally work in one area at a time and then move on to the next.
So I started with the background and then once that was done I moved on to the luggage, followed by the Truckster, and then finally the text. The above shows the layers for each group.
And this shows the layering of each group.
4. Wrapping Up
Once this got approved I just merged all of the layers of the same colour together and then sent the file to production! There really isn’t that much magic at this point so I’ll wrap up.
If you have any questions or I skipped over something crucial then feel free to message or tweet or whatever you gotta do to get in contact. I promise I’ll respond as best I can.
