276: One Last Score

 
In the midst of my departure from duties with the GDC (see previous post), I volunteered to craft the poster concept for the local chapter's next installment of PechaKucha Night in Winnipeg, an event I have come to know and love – and recruit for, and shoot, and record, and speak at, and MC – since its inception three years ago. Big shoes to fill – last year's quartet of PKN event posters were handled more than adeptly by Kevin Guenther.

When recruiting speakers for PKN events, a broad net is cast. If you're any combination of a) creative and b) passionate, I guarantee you'd do just fine hitting the stage (hit me up if you're interested; we're always on the lookout). As their poster designer, I considered visual connections between Winnipeg and the greater, global PechaKucha 'movement'. We're a city hundreds of kilometres and hours away from the next city and as such we have a unique ability to entertain ourselves, and thrive at doing it. Winnipeg is diverse yet tight-knit, and with winters as long and dark as they are, creative up the wazoo. We take the lemons we're given and make high holy lemonade. This trait has presented itself up on stage, again and again, at each of the dozen PKN events to date.

So, what did I do? I did what I love most in design: mix texture and type.

I'm a texture nut. This background texture is made with help from a 1966 document The Metropolitan Development Plan, by the Winnipeg Planning Division. It's a compilation of four images showing the hypothetical redesign of a back alley (clockwise from top left: a typical downtown lane; lighting is introduced and clutter removed; conversion to an enclosed pedestrian mall; conversion to pedestrian use). Alleys are quintessential Winnipeg, and I like to think this shows the creativity-is-in-everything motto that PKN abides by.

Rolling almost exclusively with a typographic solution, I decided to play with the forms of the words involved themselves – Winnipeg, Pecha, Kucha – all comprised of interesting characters, and all fun to dicker around with (like the rare situations at work with projects pertaining to Quebec – do you have any idea how much fun it is to get to work with an uppercase Q?). The typeface used is Intro; you can get it here.