Mid-Century by the Bay Flyer Project

It's been far too long since I've posted here, but I've been busy with a flurry of projects. Some of these projects are are still in progress, and one of them needs to stay under wraps for now, however, I can tell you about the new promotional flyer design I just finished up for author, Heater M. David. She will doing a book signing next month for her recent book, Mid-Century by the Bay. If you're lover of San Francisco, or Mid -Century architecture then you owe it to yourself to take a look, and if you're going to be in the Palo Alto area on December 3rd, you can meet her in person and have her sign a copy of for you. It would make a tremendous Christmas gift for yourself or for the retro fan on your list.

As for the design, Heather wanted something fun, yet still elegant and classy, and of course, there had to be an MCM feel to go along with the subject of her book. I started with a clean white background to help keep it quiet, then added a couple of  nice retro fonts, specifically: Mister Television and Dairyland from Font Diner. I believe they're both in the set called Casino Buffet. For the date and time section at the bottom, I chose a great vintage looking sans-serif font called News Gothic. It was also very important to have the cover of the book featured, and I used a classic grid pattern for the layout, which is similar to the book's cover. I then filled in a couple of the other sections with images taken from the book. To balance out the design I sampled colors form the book cover for the information blocks, set the type in white, and then used those same colors in the display text at the top. Originally, the top space also featured some retro looking sphere shapes, and while they had a really nice mid-century look to them, they were so heavy—even in a much lighter blue color—that they overpowered the design, so we took them out. But then there was a bunch of airy white space with the text floating around in it, basically it was unbalanced in the other direction, so Heather asked me to try some sputniks similar to the ones on her website, SV Modern. It was a good call,  they added a nice retro look not too heavy, but not too light either. And there you have it.

All photos used in this design are copyright Heather M. David.