fresh ink
Poster designs and other assets for Fresh Ink Theatre Company’s 2023-2024 season. Fresh Ink is a Boston-area theatre company committed to producing inclusive and innovative new work. Their branding is fairly loose, and because of that I had the opportunity to really be creative with this season’s posters and tailor each design to the plays themselves.
Theatrical poster design
Sept. 2023 - Present
WHAT?
the more the man
“Follow the parade from the streets of New Orleans to Fresh Ink Theatre in Boston! A love letter to New Orleans, The More the Man follows a young Black man as he connects to the ancestors of the land and lineage, while navigating the highs and lows of romantic and
familial love.”
WHEN?
orpheus in the overworld
“The gods have forced Orpheus and Eurydice to repeat their tragedy for centuries, but this time everyone (and everything) is a bit more queer than usual: tomboys, fairies, gods, and god-ish bartenders abound. Join this cast of characters for a celebration of queerness, genderfullness, and staking claim on our own story.”
honey girl
“After her sister, Asal, dies by suicide, Fey and their mother, Leila, are left to cope. But how do you cope with a loss like that? Fey needs to get creative. She’ll do anything to get her sister back.”
the more the man
The More The Man is the third and most recent poster I designed for Fresh Ink. Having created Honey Girl and Orpheus In The Overworld primarily with Photoshop and digital effects, I really wanted to experiment with making something illustrated entirely by hand, and felt that the rich, colorful setting of New Orleans was an excellent place to explore that. The play is centered around a young Black man named King. It focuses on his experience learning to understand himself in the context of where he grew up and navigating what matters to him in the present, and where he wants to end up in the future. I wanted to visually position King as a dreamer, with the city skyline and the setting sun illuminating the backdrop and adding depth and possibility to his world.
orpheus in the overworld
Orpheus in the Overworld is the second poster I designed, and Fresh Ink’s biggest production this year. It’s a lush, extensive, gender and genre-bending retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. In this version, Orpheus is transmasc, so I wanted to include elements of his identity in a way that was tasteful and not tokenizing. I went for an overall grungy, smoky theme (the play takes place in a grungy, smoky bar and mentions a neon sign) and created gradient overlays in the colors of the trans flag, as well as adding sketchy top surgery scars to the figure in the stock photo I used. Given the scope of the production itself and the wide variety of print and digital assets, this poster required the most resizing and reformatting out of the three.
honey girl
Honey Girl was the first poster I created for Fresh Ink last fall. This play in particular is the most intimate and emotional out of the three, and although it is about loss, it’s also so much about the about love that exists within and after loss. The main character is also grappling with the idea of memories becoming reality. I liked the idea of representing Asal’s memory in a way that felt hazy and half-real, but most importantly as a warm and loving entity. I wanted to reflect the intimacy of the script in the visuals of the poster, and, on top of the color palette, kept the typeface sketchy, round, and all lowercase for this reason.
