The Brief

The client requires some marketing collateral to promote Live at the Onion, a music event at The Dirty Onion, Belfast.

1. Outdoor – 48 Sheet Billboard

2. Double sided A6 Flyer

3. Social Media promotion: FB cover photo and fb square

My Approach

From working in the hospitality industry in Belfast, I already had an idea of how The Dirty Onion portrays itself and their brand identity. I decided to look at their website to research further more about the brand and their story. I found the website was very image-based and thought I could do something simple - an image of live music and some text over the top. However, I felt this was very basic and wouldn’t read well across all the marketing platforms.

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Next, I researched The Dirty Onion’s social media - mainly Facebook and Instagram. Here I found a lot more content to work with and some previous marketing work that had been done in the past. This helped me develop a better idea that was more suited to the rustic feel of the Dirty Onion. It also provided a few different colour schemes I could work from and use as a reference. I found that most marketing pieces usually included a deep green or blue colour and had highlights of a brighter colour to complement it. I also found that many of the previous marketing material had different background textures and vintage style illustrations to create the authentic feel we associate with The Dirty Onion so I decided to incorporate this to my work.

My Process

As it was a live music event, I first went for an illustration of a vintage microphone. However, I thought this could be portrayed as an "open mic night" instead of a music event.

Instead, I decided to include some sort of instrument on the artwork. I then researched the bands that were playing at the event and saw that one of the acts had some brass instruments. This gave me the inspiration to include a man playing the saxophone on the artwork, as many places in Belfast would include the standard guitar, I thought this was a little more interesting and might attract more of a crowd. To give the ads a bit more of a feel of the atmosphere I added the illustration of a dancing lady. While I was researching the bands, I also found their logos to incorporate them into my design.  

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After I was satisfied with a decent layout, I started to play around with different colours and textures in the background. Ultimately, I went with a very rustic style, to complement the brand identity of the venue. A beige and green colour were the main colours used in all of their marketing artwork and i added splashes of orange on my artwork to highlight key information.

Final Outcome