Andrew Lippa’s Wild Party – Poster

Judi Cook, the marketing director at the Footlight Club, asked me to outline the steps that go into creating a marketing piece for a theatrical production.

While every project has its own variations and requirements, most tend to follow this easy recipe:

1. It starts with research. Reading the play seems to be fairly important. The one time I didn’t, well…
2. Look at what other people have done in the past. This always leads me to a fairly strong list of what we don’t want to do.
3. Sit down with the producer and/or director to discuss themes and directions. Bring some ideas to the party but be open to their ideas, since they already have a vision of the production.
4. Sleep on it.
5. Have a wild dream, where a chimpanzee, riding a flamingo, across a golf course, at night, lays out the whole poster, including how to alter the key fonts in the title and how to layer in the different levels.
6. Pitch the idea and start collecting/building props, key people and shoot dates.
7. Day of the shoot: turn on some good tunes, get them into makeup and costume and light the set.
8. Post shoot – edit edit edit!
9. Proof everything and make sure that you have all of the key info: Date, Time, Place, Author, Where to Buy Tickets!
10. Proof it again, something was missing.
11. Get final approvals
12. Send it to print and make a low resolution file for posting on every social media site you can find.
13. Rinse and repeat!

Wild Party the key art poster shoot, directed by Chad Flahive.

Hair by Katie Moore, MUA Catherine Moniz, Costume Maureen Festa and David Alger. Cast: clockwise frm bottom left: Tyler Strawhecker, Philip Montana, Todd Yard, Taryn Cagnina, Nate Haywood, Rebecca Turner, Chelcy Harrell, Anne Olmsted, Brian Bakofen, Channa Gilbert