There’s a new artist trend happening lately, and quite frankly, I love it. Artists like Taylor Swift and The National are remastering and re-releasing updated versions of prior work. This practice got me thinking about revisiting work that I’ve released and needs updating.
Fall River: City on a Hill
In 2012, I started seeing people create travel posters based on fictional places. At the same time, I fell in love with the Works Progress Administration style of artwork and loved how the US Government promoted visiting National Parks. I wanted to develop a WPA-styled poster that promoted my hometown, Fall River, Massachusetts.
For me, I needed to create something that people from this city would be proud of and inspire people to think differently about this place. I didn’t know where to begin, and bought Adobe Illustrator and started to teach myself how to make vector images. It was a challenging process, but I fell in love with the software. Within a few months, I developed eight travel posters featuring Fall River and successfully launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the series.
Self Reflection
City on a Hill 2.0
I printed 125 posters featuring the City on a Hill and sent all of them across the country. In 2016 I sent my last copy of that poster, but I never truly felt satisfied with the result. I honestly am surprised 125 people liked it enough to purchase it!
Over the years, my Adobe Illustrator skills have grown significantly. I knew I had to redevelop this Fall River poster with my current skillset. One of the things I’ve been trying to develop is a core color palette, where all of my digital art reflects distinct and similar colors. ‘City on a Hill 2.0″ was a great experiment to test out my new palette.
Finally, I can say I’m genuinely proud of this poster, and it finally completes the vision I had nine years ago.
The poster is now available in the shop if you’d like to display your own Fall River community pride.
