Wisky Tango is a fictional band comprised of my group of friends including my brother, with me as the front-man. This was a final project for an image manipulation class at The Art Institute of Portland where we learned skills in Adobe Photoshop. Every single part of this project was done in Photoshop, and took hours to complete, actually the four individual parts were due over the course of the last few weeks if I remember correctly.
Ironically the most difficult project of the class, for me, was the first, which was to compile about 700-1000 photos into a carefully packed library built by Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Bridge. It wasn't technically difficult, but the school had severe restrictions on use of material regarding copyrights, which, as it turned out, was loosely enforced, I learned after my last quarter at the school. The school however achieved it's purpose in instilling within me a respect for others' work and copyright laws which I will always uphold.
The following make up the final project for Image Manipulation.
Call me crazy, but I love to include a little humor in my work, that is unless "super serious" is mandated. There a number of jokes going on in this piece. First the name "Whisky Tango" is two-fold: there is a famous (or infamous) bar on Sunset Boulevard called "The Whisky," (or "The Whisky A Go-go.) I've never been, but I'm told by everyone who ever has that it's the biggest dive in L.A., and it's been in every movie that has a shot of Sunset. I used the exact typeface (Mistral - on my list of fonts never to use) from the neon sign as my banner, even tried to make it look like a neon sign. The other half of the joke about the name was that it was an inside joke: "Whisky Tango," or "WT" was what we jokingly referred to as "white-trash." (And "whisky" or "whiskey" is correct spelling.)
The assignment required that a comic strip design be incorporated. As I mentioned previously, putting together the photo library was anguish because I didn't have any really good stuff, so for this project, I improvised by using images I shot with my first digital camera, low-res, but good enough for the project. The were all just random stuff from different parties we had during the summer of 2004. None of them can play any instruments, nor can I sing.
The other typeface is Comic Sans Serif, another of my "never use" typefaces. But worked well here.
This was the band's promotional poster.
The second part was a black and white newspaper ad. Imagine opening any newspaper and turning to the entertainment section. You'll see hundreds of ads for concerts and gigs breaking every rule of design. Right off the bat you'll notice there are four typefaces used. This is a huge NO-NO. You never want to use more than one, two tops. That's the thing about the instructors at The Art Institute, sometimes they just don't get it. He asked for bad design, I gave him bad design, and still he comments on using too many fonts. This is another example of a photo I improvised. The four characters in the middle are also in the first poster, they are the band members. The two outliers are just a couple of guys that were there, thus their faces are covered, but only so much as to say "THESE GUYS ARE HERE AND THEIR FACES ARE COVERED!" Worked pretty well actually, thought not my favorite.
Part three: backstage pass. Another random improvised photo that turned out to be gold, full color with the same filter as the first part.
Part four: the "telephone pole poster." "The piece de resistance" as it were. This one was the greatest risk. I stepped way out of the box on this one. The project was supposed to use pictures of the same people in each part. But I was out, it was the end of the term, I had three other major projects due and I was fried, however this part was an overwhelming success and unanimously voted the strongest piece of the project. The piece was supposed to be black, no gray scale, like the cheap concert/gig promos you see on telephone poles in every city. The iconic shape of the Jack Daniel's bottle really lent itself to this project. Again I used like seven typefaces, but it worked because it mirrored a real product.
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