Back in November I created a poster for an afternoon of track racing that my cycling club was to be holding. They are doing it again in February and I wanted to create another poster in a different style, within the constraints of the style guide I wrote for my work with the club.

This time, I wanted something with four of five riders coming out of the poster. I had to settle for four as I did not have any photos of a track cyclist from directly head on.

For the photos, three were used from round two of the series, at another velodrome and came from approximately the same section of the track at round about the same time of day. A forth photo came from another track at a different time of day, but where the lighting was similar (but not quite the same, so that image stands out a bit). The background of all photos needed to be removed, so I got busy with the Photoshop pen tool.

The typography I used mirrored the poster from round 1. Once I’d added a stroke to the font I chose for “-scratch-points-elimination-motorpace-“, the lettering got a bit tight, but I left it as so it could stand out (most likely in a bad way), but it is meant to stand out.

Once I’d posted the image to my club’s Facebook page, my brother queried why “all of the posters I do feature (me)”. Despite that not being true, as I consciously try to use photos not of me*, I modified the design after going “rargh, damn you bro”. Not to appease him, but to see how fast I could adjust a design.

I grabbed a photo of a different race with a face oriented more or less the same as mine was, chopped it out of the donor photo with the pen tool, copied it into the main photo, erased some of it when I’d dropped down the opacity, then once it was looking good, upped the opacity, merged the layers and refreshed the InDesign link. That took all of 10 mins for what looks to be a fairly good alteration (let’s see what I think in a week or two).

Before & After
Before & After

*Whenever I produce a design, I use my own photos where ever possible. That’s because I own the copyright and using my own photos makes me think of potential uses of shots as I plan to take them. In this case, the only photos I had of male track cyclists in our new cycling kit were of me when I wore my prize for inspiring the new design.

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