The making of the Builders’ Day poster

The Builders’ Day is a surprisingly well visualized holiday unlike many other professional days in the calendar. Banners and postcards feature half-naked girls in hard hats with bricks, concrete floats cutting cakes, bottles with balloons, high riggers, etc. It’s easy to see that the holiday is truly loved by people. Let’s continue the tradition by using a new image.

A hard hat as part of the skull?

Art director: Sure.

Sending the idea to the technical designer.

Drawing the first approximation, we want it to look cartoonish.

Art director: Why is that? I want nothing in this style. We need to use a proper X-ray image.

All right, taking the easy way out: looking for a suitable X-ray to avoid drawing. While we’re waiting for hospitals and friends to reply, drawing a dotted picture.

Art director: Let’s not get distracted.

Receiving an image which is too small, meaning we need to start drawing using a colleague’s brain for inspiration.

Art director: It has to be more of a construction worker’s hard hat than a Nazi helmet. You can remove the side edge and leave only the front and back ones. The color has to be more X-rayish. And remove the holes on the side.

Fixing.

Art director: Looks OK. What’s with the nose?

Designer: I’ve drawn an average one based on all the real images I’ve seen.

Art director: There has to be a hint of the bone so it doesn’t look like there’s a hole. It’s not a real skull after all.

Designer: Like this?

Art director: Yep.

Starting to typeset.

Looking at the poster and realizing it’s just not material enough.

Art director: Also add a hint of the side edge going from back to front.

Art director: Can you make the hard hat look a bit more traditional?

Slightly changing the shape. Most importantly, changing the way it sits on the head which immediately makes the picture resemble a construction worker much more.

Option 1. The hard hat is slightly larger than before but slightly smaller than a real one would be relative to the head.

Option 2. The hard hat is closer to the real proportions relative to the head.

Art director: Go with number 2.