Fall 2024 was pretty busy (job stresses and a lot of work on the Les Miserables show) and Wonka graphics were not coming together. When dropping off the Concessions and Souvenirs posters on Sunday move-in, the front of house manager looked at my lobby art concept and indicated that it wouldn’t work with the lobby theme, which was a 90s look-and-feel. She did want show posters and had room for four if I could come up with something.
These were the posters for Concessions and Souvenirs. For Midjourney artists, these were created using style reference 1143.
I ended up being sick on Monday and stayed home from work, meaning that I had a chance to tackle show posters. I decided to try creating four advertising posters from the perspective of the Wonka company encouraging people to buy chocolate bars and find a golden ticket. Research on 90s advertising indicated some common elements were “bold colors and graphics”, “minimalist layouts”, “iconic slogans and taglines”, “celebrity endorsements” and other factors.
Here are the final versions of the four advertising posters – complete with a tagline of “Got Your Golden Ticket?”. They are featuring the first four golden ticket holders, presumably good candidates for an advertising campaign.
On delivery of the four lobby posters, the lobby team indicated that they would like 3 more posters: Charlie and Grandpa Joe, Willy Wonka and the Candy Man.
Since Charle found the last golden ticket, there technically weren’t any prizes left to find. But I wanted to keep it consistent with the other advertising pictures, so worked to come up with an alternate tagline at the bottom.
The Candy Man poster was primarily based on the lyrics from the song. I was sick and didn’t get to see the show so am not sure there was a Candy Man character in it (separate from Willy Wonka).
The final poster concept was using a Times magazine “Man of the Year” cover for Willy Wonka.
For Midjourney types, the style reference used for the advertising posters was sref 1850.
