Assignment 5 Promotional Design

The brief is to design a 1970's themed A3 portrait poster, A5 landscape flyer, A6 newspaper advert and the A5 cover for a programme for Mike Leigh's play Abigail's Party.
I have a much loved 1976 copy of the Letraset catalogue (cover price 50p) which is a great reference for suitable fonts.

The fonts I have that are suitable are Gil Sans Ultra Bold, Showcard Gothic and Hobo Std I'm not so keen on Showcard Gothic here but the other 2 go well together.

What does 1970's mean? Flared trousers and floral patterns Orla Kiely (ok not actual 1970's but retro 1970's) kitsch....

Some sketchbook ideas

 the bottom left hand drawing is from a great painting from Kim Roberti

I'm not in the flow with this yet so I did some doodle type ideas on the computer I think orange was a very 70's colour and blue is it's complimentary colour.

ok this one isn't in the right theme I was just playing

Poster

A couple of mock ups still searching for a direction, this top one is difficult to read

The orange/blue format lacks punch

 I drew some silhouettes of teenagers dancing

 and put them in a window

Having tried lots of different ideas I can't make the orange/blue format work. The black background could be more expensive to produce and doesn't have a very 70's feel but I think it is the best version.

Flyer

The flyer could look like this

or this. I think the top version is best

 the back would then be

 I tried making the glasses lighter but the lettering doesn't show up as well

Newspaper advert

 For the newspaper advert I tried to keep things similar

 but it's difficult to read

 and I think it could look dull printed in the paper so I went back to the orange background

 which I think is cleared with black type

Programme cover

In black

 or in orange

I brought the dancing teenagers back for the back page but I'm not sure they're really relevant. I think if I had access to more fonts it would be better to use Bottleneck or Candice to give a more 70's feel. The more I have worked with Gil Sans Ultra bold the less 1970's it feels but maybe that's down to familiarity?

Also I seem to have talked myself back into the green and orange colour scheme so the poster could be

and the flyer