When I decided to develop the visual identity for Diles Que No Me Maten’s Richmond concert, I wanted to avoid the predictable language of rock posters. Instead of photographing the musicians themselves, I imagined a fictional community of people who could exist inside the band’s music.

Each poster introduces a different character. Some appear awkward, others confident, mysterious, rebellious, or quietly eccentric. Together they feel like pages from an imaginary high school yearbook where every outsider became the protagonist.

The visual direction draws from editorial portrait photography, vintage yearbook aesthetics, experimental fashion, and absurd humor. Bold hairstyles, expressive faces, colorful clothing, handmade typography, and carefully controlled studio lighting create a world that feels both familiar and slightly surreal.

Building a Fictional Cast

The band takes inspiration from improvisation, post punk, krautrock, jazz, psychedelia, and Mexican literature. Rather than illustrating those influences literally, I translated their unpredictable energy into a diverse collection of portraits. Every character carries a distinct personality while remaining part of the same visual universe. The result feels playful, slightly uncomfortable, expressive, and memorable, much like the band’s live performances. Although every portrait looks photographic, each image began as an AI directed concept. I developed dozens of prompt variations to explore casting, styling, expression, wardrobe, and personality before selecting the strongest compositions.

Creative Process

This project combines Generative AI with traditional graphic design. I used Midjourney to generate the initial portrait concepts and explore different personalities. I used Figma Weave to experiment with layouts, typography, and visual directions. Finally, I completed every poster in Adobe Photoshop, where I refined the images, balanced color, integrated typography, adjusted composition, and prepared the final production artwork.

The AI tools accelerated exploration, but the creative direction remained entirely human. Every portrait, expression, crop, color decision, and typographic choice served the overall identity of the series.

One of the prompts explored during development was:

Hyperrealistic comedy style yearbook photo of a fictional eccentric Guatemalan Indigenous dye blonde plus size woman with an exaggerated facial expression, absurd hairstyle, strikingly inappropriate outfit, studio lighting, high school yearbook aesthetic, ultra detailed realistic skin texture, subtly comical, rock alternativo y experimental vibe.

That prompt became a creative starting point rather than a finished solution. Each selected image evolved through iteration, editing, curation, and graphic design.

Final Result

The final collection transforms a concert announcement into an editorial portrait series. Rather than promoting a single performance, the posters introduce an imagined cast of characters that reflects the chaotic, poetic, and experimental spirit of Diles Que No Me Maten while giving the Richmond show a distinctive visual identity.

The post Diles Que No Me Maten Concert Posters appeared first on Santasombra.

A great concert poster does more than announce a show. It creates anticipation before the audience hears the first song. For this project, I designed a complete poster series for Solya’s Queen of Texas concert at The Canal Club in Richmond, Virginia. My goal was to build a visual identity that captured her music, personality, and stage presence.

Building the Atmosphere

I drew inspiration from Solya’s Queen of Texas era and blended gothic romance, dream pop, surreal Americana, fashion photography, and sacred symbolism into one cinematic world. Instead of creating standard promotional artwork, I treated every poster like a frame from an independent film or a luxury fashion editorial.

The series places Solya inside a dreamlike version of the Texas desert. Empty highways, abandoned motels, vintage roadside signs, telephone poles, oil pumps, drifting dust, roses, and oversized moons appear throughout the collection. Together they create a lonely yet beautiful landscape that feels both nostalgic and mythical.

Defining the Character

Solya stands at the center of every composition. Flowing ivory dresses, delicate halos, sapphire crosses, and restrained expressions give her an almost timeless presence. She feels mysterious, powerful, vulnerable, and unforgettable all at once. Each poster explores a different emotion while maintaining the same visual language.

Designing for Typography

I designed every composition with typography in mind from the very beginning. I left generous negative space and balanced each scene around the title and event information. The photography and graphic design support each other instead of competing for attention.

Blending AI with Traditional Design

I combined Generative AI with traditional design tools throughout the project. I used Midjourney to explore concepts and generate imagery. I used Figma Weave to experiment with layouts and creative directions. I finished every poster in Adobe Photoshop, where I composited images, refined colors, retouched details, integrated typography, and prepared the final artwork.

AI supported my creative process, but it never replaced design thinking. I directed every image, selected every composition, and refined every detail until the series felt cohesive and intentional.

Final Result

The finished collection presents a cinematic identity for the concert while expanding the visual language of the Queen of Texas album. The posters combine music, fashion, photography, graphic design, and emerging AI tools into one unified campaign that feels haunting, elegant, and distinctly contemporary.

The post Solya: Queen of Texas Concert Poster Series appeared first on Santasombra.

The creative direction imagines the band inside a recording studio where reality and synthetic performance collide. Musicians confront digital versions of themselves performing inside holographic spaces surrounded by glowing sound waves, oversized microphones, distorted portraits, and saturated neon color. Every poster presents a different interpretation of the same idea while maintaining a unified visual language inspired by vintage gig posters, photocopied zines, screen printing, and worn concert ephemera.

To develop the series, I combined Midjourney, Figma Weave, and Adobe Photoshop into a single creative workflow. Midjourney generated the initial imagery, Figma Weave helped explore compositions and visual directions, and Photoshop was used for compositing, typography, color grading, distressed textures, and final production. My role included creative direction, prompt engineering, image editing, layout design, typography, and production across the entire poster collection.

The visual system embraces imperfections. Heavy grain, worn paper, distressed type, fluorescent color palettes, and oversized graphic elements recreate the energy of underground music culture while introducing futuristic themes of identity, technology, and performance. Each poster is designed to feel loud, tactile, and collectible, capturing the intensity of a live metalcore show before the first note is even played.

This project demonstrates how emerging creative tools can become part of a professional design process while remaining driven by strong art direction and graphic design fundamentals. The result is a cohesive promotional campaign that merges music, experimental photography, digital illustration, and contemporary poster design into a distinctive visual identity for the event.

The post VANNA concert posters appeared first on Santasombra.