Decatur’s Bird Migration

For this poster, I chose to feature a natural phenomenon that takes place every year in Decatur, Alabama. Each year, over 14,000 sandhill cranes migrate to Decatur’s Wheeler Wildlife Refuge for the winter. Their arrival draws bird lovers from near and far to witness the beauty and majesty of the cranes, which led to the creation of an annual event. The Festival of the Cranes takes place in early to mid-January and is typically a three day event with indoor and outdoor activities. 

Process

First, I searched for a reference image of a sandhill crane that I wanted to work from. I found one from a Nebraska wildlife photographer named Derrald Farnsworth-Livingston on his website, journeyoflight.com. I then used Adobe Fresco to sketch and draw my own image of the crane, using vector brushes so the image could be infinitely scalable. Once I was satisfied with the image of the bird, I decided to hand letter the text and make it wrap around the image and fill the majority of the negative space of the frame. This took a few attempts to create something I was satisfied with. Once the text was finished, I realized the outlines of the crane were getting lost in the dark blue background, so I decided to use the text color to create a rough edged yellow/golden outline around the bird, giving it a kind of glowing effect and making it pop out of the image even more.