Project DANA ALEXANDER p.1 - Commercial vs. Vibe Design

Brief

Design poster for a comedy show headlined by Dana Alexander in Saigon July 2025, organized by Saigon Comedy Club (SCC) and Jack Nugget (JN) at Bebop Saigon. This is the first major production for both SCC and JN, with as much potential as there's challenge.

( chosen headshot )

About Product and Producers
The potential here is a show with line-ups curated by friend and for friends. All comedians featured in the show have one way or another, fucked with Jack (Nugget) and come out on the other end impressed and confused enough to entrust him with putting this whole things together. Likewise, Saigon Comedy Club has always proven to be an enthusiastic collaborator for various theatrical shenanigans in town. Both SCC and JN aim to explore new voices, new perspectives for the local scene, beyond the standard of solid 5.

PHASE 1: To come up with deliverable commercial design

Major Challenge at hands:

• Show has little time and budget to front. It only makes sense financially to invest a day.
• Design has to be fresh and loud to announce a new comedic collaboration in town, in both production and line-ups. But headshots provided are relatively outdated in term of quality and aesthetic.  

Solution:

• To be more cartoon and campy in the approach. Focus more in a visual hook while opting for the minimal approach when it comes to manipulating the source materials. A more overt suggestion of movement within the composition would make the poster appear more energetic and in the moment. 
• A trendy popping palette - to be coherent with the month's theme: Pride Summer. 
• Utilizing typography and color to establish compositional hierarchy
• Distort layout accordingly to the main graphic to emulate physics of interactions between components as if they had real physical weight. To suggest a break-through. 

COMMERCIAL v01 (Delivered)

PHASE 2: Vibe Design

The RULE
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Only to edit from original commercial design

To Design without much planning from the start. 

Little care for rules


The OBJECTIVE

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To match the visual with my personal impression of headlining comedian's humor as much as possible 

Feelings I have after watching some short materials by Dana over the years 

After watching a few 5 minute sets by Dana Alexander, a very sassy comedienne from Canada, I am really impressed and delighted. Her humor is sharp, mostly about her naughty observation of the matter-of-fact impartial reality, the way the world works, that could be weirdly cruel and cruelly weird at the same time. Anxieties are just funs you forget how to have. And Dana's humor is here to remind you of your own cheeky innocent wit that survive maturing. Everyone is probably just kids in grown-up bodies. Dana approaches life with the curiosity of a child and a potty mouth of an auntie. 

Her joke usually starts with a common occurrence and slowly ascends into personal quirk expressed through Dana's lively recounting of stories by half acting out, half reacting to characters and their conversations. Characters in her stories are believable and yet, you could tell Dana takes certain creative liberty in repackaging them into such dynamic sacks of personalities to poke around, to explore, to solicit reactions. The chemistry of people, the synergy of happenings. Dana's joke is a little treat for your cheeky adult inner child. And of course, it's always a pleasure to see someone's aunt prosper and thriving.

VIBE DESIGN

A duo poster design that is meant to be viewed both vertically and horizontally. 

What I like

• Establish various visual planes
• Create possibility of 3D render of text. 
• See some potential for typographic branding / visual identity. 

From this exercise so far:

I've learned to be more spontaneous, to play before thinking.
Learned to feel the source materials that I'm working with more slowly and closely.

.....TO BE CONTINUED

Up next 

• To gather what I want to bring forwards in both arenas aka commercial vs vibe
• To explore the visual syntax by play with iteration of compositions and colors.
• To reverse - engineer the inspiration and mood-board
• To detect personal cliche' / signatures
• To specify and study new skills