The shade experience

This poster is very dear to me and one of my favourite pieces of mine, as I am Indian but I grew up in Lagos, Nigeria. Hence, this piece is based on the first Nigerian fashion designer, Shade Thomas Fahm. She was the first to open her boutique in Lagos, where she sold ready tied gales and wrappers with zippers on them, which then went on to become the place where all the fashionable people at the time went to. These facts are represented and talked about on the poster, the head piece or gele, has information about her as well as bigger words that just show the traditional names for things like wrapper and aso-oke, adire and okene which are the names of some of the materials Shade Thomas used to create her clothes and designs. The gele is done in a variety of blues, pinks and purple and red to show the beautiful and intricate designs that were made with the traditional fabrics in many different colors. The artist plays around with the tonality and the opacity of some of the letters in the gele to add the feeling of folds in the fabric. The side profile of the face consists of the title of the exhibition ‘The Shade Experience’ repeated all the way down to her neck, the artist uses a brown color for this part with the neck being a slightly darker shade for some values and to give the effect of light on the face. The font used for the words in the face were done with a serif typeface called Copperplate, this font has slightly contrasting weights that allow for a cool effect when you envelope distort with mesh, in addition to this the serifs add a bit of texture to the piece as well. The other font used on the exhibition title for her name is Exocet OTECECY Heavy, this font is heavy weighted and wide set with some symbols like letters. With everything else in Copperplate, the author added this touch for some contrast in type as everything else is in the same font, this gives the viewer visual interest and a little detail to pay attention to.