Turning Leaf Productions promo materials

Turning Leaf Productions is a cabaret entertainment company run by singer and entrepreneur Valerie Sneade. TLP puts on a number of shows in the Port Charlotte, Florida area every year, each with a central theme, and while some are centered around Valerie herself, most feature other performers from all over the country.

I am usually contracted to design posters, logos and direct-mail brochures and postcards for these shows. Valerie also contracts me to do her personal promo materials for trade shows and magazine advertisements when working away from TLP’s home turf.

This is all freelance work, with short deadlines and little or no provided art: the performers often don’t have any high-quality promo photos of their own, so I must improvise, and quickly.

“Almost Famous”

For this poster, the only photo of the singer that was available was about 120 x 160 pixels, which if it had been printed at high-resolution might’ve covered a quarter of a postage stamp. TLP and I had run into this problem with this singer before, though it was never with her as the headliner, so there were other photos to focus on. Not this time.

So I replaced the photo with an illustration I based on it, and made the poster shine with elegant typography. I’d been trying to sell TLP on a less-is-more approach for a while but hadn’t been given the chance to pursue it till now, and they liked it so much they had the entire summer series named after this show, and had me do their brochure for the season in the same style.

“Franc D’Ambrosio’s Broadway!”

This was the first of three shows in TLP’s Harborview Performing Arts series. It was an upscale series taking place at the Charlotte Harbor Event & Conference Center, which was not TLP’s usual venue, so they aimed high. They started off with Franc D’Ambrosio, who was the Phantom of the Opera on Broadway. Starting with the second show the series turned to the Dinner-And-A-Show format.