Who: Brian Yap and Lidia Lukianova (for Adobe MAX)

What: Art Direction, Graphic Design, Illustration, Motion Graphics

Where: www.behance.net/brianyap

Behance member since: 2008

Illustrator Brian Yap is an Adobe creative director with a long history of designing posters for bands and concerts. For the two musical acts that performed at the MAX Bash at 2017’s Adobe MAX, Mark Ronson and Saint Motel, he decided to play with augmented design—collaborating with fellow Adobe designer Lidia Lukianova to create animations that appear when the posters are viewed through an augmented-reality app.

Viewers use the app, called Aurasma, on a mobile device to see additional content when the device is pointed at a certain object. Yap and Lukianova took advantage of Aurasma’s capabilities to create posters that moved when viewed through the app. 

The two concert posters look great on their own—and viewed through the Aurasma app, they provide a little something extra. 

“Aurasma lets you see things come to life—animations, additional information, graphic content—on top of a still image. Quite a while ago, I worked on something that functioned similarly via a QR code, on a CD insert,” says Yap. “You might think of this as an evolution of the QR code.”

And band posters seemed like a perfect place to try it out. Yap says, “It was amazing to see it come together, and the poster was beautifully printed by Mama’s Sauce.”

Click on the image to watch the animated Saint Motel poster. 

SAINT MOTEL POSTER

Lukianova and Yap created both posters in a very collaborative way. Yap says, “Going into it, knowing it would be animated of course had an impact on how we thought about the overall design. For the Saint Motel poster, the notion of a building façade with animations in the windows made a lot of sense, but the still image worked very well on its own.”

The posters were well received by MAX attendees and the musical artists. “Everybody responded so positively,” says Yap. “Using Aurasma was really easy. And Saint Motel reached out afterward—they were really excited about the poster and may want to do something similar again at some point. It was a nice surprise for them.”

Click on the image to watch the animated Mark Ronson poster. 

MARK RONSON POSTER

For the Mark Ronson poster, the pair created multiple color versions before deciding to print the red and gold version. Yap says, “I went through a lot of color exploration because I knew I would need it in the animations. To decide which one to print, I ended up putting it to a vote among the other designes I work with."

The final printed poster had a rich metallic gold ink. 

Yap says, “It was cool to take music posters to a different level, to play around with an effect that allows a different way of interacting.”