Keeling Group

So I've never really designed an Arcade Fire poster before, but after sitting about 10 feet away from Wes while he designed about 30 of them, listening to and watching the band play, and really getting down into the nooks and crannies of the stories and themes of their new record, I felt ready to dive into it after being asked by the band to design a poster for their October 2010 Berkeley shows. One of the things I'd noticed during their live shows were the patches on Win's shirts. While I could never read them or see the details from the crowd, they instantly reminded me of my short-lived stint as a Cub Scout. I pretty much quit after the first day cause I thought it was stupid, but I was always into the patches. Along with patches from vacation spots and other organizations, patches are a solid representation of my generation growing up in the suburbs in the 1970s and '80s. Here are some of the images I was looking at for inspiration: I came up with a design that incorporated the patches into a sort of wall display that might be hanging in someone's basement as a sort of look back at all of their life's accomplishments, travels, and other passions. I wanted to make sure that some were obvious references to Arcade Fire songs, but some were a bit vague and might only have sentimental meaning to the patch's owner. Time to start drawing these things out for real in Adobe Illustrator: Now here comes the fun part - tracing every single patch design in Photoshop, drawing each of those stitches one ... by ... one. Just me and the brush tool + Shift button for hours and hours. Here's the finished product: Make sure to sign up for our weekly newsletter to find out when our copies of this print will be available in our online store!