I honestly love projects like these. They’re the perfect mix of storytelling, photography, illustration, and design—all coming together to create something people get excited about before they ever step into the theater. I’m incredibly thankful for clients like Pickleville Playhouse who trust me with projects that push my creativity and remind me why I love doing this work.

Designing theater posters has always felt like creating movie posters on a smaller scale. There’s something exciting about taking an entire production—its comedy, heart, adventure, music, and personality—and distilling it into a single image that instantly tells people, “I want to see that.” It’s a challenge I never get tired of.

One of the best parts of the process is collaborating with incredibly talented people. From the actors and directors to the production team, everyone brings so much passion to what they do. My job is to take all of that energy and find a visual way to tell the story before the curtain ever rises. Every production has its own personality, which means every poster deserves its own approach.

I also love that every project teaches me something new. Rarely do I create a poster the exact same way twice. Instead, I’m constantly experimenting with new lighting techniques, compositing methods, textures, color grading, and ways to blend photography with illustration. Solving those creative puzzles is one of my favorite parts of the job. Sometimes an idea works immediately, and other times it takes dozens of iterations before everything finally clicks—but that’s what makes the final result so rewarding.

These two posters also gave me an opportunity to use AI in a way I think it’s meant to be used: not to replace creativity, but to help solve creative problems. Some of the environmental elements—like integrating the train, the boat, and other complex pieces into the compositions—would have been incredibly difficult to create exactly the way I envisioned through traditional methods alone. AI became another tool in the toolbox, helping me generate and refine pieces that I could then art direct, composite, paint over, and integrate into the final artwork. In the end, it wasn’t about letting AI create the poster—it was about using every tool available to make the poster the best it could be.

Projects like these remind me why I got into design in the first place. I love telling stories visually. I love learning new techniques. I love collaborating with talented people. And I especially love creating artwork that builds excitement long before the audience takes their seats. It’s a privilege to work with clients like Pickleville Playhouse, and I’m grateful every time I get the opportunity to help bring another show to life.