Shonen Knife gig poster

I was initially going to do a poster for Fatima Yamaha's gig in London in February, but after the frustration of trying to get the previous solution to work, I lost interest and inspiration. Luckily, I discovered that the all-girl Japanese band Shonen Knife are touring next April.

Their music is really kooky so my initial idea was to do a composition with a clothes line of socks with kooky things on them like cats and flowers (which they sing about a lot) because of this lyric which really spoke to me: 

Feel in your pockets for something fun /Wash your socks and turn them inside out

And I've always felt that socks are a good outlet for people to express kookiness. I also did a couple quick ideas of how to layout their band name - I want to feature the Japanese characters as well.

In the end though, I went off the clothes line idea and thought that the breakfast plate idea was equally kooky and potentially more interesting. I did a quick thumbnail which sold the idea to myself and went for it:

 

In the end I decided I against the bar at the bottom.

I think this makes for quite a funny poster since despite the fact that they're Japanese, maybe they'll be eating english breakfasts all month. Putting in drumsticks by the plate like chopsticks was an idea too, but I really wanted to avoid making the image cultural as it could be quite cliched or even offensive. I feel that the vertical text refers back to their heritage in an acceptable way and this was as far as I was willing to go. I feel as though the type treatment was quite inspired by Sonnenzimmer's posters as well.

What I really like about this poster is the fact that the illustration is not related to music in anyway, yet I feel it works. Definitely an interesting approach. This is also the first posted designed in non-A2: it's 18"x24", like most posters you would find online