Stand Back Said the Elephant I’m going to Sneeze – Poster
During my undergrad studies, there was a project where we were asked to design a poster based on one of our favorite children’s book. The book I remember my parents always reading to me 1971 book, “Stand Back,” Said the Elephant, “I’m Going to Sneeze!” In the story, the animals are panicking – if the elephant sneezes he will blow the monkeys out of the trees, and the feathers and stripes off of the birds and the zebras and so much more.
In designing the poster, I wanted to show the hysteria of the animals as they fled from the scene. Having the animals clustered at the bottom of the poster while the elephant stood at the top emphasized the power of his sneeze and the scrambling of the animals to get away. I thought this would be a great piece for positive and negative space in the design.
As always, I started by hand drawing the animals. Then brought them into illustrator to clean them up. I duplicated the animals to make more of them and overlapped them to add to the hysteria at the bottom of the poster. I thought that the black bar at the bottom of the piece would help weigh the piece down and be a good place to put the name on the poster. Along with emphasizing the “Stand Back” as the statement in the piece.
What was your favorite childhood book?