Santa Fe Irish Hockey Tournament Digital Flier

My Role

Graphic Designer

Tech + Tools

Gimp and Canva

Why I Loved This Project

This may seem like such a small project but I enjoyed it for a bunch of reasons. First of all, I love helping my community. I did this in trade for some ice time! One of my oldest friends Edgar was my ice hockey teammate in college, and he was running this tournament. I also asked for some Alma’s Salsa, his mother’s brand.

Besides the community stuff, this project was fun and I’m pretty proud of it. First of all, Edgar gave me a reference from another tourney and instead of trying to use that actual file like a weirdo, I recreated a lot of aspects that he liked but from scratch. Creating the circles isn’t straight forward in Gimp, and creating text that wraps around a circle is very tricky – simple enough once you learn it, but it’s not like doing it in a easy-does-it platform like Canva. Doing that twice to create the shadowing? Chef’s kiss! In fact I didn’t use Canva at all like I might for a quick and dirty layout. The only things that came from Canva were the hockey sticks and the clover. This was also the project where I learned how Gimp’s alignment tool works – again it’s not as straightforward as other tools.

The piece de resistance, though? That puck in the middle. Call me crazy, but I just really really love that!

Outcomes

Edgar was thrilled! He also loved the puck like crazy. I delivered a 1080×1920 version for Facebook/IG stories and a square version (seen above) for Instagram posting. The tournament went on without a hitch and if I’m not mistaken, Edgar’s team won. Or at least I’d like to think so.

What I’d Do Differently Now

Not much. This one was quick, small, and friendly. I might ask for more salsa than I got though.