2008 Poster Design Winner Brandy Gruner will be signing posters on Saturday, October 17 from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Coastal Arts League Museum, 300 Main Street, in Half Moon Bay. Entries from the 2009 Pumpkin Festival Poster Design Contest, a joint effort by the Coastal Arts League and Half Moon Bay Beautification Committee, will be on display at the Coastal Arts League, beginning with a reception on October 11 from 4 pm to 7 pm and continuing through November 3. The public is invited to visit the CAL Gallery to vote for their favorite design (The People’s Choice Award) during the entire month the posters are on display including Pumpkin Festival weekend, October 17-18.

When Maryland artist Brandy Gruner set out to design a poster for the Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin Festival, she knew she wanted to include two things. “It’s Half Moon Bay, so I wanted something that people would graphically associate with that. Then I was thinking of pumpkins. People really respond to pumpkins,” said the artist. “I thought about how to incorporate those two elements into something that would be striking, yet still look kind of local.”

Her winning design fit the bill perfectly. It features a bright orange pumpkin in the shape of a crescent moon, set on a dreamy blue background of waves and stars.

The poster struck a chord with the selection committee in Half Moon Bay. “It was really an eye-catching design,” said Shirley Kellicutt, member of the Coastal Arts League and chair of the poster design contest committee. “It contained all the elements we wanted in an ad poster to communicate the energy of the Pumpkin Festival. Her design is very professional, yet simple and easy to use for all our different applications.”  The design will soon be admired by a quarter-million festival-goers on not only posters, but hats, glasses, mugs, T-shirts and countless advertisements.

This is the second year that the poster for Half Moon Bay’s world-famous Art & Pumpkin Festival has been chosen through a nationwide contest, jointly sponsored by the Half Moon Bay Beautification Committee, which runs the Pumpkin Festival, and the Coastal Arts League, a local non-profit organization that supports local artists.

Gruner entered the contest last year as well, but did not win. This year, she put a lot of thought into the concept of her design to find something that would translate well on a poster and be both universally striking and locally meaningful to Half Moon Bay. Her careful work paid off with a $1,000 prize, as well as the honor of having her artwork featured at the festival.  

Gruner recently worked as a production manager at the Madison Design Group in the Washington D.C. metro area, where she managed projects for print and the Web. She also is a fine arts painter working with oils, mostly portraits and figurative landscapes, including paintings of Northern California scenery. She designed the Pumpkin Festival poster on a Mac using Adobe Illustrator and put her prize money to good use by purchasing a new computer. “I can design next year’s poster on that,” she said, laughing.

Gruner says she’s entered small art competitions before and recently entered another local contest for San Mateo County’s “As Fresh as it Gets” campaign to promote local agriculture and restaurants. She’s looking forward to coming to Half Moon Bay for the Pumpkin Festival to sign her posters and see her art in action. “I think it will be neat,” she said. “People who I know out there are really excited. As an artist, I’m always trying to build my network, especially on the West coast, and this really helps.”