Wyatt Knowles on his DIY approach to poster design

Three months after starting his BFA in Drawing at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Wyatt Knowles discovered collage and spent most of his time doing that instead. During this time he also started making posters and flyers for the bands he and his friends were in: “I think I enjoyed the freedom and contrast of just making this sort of throw-away thing, in comparison to the big conceptual ideas I had to have for my university work,” he tells It’s Nice That.

Fast forward to today and Wyatt has a beautiful collection of these music posters in his portfolio. Ranging from album launches to live gigs, the predominant aesthetic is grainy and vintage, with bold uses of colour and collage elements that clearly hark back to his university days. “The nostalgic look of my work comes from all my reference material. I’ve got stacks of books and magazines and most of them are pre-1980s because something about the print quality appeals to me more,” says Wyatt on his aesthetic style. "I refuse to use images off the internet because I feel like it’s cheating for some reason, so I use scans from these instead.”

Influenced by everything from “hardcore and rave flyers, to Bollywood posters and graffiti,” Wyatt’s inspiration comes from all angles, not least the paintings in the gallery he works in. Using this stimulation, he then utilises pastels, marker pens, paint and paper cuttings to produce the final result. A fan of the DIY approach, Wyatt says “the more hand-done things are, the more interesting the finished product.”

Talking about the future, Wyatt says he wants to branch into record covers and fashion editorials and “make enough money so I can quit my day job and spend more time with my dog.”