Project 1: Banner for an artist

My artist of choice was Theodor Seuss Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss.

Theodor Seuss Geisel was a prolific children's author as well as an illustrator and artist. Among critics there is no real consensus to his style.  Some see his work as Maximalism & Pre-Emptive Cute Formalism.  He created his artwork in the mid-1900's.  While he was most well known for his books, he was an incredibly talented artist who created many eccentric characters.  He did this by melding two animals together or sometimes adding non-animal characteristics to his creations.  In addition to these ilustrations, he also spent many years working in advertising and during WWII he created United States Army posters.  He also went thru a psychedelic art phase which many of his admirers are not familiar with.  He was awarded 2 Academy Awards, 2 Emmys, 1 Peabody and 1 Pulitzer Prize over the course of his career.

Works the artist is known for would be the characters in dozens of his books.  Sam-I-Am from "Green Eggs and Ham", The Grinch and The Whos from "How the Grinch Stole Christmas", and the Cat in the Hat, to name a few.

I'm envisioning the banner to be shaped either like a big green sunny-side-up egg or the edge of the pages of a book.  I'm considering the tag line "Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened!" - Dr. Seuss

The images I plan to use will be the characters from some of his most popular books, listed above.  I plan to use the typeface "FOOTLIGHT MT LIGHT" because it is fun and captures his lightheartedness while it is easy to read and will not take away from the artwork in the banner.  The colors will be red, green, black & white.  The size of the header will be 980 x 400.  I plan to present some of the characters in the banner amongst the menu items.