The final poster design.

At first I wanted to focus on the tourism of the pier. That is until I learned about it's interesting history.

Oceanside's sister city Carlsbad has an iconic sign near the beach. I wanted to capture this beachfront city sign in the type.

I used a Google Maps screenshot of the pier for a while, since it was hard to find a photo of the pier that was at just the right angle.

The design gradually became more and more and more colorful as I went along. The middle design was almost the final color pallet, until I added the complementary background color.

If I would go back I would further adjust the sizing and colors, and add more type about the history. Specifically explaining why it's sometimes called a "wharf."

Here's an alternate final design with the wharf more saturated.