Bioshock Infinite Vigor Posters
Bioshock Infinite released back in 2013, but I am just as enamored with the city of Columbia today as I was then. I always admired and studied the advertisements that filled the city; particularly the posters selling vigors. Throughout your time in the city, you see advertisements for some of vigors, yet others are conspicuously absent. For years I had wondered what those missing vigor ads might look like. As a lifelong Bioshock fan I took it upon myself to explore what those could be.
The vigors missing context were Charge, Return to Sender, and Undertow. Additionally, Ironsides from the Burial at Sea: Episode 2 DLC was also missing any advertising, but I decided to focus on the original vigors from the main game for this set. Instead of stopping at three, I decided it would be a fun exercise to develop a full set of eight posters, one for each vigor.
Design Process
As an avid antique ephemera collector, I dove into my collection of scanned sheet music covers for material to start with. Each poster is based on a real turn-of-the-century design from my collection. While each heavily modified, they clearly bear the authenticity of their era. While the original game's posters featured large fonts to compensate for the texture quality on consoles of the time, I decided to let loose and maintain the detail of the artwork I was based them on.
In order to anchor them to the game world I created each poster with four goals or rules in mind:
1. Each poster's color scheme should be inspired by the vigor's colors. This helps establish each brand of vigor as exactly that, a brand. Branding products was a relatively new practice in 1912, so some leniency was retained.
2. Each poster must feature the vigor's HUD icon. While I adore the visual design of the game and its vigors, their icons sometimes felt out of place for such high-end or expensive products as vigors. While they fit well in the context of game design limitations based on texture resolution at the time of the game's release, I thought it would be a fun challenge to fully integrate them into the advertising.
3. Each poster would bear the Fink Mfg. logo. When comparing pre-release vigor posters to the final product, a distinct change is noticed. Whereas vigors previously appeared to be concocted by different companies, in the final game Fink Mfg. is the exclusive developer of the product. This makes sense from the narrative's standpoint and so I wanted to include Fink's mark on every poster.
4. The word vigor must be featured on each poster. The Devil's Kiss and Shock Jockey posters in the final game do not mention the word vigor at all (possibly due to the context of their locations). For my posters, I wanted it to be clear what type of product was being sold, treating the names as brand names.
With these four rules in mind I set to work. In order to prevent myself from overthinking things I challenged myself to complete all of this in less than a week. I spent about 3 hours on each poster and had them done in just a few days. The final posters are designed at 11"×14" at high print resolutions.
Anti-Vigor Posters
While I was looking through my scans, I came across two covers for Carbarlick Acid Rag that gave me an idea I had to run with. In the game, Booker has easy access to all eight vigors through samples and vending machines. Theoretically, so do his enemies. Yet the player rarely encounters anyone using vigors for either combat or everyday purposes. That gave me the idea of an anti-vigor movement within the city.
Temperance movements were prevalent during this time in American history as the country moved towards the prohibition of alcohol. It seems plausible that a vigor temperance movement would have sprung up in Columbia against these expensive drinks that not only granted unnatural abilities but also proved addictive, much like the plasmids of Rapture.
The two resulting posters give context to the lack of vigor users encountered by the player. These posters would likely be used in different districts of the city; “The True Benefits of the Vigor” features expensive illustration and colored ink while the skeleton print is single-color print that could be widely distributed.
I love worldbuilding in video games but I also design logos, websites, and more! If you need design support for your game contact me through christophercc.com.
Bioshock, Bioshock Infinite, and related intellectual property are copyright their respective owners. Vigor icons by Robb Waters.
