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# Reveal · Theme Reveal
- URL: https://blog.garypercival.com/reveal-theme-reveal/
- Published: 2026-06-21T15:00:55.000Z
- Updated: 2026-06-21T15:00:54.000Z
- Description: A poster that breaks the surface. Soap-film volumes, dispersion edges, and a circle grid carrying the word for the month ahead.
- Author: Gary Percival
- Tags: #behindtheposter

## Why this week’s poster

A theme needs a marker.   
I wanted the artwork to do the announcing.

Bubbles read as thresholds 〰 something held, then gone.   
The word sits behind the surface and the surface sits behind the word. 

The grid keeps it honest.

## The build

- **Objects.** Soap-film volumes built from thin-shell geometry. Membrane thickness tuned for dispersion. A second pass added micro-tears at the rims.
- **Letters.** REVEAL set in a heavy geometric sans, stacked single-column down the centre. Blocky · uniform · quiet against the chaos behind.
- **Colour.** Pure black ground. Iridescent oil-slick spectrum on the films · magenta, cyan, amber. White type and white circles for the structural pass.
- **Lighting.** One hard key from upper-left for the highlight ribbons · soft fill underneath to keep the form readable · sharp rim light to pull the dispersion through the edges.
- **Texture.** Thin-film interference shader for the rainbow bands. A noise layer on the membrane for surface drift. Torn edges modelled, not painted.
- **Type.** Headline sits inside the construction. Wordmark and date pinned top-right and lower-left. The poster reads as a diagram first, an image second.

## What worked

- The circles sell the reveal. They look like a plan view of where the bubbles will land.
- Letters cut clean through the iridescence. No glow, no blur, no softening.
- The black ground holds everything. Nothing competes with the spectrum.

## What I’d push next time

- A slower dispersion gradient · the current pass leans saturated.
- Tighter alignment between letter centres and circle centres.
- One frame mid-pop. Membrane tearing in real time.

## Print details

- Edition: open
- Sizes: A3

## Close

A bubble is a surface and a signal. 

This one carries June.

![Two REVEAL posters side by side · black version with iridescent soap-film and circle grid · muted lilac variant behind](https://storage.ghost.io/c/92/bc/92bc4aa6-fb0d-48c9-88cc-6bb1e109d23d/content/images/2026/06/Ghost_Post_Images-1.jpg)