It's back to Baku for Formula One - a relatively new circuit in the history of F1, but one that has rapidly ascended to be seen as one of the best street circuits the sport has seen, with the longest straight on the calendar and iconic corners through the historic old town.

As we return to racing in Azerbaijan, our Senior Visual Designer, Sean Bull, takes us through his process that brought this beautiful poster to life.

Did the location or culture of the race influence your concept in any way?

With Azerbaijan being known as ‘land of fire’ I wanted to translate that visually into this week’s race poster, with a focus on a low sunlight, haze and the trademark sparks that the straights at Baku give us I wanted to include them as the ‘feature’ piece of this poster and how they reflect onto the following cars paint work to give a unique visual on the paintwork.

As for setting the location, I wanted to again go with a more photographic result for this one, with some enhanced cinematic visuals, so I looked at some of the iconic sections of the track and decided on the straight heading toward the Flame Tower skyscrapers as this would give me a good horizon focal point for my composition, with this a key feature of Baku I had to replicate was the trees overhanging the barriers and the particular aesthetic of the buildings surrounding the circuit

In addition to these core elements taken for the track itself, I wanted to colour grade it in Azerbaijani colours. Focussing on the teals and blues from their flag and national ID, this mixed with a boosted red hue around the sun flare/light areas helps bring the national colours into this piece a bit closer and gives it a more cinematic feel over the standard photographic grading approach I usually use.

Did you experiment with any new techniques or styles for this piece?

With this design I really wanted to convey a greater sense of speed compared to previous posters I’ve done this season, so a lot of trial and error applied with car speeds, camera settings, focal lengths, f-stops and shutter speeds all coming into play with this one to get enough exposure to give the blur I wanted without it being too ‘mushed’ into nothing readable.

From this starting point, the mix of exposures meant that I had 2 different scenes I was happy with, one that was brighter allowing the car, scenery and environment to be clearer, brighter and more visible, and another moody shot that had deeper shadows, richer tones and a more hazy skyline that knocked the flame towers further back into the background and gave a better sense of depth, so blending these two together in post was the best way to achieve the look I wanted, unfortunately with the sizes we render at and the speed of Corona, this meant waiting for two individual 2-hour renders to complete and be set up individually before being able to blend the aspects, but with the end result far exceeding what I would have got a as ‘raw render’ it was well worth it.