The original posters were better than any of the mockups.

Not because they looked good, but because they used a design language that "at-a-glance" said what the event was. Sure, the designers republic/etc looked less commonplace, but if I was looking for a fun local faire I would absolutely never notice those posters and if I went i'd assume it was a completely different type of event than it is (e.g. some sort of modern art faire).

Every one of those posters didn't fit the medium idea at all (local faire event) except the child's drawing one could maybe pass.

In fact I can almost guarantee that all the posters in this article would perform worse than the originals if you were to test them on the street or in a facebook group.

If you are an actual production/commercial designer, your first goal is to understand what the clientele wants and converts, secondarily make it beautiful.

This failed both, zero understanding of the purpose of commercial art (to speak to the actual clientele and bring in more people) and ugly within their own design language (but yes, less common).

Would have been interesting to try and make designs that actually make sense for this product AND are a bit less generic.