Poster Series, CDF Assignment 4

David Bick

Introduction

Our task was to create a series of three posters for an event of our creation, where each poster has unique elements but functions well in the context of a series as well.

The event I invented was a series of three concerts, where three different tenor saxophone players performed concerts based on one jazz standard, Body and Soul. This idea is based on a project I did while studying jazz in high school, where I transcribed the improvised solo of the three chosen musicians on this song, to explore each artist’s take on the same material.

Initial Sketches

I had a strong initial idea that each poster would focus on the nickname of the player, and represent it with a logo or symbol. I think each nickname accurately captures the character of the musician, and a visual representation of this would similarly capture some of their essence in a striking way.

Coleman Hawkins is known as “Hawk”, for the obvious reason of his name, but also because his style of playing is known for angularity and swooping up and down the range of the saxophone.

Lester Young’s nickname is “Pres”, short for President, because of the respect he garnered as an elder statesman and ambassador of jazz, as well as the elegance of his playing. My sketch ideas hoped to conjure his lyrical playing and regality.

Dexter Gordon was called “Long Tall Dexter” and “The Sophisticated Giant”, for his height, but he also produced a sound that was larger than life, and his playing had extreme wit, cleverness, and humor. This nickname was the hardest to capture in a logo, as my initial sketch used a man in a suit trying to show sophistication, and I wanted to extend the legs down in a gradient or fade-out to show the “giant” aspect.

Initial Digital Iterations

The first iterations on Illustrator captured the sketches decently, but I began to realize these designs would need a considerable amount of adjustments. Particularly the Dexter Gordon logo turned out to be harder to implement that I anticipated. The hierarchy of this poster left a lot to be desired. I also needed to add the information about the event, and many people observed that the symbols were too on-the-nose and could benefit from some abstraction.

Intermediate Steps

While iterating through new ideas, I went down many paths that were not fruitful. I knew the Dexter Gordon poster was the weakest, so I focused on creating a better version of that one, thinking I could adapt this final design to the other musicians fairly easily. Below are iterations based on an iconic picture of Dexter that shows him smoking after playing, which I hoped would capture some of the appearance of sophistication.

The third version I thought started to approach something decent, but after receiving feedback I found I needed to make some changes, which are shown below. I tried experimenting with the placement of objects and the hierarchy.

I thought I was approaching a decent design, so I tried to create a version for the other musicians. After some reflection, however, I determined that it seemed very awkward for the other two posters, and did not do enough to address the concerns from before of taking the nicknames too literally.

New Direction

At a certain point, I decided to abandon all the past attempts and take a new direction. I was especially trying to use abstract visuals, as many people had mentioned in feedback.

The first idea came to me for the Coleman Hawkins poster, as I was trying to capture something reminiscent of a mountain range. I thought of a hawk flying over mountains, and the vertical motion of a mountain range mirrored Hawkins’ style of jumping up and down through arpeggios.

The Lester Young poster sought to demonstrate the smooth lyrical playing he is known for, with a softer color scheme to show visually that his playing is less aggressive.

Dexter Gordon incorporated the styles of both players in his own playing, so I combined the elements of both in his poster. He was from a later time period, so he listened to both players and took elements of both their playing.

I was pretty happy with these versions, and submitted them for feedback. A number of changes were suggested, however, so I went back to the drawing board.

Final Path

At this point, I was pretty lost. I thought the concept of lines would lead to a positive result, yet it did not achieve as well as I had hoped. The initial iterations I had done before that did not amount to very good results either.

I tried to reconcile the two ideas and combine elements of both, keeping the the lines to represent the playing of the musicians, and using silhouettes to show that the poster is for a concert series. The goal was that this would address the issue with the lines iterations needing to show more clearly that the is related to music, and address that the initial iterations needed more abstraction and a better hierarchy.

Thoughts on Final Draft

My final draft tries to combine the lines concept with the silhouette of the musician. The silhouette should be recognizable to someone who is familiar with these players, and to those who are not it is easily recognizable as a saxophone player. I think it strikes a better balance of abstract ideas and concepts, while still informing the viewer that the event is related to music. I like the colored lines contrasting with the black background, and I think the combination of the silhouette and colored lines are pretty striking. I also believe the aesthetic appearance of the text is better, and the hierarchy does a better job of showing the most important ideas most clearly.

If I had more time to improve on this edition, I would definitely experiment with varying the layout across the series.

I would also experiment with different versions of the silhouettes. I tried my best to capture a picture that could be recognized and were different enough to differentiate, but I think they leave a lot of room for refinement, especially with respect to the craftsmanship of them.

Conclusions/Final Thoughts

This project turned out to be very interesting, and the process was also very challenging and informative. I felt at the end of the previous assignment, just a single poster, that I still had much to learn about how to form hierarchies in a poster and to express ideas visually. In this project we had the same challenges but now with multiple posters, while also trying to form a coherent series. The task became much harder, and I had to pick up all the slack the previous assignment.

I think a lot of the problems I had in this project were similar to the problems I had in the previous poster assignment, such as struggling to create a good hierarchy and layout of elements. However, I was happy with how I tried a number of avenues and was eventually able to reconcile the different concepts.