Music Icons: 50 Years
Poster Series Project
Typography 2 - Spring 2023
Big Idea:
Collision + Sound = Progression
Colliding new sounds leads to progression. A collision is to be compared to something fearless. Through these artists’ choices, something new for people to enjoy is born. They had the strength to be bold and create a new sound, and my design is intended to represent their bravery in blazing a trail through bold typographic and design elements.
Ravi Shankar gave people joy listening to a sitar solo similarly to a guitar. He was a dancer born in India, who eventually got involved in Western music and the sitar, and blended the two together.
Ravi Shankar
Madonna was born in Michigan and studied dance. She broke the conventionalities of womanhood and pursued her own personality through her music and style. She is now seen as a historical figure as well as a feminist icon.
Madonna
Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix was born in Seattle, Washington. He joined the army at 15, and was discharged shortly after. He later found his love for music. He pioneered the world of electric guitar and created music that blended electric guitar and noise from amplifiers.
Sketches/Exploration:
After researching, I chose to focus on contrast - between the words and type, color choices, and format. I primarily created sketch iterations that represented different variations of this concept. This utilized elements I intended to portray about the artists, while also incorporating the information in a legible way.
Digital Poster Ideating:
Upon ideating, I gravitated toward creating a digital typeface to use. I played with integrating digital design and textural elements with images taken in the workshop, and I used physical elements to warp my typeface before scanning it in and editing digitally.
Lettermark Ideating:
After ideating with my texture choices from the free play workshop, I decided to build my own letter sequence that I felt exhibited the characteristics of my big idea. I started by creating many different iterations then slowly filtering my choices.
Poster Iterations:
I built letterforms based on the attributes that related most to my concept. I created a grid and iterated fonts varying in size, weight, and design. Additionally, I chose my color pallet and iterated with different variations of color and texture focusing on contrast.
