Earshot Jazz Festival

Project type: Poster design, Layout, Wayfinding
Timeframe: January 2022 – March 2022
Tools: Illustrator, Photoshop

Problem

Earshot Jazz needed a poster and additional material to advertise and support their upcoming festival. They wanted something that spoke the true essence of jazz.

Solution

Create a poster to advertise the festival, as well as standing A-frames, and hanging pole tapestry to help festival-goers find their way to the various locations where the festival is held. Tickets, beanies, and tote bags were made as "memory/take-home items" so folks could have something physical to remember the experience by.

Research

Visual Research Moodboard

Earshot’s current branding uses only photography to attempt to convey its message. Some of the Earshot work feels like it could be for anything, it’s too open and doesn't contain the thing that makes jazz what it is: Improv.

Style Moodboard

I wanted this poster to give more of that musical improv, rough around the edges feeling. Hard lines and abstracting of the form using illustration felt like it would give the most impact.

Process

Sketches

In most of my sketches a pattern started forming, using type as image and really warping shapes. However, one stood out from the rest, this little character pushing up against the border of his square.

Back To Paper

After I chose my sketch, I immediately went to paper because I felt like I would get a result that will naturally feel jazzy, like have this nice roughness, and raw quality that really speaks jazz. So I cut out the poster, photographed it and brought it into Illustrator.

Typeface

I decided that hand-making my typeface would be the best option to fit the rough look. Each letter was cut out and rebuilt in Illustrator, yet, none of the type in the final poster goes below 9 points. I wanted to make sure that this type would be readable, especially the call to action: Tickets at Earshot.org.

Final Thoughts

Never have I gone to use a pair of scissors before designing something, so this was a very unique project for me. Overall, wouldn’t have done it any other way, it opened my eyes to a step in a new direction in the design process that I had never considered before. Not only was it an interesting exercise, but my understanding of letterforms, their shape, and how they interact with each other has grown tremendously.