Focusing on design within the entertainment industry, I've always had a fascination with music gig posters. The reason being that some bands, more so within the alternative genre, opt to have a new poster created for each show on their tour, when they could just as easily have one stock poster that they just change the information on, or with technology today, not have one at all.
What's also fascinating is that these posters aren't just a quick cut and paste job. These can be highly detailed works of art that become collectors items, and these are the ones that always blow me away, such as the pieces created by Ken Taylor, the artist featured in this spread.
What I set out to do was write a short profile on Ken and then place equal emphasis on both an interview with him and his work. I couldn't get the interview, but I was able to transcribe an older interview with him that fortunately asked similar questions that I would have asked, regarding his process and the such.
The first thing I'd landed on when I decided to head in this direction was the title. I wanted it to be a play on something familiar that alluded to the article being about these gig posters and almost instantly I came up with "Sights of Sound", a play on the phrase "Sights and Sounds". I knew the spread would be heavy with Ken's pieces so it was important that this was highlighted.
After plugging in all of the copy and compiling a bunch of his works, I laid it all out according to the thumbnails I had drawn up and while it was coming along decently, I realized something: I wasn't treating the spread the same way I had treated the title. I needed to take that concept one step further and give the article this same "sights of sound" treatment and then it hit me to transform a block of his work into a sound wave. Finally coming to terms with the fact that this was my concept, I used this as a continuing visual throughout the spread as a way to guide the reader from art to text and back again.
What's also fascinating is that these posters aren't just a quick cut and paste job. These can be highly detailed works of art that become collectors items, and these are the ones that always blow me away, such as the pieces created by Ken Taylor, the artist featured in this spread.
What I set out to do was write a short profile on Ken and then place equal emphasis on both an interview with him and his work. I couldn't get the interview, but I was able to transcribe an older interview with him that fortunately asked similar questions that I would have asked, regarding his process and the such.
The first thing I'd landed on when I decided to head in this direction was the title. I wanted it to be a play on something familiar that alluded to the article being about these gig posters and almost instantly I came up with "Sights of Sound", a play on the phrase "Sights and Sounds". I knew the spread would be heavy with Ken's pieces so it was important that this was highlighted.
After plugging in all of the copy and compiling a bunch of his works, I laid it all out according to the thumbnails I had drawn up and while it was coming along decently, I realized something: I wasn't treating the spread the same way I had treated the title. I needed to take that concept one step further and give the article this same "sights of sound" treatment and then it hit me to transform a block of his work into a sound wave. Finally coming to terms with the fact that this was my concept, I used this as a continuing visual throughout the spread as a way to guide the reader from art to text and back again.
