SONDHEIM SERIES
West Side Story | Gypsy | Sweeney Todd | Into the Woods
THE PROJECT: I created a book cover series each being one of the original books of Sondheim’s most famous works. When you put the black spines together in chronological order it forms his signature “Stephen Sondheim” which was laid out by hand with a letter brush and white ink. The numbers at the bottom of each spine indicate the year of the original performance for each show. And finally the back covers of each of the books are an outlined silhouette of Sondheim. He has a very unique and distinguishable profile and I wanted to play with that.
EXECUTION: A series of latex acrylics and enamels painted, smeared and laid on 5×4 clear acrylic plastic sheets. These were the foundation for all of backgrounds. They were then photographed and adjusted in photoshop to create stark and contrasting backgrounds. Symbols and elements from each musical were created into black pop-art forms, each telling a story. Then using basic typography, some digital and some using original hand letterpress forms, titles for each musical were created.
