Last Post for Folly Poster

FINAL POSTER

My design intentions were to show the signature 4/5 time of Dave Brubeck Quartet. The use of 4 arms represents the four different tempos and instruments in the quartet and how their different sound can come together in once place (or in this case, on one metronome). The use of vibrant colors, associated in the arms on the metronome, symbolize the brightness of west coast jazz, and the implication of movement, that the music has.

How I employed a rhetorical trope in my design and solution. It started off with being the idea of an antithesis and demonstrating how different sound waves, coming from two different objects, demonstrated the sound of Dave Brubeck Quartet. After that, the idea was to demonstrate these different sound on a metronome by using color, scale, and style of the arms to show how the different instillments work in unison to elaborate and create a new sound for jazz. The metronome was a symbol for 4/5 time, mentioned above.

DECISIONS MADE FROM FINAL CRIT

• The background is not the right color blue, it's too dated.
• Black makes it too dark with the blue.
• Leading of date and time needs to be tighter.
• Title is too close to the frame.
• Move quartet over for better alignment with Dave Brubeck.
• Purple on black is problematic.
• Work on color of the arms.
• Shadow arms.
• Edit treatment of the arms.
• Size of arms bigger, closer, smaller farther away.
• Possible arm colors; yellow, red, green, and pink?

FINAL AD

Although these ads are shown in color, they are meant to be in greyscale to print. Their purpose is mean to be an ad in a newspaper.
AD ITERATIONS BEFORE THE FINAL

Dave Brubeck Quartet Final Round

CRIT RESULTS

• Look up David Carson and the way he handles his typography.
• Orange poster: look at lip on edge. Try going back to the blue background.
• Maybe make the blue arm orange so there's more room to mess with other colors for the background.
• Try a more condensed typeface for the time and date.

Dave Brubeck Quartet Round IV

Dave Brubeck Quartet Round III

One direction, six ways, and more to come. Iterate, iterate, iterate.

NOTES FROM CRIT

• More cut paper iterations.
• New color palette.
• Take photographs of metronome.
• Maybe make a sculpture?
• Change the lines, they can be pushed more with materials or how made.
• Explore creating a personalized typeface, maybe play off metronome and used shared forms.
• Split or contained line. (I don't remember why I wrote that).
• Add 8:00 PM to the poster.
• Try manipulating stock photo is all else fails.

Rhetorical Tropes Round Three Iterations

Branching off of different ideas, I have created 15 compostions that are a little more narrow in my decision and direction towards my final poster. The compositions highlighted in black will be the dies that I plan on following up with iterations.

NOTES FROM CRIT

• The metronome with 4 arms is gold; cut shapes would work well with that.
• Metronome broke and glasses is too much.
• Dance steps echoes the wrong music (jitterbug)?
• Keyboard prints work (with the finger prints).
• Just finger print isn't enough, not enough jazz into it. Thumb print is a nice idea though.
• Beethoven off track (and creepy).
• Mediums; cut paper and piano with collage. Not watercolor.

Rhetorical Tropes Round Two

1. Metonymy; I took the idea of a dance diagram and switched the sign of dance shoes with the fingerprint. This represents his fingers dancing around the keys and the rhythm behind his compositions.

3. Hyperbole; The size of the foot crushing the metronome is of larger scale than normal scale.

4. Personification; The metronome is taking on human traits of Brubeck by playing the piano, as Brubeck does.

5. Parody; Roland has a piano brand called "Super Natural Piano" so I took that brand and created it to read Super Natural Piano Player using the same logo as Roland's Super Natural Piano brand.

6. Antithesis; Each speaker from the stereo is playing contrasting airwaves. One speaker is smooth and the other is jagged. These are the sounds that contradict one another to create west coast jazz.

7. Antithesis; Each hand is playing the piano and the left and right had are admitting a different feeling. One hand is smooth and the other is jagged. These are the sounds that contradict one another to create west coast jazz.

8. Pun;

9. Synecdoche; The glasses represent Dave Brubeck as a whole. They define him as a whole person.

10. Synecdoche; The glasses represent Dave Brubeck as a whole. They define him as a whole person. So simplified the head to be a mannequin head because a mannequin head holds no identity, like Brubeck's glasses does.

11. Metonymy; the metronome replicates the shape of the "A" in Dave's name (which is a simpler version of the shape).

12. Metaphor; Using a pitchfork in a haystack, that takes on the prongs as piano keys, I am demonstrating the truth that Brubeck though of being a rancher but actually becoming a musician.

Testing Mediums

MARK MAKING

Remember way back, about a year ago, J. Gray assigned me to make marks with different objects and mediums to create symbols and representations for my haiku? Well, there's a old quote that comes to mind which is, history repeats itself. So, here I am, once again, creating marks and images with different technique of mark making. Does your face count?

5 DIFFERENT WAY

College -- showing different styles and imagery to make one composition; four can equal one.

Water Color -- hinting at the fluidness of Brubeck's sound and the cohesiveness of the quartet.

Finger painting -- to show the playful side of Dave's compositions and mimic hands playing a piano.

Blind contour drawing // or regular contour -- to include line drawings with different directions, using smooth and jagged lines. Relates to the improve side of jazz and

Cut paper -- this feel kind of reminds me of the era of Jazz and Dave Brubeck.

Word List

Keaton and I created a moodboard to represent Dave Brubeck and his quartet. Each items describes his music. The numbers represent time signatures. The black and white textures are meant to stand in and relate to the rhythm of his music. The fingerprint in the lower right corner symbolized Dave's "fingerprint" on the world of jazz.

TEN CONCEPTS

• Metronome
• Piano
• Time signatures/numbers
• Pencil
• Movement/lines
• Raindrops
• West coast
• Bright/colours
• No. 5
• Eyeglasses

The Folly Theatre

Last Friday, our class went to the Folly Theatre so learn a little bit of history about the building and see where our posters for the jazz festival would be located. I also learned that Dave Brubeck had played there before and would be turning 90 shortly after this performance there in October.

The picture above shows the scale of a person, Jamie Gray, to the size of the poster and the display case. This is important to keep in mind, along with how people in cars, walking, biking by will view the poster as well.

Steve, pictured above, also wanted us to keep in mind that The Folly would like to see a younger crowd and to gear interest towards our age group.

Dave Brubeck Quartet

I am designing a poster for The Folly Theatre's upcoming jazz music festival. I have been assigned to design for Dave Brubeck Quartet. Through research of music and his history, I will communicate engaging image making, typography, hierarchy, composition, and color sensibilities. If you've never head his music, or need a refresher, please view the column titled "Dave Brubeck Quartet" on the right side of the page (you may need to scroll to find it).

Dave Brubeck Quartet
JAZZ ICON // HISTORY

HIS THOUGHTS – The purest form of music.

OVERVIEW – American jazz pianist. To truly understand him, you have to listen to his music. He “speaks” with meaning through his music. “Always looking for a great marriage of creativity that you can pull off technically.”, Brubeck. He invented an individual style. He can play sloppy and likes to take chances. He rhythms of the ranch got into this music.

CHILDHOOD – Raised on a ranch. His mother was a piano teacher. Even when he was a baby, in the womb, she would play the piano for him and when he was born, his crib was next to the piano. His mother was strict about what kind of music Dave could listen to and would go over to a friend’s house to listen to jazz records. He couldn’t buy a jazz record until he was a teenager.

INSTRUMENT – Pianist; this style is bombastic to classical reflecting his mother’s training. Known for using unusual time signatures and superimposing contrasting rhymes, meters, and tonalities. He composes when he plays. Almost broke his next in a swimming accident.

QUARTET – Paul Desmond; saxophone.

EDUCATION – Worked way through college as a jazz pianist in local clubs. He decided to not be a veterinarian and ranch worker and changed his major to music. His professors wanted to kick him out for not being able to read music but his talented made up for it. He had to promise to never teach piano lessons to graduate. He was drafted into the army. After, helped establish Fantasy Records, in Berkeley, CA.

WHAT SETS APART – Very old and has been recognized musician since 1949. Helped launch “West Coast Jazz” or “Cool” Jazz. Played on college campuses and recordings probably gathered more new groups to jazz and any other in jazz history. He was the first jazz artist to see over one million copies of his album. He was one of two jazz musicians to be on the cover of Time Magazine.

CULTURAL REFRENCES – Some of his records used contemporary paintings as cover art.

Moodboard //

Light hearted, going for a stroll, bouncing dot, upbeat; but calm.
Old, smokey, classic, light saturation.
Colors in contemporary paintings, abstract.
Strong, gentle
Staccato. Explosive.
Sharp and smooth, quartet combination; quick and slow contrast with piano and saxophone.
Piano is always present with different combinations of the quartet adding in splashes.
Sleek, sophisticated, silver.
Feels like splashes of paint on water color.
Happy sunny day, busy street, city noises.

*Most information was gathered via wikipedia, and courtesy of NPR. You can listen to a selection of stories about Dave Brubeck here.