This is an annual summer festival, hosted at the 92nd Street Y, featuring today's most talented Jazz legends and rising stars.
My task was to create a visual language and corresponding assets to brand the event and unify its marketing.
The core element in my solution was a large set of illustrations featuring distorted musical instruments.
This distortion is a conceptual nod to the genre’s improvisational, experimental, and playful nature, highlighting Jazz’s ability to reinvent classical ideas of what music and rhythm should be.
The illustrations and corresponding color palette come together to create energetic, vivid graphics that strike a balance between chaos and poise.
The kit of parts is highly flexible, allowing for an infinite number of variations.
The same instrument can be represented in a number of different ways and new instruments can be added as needed.
These elements were used throughout the events program booklet, and its visual style lent itself well to the limited two-color printing process.
Color and illustrative elements were also crucial in tying together promotional materials that used disparate photographs provided by each artist.
While each performance was given its own unique illustration and limited color palette, it was important for them to be recognized as a part of a larger whole.
This malleable system allowed me to create a variety of assets for social media, email promotions, direct mail marketing, animated posters, and event signage.
The illustrations ended up being so popular, that the 92Y decided to print branded t-shirts that were sold at the event and given to the artists as gifts after the show.
