The Roadkill Clarinet Quintet

When I first approached this project, I thought it would be pretty straight forward. Well, that can quickly lead to pretty boring. That is until one phrase the committee wanted to see on the poster jumped out: Music from the Dance Era. And for some reason, my mind went to that dark place known as The Lawrence Welk Show, and that's when things got weird -- I mean, that's from where the circle or "bubble" motif sprung. (Champagne music ... bubbles ...)

I then Googled big band and swing band posters for further inspiration with mixed results. Color schemes, yes, but over all thunderbolt moments, not so much. Although, most of them used circles in their designs, so my instincts weren't completely off the rails.

This group does not have a logo. Earlier efforts on my part involved playing up the word "roadkill." No, no, no, merely a strip of highway as a design element, nothing more. Now I did pick this particular typeface for the tail on the "Q" as it is quite pronounced, even animalish. Tilting the word "clarinet" and giving it a different color, emphasizes the sound we'll hear. (At first I thought the instrument in the lower left of the group photo was a saxophone, but it's a bass clarinet. Who knew?)

I put the submitted group photo through some editing -- color to black and white, square to circle. The border is reminiscent of the design touches from the Swing Era. The real trick was arranging the bubbles without them looking like part of rotary phone or bad Swiss cheese. It's a lot of work to make something look haphazard and organized at the same time. I also played with the transparency of the dots to give a variety of depth.

For sanity's sake,  not every bit of information went into a bubble. The pertinent info: date, time, place, etc. is down at the bottom. It's an interesting look, and not like anything I've done before.

The tickets tie into the original design, but the look is obviously less complicated. Kirksville Arts is stilll small enough not to have an electronic ticketing system, like Tessitura. As long as that's the case, why not do something special?

I may be doing the program too, but I've not seen a set list yet. So there may be more to come.