Poster Project MERCER

For the poster project I decided to create a poster for an upcoming recital for my mother’s piano trio, The Almeda Trio. This trio is the trio-in-residence at the Music Settlement in Cleveland, Ohio. This is a non-profit school of music for children in the Cleveland area. I am very interested in music and my mother’s trio which it still very new, so I was excited to work on such a project.

My overall goal with this poster is to provide a graphically pleasing and interesting poster for the trio to use. The Music Settlement commonly prints posters out on tacky-colored 8 ½ x 11 papers with an image of a cello snagged out of clip art! This trio is very new and its main goal is to help modernize the Music Settlement and lead it in a new transition to a future with more creativity and better structure. I think using a creative poster will make a huge difference, especially amongst the terrible posters seen floating around the building. I also wanted to create one that is acceptable for posting in other Cleveland locations that may be home to more graphically pleasing posters to begin with!

The visual aspect of my poster is the word ‘Schh!’ I wanted to catch the attention of people passing by the poster (which, by the way, is going to be hung amidst a sea of graphically-displeasing posters) and I thought this noise, so often heard in concert settings, would do the trick. I used a bit of a play on words by spelling it the way I did- as the reader looks down the poster, it’s clear that the composers whose works will be displayed at the concert have last names beginning with the letters ‘sch.’ After picking the word I wanted to use, I decided to trace images commonly associated with music to fill the letters in. I used the pen tool to trace seven symbols that I recognize easily (as well as anyone attending the Music Settlement) and duplicated them in a pattern on a plane that I used to fill the letters in. For the ‘Schh!’ I used Avenir LT Std 95 black in 290 pt. I wanted it to be an easy-to-read sans-serif font that is huge- which it is.

The second line of text is another common phrase used within the concert world- ‘the concert’s starting’ is something I hear at almost every event I go to. I used Futura Std. Heavy in 76 pt. for this text because Futura is a large font that provides stark contrast to the peach background (C=0, M=43, Y=53, K=0). The rest of the text (aside from the Almeda Trio’s word mark) is also Futura Std Heavy (in 29 pt. and 25 pt.). I used the same font to lead the reader down the left side of the page for further information about the concert details.

The Almeda Trio uses Caecillia LT Std Heavy for its word mark, and I made the size smaller for the purposes of the poster (34 pt.). I made the gray text (C=48, M=43, Y=45, K=7) larger to make the trio name stand out.

I really didn’t include much text on the poster- I wanted the focus to be on the visual ‘Schh!’ and otherwise I was only interested in including vital information about the concert. In the lower right-hand corner I also included the Music Settlement logo (which is also new to the organization!)

Overall I really enjoyed this project because I was able to create something that will actually be used in the real world! I like how it turned out and I'm pleased that I was able to create this graphic image for the trio. Hopefully there will be a lot of attendees!