shown below is the first in the new series of posters i am developing for my latest client: het muziektheater amsterdam (the amsterdam music theater) or ‘HMA’ in short
a tough gig this one, the identity (designed by agency ‘koeweiden postma’ last year) with it’s outspoken custom typeface was a ‘given’, and the brief was to redesign the posters… my main starting point is the fact that HMA only does approx. four productions a year and therefore doesn’t have much ‘exposure on the streets’, with so little ‘air’ time it is very important that the posters create a coherent look and help to establish the identity in the public’s mind… the solution was to create a strong and highly recognisable format (the red border & black band) as a means of binding the various productions (ballet and opera) together in a harmonious way…
the two image areas above and below can be used to mix images or use various crops and details from the same image to create a dynamic form and to give a ‘flavour’ of the show… i further chose to ‘tone down’ the custom typography which i felt was perhaps a bit too ‘loud’ in it’s expressiveness, plus using a narrower palette of fonts and tidying up the layout by placing the information all within the black band and dropping the amount of information shown, the average viewer will usually grant a poster on the streets less than 3 seconds viewing time… so too much in-depth information is pointless…
i felt that the identity’s own colour scheme (black & red) needed to be used more explicitly in the posters and it aims to reflect the dark ‘theatrical feeling’ of other channels such as the recently designed website by ‘fabrique’, i will be developing several other projects for them in the coming year as well as continuing to roll out the posters for the upcoming productions, shown here are also a number of the sketches made in the initial stages of the design
the red border in the final design has even been made slightly larger than i first intended, as it is a very important element in the whole ‘look & feel’, it is perhaps even the principle housestyle element, at least for the posters, the imagery is usually provided by the production companies themselves and it is therefore very ‘tricky’ to rely on good quality pictures as a main focus for the design, hence the dominant red border…
