Designing a Concert Poster

My involvement with amateur orchestras goes beyond the musician role. With a graphic design background, I enjoy designing concert posters and programs. However, since I do this on a voluntary basis, I have some conditions that I share with my fellow musicians and orchestras committees.

The main condition is to give me the full freedom in terms of design. This provides flexibility to let my imagination flow and I don’t have to face a client requirement or multiple changes. The worst is when sometimes a client plays the role of a designer and gets involved in the design, making decisions on how the items are displayed that don’t respect the basics of layout.

Even with the flexibility I mentioned, once a draft is previewed by more than 5 people, I get sometimes 5 different opinions, likes and dislikes, etc. People’s tastes are very different and I respect the opinions and ideas that come my way. I try to balance the flow of feedback and work on leveraging-up the design where I believe it is necessary.

Since these posters are designed for different concerts and the musical season is not really announced ahead of time, I try to have a unique poster for each concert instead of a series of similar posters.

The latest poster I worked on is an all Italian program with the OPMM (Orchestre Philharmonia Mundi de Montreal) featuring Puccini early work (Messa di Gloria & Preludio Sinfonico), opera choruses and a Verdi overture. I wanted a warm design, something a bit retro in style as if it is a corner in an old Italian home. A little note on the program... I actually love this Gloria; you sense the “future” Puccini in this music. The “preludio” is pretty nice too!

Finally, the purpose of these concert posters is more informative than a marketing campaign. I favour artistic designs or even photography over a plain informative sheet of paper.

In contrast with the Italian program poster, the Russian program poster of last year was a blend of red and Russian fonts. As for the Schubert Unfinished concert, an unfinished portrait of the composer was featured; a kind of a drawing in progress on a canvas.