Launched in February 2018, Jazz at the Merchants House promotes and hosts monthly Sunday evening concerts in the historic Merchants Hall in the Merchants House of Glasgow featuring prominent Scottish and international jazz musicians.
Initially, for JATMH, I’d been creating an original design tailored for each artist or ensemble, but my client wanted people at a glance to tell that the poster was for a Jazz at the Merchants House event. I had the idea to tie music with art and wanted to visualise somehow the freedom of jazz and improvisation with the fluidity of paint, using splashes of colour to represent the colourful sounds of jazz and improvisation.
Each poster and flyer follows a consistent framework with logo top left, an area to feature a photo of the artist/ensemble, and below an easy to read headline and tagline in a thick slab serif typeface. My client loves the design so much he collects each poster and displays them on a wall in his home.
In addition to printed promotion I resize the design to fit social media, in particular Instagram posts and stories.
The Jazz at the Merchants House logo slowly evolved, at first just a title, it now represents the main brand. I’ve made little tweaks to the size and spacing of the letters and words of the wordmark over the years until it is as now, ensuring it is readable at small sizes and creating mono versions for my client to use for his own social media graphics.
