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How to create of a poster for the latest production of an oratorio choir ?
After the posters for Arthur Honegger's King David and Herman Suter's
Le Laudi, this is the third time that graphic designer Jean-Benoit Levy from
Studio AND in San Francisco is offering to have a look into his
personal poster design research by showing 14 preliminary versions and the final design for his latest poster.
For the street poster for one of his swiss clients – the Choeur Faller in
Lausanne - Jean-Benoit Levy had to find a new idea, this time for the oratorio
Elias, composed
between 1845 and 1846 by the composer Felix Mendelssohn-
Bartholdy (1809 – 1847) in Berlin.
The story of Elias can be found in the chapters 17-19 from the biblical Book of Kings. As
Elias is a prophet, graphic
designer Jean-Benoit Levy tried to express the story trough diverse
visual ideas. As in religion, a prophet is a person who has been
contacted by, or has encountered, the supernatural or the divine, and
serves as an intermediary with humanity, delivering this new found
knowledge from the supernatural entity to other humans, Jean-Benoit Levy tried in
two sketches ( 1 + 7 ) to use unsharp silhouettes taken from
contemporary photography to represent the prophet, but according the
client, this metaphor was too much directed toward a theater play.
The use of various pictures of the sky – a theme applied already for two earlier
posters for the same client, King David
and Le Laudi –
was of course very tempting.
But either the use of the typography on the horizon ( 3 + 5 + 8 + 9 )
emphasizing the apparition of a prophecy , flying letters building the
name of the prophet nor a very modern graphical effect from
photographer Daniel Furon of a ascending or descending triangle trough
the sky ( 11 + 12 + 13 ) did not convinced the client, Jacques-Henri
Addor, president of the Choeur Faller.
It is after a deeper research that the use of a tree, symbolizing the
knowledge, a certain wisdom and a wider vision did find a particular
interest from the client. It is with this metaphor of the tree,
combined with another strong symbol, the fire ( 10 ), symbolizing the
intensive presence of divinity, that Jean-Benoit Levy found it's
luck with a picture of a bush fire taken again by Daniel Furon of San
Francisco. This picture of a burning tree, combined with an ascending
classical uppercases centered typography expresses the connection
between the earth and the sky. It also simply functions as strong eyecatching
graphical element for pedestrians and drivers in the
streets of Lausanne.
The Choeur Faller will give a single performance of Elias
in the Cathedrale of
Lausanne, Switzerland, on the night of December 2, 2009.
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