The project works with the Pro Coro Canada concert, which every year includes something new and special in its programme.
This year it was "The Growlers" a new choir from Montreal, who have integrated a heavy metal style into their choir. Together these two choirs performed the piece "The Dayking". The piece deals with the story of Troy from the perspective of the Watchman, who has to warn his people but is torn apart by an inner conflict.
In both, I worked with the same key moments in the play. The glassy sea, the dying to a skeleton, the roots that grow through him, the teeth that fall out and the awakening from his rigidity, as well as some other parts. I started with the visual representation, because as an illustrator I immediately had some ideas for the realisation. I started to illustrate the elements and to bring in the key words as well as the colours to reflect the atmosphere of the concert from my eyes. For the background I chose a grey to let the colours stand out. The back should be a lively extension of the front. The text runs horizontally at the height of the title, and you can also see the colours running further on this side.
With my text dominant variant, I wanted to show clear differences in the illustration, and still show a connection, by using the same illustration. I reduced the illustration to the most important lines and removed the colours. However, in order to make the whole thing seem alive, I let the text of the play flow into it. As if it were alive, it flows through the skull and adapts to its forms. The whole thing should seem very simple and hectic, like something someone has written heavily on a rock face with their last ounce of strength. The arrangement should also seem arbitrary, as if every space had to be used. I wrote the font myself to really convey these feelings, and also used it on both designs to create this context again.
The research for this project was rather straightforward. The task was to watch the concert live, paying attention to mood, emotions and specifics. After the performance, I conducted interviews with the main actors, which also provided insights into the emotions and ideas of a design.
After that, it was actually straight into implementation. I had several notes on individual words from the song lyrics that particularly struck me in the piece, as well as notes on the colours and the mood. And then I tried to reproduce the whole thing, once with the focus on a pictorial representation and then a version where the whole text is dominant. You can see both versions here in my portfolio. Image Dominant (grey in colour) and Text Dominant (black and white).
