Listen To Your City
Visitors explore the New Orleans Medley: Sounds of the City at The Historic New Orleans Collection’s Williams Research Center. The exhibit is open through August 4, 2019.
I really love working on projects with The Historic New Orleans Collection. In the few months we’ve worked together, they’ve have given me some incredible, new design challenges. I was really excited when they approached me to design the title design and wall graphics for New Orleans Medley: Sounds of the City.
For the title design, I gave the team three different options but the mission was singular: give THNOC a title logo that speaks to 300 years of music in New Orleans. Marketing materials for the exhibit stated “New Orleans music is not a genre but a story of diverse styles, influences, and musicians coexisting across history.” I thought that really summed up New Orleans music. One icon couldn’t wrap up 300 years.
I started thinking about how to summarize that. After some type tests, the team and I liked the whimsical feel of Grafolita Script. It felt light enough to speak to the joy of New Orleans music. My thought was to take the capital M in Grafolita and outline it with all sorts of musical elements and instruments. Trombones! Drums! Tubas! Saxophones! Sharps! Flats! Clarinets! Trumpets! Guitars! You name it.
A major challenge to the overall project is the wall color of the gallery space. The dark red wall is standard in the halls of Williams Research Center and would not be painted, so designing anything for this space had to be legible on that color.
After we had the title graphic nailed down, there were four wall quotes and some text panels to design. I peppered Grafolita into those quotes and panels to keep it cohesive.
The exhibition is free and open through August 4, 2019, at the Williams Research Center of The Historic New Orleans Collection at 410 Chartres Street.
