LizzyHouse

Theatre Council Fall 2007

more Oklahoma

this is the finished poster, I had a final meeting on Friday and it went really well. The director Richard Clifford loved it and that means it went really well. We are going with a colored version for the poster, and for the program instead of black and white, it will be black and blue a deepish corn flower blue. Enjoy.

Ok la h o m a.....

One of my frequent clients, is the Theatre Department. I get jobs to do posters for the shows. This is usually fun, and cool, because I get to do research and maybe try some new painting technique or something. Well, the poster that I am working on right now is for Oklahoma! I only put the exclamation point because it is the title, not because I wanted to exclimate it.

Up until just a week ago I was really excited about finishing this project. I went out with a friend, we took some great pictures, I learned to like the play itself (via the 1999 Royal Theatre Version starring Hugh Jackman), I get along really well with the director and we had discussed a vision and we were both there, all these good things happened in my journey to producing this poster. Then in it's nearly final state, after Richard and I agreed on a compostion, I get the info that has to go on the poster... you know usually it's just this play is being produced under the permission of... blah blah blah... you give the playwrite credit, you give the dates... well this is Oklahoma! And all of your artistic rights have just been stripped from you. This is what the Rodgers and Hammerstein licsencing company sent us:

Author Billing Credit:
You agree to set forth the following credits on the title page in all programs, and on all house boards, displays, heralds, posters, fliers, and on all other advertising and promotion in connection with your production of the Play.

Rodgers and Hammerstein's 75%
OKLAHOMA! 100%
Music by RICHARD RODGERS 75%*
Book and Lyrics by OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN 75%*
Based on the play "Green Grow the Lilacs" by Lynn Riggs 37-1/2%
Original Dances by Agnes de Mille 56-1/4%

* Immediatly following the title and in no event less than hat of the largest, most prominent credit given any other person.

So here is what I think. I think that credit should be given where credit is due. Yes, Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote the show, yes, it is called OKLAHOMA, but why on earth is Agnes de Mille still getting credit for the dances that we are not even doing.

What kind of Hierarchy are those percentages. They might know how to write a hit musical that is celebrating it's 60th anniversary this year, but they do NOT know how to design a poster.

here is my solution thus far. I know that Nate is probably cringing. I'm sorry

I love Shakespeare.

here is the poster that I just did for this semester's Theatre Council.

I think everyone is dealing with deadlines right now... So this is it for today

Oh and I am actually nervous about the mix cd battle results!

Je Soif!

So I did a study in the "International Typographical Style," and these are some of the posters that I came up with. One is a Robert Burns poem, and then the other is from a conference talk "Sunday Will Come". I enjoyed studying the style, although I completely went away from their color schemes. They were mostly red, black, and white, or just really dark. While I was doing these posters I got some ideas for some new patterns.

I highly recommend breaking down a I.T.S poster with something like a poem, really try to convey the meaning through text and shape. Cool! I just love typography.

Have a good Thursday, because that means that tomorrow is Friday!

Type animals

Here is a fun thing to do for all you adobe nerds who just can't get enough. I am only allowed to say that as I could be a queen among nerds, because I read the books, and take the tutorials on a good and regular basis. Not only that manipulating type is one of my favorite things, because I love type so much. Futura is my very favorite font. I love how geometric it is. I use it for just about everything. Here is a type Giraffe. The idea is that you take all the letters in the title of the animal.. I used g, i, r, a, f, e. I found a picture of a giraffe that I like and moved the the letters over it. NO cutting the letters, and no scaling the font out of proportion. You can use as many fonts as you want, or anything from a type family (italics, bold, small caps) go nuts, but please, oh please have a good time whilst you do.

it would be fun to do a series, print them on poster, and mount them on foam core instead of framing them.

goodtype badtype.

everyday in typography somebody presents a "GTBT" slide show. Well, I decided to let mine be for the birds. After the project I changed the GTBT to LIZZY. My example for good type was a still from the Anthropologie website, and my example of bad type was from my university homepage. You know now where my loyalties are laying.