Watford Jazz Junction: Festival Identity
In the way that all music is made up from only twelve notes, I wanted this entire brand to be made from one set of Latin characters. I began by creating an all caps alphabet, not as a functioning font, but as a source of graphic devices that could fit into a grid-like layout structure. Essentially, any combination of letters can fit together like a puzzle to form a hopefully visually pleasing pattern. It’s the graphic uniformity and simplicity of shape that allows this pattern to be recognizeable as a brand no matter how the letters are combined. From this base alphabet I pulled the letters needed to form WATFORD JAZZ JCT both on its own and in repeating pattern formats. The visual style of the letters was also inspired in part by the history of Watford as a rail town as well as a hub for printing in the days of manual typesetting. As a way of incorporating artist photographs into this grid concept, I physically wove printed paper strips of both the photographs and the brand typography together, and then re-photographed the results.