Rochester
Jazz
Festival
A typographic redesign of Rochester International Jazz Festival's promotional poster — replacing an over-saturated lineup grid with a Constructivist identity built from letterform and geometric form.
The Rochester International Jazz Festival is a long-running free event — but its official poster looked like a spreadsheet.
The assignment: redesign the festival poster with a coherent visual identity. No pre-set direction. The only constraint was the event name, dates, and the expectation that the poster communicate the spirit of jazz — not just its schedule.
Original
Information overload — 171 shows, 10 venues, no hierarchy
Redesign
Typographic abstraction — JAZZ as a visual system
Original — Rochester International Jazz Festival 2025
The search moved through three distinct territories: hand-drawn and calligraphic letterforms, photographic texture and material experiments, and finally geometric typographic construction. Each direction was pushed until it revealed either a dead end or a path worth continuing.
Draft 01
Draft 02
Draft 03
Draft 04
Draft 05
Draft 06
Draft 07
Draft 08
Draft 09
Draft 10 — Selected
Phase 1
Drafts 1–5
Handmade, calligraphic, expressive letterforms
Phase 2
Drafts 6–9
Photographic texture — material applied to type
Phase 3
Drafts 10+
Geometric construction — letterform as shape system
Jazz is structured improvisation — a form that's simultaneously precise and free. The Constructivist approach captures both: rigid geometric shapes that, when collaged together, feel kinetic and alive.
Reference
Early Soviet Constructivism — Rodchenko, Lissitzky
Palette
Orange + Charcoal on cream — heat, shadow, paper
Type Logic
Letters treated as pure shape — 'A' replaced by triangle, 'Z' as angular slash
Festival Poster
Programme Brochure
Cover
Interior Spread
The most useful constraint in this project wasn't the brief — it was the original poster. Knowing what you're designing against clarifies every decision.
Typeface
Custom geometric letterforms based on Helvetica skeleton
Tools
Illustrator + InDesign
Deliverables
Event poster + folded programme brochure