One of the most beloved tools for navigating any festival is the printed program guide. The guide has everything an audience member needs – maps, schedules, calendars of events and artist bios. For the truly faithful, by the time day one comes around, their copy is often already well-worn, thumbed over countless times during advanced planning of their festival experience. The cover of the guide is always the main festival artwork for that year. Then and now, a festival’s artwork or branding, is an important element in the creative process of bringing the event to life. It provides a visual cue into the energy of the festival – or at least what the organizers hope to convey. But sometimes it doesn’t. The challenge of any event with corporate sponsors is to find a balance between creativity and commerce.
“We weren’t satisfied with most of the previous artwork for the poster/program guide covers,” said festival co-founder, Robert Kerr. “1988 & 1989 were good. The rest were too generic.” In 1994 the society had negotiated firm control over festival imagery from title sponsor du Maurier, and the result is an about-face. “We wanted something really creative, cool, original.”
Enter Barbara Klunder.
Barbara Klunder, one of Canada’s most respected artists, had recently come onto the radar of a Coastal board member. Coastal Jazz hosted a design contest to pick the 1994 festival artist, and Barbara was encouraged to enter. Barbara recalled for us recently, “I had done a collage for a Laurie Anderson gig in New York and it really worked.” That collage art piece ultimately inspired the look for the Vancouver Jazz Festival’s 1994, 1995 and 1996 poster design. In retrospect, the 1994 is a certainly stark contrast to the earlier years. See the festival artwork evolution in this video.
“The ’94 artwork is really great. One of my favourites. She provided a couple drafts but it didn’t take her long to get to that final version. After they saw our ’94 program guide, the Toronto Downtown Jazz Festival hired Barbara to do their artwork for several years.”
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