The History Poster Final

With this poster I attempted to illustrate a history of  Punk Rock music.  I found in doing research for the project that there is a variety of opinions as to the origins, influences, and even the musical styles that can be considered to be "Punk".   Since I wanted a poster that could be informative without overwhelming viewers with information, I tried to limit my choices to those artists that are considered major influences by a variety of sources.  I also tried to differentiate between those early musicians (pre-punk or proto-punk) that came before the punk explosion of the 1970's and the kinds of music (new wave, hardcore, post-punk etc.) descended from the initial movement with the use of appropriately placed text.  In my initial sketches I decided to center my design around what was considered an iconic piece of punk fashion; the safety pin.  Fortunately I found a high quality image on the Internet that was well suited to my purpose.  I've tried to evoke a style of modern /post modern design similar to the "cut and paste" look commonly used for album covers and concert posters by the bands who were considered "punk".   The design uses a time-line following the spine of a safety pin to show the chronology of punk rock.   The chaotic look and large scale of the typography in the upper-left corner is meant to grab attention and inform the audience of the subject matter.  The "rule of thirds" is used in the placement of the "a brief history of punk rock" text and in the positioning of the lower part of the safety pin along with that of the majority of musical acts depicted.  Emphasis is placed on the words "punk rock" through the use of scale. The eye moves from the emphasized text to the top of the pin and down towards the bottom of the page.  Certain parts of the design are aligned with the safety pin to help maintain this flow.  The use of the open part of the pin for the "British" part of the time-line plus the "weight" of the number of artists depicted towards the lower-right part of the design is meant to achieve balance with the text in upper-left.  The same font is used for the three decades depicted. The words"proto-punk, post-punk, hardcore, and new wave also use an identical font to give a sense of repetition.  Parts of the text (the previously mentioned 1960's, 1970's, and 1980's) along with some of the photography runs along parallel lines for purposes of both repetition and alignment.  The design uses the placement of photographic elements and text along with the use of gray-scale and opacity to achieve contrast.   The choice of making this poster in black and white ( any part including the safety pin that was originally found in color was converted before use) is in keeping with the objective of having a "punk" look to the design.