Natalija creates:

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March 22, 2008

Creating Imagery for Artists

Here are the images I created for Perth Theatre Company last year for their performance season for 2008.

I love this kind of work. It's so involved. I get to read the scripts, speak with the director, writers and the company management to get a thorough sense of each production.
Then I have to condense all of this information into a single image. It's a balancing act. The image should honesty convey the production but with the effectiveness of simplicity.
If you try to spell out the whole performance literally then you weaken your message. So the key is to develop one striking image that embodies the sentiment and leaves the audience gagging to know more (and buying a ticket).

However when designing for artistic productions it often becomes a compromise of my 'artistic' opinion with that of the many other artists - director, writer, marketing and management. It's difficult to get everyone on the same page in this kind of creative process. And who is more right? The vision of the artistic director or that of the designer?

I believe that if you are a proven* designer then you should be trusted to do what you do rather than be instructed. Of course when designing for an artistic vision you have to accurately interpret the vision of the director whilst using your design experience to know how best to package that concept whilst meeting the foremost aim of getting bums in seats. I always say, if a plumber comes to your house, you don't tell them how to connect a drainpipe, so why do so many people insist on dictating to a designer how to do theirs?
In non-artistic clients it often comes down to the accessibility of design (it's all around us) and it gives them a false sense of knowledge over what is good and what isn't. So they hang on so tightly, trying to manage the process and do not trust the designer.

With the artistic clients, yes, they have the visually literacy to engage with it, but can often be manipulated by their own personal taste. Do they know what is best to sell their show? Perhaps they are too close to it and can't step back and see how to 'frame' it.

These interferences will cause a design concept to become a watered down version of its original intent as the many stakeholders' preferences are met. If more clients trusted their designer to know what is best for them, the world might be prettier place. But not only that, they might have a fatter hip pocket. In fact, I believe that it's only partly about being pretty (appealing), it's about being effective (which ain't necessarily pretty). And it is likely that what is effective may not be to the personal tastes of the client. As aesthetics are so subjective, what stands up is putting into place the knowledge of marketing, psychology and what sells.

I wish more clients would let the designer work to their full unfettered potential and see what emerges! I've noticed that the more I work with a single client, the more they trust me and the better the designs get. They often realise this too.

* There are unfortunately too many "unproven" designers out there giving design a bad name. They get caught up in their personal art making exercise so much so that they don't create an effective solution for the client. Instead they create something cool for their folio.

turning_ptc