KU Jazz Festival Postcard
Way back in 1999, Christian was still going to school at the University of Kansas. During his final semester, he was involved in work-study program called the Arts. The Arts was essentially an in-house design firm for the university that used students as their designers.
The client for this piece was KU’s Department of Music and Dance which annually hosts a jazz festival featuring various jazz acts from throughout the country. When the opportunity came to design a postcard mailer promoting the event, Christian leapt at the chance. After he was given publicity photos for each of the acts, Christian chose to use just a single image of saxophonist Dick Oats to keep the postcard from looking cluttered. However, since Christian didn’t want to make the piece about a single artist either, he cropped the photo and made it into a generic “jazz” image. The final look of the postcard was Christian’s nod to old Blue Note album covers and his use of just 2 colors not only looked great, but saved the music department some money in printing costs as well.