For the graphic for my poster I have used a program called Alchemy to generate a large amount of thumbnails, in order to give me something to work with. I set Alchemy to clear my canvas every 30seconds then drew, while listening to Rachmaninoff, the sounds that I heard. I also set it so the line drawn changed with the speed which I drew it and so I could not see what I was drawing until I had finished all of the sketches; this was done to prevent me being influenced by anything other than the music.
I don't know if this is how Muller-Brockmann worked and I doubt it is but I felt it would be a good way to express the musical abstraction, in a 2d form, he talks about. below is the contact sheet of all of the sketches.

(click image for larger version)

from these I really like 2, 5, 16, 21 and 23 these ones stand out because I feel they can be used to go around the text and have several strong shapes in them.
i then used Photoshop to draft more ideas using the sketches as a base.

(click image for larger version)



Muller-Brockmann was a strong believer in the grid system so I will produce my poster based on a grid. In his book Grid systems in graphic design, Muller-Brockmann states:
the problem posed by the job must be studied befor work can begin. Questions regarding the format, the text and illustration, the typeface, the printing method and puality of paper must be cleared up. The designer then begins to approach the solution of the problems by means of small sketches.
I have done some sketches of grids in my sketch book but upon further research of Muller-Brockmann i found that the grids for these posters are based around the graphic with the text falling on very simple 2,3 or 4 column grids. i have done some thumbnails of text layout to try get more of a feel for the poster, I have used black Quadrilaterals to represent the text.
(click image for larger version)

out of those I like the original two as they have a nice clean look to them. looking at Muller-Brockmann's work he went from a style similar to the the bottom middle and left images to one more like the first two as he made more posters.

the grid i am using for the poster was constructed in illustrator. it is based on the verso page of a symmetrical grid and has 3 columns. this kind of grid is not needed for my poster but I will be using a version of it for my booklet.

top