The summer of 2008 my wife and I drove cross country from Philadelphia to San Francisco. Along the way we made many stops to see friends of family, and one of them was in Chicago, a city neither of us had been to before and one that we both fell in love with almost immediately. Coincidentally, the Chicago Jazz fest was going on the few days that we were there and was only a few minutes away from the hotel we were staying at. A free event, we wandered the festival grounds during the day and decided to come back at night to watch Ornette Coleman perform (even more coincidentally I found a copy of Coleman’s seminal record Free Jazz in Denver a few days later). It was a great performance, and all around just good vibes. Our stay in Chicago left an impression on both of us, and as a memento of our time there we bought that year’s Chicago Jazz Fest poster illustrated by local artist John Solimine (pictured above). It’s a cool silk screened print, hand signed and numbered, although we didn’t realize until we got it how bright the yellows were going to be. They are almost like a highlighter yellow, and I don’t know if this was intended or a miscalculation at the printer.
Anyways, I stumbled upon his follow-up for this years Jazz Fest and I’m really feeling it. Great use of gradients and strong type. If you like this there’s a lot of other really nice work on Solimine’s website Spike Press that you should check out.
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