Miles Davis
Day 100
#1 – Miles Dewey Davis III (1926–1991). American jazz musician, trumpeter, composer and bandleader. Albums include: Birth of the Cool (1950), Kind of Blue (1959) and Bitches Brew (1969).
Widely considered one of the major figures in jazz history, his album ‘Kind of Blue’ has sold over four million albums. His career spanned every important innovation from the 1940s to the 1990s. Whilst his sound is often consistent, he constantly tried new things, working with people to push jazz in different directions. His playing on ‘Kind of Blue’ sounds clear and precise so Helvetica Ultra Light seemed to fit the bill. And to emphasise the ‘blue’ I thought I would make the trumpet blue, but struggled to get it to work. I needed to try something different, so I left the trumpet out and just worked with the type. His first and last name have the same number of letters; I wrote it out in different ways until settling on a vertical positioning to fit the space. But it was too safe. How to get across this constant changing and disrupting the status quo? Cutting the type made it more edgy. I then put the trumpet back in as this remained constant throughout his life.
2.5 hours
One of the many early ideas
Listen…
to excerpts from ‘Kind of Blue’