Django Reinhardt
Day 35
#43 – Jean Baptiste ‘Django’ Reinhardt (1910–1953). Belgian virtuoso jazz guitarist and composer. Albums include: Swing from Paris, with Stéphane Grappelli (1935-39), The Great Artistry of Django Reinhardt (1954) and The Best Of Django Reinhardt (1960).
Often regarded as one of the greatest guitar players of all time, Django Reinhardt was a remarkable man. After a fire his third and fourth fingers were paralysed on his left hand and he relearned his craft and developed a new style of jazz guitar technique. He played all of his guitar solos with only two fingers. I looked at different ways of conveying this and decided to concentrate on cutting some of the letters in his name. The colours were chosen to match those of Belgium, where he was born. The poster was looking a little bare so I added various song titles. The angle of the cut on the letters and all the songs is set at 18 degrees – 18 being the age he had the accident.
4 hours
This early idea looked at a more obvious way of showing the loss of two fingers, but also suggesting a guitar. On reflection, this idea would have been worth developing further. More immediate, different and with a nice visual idea in the middle.
Listen...
to excerpts from ‘The Great Artistry of Django Reinhardt’.