Duke Ellington
Day 14
#3 – Edward Kennedy ‘Duke’ Ellington (1899–1974). American composer, pianist, and big-band leader. Recordings include: It Don’t Mean a Thing (1932) and ‘Take the A Train’ (1941) and the album Anatomy of a Murder (1959).
His career spanned over more than 50 years, with over 1,000 compositions to his name. He lived for the music. After playing around with some typefaces and famous song titles, the sheer number of compositions is so unique, it seemed sensible to make this the main starting point. I experimented with flooding the page with the songs and trying to pick out an image of the man but this didn’t have enough energy. I wanted to express this idea of thousands of songs springing from this one man. An explosion of songs. Once I had placed all the songs coming out from the middle I used a purple for the background (for ‘duke’) and a bright red for the songs to express the energy.
4 hours
An early idea using all his song titles to create his image but it lacked energy.
Listen...
to ‘Take The ‘A’ Train’.