This project started with the selection of topic that could hypothetically have a self-contained hierarchy that could be translated into an entire deck of cards. I choose influential jazz and swing musicians as my topic because of my love for the musical style and because I saw an opportunity for suites and hierarchy. To give my theme more purpose I created the 5/4 Restaurant and Jazz Bar. I named the bar 5/4 because that is the most common time signature in for jazz music. My cards were designed to be a promotional item for the bar featuring all the headline shows at this bar in one year.
With this in mind I chose to look at posters from the 1940’s and 1950’s as inspiration for the face cards. The range of these posters led me to settle on a combination of text and imagery, I wanted to feature both the faces and names because while older generations would recognize the face younger peoples may only recognize the name. The diversity of typefaces in the posters that I found pushed me to challenge myself to use a different typeface on every face card like the promotional posters would most likely be. Finally, I aged the appearance of the cards to imply that could have actually been a promotional piece for the 5/4 Restaurant and Jazz Bar.
