The Piano Lesson
Designing before the Product Is Created
The Piano Lesson
4 weeks, solo project
InDesign, Illustrator
Project Manager, Researcher, Designer
Typography, Layout, Illustration
Instructors: Julia McNamara and Michael Buchino
During discussions in our poster class, the instructors shared their experiences working with nonprofit theaters that designers are regularly asked to generate visual designs in advance of the start of production. The challenge for The Piano Lesson was to create an arresting graphic that conveyed the essence of August Wilson’s play months before key hires were made and work started on the production.
The solution centers on a visual metaphor for Wilson’s multi-layered conflicts that drive the play’s narrative: between brother and sister, the generational trauma experienced by African Americans as a legacy of slavery, racial conflict during the Great Depression, and the extraction of reparations for the descendants of enslaved Americans. The typography and muted color palettes were inspired by Work Progress Administration posters in the Library of Congress to evoke the play’s Depression-era setting in Pittsburgh.
Thumbnail sketches focused on the keyboard as the central motif placed within a formal compositional structure of thirds dominated by the diagonal thrust.
Arranging the keyboard in a haphazard and frenetic order gives the sense of ongoing conflict.
Mirroring the keyboard and swapping the color of the keys represents racial discord.
The clean lines accented by slight swelling of the final typeface nod to the elegant type of the 1920s/30s while not losing its contemporary relevance.
