Let there be light. Hommage à Górecki

Henryk Mikołaj Górecki, the great Polish composer (1933–2010), was internationally renowned for his symphonies and chorals. The term "spiritual minimalism" is often used to describe his works. According to Wikipedia, spiritual minimalism was  

a term used to refer to a number of late-twentieth-century composers of Western classical music, whose works are distinguished by a minimalist compositional aesthetic and a distinctly religious or mystical subject focus.

If you'd like to read more about Górecki and his work, go here. If you'd like to listen to some of his masterpieces, go here or here.

Back to the poster...

I designed it for a competition commemorating Henryk Mikołaj Górecki. Digging deeper into his biography and work, I thought that using light seemed a perfect fit to show his approach. As in my other posters, I was trying to use as little graphic design means as possible, so the whole design was based on photography that was retouched. I believe this gives the viewer the sense of something physical that wasn't created in a computer program from start to finish, even if the photography is modified to some extent.

Light became a material building the whole structure of the poster. The idea came to me after analyzing the shapes of the letters in composer's last name. It was possible to create a message of the light going "through" the name of the composer and therefore create notes on the musical staff.

The other thing I wanted to communicate was a metaphor of music coming to existence through the inspiration (that some believe comes from God).

Click to see more pictures from the making-of:

As always, it's up to you to decide if my approach was right :)
Feel free to leave comments or share your thoughts. Thank you for reading and see you in the next post!