kind of blue
Front
MILES DAVIS "SHAPES”
Back
Kind of Blue is considered modal jazz, as Davis shifts away from traditional chord progressions and focuses solely on scales and improvisation. This style is what gave him the title, “Miles Davis Shapes.” As a jazz and classical pianist I would often have to visualize the music I was learning by drawing out the shapes and forms I extracted from the piece. This was done with my eyes closed the first time, as a way to aid my comprehension of the composition on a deeper level. Typically, jazz album covers feature smooth, organic shapes and lines to convey the fluidity associated with jazz music, and I wanted to show the opposite of this to further explore cognitive dissonance, as well as convey the abstraction and improvisation within Davis’ work fully.
The prompt was to create original artwork for an album cover and zoetrope from a published musician. The goal was to incorporate the use of cognitive dissonance and motion as the visual device in the design. This redesign of Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue album mimics the unexpected note choices within Davis’ work in order to capture his innovative and improvised jazz style.
The artwork displays cognitive dissonance with jagged lines and sharp angles, blurring reality and fantasy. It displays motion through energy, as illustrated by a bass player in a distorted hallway and a zoetrope depicting trumpet movement in an abstract form. The goal was to immerse the viewer in Miles Davis’ unique jazz realm of imagination and abstraction.
