The album, Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits featured an iconic poster, designed by well-known graphic designer, Milton Glaser. The artwork of Bob Dylan became so famous, that the style has been heavily reproduced by others. It was about time that I followed these footsteps with my own rendition!

Getting into it:

Structure:

For this rendition, the purpose for me was to start from a preexisting image for my graphic interpretation of the poster. I knew I needed to choose a photo of someone’s profile and strip the details down to their economy stage; basically, keeping it simple. Then, ensuring I’d be able to add a bold statement with different colors – which in this case, would be with the hair. 

Because this poster and style have ties to music, I believe that many of the newer interpretations choose to highlight celebrities or very well-known people. When thinking about who I wanted as my subject, I realized that I have a photo of myself that would work perfectly for this! Back in 2018, I had a portrait taken where I flipped my hair – It took many tries to get the image, but it was well worth it; especially now, where I get to recreate it.

Colors:

Now that I had my basic layout started, I needed to think about the colors to use for my hair. For the three separate posters, I decided to use tonal variations. I chose the three secondary colors for each of the separate posters. That way, I knew I could get two cool colors (which are also complementary – purple and green) and one warm color placed in the middle to balance them out. 

I was also influenced by these colors because of color psychology, and I wanted to choose colors that represent myself. 

Purple – mysterious, understanding

Orange – adventurous, happy

Green – natural, balanced, authentic

Presentation:

With three separate posters laid out next to each other, the separation I used is called rules. The rules are the spacing/stripes/lines between blocks to act as the dividers between the posters.

Text:

Okay – so I finished the posters! But wait, there was one last element to include to truly make this a rendition of the famous poster. I needed to find a font that accurately constitutes the style – a bold, solid character approach. I found one called Hunt that worked perfectly for my name. I used white because I think that this is the negative space in the composition, as everything else is either black, gray, or a variation of different colors. 

Overall, this project was very fun to create my own interpretation of the Bob Dylan poster by Milton Glaser. I particularly enjoyed learning about different colors and their meanings and positioning them with myself. This helped me to continue my knowledge of graphic design, and I would strongly suggest this to anyone else looking to expand their knowledge of design as well!