57 years of Motown, 57 number 1’s, 57 Days.

2016 marked 57 years since the birth of Motown, founded by Berry Gordy, Jr. on January 12, 1959. Drawing from my love of Motown and the International Typographic Style (Swiss Style), My goal was to redesign all 57 of Motown’s number 1 records into International Typographic Style covers; one per day for the remaining 57 days of the year. Each design is set in Univers by Adrian Frutiger, released by Deberny & Peignot in 1957. A typeface that proved to be enormously influential: it was one of the first typefaces to fulfil the idea that a typeface should form a family of consistent, similar designs. Whilst searching for a job I needed something to keep me busy and my creativity flowing, something not only to test but fire my imagination.

Everyday was a new challenge, before even visualising any potential designs I would learn about each musician/group and the influence of the Number 1 single that they produced. Each day I would look forward to blocking everything else out to purely enjoy the sounds of Motown, influencing not only the design but the colours, type, hierarchy etc.

With lack of time to create a solution, I would resort to tired and tested solutions. These days would set me back and through reconsigning this it helped push me into ways of developing other ideas. The main thing I gained from this project was that I had a lot of fun and thoroughly enjoyed playing with different features/tools that I haven’t before, testing my creativity and my knowledge of all the programs. By seeing what might happen and not worrying about failing, always led to a different way of approaching the problem.