Richard III Poster by Jisuke Matsuda is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2022 A' Design Award in Graphics, Illustration and Visual Communication Design Competition Category.
IronGraphic· 2022
Richard III Poster
Client: Create Theatre Poster
A' Design Award Winner in Graphic Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #133345The Design
About Richard III Poster
This poster represents strong human emotions such as despair, desire and screaming. Richard III is a fascinating villain. He is noble and also fragile, like a Japanese castle wall. These stones in the poster seems the fragments his broken castle and heart. The blue background and embossing print emphasizes fluctuations undulates like a coral reef. Richard's ambition have sunk into there. The typography of his name are entwined with these stones. As if his complicated fate.
The Recognition
About the A' Design Award
Richard III Poster is an Iron A' Design Award winner, a prestigious recognition granted to good designs that meet the professional and industrial requirements expected from well-designed creations. Iron winners demonstrate great skill, high specialization, expert understanding, and creative capacity of their creators. Richard III Poster is expected to be a highly regarded, admired, and cherished creation that is practical and innovative. This Iron A' Design Award-winning design integrates industry best practices and has competent technical characteristics linked with know-how and talent. Richard III Poster is respected for its thoroughness and is designed to provide quality of life improvements that help make the world a better place.
Interviews
Grand Interview
Your innovative fusion of Japanese castle aesthetics with Shakespearean tragedy in Richard III Poster creates a powerful visual metaphor - could you elaborate on how this cultural intersection shaped your creative decisions?
There are wars and conflicts all over the world, and both Japan and the United Kingdom have been involved in them. This participation reflects the inherent foolishness of humanity—a foolishness that, of course, includes the Japanese as well. This foolishness gives rise to sorrow. Sorrow, in this case, represents the way the rocks that people have carefully piled up can be so easily toppled by those who stand above. This is what I wanted to depict in the poster for Richard III.
The embossing effect in Richard III Poster creates a fascinating coral reef-like texture that symbolizes sunken ambitions - what inspired you to choose this specific printing technique to convey such deep emotional themes?
I wanted to depict the sinking of a Japanese warship, a symbol of our involvement in the war, and the crumbling stones of the wall, the remnants of a foolish conflict, sinking into the beautiful sea. To achieve this, I used the embossing technique to create the ups and downs.
Your typography in Richard III Poster interweaves English and Japanese text like seaweed, reflecting your extensive research of both languages - how did this bilingual study of Shakespeare influence your typographic design choices?
When attempting to convey a message, if English serves as the common language for multiple nations, then blending Japanese and English allows us to reach and be understood by more people around the world. As I mentioned before, both Japan and the UK were involved in the war, and so, for atonement and to honor those who lost their lives, the languages of both nations are significant elements in this expression.
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- This poster shows the strong emotions of human beings. Richard III is a fascinating villain. He is noble, like a Japanese castle made of stones on the foundation. But he is also fragile. The background of the piled stones is the image of the seabed, and it undulates like a coral reef. His ambitions have sunk. And the characters of Richard III and Shakespeare express typography in an entwined manner like algae and seaweed.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- 728mm x 1030mm
vertical - Tags
- poster, theatre, theater, Shakespeare, play, stage
- Production Technology
- Offset printing
Embossing Effect - Design Challenge
- It is a work that has been visualized innumerably so far. In order to revive it as a fresh work that I have never seen, it was necessary to deeply interpret the work itself. However, the original text was a non-native language and had some difficulties. On the technical side, it was necessary to create a delicate embossing effect in order to add depth to the work. For that reason, the print plate is divided into multiple parts.
- Research
- This project is part of an academic study of Shakespeare's classical drama. Even today, the goal is to reinterpret the works of the most influential playwrights in line with the times. Both the original English and the Japanese translation are used for the research. It is the role of this poster to visually show the new charm, and it is required to be modern and novel in color and composition. As typography, both English and Japanese used in the research are fused.
- Inspiration
- Shakespeare's play still excites, saddens and impresses us. When reading and looking at his play, we are not facing a difficult classics. His work is full of the fundamental human truth. In his plays, strong emotion and love who we forget is overflow. This series is an attempt to reconstruct that secret with contemporary posters.
- Project Duration
- This work is one of Shakespeare's series, which started in Tokyo (Japan) in 2015 and continues as now. Especially This poster was constructed for the creation of the series "Love and emotion" announced in 2020.
- Operation Flow
- Although it is a poster for domestic events, it has been introduced all over the world and has a strong presence through the participation exhibitions of many international competitions.
- Patents
- Created by Jisuke Matsuda
- Image Credits
- Image #1 : Jisuke Matsuda, Optional Image #1 : Jisuke Matsuda, Optional Image #2 : Jisuke Matsuda, Optional Image #3 : Jisuke Matsuda, Optional Image #4 : Jisuke Matsuda
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