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While composing my work, I decided I needed a striking image to help not only advertise the piece, but to cause a controversy. I used the design because of how extremely startling and repulsive it is. The swastika inside the Gay Pride flag is the merging of two diametrically-opposed worlds. One would think these two worlds would never collide. (After all, homosexuals had one of the highest mortality rates in concentration camps.) Yet, there is a site on the internet dedicated to gay Nazi’s. As repugnant as that is to me, the look of this design was almost too good to resist. Almost. After debating the merits of whether I could use such an icon to promote my play, I decided this icon gave the absolute wrong message. I did, however, use it to advertise my first reading of the play in the Independent Record and Queen City News the week of September 16, 2007.
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I needed an idea for a poster design. So I used Old English Text as my typestyle for the title, Berlin Sans FB for the byline text and a photo. I choose a photo from Dachau, a concentration camp outside Munich. I selected five different lines or portions of speeches from the play as a byline. I then conducted a nonscientific survey, asking friends: “Which of these five poster designs intrigues you the most?” The winner: No one will follow you: Not a nation, not a person, not a dog. It resonated because it gives the feeling of something sinister occurring, against a backdrop of a grainy photo and a lovely typestyle.
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(Photographs courtesy Philip Greenspun)
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Ultimately the decision for the poster came down to the old adage: “Less is More.” I decided to choose one typestyle for all the text. I really like the look of simplicity a single type conveys. As much as I believe a gothic typescript completely conveys the time period of the play, it was a difficult text to read. So instead I chose a typestyle that was cleaner and had a more modern look. I also stayed with the color themes of red, black and yellow. Thus the design and graphics you see here.
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