Jan 13, 2021
Concierto Experiment #1
RJD2 — Dec. 1st, 2004
My ongoing series where I design concert posters from shows that I have attended and talk about memorable moments. A design exercise where I get to experiment with no pressure or constraints.
RJD2 is a DJ that connected with me right away. Once I heard the album Deadringer, I was an instant fan. His musical arrangements have many layers and texture to them, things I have noticed in myself that catches my interest. His sound has changed throughout the years, and it’s been cool to see how far he has evolved since the first album. I’ve joked with friends that if I made a movie or TV show, he would be one of the few DJs that I would reach out to score it. Speaking of TV, you may already be familiar with his work. If you have watched the TV show Mad Men, well, his work was used as the main theme song. Check out his catalogue; he has some great music that has influences from many different genres. Now let’s talk about the show.
If you notice on my poster, RJD2 was the main headliner for the show, but you may also see another DJ that you may be more familiar with, Diplo. Yes, that Diplo. This show was way before he blew up and became the Diplo of today. This was 2004, and he had released his album Florida. (Which I still rock to this day and is my favorite, but I digress).
RJD2 showed his DJ mastery this night. The main thing is that he did not have headphones. Let me repeat for the people in the back…He did not have headphones. He was doing the entire show without the ability to listen to what the other record would be playing. When my friends realized this, our minds were blown. He was not using Serato. He just had his physical records (no hard drive with endless Mp3’s on them that most DJ’s use today) accompanied by his DJ and beat-making equipment. He was that good. He knew his set and records so well that he didn’t need to check to see if he had the right part cued up before playing it for us during the show. I’ve been to a lot of shows and he is the only DJ that I have seen firsthand do this. During the show I felt he was good at reading the crowd and the show overall flowed well. I remember leaving that show with my friends with the biggest smile on our faces. What a great night!
Idea behind the design
Since the show consisted of DJs, I thought about how technical RJD2 was during the show. When I think technical, my mind went towards blueprints. So what is the foundation of DJing? Turntables.
I found some old turntable blueprint and extracted them out, mixing them with other schematics from mixers. A mixture of the two was used for the background. For the main image, I thought about how RJD2 knew his equipment and memorized his records. It seemed like he was performing magic in front of us. DJ’s travel worldwide to perform, so an image of a lone traveler on a stagecoach going town to town selling their wares popped in my head. I went with this old-timey image and added turntable parts springing out from this tall hat, to help bring the design together.
