ANDY J. MILLER

www.designkoma.com

Band –
Sufjan Stevens

Track –
Chicago

“I chose ‘Chicago’ because it totally moves me unlike any other song. Also, I wanted a challenge—something I could really go all out on. This song comes from the album Illinoise, which was extremely inspiring to me. The album is obviously the finely tuned work of an extremely prolific and tirelessly hardworking artist, and it was a bit daunting to make a tribute to something so magnificent.

I hardly spent the time that Sufjan did creating such an intense masterpiece, but as far as any poster design I have ever done, this is my ‘Chicago.’ I was inspired by Sufjan Stevens’s work ethic. In emulating his extremely disciplined approach, I tried to capture the essence of the song’s extremely detailed layers upon even more-detailed layers. I spent hours working with different symbols, icons, and ideas, sketching and sketching away. When I had finally built up enough imagery, I made several preliminary compositions until I was completely happy with the way the images were working together.

This poster was truly inspired by the lyrics of the song. Much of my imagery—including visual riddles—came from the words. For instance, the line “I fell in love again” inspired the image of the man running and falling into a heart-shaped hole in the top right-hand part of the poster.

My overall goal was to create a work that feels like a journey. To me, ‘Chicago’ sounds like traveling down a highway to find something important and true.”