Felix Sockwell’s Jazz Festival poster 

Felix Sockwell is a designer, (former) illustrator, artist, sculptor, and farmer. In 2004 he had the opportunity to create two poster designs for the Ford Detroit International Jazz Festival, which is North America’s largest free jazz festival. The objective the festival wanted to show within the posters for that year was to reflect the ‘free-form excitement’ that jazz expresses and Sockwell did just that. Matt Dimmer was the art director and worked hand-hand-hand with Sockwell.

  Sockwell created both illustrations with one continuous line that depicts jazz players. With the lines being continuous, they all intervene and interact with one another, and no matter what line you follow it seems to go on forever. The first poster has an almost sage green background as it depicts a man wearing a hat and playing the saxophone. The way that Sockwell does this continuous line method, you can see the overlap of certain lines that aren’t realistic - like the lines of the saxophone being shown through the man’s hands. Even though it isn’t realistic Sockwell made the design choice work - the way he does this method is still captivating nonetheless and it just helps add to his technique. Out of the two illustrations, this one is my favorite. 

The second poster has an almost muted, or burnt, orange background and depicts another man wearing a hat playing what looks like the Frech horn. Sockwell approached this illustration differently as you don’t see as many details in it as you do the first one. When comparing it to the first one, the face on this illustration seems to be detailed and rendered a little less, as well as you notice there aren’t as many ‘playful’ loops (for example, on the bottom of the right hand). Even though this illustration was approached differently, it still captivates the ‘free-form excitement’ that is Jazz. Similar to the first design you can see the overlap of certain lines.

I had the pleasure to speak with Felix through Instagram (@felixsockwell). We had a pleasant conversation, and he answered some questions. When talking about the inspiration behind this style that he had picked for these illustrations, he talked about how this loose interpretation of the one-liner method had developed through the many trips he had taken on the NYC subway. He would take his sketchbook with him and would give himself 5 seconds or so to draw passengers on the subway with him. He wanted to see how far he could achieve their likeness or gestures in an accurate way while doing so in a short time frame. This then led to him doing jazz studies and started to get work for jazz artists. 

Although Sockwell is not an illustrator anymore he is currently a sculpture artist and still creates things like puzzles, icons, logos, and packages. Felix Sockwell is an amazing artist, and he continues to evolve his work every day.