Viktor Hertz Graphic Design: Pictogram Music Posters

Viktor Hertz is a graphic designer from Uppsala, Sweden. He is famous for his Pictogram Movie Posters and Pictogram Music Posters of 2011. Also, we had the honor to take an interview with Viktor Hertz about his Honest Logos project and feature it on Astrum People.

Viktor has a lot of bright and viral ideas, and he has created a new series of Pictogram Music Posters of 2017, and he is currently running his fundraising campaign on Kickstarter.

We decided to learn more about the new project and took another interview with Viktor Hertz.

AP: Viktor, we are very happy to see you again. It’s a big pleasure for us to feature your success story with our readers. Could you please tell us briefly about the Pictogram Music Posters 2017 and who or what inspired you to start working on it?

Candle In The Wind – Elton John

Viktor: This is a follow-up on a personal project from 2011, where I picked songs and made pictogram posters for them. In the fall of 2016, I felt inspired to make a new batch of them – I wanted to see how much I’ve developed as a graphic designer, and I really aimed to do my best work so far.

AP: This is a great idea and we see your project has been successfully funded and it reached its goal of 10,000 SEK (US$1121). Our sincere congratulations to you! By the way, why did you select that list of songs? How was the selection process done?

Viktor: The list of songs is a mixture of personal favorites (Monkey Gone to Heaven by Pixies, Firestarter by The Prodigy, Toxic by Britney Spears, Give Life Back to Music by Daft Punk, inspiration from top lists (Candle In The Wind by Elton John, Thinking Out Loud by Ed Sheeran, Piano Man by Billy Joel) and pure randomness. I had 30+ drafts and picked the ones I was most happy with. I’m hoping to finish more of them later this year, depending on how big of interest they get online.

Spanish Key – Miles Davis

AP: That is an excellent selection. Why did you choose those four color palette?

Viktor: Black and white(-ish) were a given, and red and yellow are probably the most useful and distinct colors, in my opinion. Although I still feel like a beginner when it comes to colors, so I forced myself to be really careful, and keep it as simple as possible. Some of my posters had to be trashed (at least for this first batch) because they needed other colors than these four. Restriction can really be a good thing, and a good motivator too.

AP: What is your favorite poster or song among those so far?

Viktor: It would probably be “Give Life Back to Music.” Quite late in the process, I figured out how to use negative space in an interesting way, all thanks to playing around with the colors. I almost accidentally changed the background color to black, and the vinyl disc “disappeared,” and I loved the way it looked and kept it that way. It might actually be one of my best posters ever when I think about it. It’s maybe not my favorite song among all of these, but definitely in the top five.

Give Life Back to Music – Daft Punk

Viktor thank you very much for sharing some interesting facts the Pictogram Music Posters project. It’s been a great pleasure talking to you. We wish you best of luck in your Kickstarter campaign and your further projects.

To learn more about other Viktor Hertz graphic design projects, feel free to visit his personal website or Behance page.