
REJECT THE NATURAL, BECOME MECHANICAL;
GIG POSTER
Reject the Natural, Become Mechanical – Poster Design
Independent Commission | Master's Recital (2025)
Role: Concept Development, Visual Design, AI Integration, Typography
Tools: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator
I was commissioned to design a poster for Harrison Scholes’ final Master’s recital, a performance of his original seven-movement suite for an 18-piece jazz orchestra. The suite, Reject the Natural, Become Mechanical, draws from speculative fiction and cinematic world-building, centering on two imagined worlds: the Organic Planet, a lush, life-filled ecosystem, and the Mechanised Planet, a vast machine that assimilates life to preserve it.
The brief was to visually convey this narrative of transformation — from natural to mechanical — while capturing the suite’s dramatic, metaphor-rich concept. This became the first project where I integrated AI-generated imagery into my process. I used it as a foundation to develop an immersive landscape that visually bridges the two fictional realms.
Key visual elements:
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A dense forest setting disrupted by a colossal biomechanical structure
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A solitary figure dwarfed by a surreal, otherworldly machine
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Stylised typography to evoke retro science fiction and orchestral gravity
The final composition reflects both the cinematic scale and philosophical tension of the music, offering a visual prologue to the performance’s conceptual journey.