Holywell designed a series of five dramatic posters for Merton College’s Passiontide programme of concerts.

The posters are something of a departure from traditional classical music concert promotions, which commonly use Rennaissance imagery. The College wanted something iconic that would be immediately suggestive of the Passiontide but would be distinct from run-of-the-mill classical concert publicity. We agreed that a simple crown of thorns would be immediately suggestive of the Passion. We combined a contemporary photographic image of a crown with an overlay of solid colours drawn from the College’s brand colour palette. Different colours were used to distinguish each event.

In 2017 we produced five different posters, printed in A2 size and mounted on Foamex boards for displaying outside the College and further posters were distributed around Oxford to publicise the concerts.