Prospect Front Ensemble Background Information
In high school, I was a member of the marching band and specifically spent all four years in the front ensemble (also known as the pit). For anybody who doesn’t know, the pit is located at the very front edge of the football field and consists of any non-marching percussion instruments, with the main elements being marimbas and vibraphones. I played vibraphone for one year, marimba for three years, and was the center marimba and pit section leader for my last two years. Pit members don’t actually march but instead end up playing much more musically complex parts and also add texture to the sound with various additional percussion instruments.
2021 Front Ensemble Shirt Design Personal Project | 2021
Each year, the marching band learned a custom field show that we rehearsed the entire season and performed at competitions and football games. For my senior year, I wanted to create a custom pit t-shirt. The show name was “SMiLE” and prominently featured the color yellow in addition to our school colors of navy and light blue. The initial back design can be seen above. I decided to spell out “smile” using various percussion instruments. The “S” was formed from two tambourines, the “M” was made from two triangles, the “i” was a singular marimba mallet, the “L” is a vibraslap, and the “E” is four drumsticks.
I added the “Prospect Front Ensemble” text to this design and started looking at t-shirt options which can be seen above. The front logo is a modified version of the school logo with mallets added within the crest. When looking at a yellow base color, I used the multicolor graphic but realized it would be more cost effective to switch to a single-color version of the design. This can be seen on the navy base colored shirt, with the light blue design that we ultimately went with.
I also took a crack at designing a show logo for the full band shirt that included a Prospect shako (this is what the marching band hats are called) on top of the dot in the I. I wasn’t too happy with this design though, so I didn't fully develop and refine it, and it never got used.
Finally, I also started working on year specific custom bandanas for the marimba players. I started in 2020 with our show “Classic” and also created one in 2021 for “SMiLE”. I made the designs for both and choose the coloring. I then sent these to another marimba player who had access to a screen printer and she printed them.
