Macbeth

The creative team at Palio+Ignite welcomed the opportunity
to create a poster for the Saratoga Shakespeare Company’s
2014 summer production of Macbeth. No doubt one of
Shakespeare’s darkest and most tragic works, Macbeth
delves into the perils of unbridled ambition and the
complexities of human nature. For the poster, the creative
team focused on two dominant symbols from the play:
blood and a crown. The team wanted to create a
provocative, menacing mood to conjure the true spirit of
Macbeth. To achieve this, Palio+Ignite photographed a set of
blood-soaked daggers and custom-forged them into a
king’s crown. In the poster’s image, the bloody crown leaves
stains on Lady Macbeth’s hands as she places it atop her
husband’s head. (Who could forget Lady Macbeth’s descent
into madness and her immortal words: “Out, damned spot, I
say!”) The bloody crown also drips on Macbeth’s head – a
smear on his conscience. The symbolism is
multidimensional, conveying both Macbeth’s murderous rise
to the throne at the taunting of his power-hungry wife, as
well as their eventual guilt that cannot be washed away.
Macbeth announces that “blood will beget blood,” and his
image of wading in a river of blood sums up one of the
biggest themes in Macbeth: once you’ve gone far enough in
spilling blood, there’s nothing you can do to stop it. The
Palio+Ignite team created a dramatic poster that quickly
telegraphs Shakespeare’s unforgettable, character-driven
story about the dangers of ruthless ambition. Its echoes of
poetic tragedy still resonate today.