I want YOU...

My original focus was intended to be Victorian era advertising, although with further research I decided to focus on wartime advertising and propaganda in comparison to similar types of advertisements today. 

When designing my poster I decided to incorporate the bold lettering often used in propaganda posters along with a common colour scheme including red, white, black, and grey.  My choice to use the image of a solider along with the colour scheme was meant to instil thoughts of wartime propaganda, which is the focus of my essay, within viewers.

Manifesto of thoughts and ideas

Helvetica, why you so bold?

This weeks blog was to create icons using only helvetica bold.  How can you go wrong with a science fiction series? (Alien, Spaceship, and Lovable Robot!)


TREKKIES UNITE!

Mind the Gap.

Image from: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/clive.billson/tubemaps/1933.html

A lot of London’s tourism is based off of its famous underground “tube”.  There are numerous souvenirs available with maps of the underground, none of which would be here today if it were not for Harry Beck.  Harry Beck designed the first London Underground Map in 1931. 

The type found on the map is Johnston’s Railway Type, and was designed by Edward Johnston in 1916.  This typeface has been influential because it embraced function over form.  There were no unnecessary embellishments or elements just a simple, easy to read typeface.  Very similar to the popular sans serif typefaces that exist today.

 A lot of map designs in Beck’s time were overly crowded with extra elements that did not make reading a map very easy.  Beck’s design included only the bare minimum of information needed to remain functional and to preserve simplicity.  He used bright colours and straight lines to make the map easier to read, which was greatly appreciated by tube users. 

         I really enjoy Beck’s design.  I find it very easy to read and very recognizable which is fantastic if you are in a foreign city trying to find your way around.  I appreciate how he strayed away from the curved lines of previous maps to create a more organized feel for the new map.

As the English would say…

Cheerio Chap!

Are You Serious...

This week’s blog was to redesign the serious coffee logo in the style of a specific time period, I chose art nouveau.  I decided to include a simple line drawing of a woman’s face in my redesign because, through research, I found that this was a common element in many art nouveau designs.  I also chose to include a coffee cup adorned with the serious coffee bean that currently exists to make a connection between the two designs.  I chose to include the mug because the disposable coffee cups of today did not exist in the art nouveau period.   Another element that is reminiscent of art nouveau period is the circular format of the logo along with the embellished boarder.  This decorative element helps to balance out the intricate font that was popular in the era and add some interest to the design.  I had researched Edward Penfield in class, so his work, especially that with Harpers Bazar, inspired my logo redesign with the woman.  The audience for this logo includes people who are interested in design history and the different styles and eras, or if it were around during the era it would appeal to avid coffee and snack enthusiasts. 

Until the next post... 

Victorian Era Advertising!

This image from :Thinking with type: a critical guide for designers, writers, editors, and students by Ellen Lupton, published by Princeton Architectural 2010

This week’s blog post focuses on Victorian era advertising.  My example of a Victorian era advertisement is a poster for a steamship cruise.  In the era the majority of advertising was done with posters and/or by word of mouth, the poster was made to further promote a specific occurrence.  I found my example by looking in one of my textbooks for another course, Typography, I had remembered reading something about different decorative font choices earlier on so I flipped trough the book and found the picture that accompanied the article.  The design is very ‘In your Face’ and ‘flashy’, typical for most work around that time.  The type choices include large, decorative fonts all piled up on top of one another.  This was popular in the Victorian era because typefaces only had a certain amount of letters that could be used at one time.  For the period I believe the artwork would have been of fairly good quality, but today it would contain many ‘faux-pas’.  The first thing that attracted me to the piece was the very large, aggressive text.  This then led me to the different intricacies in the individual typefaces an eventually the on the poster, which, I guess, was is the whole point of a poster!

Cheerio

Renaissance Style

This week's blog post is a rendering of a typical renaissance page layout.  The page was rendered by hand using a fine point black marker.  The function of this piece is to explore some of the graphic styles in our history and test different rendering techniques.  Traditionally this particular type of layout would have been used in books during the renaissance period to create unique and interesting pages.  The original illustrations would have been much more detailed and would usually have incorporated colour.  It is amazing to imagine how much time artists must have spent creating a single page.  Typical elements of a renaissance page include embellished letters, intricate borders, and detailed illustrations.  My design follows the style of this period by incorporating an intricate border into a spread along with an embellished first letter.  No specific artist  influenced my rendering, I gathered most of my information from google and text books.  I believe the audience for this piece would be any young adult to senior who is interested in learning about design history or even those who just appreciate a nice visual piece of work. I found this assignment quite enjoyable, but VERY time consuming, overall a pretty good experience!

Snow Day!

Thought I would share this because of the snow day...

This is from: http://www.designfreebies.org/free-vectors/free-vectors-early-winter-snow-flakes/

Inspired by Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Forms

Oops forgot to press post on that last entry let's try for round two...


For my example of Graphic Design from the 21st Century that has been influenced/ inspired by ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic forms I found a clothing line.  The tee shirts feature images that are almost exactly the same as some of the older Egyptian characters along with some other more modern images.  The function of the clothing is to wear and make a statement to others.  I found my example while searching online for clothing with hieroglyphs on them.  The style of the graphic design is a bit strange because it mixes street art style along with the hieroglyphic forms which creates a nice mix of new and old.  I believe that the quality of the art work is perfect for the demographic because it is simple and not high maintenance.  The first thing that attracted me to this design was the simplicity.  This was followed by an interest in who the clothing is aimed at which I deduced to be teenaged males and maybe those who enjoy skateboarding which I find quite interesting.


This assignment was neat because I discovered that old is regularly mixed with new design when it comes to clothing.




Image from the website: http://sneakhype.com/clothing/2010/01/hieroglyphics-x-souls-of-mischief-x-adapt.html

Aloha!

Ahh yes the very first post.  This blog was created for a design course and I am curious to see where it goes :)

Cheers