Final Blog Post

Final Exam Blog Post

Arts and Crafts

William Morris, Minstrel with Clarinet, 1870

William Morris, Sussex Chair, 1865

William Morris, The Nature Gothic, 1892

Art Noveau

Jules Cheret, Folies Bergère-Fleur de Lotus, 1893

Jules Cheret, Les Girard, 1879

Jules Cheret, La Loïe Fuller, 1893

Sachplakat

Lucian Bernhard, Bosch, 1914

Julius Klinger, Poster, Möhring Chandelier Factory, 1909

Hans Rudi Erdt, Opel, 1911

Art Deco

 A.M. Cassandre, Wagon-Bar, 1932

Cassandre and Maximilien Vox, Divertissements Typographiques, 1927

Adrian Allinson, East African Transport-Old Style, 1931

De Stijl

 Theo van Doesburg, NB De Stijl, 1921

Theo van Doesburg, Alphabet, 1917

El Lissitzky, "Of Two Squares" from De Stijl, 1922

Constructivism

 Theo van Doesburg and Kurt Schwitters, Kleine Dada Soirée, 1922

Theo van Doesburg, Mécano, 1923

Raoul Haussmann, Tatlin at Home, 1920

Bauhaus

Fritz Schleifer, Bauhaus Ausstellung, 1923

Joost Schmidt, Exhibition Poster, 1923

László Moholy-Nagy, Exhibition Catalog Staatliches Bauhaus im Weimar, 1923

International Style

Alvin Lustig, Fortune magazine, 1946

Alvin Lustig, Exhibition Catalog The New Decade, 1955

Saul Bass, Exodus, 1961

Psychedelic Poster Art

Victor Moscoso, Youngbloods, 1967

Richard Griffin, Flying Eyeball, 1968

Micheal English, Love Festival, 1967

Postmodernism

Wolfgang Weingart, Schreibkunst, 1984

Wolfgang Weingart, Das Schweizer Plakat,1984

April Greiman, The Modern Poster, 1988

Gig Poster

Wes Wilson, Greatful Dead Concert Poster, 1966

Wes Wilson, Grateful Dead Poster, 1966

Wes Wilson, Grateful Dead Poster, 1966

Final "Textbook-Based" Blog Post

International Style

Saul Bass

The Man with the Golden Arm,1955

Vertigo, 1958

One, Two, Three, 1961

Saul Bass was an American designer who is most famous for his work done out of Los Angeles. He is most well-known for his work with film specifically movie posters. One of his more famous works was for a film by Otto Preminger entitled The Man with the Golden Arm. Bass’s poster consisted of a grid of geometric shapes of varying colors such as blue back and purple. On the largest shape closest to the center of the poster a boxy arm like shape protrudes and divides the lettering which reads The Man with the Golden Arm. Another of Bass’s famous posters was for Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. The poster is very basic utilizing a spiral shape with the black outline of a man and the white outline of woman in the center. As simplistic as the poster is it tells a great deal about the film without giving a lot away. It is also a great demonstration of Bass’s diversity of style. In that in this particular poster he chose not to utilize a grid. Rather things seem to center around the spiral shape in the center. Even the text seems to be centered in a way around the spiral as it appears on either side of it.

Paul Rand

Modern Art in Your Life, 1949

Direction Cover, 1940

Eye Bee M Poster, 1970

Paul Rand is a graphic designer whose modern style has made him widely popular. Rand Trained in New York and eventually held a position as the art director of Esquire magazine. Rand is known for the designing the logos for a number of different companies. One of these being the logo for IBM, which consisted of the letters with white lines running horizontally through them which although simplistic went through many different iterations before it was decided by Rand to be the right design. Another of Rand’s works was the cover for the book The Dada Painters and Poets. The cover accurately depicts the overall theme of the “dada” movement. The cover is another perfect example of Rand’s love of modern simplicity being that it is merely made up of “DADA” spelled out horizontally in black letters and vertically in white letters. Rand is also known for creating the Westinghouse company logo. This logo is also very modernist and simple. It consists of a “W” with circles at each of the tips. The “W” is then surrounded by a large circle and underneath the “W” is large black oval. Rand’s choice of how to draw the “W” with the circles is vaguely reminiscent of a circuit board drawing which would make sense in that Westinghouse was an electronics manufacturer.

Josef Müller-Brockmann

Olma, 1959

Beethoven, 1955

Illustration, 1955

 

Josef Müller-Brockmann is an illustrator who became a fan of international style in the 1950s. His work during this time reflects this new found interest in the international style. Müller-Brockmann’s Beethoven poster is one of his most well-known works. The poster consists of several curved shapes one in front of the other. In the middle of the curved shapes is the smaller centered text. Above that is a lowercase sub header that reads “beethoven”. The placement of the word “beethoven” is important because it stops any symmetry which may have been present without it. Müller-Brockmann’s work is largely hand drawn though some of it was done in combination with photographic elements such as in Olma above in which a photo of a cow is utilized. The cow is the center focus of the poster with a filter over the photo making it appear as if the photo is entirely composed of dots. The text on the poster surrounds the cow and it forms its general shape. The largest piece of text reading “Olma” is facing towards the cow. Josef Müller-Brockmann’s unique use of text and graphics in his illustrations stands amongst other international style illustrators. His use of modern looking geometric shapes truly stands out in his illustrations.

Final "Textbook-Based" Blog Post

Art Deco

Cassandre

 Normandie, 1935

Dubonnet, 1932

Nord Express, 1927

Adolphe Jean-Marie Mouron who went by the alias Cassandre is one of the most well-known Art Deco graphic designers in Paris. Cassandre is well known for his advertisement for Dubonnet liquor called Dubo, Dubon, Dubonnet. In this piece he utilized repetitious images of a man drinking liquor in three continual panels. In this the liquor representative of the color flows through the characters body eventually filling him entirely thus “fulfilling” him. Cassandre’s use of the text underneath the piece was also a very interesting choice as he not only used the brands name to advertise but use words within the brands name to advertise the brand further. Starting with Dubo which to a French speaker sounds like “some beautiful” followed by Dubon which sounds like “some good” and then finally ending with the actual name of the brand, Dubonnet. The idea behind many of Cassandres works was to create something which would create an instant visual impact and which could understood quickly simply by viewing it. Cassandre’s work also embodied the art-deco style by using smooth abstract images to represent people or other things. Cassandre’s work generally utilized shapes crisp solid shapes that in their simplicity is what made them so aesthetically pleasing to the eye.

Jean Carlu

Au Bon Marché, 1928

Patriotic War Poster, 1942

A Votre Sant Pousset Spatenbrau, 1960s

Jean Carlu, a graphic designer from France produced many posters in the Art Deco style including patriotic war posters for the U.S. government. Carlu’s work seems to focus on angular forms and cubism. This focus leads to a lack of depth while showing multiple angles of each piece at the same time. Carlu’s pieces seem to focus very heavily on the geometric. The main idea behind most of his pieces was to create emotional values using color and lines. The first Art Deco poster Carlu designed was for Charlie Chaplin’s “The Kid”. Soon after this Carlu took an interest in Cubism and the more geometric abstract pieces that embody Art Deco. He is well known for his posters designed to promote more production for the WWII war effort. His designs always seem to use very rudimentary shapes with generally few dimensions. He also often employed the use of gradients and contrasting colors in much of his work. One of his more well-known pieces is a lithograph for the department store Au Bon Marché which depicts a door a very geometrically blocky doorman holding an umbrella over a child. The doorman is framed by a triangle which seems to reflect Carlu’s background as an architect. 

Paul Bonet

Cirque, 1959

Book Binding, 1958

Book Binding, 1958

Paul Bonet, original began his career as a fashion designer but quickly moved into book binding after being influenced by fellow book artist Paul Legrain.  One of Bonet’s designs was a new edition of Apollinaire’s Calligrammes. The book binding reflected a very cubist inspired design. The cover itself seems is very puzzle like. The letters on the cover shift between positive and negative and indented and raised giving it a very geometrically inspired look. The various shapes on the cover overlap each other some raised and some sunk into the cover making the cover seem very three dimensional. Another cover for Cirque has a very colorful almost three dimensional look. The colors on the front cover form a tunnel giving the illusion that the cover has another dimension. While the design making the tunnel consists of various lines all meeting at the middle. Another of Bonet’s covers for Les élans du Coeur used leather inlays in various colors. The covers each featured a large white oval with waving lines intersecting through it. On top of this were blue rectangles of a dark and light blue. The darker blue rectangles makes up a geometric pattern while the lighter blue rectangles make up a blue cross shaped pattern making for a very abstract cover.