This is like a set-up for a 'candid camera' episode. Okay, so this road sign is visually clear, but what are we supposed to do with the information?
The 20th century Dutch art movement known as 'De Stijl' is perhaps best known by some of the paintings of Piet Mondrian, in which he used a white background, with bold black lines creating spaces which he filled with primary colors. A contemporary of Mondrian and adherent of this style was the Dutch architect Gerrit Rietveld. He designed some extremely interesting furniture that embodied the clean lines and bold colors of De Stijl. This example is referred to as his 'Red-Blue chair'. I think the use of colors makes it wonderful to look at. Rietveld said that he usually banged his shins trying to settle into it, but others have said that it is actually more comfortable to sit in than it looks. The red and blue 'planes' are plywood, to make it easier to manufacture. I got to sit on one of his designs, the 'zig-zag' chair, when I was in Holland many years ago. That particular design also doesn't look comfortable, and looks as if it might break at one of the main joints when you use it, and flexes more than you might think, but it works, and it stacks beautifully. There have been several books written about the work of Rietveld. I enjoy good chair design, and a lot of designers and architects over the years have directed their energies at coming up with good examples. A really good chair design has to have a very skillful balance of comfort and visual aesthetics.
Somehow it was easier for me to come up with a concept for a book jacket than for the posters. This is the full dust jacket; both front and back. I had been thinking about some of the very small, yet fun printed figures I had that were actually printed on individual matches, and I wanted to do something with them, so I came up with the idea of an industry with a community of in-the-closet illlustrators 'yearning-to-breathe-free' by subtly including aspects of their wish for general acceptance by portraying them on commercial matchbooks. This subject has been on my mind lately; I have friends who wish to legally marry, but simply can't because the law doesn't allow it. There was a woman in the midwest somewhere recently who had some sort of rapid and unexpected medical deterioration; the hospital would not allow her partner of 18 years (who a had a legal document giving her power of attorney) - and their 2 young children - to be with her in her final hours, so she died without any family members being able to be with her. The surviving partner filed a lawsuit, and a judge later upheld the hospital administration's policy.
A crown prince, on a goodwill tour of the U.S., is experiencing culture shock, and pines for the girl he left back home...
There was a veritable explosion of 'men's magazines' in the years following the second world war. The vast majority of them were quite cheap and tacky, yet some of them employed effectively catchy graphics on the front cover to snag the attention of browsers at the local newstand. This is my homage to that visual style. Everything here is intended to keep those optic nerves a-jangling along, including a background of narrow contrasting stripes. There is something about misaligned letters in a line of script that tends to catch the eye. For the words 'kit' and 'kat', I used four different layers for each word: one for each background, and one for each letter, which made it a little easier to manipulate and position each element. 'Club' required five layers. I also wanted to use different typefaces, in different colors, on different backgrounds. Tacky, but it accomplishes its intended purpose. This is an advertisement for a venue that is concerned about neither a social nor visual aesthetic. The performance date was inspired by an ad I once saw in a newspaper for a 'special event' at a strip club on Thanksgiving(!). Just doing a quick count, I think this image had about 40 layers.
There were a lot of lurid melodramas and exploitation films that came out in the 1930's (i.e., 'Reefer Madness). The film posters that went with them tended to be a bit dramatic. Whether they were actually meant to be 'educational', or just pretended to be, I'm not quite clear on. In this day and age, after the advent of the Jerry Springer tv show, Cole Porter's song, 'Anything Goes...' was never truer, and we're all a lot more jaded, but in the 1930's, these types of film posters probably had some visual impact. This is my salute to those types of posters.
I was looking for a feeling of motion with this study - of this form emerging from the mists, becoming more visually clear, and rolling/bouncing across the screen from left to right. The relative roundness of the letter G helped, as well as the fact that we normally read from left to right, although I actually constructed it from right to left, adding size and dimishing opacity with each new layer. It seemed important to make sure that the last 'G' was not upright, but that a sense of visual imbalance would suggest that the form just continues to move off the screen to the right. Working with varying layers of opacity was interesting, as well as noticing the different shapes that were created when they overlapped.
I wanted to try to do a collage study using my small collection of vintage matchbooks, matchboxes, and cinderella stamps. The rawness and crudeness of some of these halftone images really appeal to me. When you enlarge those images, you get a feel for the visual process of the creation of those images. I also enjoy a lot of 'older' things, and both the funkiness of the images, as well as how 'dated' some of these things appear, create a feeling of a popular culture gone by, and history. The original Egyptian background with the sand, sphinx, and pyramids, came from a Danish cinderella stamp (it was an advertisement for some form of margarine). I extended it and made it wider partly because I wanted to include more elements, and partly because I wanted the other elements to dominate the Egyptian landscape. I was trying to convey a feeling of 'modern culture' traditionally not always having respect for older culture. An alternate title is 'Club Med - 1947'.
Another piece of wartime propaganda, this time from the Soviets in WWII. I enjoy older communist poster art. This is a reprint from a communist Chinese matchbox label that I have. Typical soviet socialist 'realism'. Definitely more in the heroic style than the German example listed below. This is depicting the repulsion of German forces on the eastern front (If you look very carefully, you can see that the closest fallen soldier is German, because of his helmet style). The stalwart soviet soldier dominates the field with his size, and the strong diagonals formed by his body posture and legs. His cape is blowing majestically behind him. The angle of his submachine gun barrel is roughly parallel with the airplanes in the background, moving forward with him, and the tank is moving forward, also. Just one big, happy collective family of comrades, doing what they have to do for Uncle 'Joe'. The extremely muted and limited palette of colors may have been a result of wartime exigencies.
There is a woman who is a professional baker and cake decorator, and she started a blog about 'memorable' cakes, shall we say, or 'cake wrecks', at http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/. The site has become fairly large, and some of the creations listed there made me laugh until I was crying, but this particular example is in a different category than ineptness. The physical execution of the cake is actually well done. The colors work well together. I think this type of cake may be becoming a current trend at baby showers, but to tell you the truth, it creeps me out. I'm flailing for words here, but I would use 'inappropriate'. I guess it is intended to be 'cute', but would anyone else besides me have a hard time being the first one to plunge a knife into the pregnant abdomen and involuntarily become a defacto vivisectionist?
I have an appreciation for many different types of vintage commercial graphic art, and I haphazardly collect it at times. I enjoyed Ed Polish's presentation, and his treatment of vintage adwork. I tend to seek out material that predates most of the material he works with. A 'cinderella stamp' is any type of roughly stamp-sized printed label which was not an official postage stamp. They used to be used quite frequently for advertising, publicizing expositions and fairs, to show tax revenue had been paid, wartime propaganda, etc. This cinderella stamp is from my own meagre collection and apparently dates from around the time of WWI. It seems to be wartime propaganda, but it is unusual to me partly because of the treatment. Wartime propaganda is usually either unrelentingly grim, or unrelentingly heroic, but this one doesn't really fit the mold. It depicts a sombre, business-like crew of a German AAA gun standing guard on a map of Europe. The use of light pastel colors is fantastic. The overall visual effect is really quite lovely, and you can't always say that about military propaganda. I enjoy very much the enlarging of small printed halftone illustrations, so that you can really see the dots and be aware of the 'process'. Being an idealistic view of the German military, I am unclear on why the caption was printed in English, and not German.
I have no experience in traffic engineering, but it seems to me that the one overriding concern when designing a road sign is not only visual - but also syntactical - clarity. The sign itself is simple enough with it's basic yellow, black, and red on a white background, but the intended meaning has me completely befuddled. Just what exactly is being prohibited here? (And remember folks, ignorance of the law is no excuse.) Construction of signal fires on taxis strictly prohibited? This is a roof-mounted nuclear device free zone? Something about transporting giant jellyfish on 1950's DeSotos?
