Ashton - Blog IV


For this section in the book, I was most fascinated with the car advertisements before and after World War II. I can really appreciate the examples given in the book as the ads are very small and minimal. In this example, made by the legendary Paul Rand, simply has the automobile in question, handwritten text with information to the audience and then a slick arrow graphic showing movement for the piece.
aiser-Frazer Corporation Advertisement
Frazer Automobiles advertisement designed by Paul Rand in 1946
 https://images.lib.ncsu.edu/luna/servlet/view/all/when/Modern?widgetFormat=javascript&os=1350&widgetType=thumbnail&showAll=when&embedded=true&pgs=100 accessed 5 February 2020


The second car ad, designed by Doyle Dane Bernbach, has even less on the page than Paul’s earlier rendition. In this example the car is the main focus of the piece yet it is very small for the reader to digest. I see an imaginary path that leads your eye from the car to the set of type that is at the bottom of the ad. The words “Think Small” in a bold typeface sit atop a list of information about the car for the reader.

mage result for doyle dane bernbach think small"
 “Think Small” advertisement by Doyle Dane Bernbach in 1959

https://designshack.net/articles/graphics/the-greatest-print-campaigns-of-all-time-volkswagen-think-small/  accessed 5 February 2020.

Hollis talks about how Paul Rand was the pioneer of the New Advertising and that he was the first to have the reader play an active role in consuming the information in front of them. I think both of the examples I discussed follow the active reader idea pretty well. The next example changes to a very static design with bigger blocks of type for the reader.

938 GrahamAd
1938 Graham Advertisement
https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2014/05/29/1930s-auto-design-art-deco-and-streamline-moderne/ accessed 5 February 2020

Comments

  1. KolaniFebruary 5, 2020 at 1:07 AM

    I really liked you images Ashton. I really felt that they captured the essence of post war America and that they carry forth designs and motifs that would regularly be seen in moderen advertisment.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blog Post 1 (Matthew Donald)

Image
One of the pieces that really caught my eye during the reading was Alphonse Mucha's Job  cigarette papers advertisement. There was something very intriguing about the way he created a background texture using an element from the foreground. "JOB" is written in big letters at the very top of the poster and its accented by "job" written in little letters evenly throughout the background. I think it does a good job at creating an interesting composition while maintaining the central focus around the brand. The big "JOB" flows on top of a large ring where a woman sits. I think the overall shape of the illustration was executed very well because of its emphasis on curves. The curves of the hair and the woman are all reinforced by the circle in the center of the page. Mucha, A. (1898). "Job" poster for cigarette papers. Retrieved from  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JOB_(rolling_papers)  on January 1st, 2020. In this piece of typography created ...
Read more

Post 3 - Sam Weible

Image
From the experimentation and norm-breaking designs of the avant garde movement came some of my favorite European designs predating 1940s. From this period, I particularly love the posters advertising the London Underground. I first saw some of these posters at the Art Institute over the summer and was immediately intrigued by their design, how they managed somehow be both artistically beautiful and utilitarian. The elements of each poster followed suit, text and imagery being generally separate from one another on the page yet communicating a since of uniformity. While that was the case for most of the poster I got to see, it wasn't for every Underground poster. There are actually a great variance of design and style between these mass-produced posters. This poster, "Power", from the textbook, for example, hardly has any visual unity. What it's trying to communicate is unclear and the visual ties the artist tries to make between each element isn't as unifying as...
Read more

2/5 in class reflection

I liked learning a bit of back story on Bert Stern. I like learning a more in depth about a designers history. Its interesting to see where these designers are coming from however, I know that the time frame of this class doesn't really allow for too much of that. I didn't really like watching the ted talk at the beginning because, while the message is good, this is the fourth class I have had to watch that talk in.
Read more