Week 4

The Designer and the Art Director



The design scene in 1930's America saw some serious beauty. While work was still primarly done in the advertising realm, these sort of constraints allowed lots of talented designers to bend the rules and make great design advances. All three of the examples in this post come from the 1930's, however they vary greatly in style and form.

 Lowey, R. (1933) Lucky Strike Redesign retrieved from:

This first example is from American Tobacco's redesign of Lucky Strike Cigarettes in the mid 30's. In the image we see the before and after, and I must say, I think the redesign went perfectly. Raymond Lowey was an Industrial Designer and him and his team did an outstanding job. The classic imagery and logo remain, however the piece as a whole just works better. Less clutter and ornamental details, and just a focus on the brand imagery and what makes it work is what makes this a great piece of design.


Culin, N. (1939) New York Worlds Fair retrieved from:
http://www.idcn.jp/en/archives/custom_column/vol11-30s-graphics

Here we have a poster from the New York Worlds Fair in 1939. The idea of these fairs of the time was basically a showcase of the newest and best that America had to offer. The best manufacturing, technology, art, music, anything at all was put on display for the world. This poster invokes that very well. Art progresses along with any other industry. we see here a very clean and elegant poster made to feel very forward and evolutionary. Gets the job done and then some.


Beall, L. (1937) US Electric Administration retrieved from:

Finally, we arrive at my favorite of the week. This poster series was for the United States Government’s Rural Electrification Administration, to promote electrifying rural parts of the country. The imagery is immaculate. The utilities, the color, the type, all of it make for an amazing series. It communicates effectively to virtually anybody, and for this application, it needed that relatability. 

Comments

  1. MatthewFebruary 5, 2020 at 1:31 PM

    I really like the Rural Electrification example you chose. It think it does a good job at demonstrating the point you make about designers getting creative within the restraints of advertising of a specific idea. I think these posters show a the importance of the vital technologies we rely on, and technologies we take for granted today. It is strange to imagine living in a home without electricity or running water, and these posters make their necessity clear.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ivy MarkhamFebruary 5, 2020 at 1:34 PM

    I think you chose three really great examples of effective and successful designs. I think whats interesting about the Lucky Strike redesign is how little they changed (the logo is almost exactly the same), but how much it changed the feel of the brand. The second poster seems perfect example for the vintage vision of the future. The typography, gradients, and royal blue hues evoke a very distinct feeling.

    ReplyDelete
  3. HarryKFebruary 5, 2020 at 1:53 PM

    I really like the World's Fair poster that you chose. I aprreciate that it has a lot of motion from the spotlights, the weird swooshy thing on the right under the globe, and the squadron of planes in a vertical climb. The spire and globe, along with the city skyline really captures a futuristic look, adding to the poster's claim of "the world of tomorrow."

    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