Monthly Archives: November 2024

Influence: Herbert Matter & the Swiss Style

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Herbert Matter was born in Engelberg, Switzerland in 1907. Throughout his life he studied painting in Geneva and Paris before returning to Zurich to work for Swiss National Tourist Office. This is where his most well known work was created. His travel posters went on to earn him many awards and bring him many opportunities to showcase his talent in the design world.

When looking through the design books in class, I was immediately drawn to the Swiss style. The deep contrasts, simplicity, and pops of color stood out to me as truly effective posters. Most importantly, the use of photomontage solidified Swiss style as my choice. I’ve cycled through lots of different arts and crafts in my life, but scrapbooking or creating digital collages has always been my favorite. Once I saw Matter’s work, I knew he would be my choice.

As seen above, Matter typically finds a way to highlight the blue sky or traces of blue in his work. In creating my poster, I looked for a way to incorporate this, but ultimately it didn’t feel natural to my design. Instead I looked towards his usage of color pops, black and white photography, and bold diagonal type.

The most difficult part of this process was trying to recreate his style of photography. There is a almost a film-strip like grain over the pictures, sometimes making it confusing as to whether they are illustrations or highly edited images. I played around with many different combinations of filters and image adjustments before I felt like I had achieved close to his balance between image and illustration.

The most enjoyable part of this process was the creating the composition. Once I had my imagery and everything was filtered, I got to play around with his use of diagonal lines and recoloring parts of the images to create his signature pops of color. I knew I wanted to include some of the red-orange I had seen in his work, but I otherwise tried to keep the color palette stay true to the event. Although his work might seem a bit surreal, his colors are still natural to the images, just a bit more saturated at times.

Overall, I truly enjoyed my time working in the Swiss style. Although the posters may seem simple, there is a lot of work that happens on each individual image before they can be arranged. The effortless quality of Herbert Matter’s work comes from his deep knowledge of structure, color, and composition, as well as a love for his home country that is steeped into every poster.

Influence Poster (Influence of Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec)

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My poster influenced by the style of Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec
Click my poster to see the full PDF view

For this project, I chose Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec as an inspirations for my poster because I was always a great fan of all his work. From his paintings to his posters, Toulouse-Lautrec’s style is distinguishable from afar, and captures a feeling of everyday life that is hard to put into words. The way he paints the elegant culture of the late 1800s and the social sensibilities of the time period always stuck with me when observing his work. Thus, I thought this would both translate well to the idea of IU Dance Marathon- a weekend long dance party event to raise money- as well as humorously contrast that notion of high society and elegance in Toulouse-Lautrec’s work with the casual, modest style of the Dance Marathon in which students wear rainbow clothing, capes, flower necklaces and whatever else they can get their hands on that will accurately reflect their team’s colors. From a design standpoint, Toulouse-Lautrec’s notions of color felt perfect for capturing the IU Dance Marathon because of this heavy emphasis at the event of bold colors to make a statement.

Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec’s “Moulin Rouge: La Goulue”

In trying to convey a scene of dance and a party atmosphere, the first of Toulouse-Latrec’s work I turned to was his iconic poster of Moulin Rouge, in which he expressed a watercolor-filled world of performance. A well-dressed gentleman stands in the foreground, as behind him a woman in a large dress dances for a mysterious silhouetted audience. I utilized his dominating usage of specified foreground, middle ground and background elements into my party scene, creating my own two figures to demonstrate the differing aspects of participation during the marathon, as well as a silhouetted group in the background that conveys the instantly-recognizable “total reveal” at the end of the marathon when the final amount is displayed on large cards.

This poster was also a great influence on my typography, which like Toulouse-Latrec, I hand-drew myself. I utilized a soft typeface I found online, then typed my text out and sketched over it all to have that hand-drawn look while still utilizing the professional appearance of an actual typeface. I then stretched out certain letters to create that longer text feel that Toulouse-Latrec utilized in this poster, and took influence from his usage of bright colors in the majority of the typography.

Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec’s “The Force of Mlle Eglantine”

For the actual design itself, I took inspiration from “”The Force of Mlle Eglantine,” a poster that features several women in a line, dancing. I was drawn to the strong usage of yellow coloring for the space, and the outlines of the women, which change in strength and size often. Thus, in my own work I employed much yellow in my background as Toulouse-Lautrec often did, and utilized an oval brush shape for drawing my figures that would allow for my lines to reflect the direction and weight in which I drew them- similar to a real pen or paintbrush. This gave my people a bit more of a “sketched” look, and I even erased certain parts of my figure’s outlines to emphasize this further; if you look closely at the feathers in the top of the women’s hats, you can see a similar absence of line in certain places.

Overall, I am quite happy with how my design turned out. I believe I accurately reflected lots of Toulouse-Lautrec’s style elements in my own design while remaining original. I really enjoy how my texture looks on a closer inspection, and all of my background elements- the watercoloring, the usage of abstract shapes, the thin lines- help the piece stand out and be memorable. If I was to redo my project and make changes, I would probably go even further in making the people in my design look hand-sketched. While I did employ several techniques to give them this appearance, in the final render it didn’t look as handmade as I had hoped. In the end I am still proud with my final design and while Toulouse-Lautrec was a bold choice, I am glad I chose his work as inspiration.

Timothy Goodman Little 500 Influence

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CLICK THIS IMAGE TO VIEW FULL WORK

For my influence, I decided I wanted to specifically choose an artist that is new to the game, someone who will most likely have a long illustrious career in the near future. I decided that Timothy Goodman would be a good choice. Goodman was born in Cleveland, Ohio and developed a passion for art early on in his life. Although he didn’t see this as a viable career path, he initially worked in construction. Eventually, he decided to apply to the School of Visual Arts in New York City where he studied graphic design and finally found his artistic voice. 

Working as a designer for a few years, Goodman eventually gained recognition for his illustrations and murals. His distinctive mix of bold hand-drawn letters and illustrations combined  with his socially aware and reflective messaging allowed his career to really take off. His collaborations with high-profile brands such as Apple, Google, Target, and The New York Times quickly allowed him to build a name for himself. 

I ALWAYS THINK IT”S FOREVER BY TIMOTHY GOODMAN

Goodman has since used his art as a medium to explore more complex personal and social ideas. He often talks about topics such as mental health, masculinity, relationships, and self discovery in his works and he uses his platform to address issues on social justice and activism. His extremely distinct style of hand-drawn letters and minimal use of bold color make his work instantly recognizable and visually engaging. The way he chooses to fill space and weave words for visual balance is thought-provoking as well as attractive to the eye. This combined with his unique voice has made him a standout figure in the world of contemporary art, illustration, and design. 

Again, I chose Goodman initially due to the fact that he is still a relatively new designer, but I also resonate heavily with his style being heavily into hand-drawn elements. Looking at my piece is trying to draw on that style while also remaining original in design choices. So things I directly took from Goodman include the line weight being overall the same except for in a few specific cases. Goodman often uses sharpies and paint markers for his work, so the line weight almost always is consistently the same throughout one project. I also initially struggled with how to incorporate color and ended up reverting to a technique that Goodman has employed where the largest, most important words stand alone in color, while the rest of the work remains black and white. As far as the fonts and fillings go for the hand-drawn elements, most of them derive from designs that Goodman consistently employs with my own personal spin on them. 

CELEBRATING THE GREATEST NBA TEAMS BY TIMOTHY GOODMAN

Overall, I think my design most definitely looks as if it was influenced by Goodman. The way that space is managed and filled was a long and laborious task, but I think it resulted in something that has the same visual interest as Goodman’s work. If I was to do this again I would have probably employed more words or phrases into the design, seeing that most of Goodman’s work has copious amounts of words. I do think that the design lives up to the hand-drawn lettering, the emphasis on space, and use of bold colors that Goodman got so famous for in the first place.  

Influence Poster (influence of Gert Sellheim)

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Click the poster to see a full PDF view

I chose Gert Sellheim as my influence because I was very intrigued by his work and I thought he had a very distinct style. As I was flipping through Professor Layton’s graphic design books in class, the “Australian Surf Club” sparked my interest because of the repetition and bright colors. I thought this would be the perfect designer to choose for this project because I was already thinking of ways I could incorporate the bike track and bikers since this is a Little 500 themed poster. I also liked the use of bright colors because I knew I wanted to include vibrant colors to represent the different teams on the track.

Australia Surf Club, 1936

Gert Sellheim is a German-Australian artist/designer who was born Estonia and moved to Australia when he was 25. The poster above was a piece of work that he created for the Australian National Travel Association, and this was also the poster I used as a a true inspiration for my poster. Sellheim created many other posters for the Travel Association, but the Australian Surf Club one was the most popular. Throughout his years as a designer, he also created the logo for Qantas Airlines, which is a jumping kangaroo and is still the logo that the company uses today. More recently, Gert Sellheim was inducted into the Australian Graphic Design Association Hall of Fame in 2019, 50 years after his death. Below are some of his other works.

I chose Sellheim’s work because I thought they were very original and stood out to me against the other works I had previously looked at. My design for the Little 500 uses Sellheim’s work as influence by using bright colors, repetition, and diagonals/slants within the work. I knew I wanted to create something with the bikers themselves and I thought using a track would make sense because the lines on the track show repetition, plus it is where the Little 500 actually takes place. When illustrating the bikers, I wanted to keep it simplistic. Just like the women in the Surf Club poster, I wanted to make them all look the same and make the illustrations minimalistic. The women in the original poster are completely identical but because the Little 500 has teams, I wanted to show that by the colors that the bikers are wearing in my poster. I chose to make the track at a slant, as well as the text in the top left corner because that is something commonly done in Sellheim’s work.

Additionally, it was a difficult decision to choose a typeface. I ended up choosing an art-deco style one because I thought that matched Sellheim’s work the best. He uses sans-serif, unique typefaces, and the one I chose mirrors that.

I believe that my work does a great job representing a modern take on Sellheim’s work. I incorporated many elements that Sellheim used many decades ago when he worked for the Australian National Travel Association. I think that if someone was given my poster as well as a piece from Sellheim, they would think that they were potentially completed by the same person. My poster uses elements that Sellheim hadn’t used before, such as the checkered pattern, but I wanted to include that to stay on the Little 500 theme. It was difficult to take inspiration from a piece of work, but not completely copy it, but I think my influence poster does a great job showing influence without copying.

Overall, I am incredibly happy with how my poster turned out and I am glad I chose Sellheim as my influence. This poster will look great on my portfolio.