In class we went through the history of graphic design and were introduced to different graphic styles and several influential designers. I found a real interest and liking of the late modern period and more specifically the Swiss International which is why i chose Josef Müller-Brockmann as my influence for this poster project. Müller-Brockmann was a swiss graphic designer who pioneered the International Typographic Style, often referred to as the “Swiss Style.” That being said, his work is easily recognizable based on his use of clean sans-serif typefaces, which have become my favorites to use because of their modern looks. He also established the use of grid systems or grid-based layouts in graphic design, creating very visually balanced works. Müller-Brockmann is widely known for his iconic poster designs, his most famous being three posters from the Zurich Town Hall Concert Series (1950s–1960s). However some of my favorite works of him came from the posters for the Swiss Automobile Club in 1955, which was my biggest influence when it came to creating my poster.

I loved the use of the large and small imagery creating a foreground, middleground, and/or background within these posters and I knew I wanted to include this concept within my own design. To create this poster I used Adobe’s Photoshop. I began by searching and deciding to use an image of a little 500 race winner as the main image to represent foreground image in my poster. I then looked for an image of racers biking forward on the track (the same direction as the first biker), to create a sense of dimension within my poster. I first thought about just pulling a side shot of several bikers to follow Müller-Brockmann’s design in the 2nd poster above, but I wanted to have a twist to his design rather than it being a straight parody. I edited this photo to have a screen of the red color hex code of the little 500 logo, and then messed with the hard light, linear light, contrast etc. until I was happy with the overall look of this middleground image.

As for the text for my poster, I followed his typographic style and found a Swiss-inspired font on Adobe fonts called, Neue Haas Grotesk Display Pro. I realized I was mostly inspired by his use of grid systems and the way he positions his text within his posters…Not particularly in the ones from above, but on one of his most famous works, the Beethoven poster for the Zurich Town Hall, shown below. I knew I wanted to incorporate this style and positioning of text within my poster, to really show his influence.

Overall, I am very happy with the poster that I came up with. I believe I was very successful in representing Josef Müller-Brockmann’s design style within my poster without creating a direct parody of one of his works. This was a very enjoyable project for me as I got to enhance my skills in certain areas as well as learn new skills within Photoshop, especially because I usually just stick to illustrating in InDesign, rather than working in this program.