Category Archives: Influence

Influence of Yusaku Kamekura

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For my influence I chose Yusaku Kamekura. I found him in one of the graphic design books that we looked at in class. The reason I chose him was because I felt he had a blocky color art style that resonated with my art style. In Graphic Design I, I made a poster that was similar to his method of color pieces put together to make one design.

Kamekura was a Japanese graphic designer who studied at the Institute of New Architecture and Industrial Arts located in Tokyo, Japan. The school took inspiration from Bauhaus. After his education he started working at Nippon magazine. In 1960 he became their managing director. Throughout his early life as a graphic designer, Kamekura gained inspiration from Bauhaus as well as Cassandre, and constructivism. He is best known for his work designing the 1964 Summer Olympics Tokyo poster. He would later go on to work at Nikon and design a series of logos for the company.

In terms of the influence I took from him. I was deeply drawn to his poster called Graphic ’55 Exhibition, 1955, seen on the left here. I think the circles, colors, and overlapping of both make for a distinct visual and a great artistic choice. This style can be seen in my poster with the wheels of the bike. I felt like they were visually captivating. The bright colors that Kamekura utilizes throughout his posters are an aspect I also wanted to take in with my poster. Through multiple posters of his I took the color dropper tool so I could use the exact vibrant colors that he used from his works. The back wheel on the bike has a little bit of overlap in terms of color where the bike chain is, I also added that style in inspiration from his Graphic ’55 Exhibition poster, as well as the “Little 500” text. In Kamekura’s work he often does a sandwich method in his work where he’ll have one line first, then the second increased in size and a bolder color, then more text below it to emphasize the text in the middle. I tried to do that with my text in my poster.

Another work that I took inspiration from was Kamekura’s poster called Nikon Mikron Binoculars, 1955. Upon immediate inspection of this poster, I was inspired to make a bike with the shape that the eyes are made in this poster. Hence why I used the above poster to as well to include the main visual to be a bike in my Little 500 poster. Again, the colors are vibrant and eye catching, The pink here can be seen in my poster too. This poster was the one I used to help me pick out my font, a lot of Kamekura’s posters are in Japanese and so I wanted to find something in English and came across this poster. The main link in my poster in yellow takes inspiration from the fonts used in this poster on the left. The art style of doodle type shapes were another thing I took inspiration from. I tried to draw my cyclist in a similar style as the yellow hand seen in the above poster.

I really enjoyed making this poster. I unfortunately, was crunched for time, but if I could go in and revise my poster I would add more color and a border around the poster that kind of looks like the checkerboard race flag but instead of black and white, I would replace every black square with colors I used in my poster to create a rainbow checkerboard. Overall, I think Kamekura has a minimalist and clean style with vibrant usage of colors, I tried my best to use his influence within my poster.

Influence Poster: Josef Müller-Brockmann

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Designing the Little 500 poster through the lens of Josef Müller-Brockmann’s work was an exercise in restraint, structure, and purpose. Known as a key figure in the Swiss International Style, Müller-Brockmann emphasized clarity, order, and functionality in graphic design. His iconic Musica Viva posters and his seminal book Grid Systems in Graphic Design guided my process, showing me how structure can elevate visual communication. I wanted to emulate Brockmann’s Beethoven poster in particular. I started by sketching the composition of the wheel and adding elements of Brockmann’s influence as I went. I eventually got a good idea of how I would make it in Illustrator, mapping out where the typography would go.

Initial sketch

As I transitioned to the digital phase, I focused on incorporating Müller-Brockmann’s key principles: clean geometry, typographic hierarchy, and grid-based composition. The biggest challenge of this process was staying true to Brockmann’s minimalist style while simultaneously communicating to the audience that the centerpiece is a bike wheel. The grid design on the right side of the wheel signifies the motion of the spinning wheel. Brockmann’s work does not typically incorporate bright colors, but considering this is an IU event, I felt like the bright red was a must-have.

Josef Müller-Brockmann began his design journey in Zurich, Switzerland, where he studied architecture, design, and art history. He later opened his studio and became a leading figure in Swiss graphic design, known for pioneering the International Typographic Style. His work emphasized grid systems, objective communication, and the use of sans-serif typography to create clarity and order. Over time, Brockmann’s designs evolved from more illustrative compositions to purely abstract, structured visuals that prioritized function over decoration.

Poster for the Zurich Town Hall by Müller-Brockmann
“Swiss Style” poster by Müller-Brockmann

Influencer Poster: Erik Nitsche

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Little 500, Erik Nitsche inspired poster, with cyclists on a track.
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My influence of choice for Project 2 is Erik Nitsche. The Swiss designer, famous for his posters for General Dynamics, drew my attention by the dull and dark backgrounds contrasted by bright primary colors. In my own work the color of the cyclists draw inspiration from the color used on the album Mendelssohn created by Nitsche. I wanted to create a similar color collage as the one on the album. Sticking to four cyclists per lain, I wanted them to have that same scattered feeling as in the album along with the color inspiration.

Album cover by Erik Nitsche

Nitsche’s Atoms for Peace poster was another inspiration for my poster. Nitsche’s poster has vertical motion directing the eye to the top of the poster presenting the message. I used the cyclists to create motion moving down. The sans serif font I used in my poster, Conthrax, was inspired by the font Nitsche uses in the Atoms for Peace poster.

General Dynamics poster by Erik Nitsche

Erik Nitsche started designing around 1936, working in Hollywood, on magazines. In 1955 Nitsche designed a series of modern and sleek posters for General Dynamics in order to outshine competitors in a blossoming atomic age. Nitsche’s modernist and clean, sleek is what drove me to choose Nitsche has my poster influence.

Influence Project – Josef Müller-Brockmann

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For our second project, I took inspiration from Josef Müller-Brockmann. Müller-Brockmann’s work was influenced by Bauhaus and constructivism where he eventually became known as one of the pioneers of Swiss graphic design. He opened his own graphic design studio in Zurich in 1934 where he worked as a freelancer, soon joined by collaborators in 1936. He then began the communication agency Müller-Brockmann and Co. alongside with being a consultant for IBM.

Click the image to view the poster PDF!

I came to the decision to use Müller-Brockmann as I felt that I could come up with a clear vision for a poster when looking at some of his past work. His work really stood out to me with its minimalist vibe. I really thought that his style would be able to create a poster design that is able to effectively communicate the information related to the Little 500 race.

Some of the key elements from Müller-Brockmann’s design style I tried to include were sans-serif typography, asymmetrical layouts, and use of negative space. These were the features that I saw across most of Müller-Brockmann’s work and felt it was crucial to incorporate them into my design.

The typeface seen on the poster is Helvetica. Most of Müller-Brockmann’s work uses the Akzidenz-Grotesk typeface, but I was unable to find the font for free online, so I thought Helvetica would be a fine substitution. Müller-Brockmann does not really do anything special with his type, he just uses a clean sans-serif typeface. He does usually include lots of text in work, and I tried to include as much as I could without it getting too busy.

Automobil-Club der Schweiz, Schützt das Kind!, 1953
Musica Viva, 1958

I took inspiration from Müller-Brockmann’s Automobil-Club der Schweiz, Schützt das Kind! for the photographic elements on the poster. While photographic imagery was not a staple of Müller-Brockmann’s style, he does have some artwork that utilizes it and I thought that its inclusion would make for effective design in this case. I also really liked the diagonal directional force from his posters for Musica Viva, especially the one from 1958. I felt that the diagonal direction of the cyclist paired the two inspirations together well. I included the other cyclist in the bottom right to fulfill that element of asymmetrical balance, as well as the inspiration from the Automobil-Club der Schweiz, Schützt das Kind! poster.

Lastly, the use of negative space was a huge feature from Müller-Brockmann’s work. A lot of his designs were very minimalist and left a lot of open space. It seemed like it would be a crucial part of my design to not overcrowd the poster. I again tried to incorporate the use of asymmetrical balance with my negative space by leaving lots of openness to the top-right and bottom-left of the “Little 500.”

Under the influence of Lucian Bernhard

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For this project we looked to some of the greats to get inspiration for the Little 500. Little Five is a famous bicycle race held annually at Indiana University Bloomington. It started in 1951 and is modeled after the Indianapolis 500, but with bikes instead of cars. It’s argued as the biggest week here at IU, and with that it’s advertised and talked about the whole Month of April. We were tasked with creating a poster for the event but in the influence of a famous graphic designer.

When looking at some designers to get inspiration from I found myself circling back to Lucian Bernhard and George Olden, two amazing designers with vary different styles. because I was so stuck with who I would pick I decided to sketch some of my ideas down and see what style my vision would look best in, muted black and white photo collages or sketch style colored designs. I the end I went with Lucian Bernhard.

Lucian Bernhard was a German graphic designer, type designer, professor, interior designer, and artist. He is best known for pioneering the Plakatstil or the poster style movement, characterized by bold, simple designs with flat colors and minimal text. ​

With my designer now picked it was time to work on my poster. like I said before I already sketched out two ideas one was a close up on a bicycle seat and the other I wanted to do a race track with a racer on it.

The bicycle seat one was pretty straightforward, the only thing that stumped me was choosing the color way. I know I wanted to stay with the cream, red, and black color palette, I just didn’t know how to format it the way I wanted.

In the end I narrowed it down between these two color ways

next I worked on font and copy placement, I wanted to do a similar fort to one you find in Lucian Bernhard’s designs. I found a font called Attic Antique Italic, I thought it resembles perfectly with fonts Lucian Bernhard uses. but also for fun I went with a simple font called Transat Black just to see. in the end I went with Attic Antique Italic, I just looked better and more cohesive to me with the design.

And these were the final designs I turned in because I couldn’t ick what color way was better.

at this point of the project I was just messing around with more ideas I had so I ended up making another post for this project. this poster shows more of the racers. and combining 500 into the actual drawing of the racer.

I stared making the design as a vertical poster but I looked too smushed so I switched it to horizontal and it was much much better.

click to see the poster better!

this is the final design for the horizontal poster and I think it Turned out perfectly.

overall I have a lot of fun with this project, even though we have to “copy” a creative style I still felt like I had a lot of creative freedom.

Influenced by Mari White

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For this project, I took inspiration from the designer Mari White. I really wanted to go off the beaten path with this assignment and looked for inspiration from lesser-known contemporary designers with a distinct styles. I found Mari White by accident on Pinterest and followed the links to their website, Behance site, and Instagram. Their “poster experimentations” series, which was done out of a desire to rekindle their creative spirit, really spoke to me because of their energy and dynamic use of layered elements.

There isn’t much on the internet about Mari White apart from examples of their work. They’re a brand designer based in Tampa who has more recently designed band tour posters and shared a fair bit of personal artwork. I think this poster says a lot to me about them:

Mari is contemporary not only in their designs, but in their experience as a designer in the age of social media. The “poster experiementations” designs deviate significantly from their cleaner brand work and are more reflective of their internal artistic passion. I think this is why I was attracted to these designs in the first place.

The main typography is hand-lettered. Many of Mari’s designs feature uneven lettering that look as though they’ve been cut out of paper and pasted onto the poster. Although I kept my letters a bit cleaner, I wanted to hand-letter to get that spontenaiety. I tried to imagine what it would look like if I were to cut out the letters from a sheet of paper. In some of Mari’s designs, the letters have a darker double behind them, resembling a drop shadow. I also used this technique on the letters and on the red background shape. For the location, dates, and url, I used a royalty-free font called “Paper Johnny” that mimicks this cut-paper look.

Mari’s designs use lines criss-crossing in and around the typography to create a sense of energy and motion. In this spirit, I included lines in my design which are patterned with the checkers associated with racing. As Mari does, I passed these paths over and behind the main lettering.

The colors for this poster came from a couple of different places. The red of the background shape comes from the IU brand guide to link the poster to the Little 500 and to the school. The cream color, however, comes from Mari White’s tendency to use a cream color like a faded paper in their poster designs.

Over everything, I used two different paper textures. Mari White’s posters make generous use of texture, especially paper textures. For the background of my poster, I used a texture that is closer to linen. The main elements are textured with something more similar to contruction paper, like someone would use to cut out letters for a physically assembled poster.

Ultimately, I don’t think my design looks like something that would have come from Mari White. I was greatly inspired by their dynamic lettering and use of lines and abstract shapes, but Mari’s designs tend to be much busier than mine and I use a lot more rounded shapes. Even though I went back and forth between my design and Mari’s as I worked on this project, I think my unfamiliarity with their technique hindered my ability to mimic it, and I got a little carried away with my own ideas as I worked on the poster. I would like to try something similar again, perhaps with a little more focus on colors—especially the way the colors of overlapping elements interact—and using more varied and interesting shapes.

Influence Poster: Seymour Chwast

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My Little 500 poster is influenced by Seymour Chwast, a legendary graphic designer, illustrator, and typographer, born in 1931 in the Bronx, and now 93 years old. Chwast is celebrated for his bold, vibrant colors, playful typography, and whimsical tone. His hand-drawn, quirky, cartoonish aesthetic has become his signature style.

Chwast’s work spans a wide variety of mediums, including posters, book covers, advertisements, and children’s books. He often incorporates humor and clever visuals into his designs. Below are examples of Chwast’s work that inspired me for this project.

Bailey Cappella, rider for Kappa Alpha Theta bike team, finishing first in the Little 500 race in 2024.

When I first selected Seymour Chwast as my influence, I didn’t have a clear idea of how to integrate his style into my poster. However, after researching his work, I began to appreciate his illustrative approach. This inspired me to create an illustration of a Little 500 photo. I immediately knew which photo I wanted to recreate: the moment my friend Bailey Cappella crossed the finish line at the end of last spring’s Women’s Race. Bailey and I are both in Kappa Alpha Theta, but unlike me, she’s a member of the bike team.

Click the image to see the full pdf version of my poster.

After tracing the photo of Bailey, I decided what to do next. I knew I wanted to give the poster a border because almost all of Chwast’s pieces include borders lining the edges of the page. For inspiration, I turned to his work of Judy Garland. I was drawn to the way he outlined her shape and decided to do the same with Bailey’s figure. It took a few tries to get the outlines just right. I aimed for a slightly wonky and quirky look, staying true to Chwast’s style.

Next, I selected the colors for the outlines. I debated whether to draw from Chwast’s palette or take inspiration from The Little 500. Ultimately, I decided to use the colors of the flags in the Indiana University Student Foundation (IUSF) logo. Since IUSF organizes the Little 500, I felt it was fitting to incorporate their influence into the design.

Finally, I worked on adding type and the border. I chose letter colors that matched the outlines. For the border, the answer became almost too obvious: checkers, representing the iconic checkered flag waved at the finish line of the race.

Overall, I am very pleased with how my poster turned out and I hope that Seymour Chwast would appreciate it.

Influence Poster: Paula Scher

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For my influence project, I took inspiration from Paula Scher’s work. When choosing my influence, I wanted to look for a female graphic designer. Not only did I find one, but I believe I found the ultimate female graphic designer. I came across her work when looking for female graphic designers in general, and I loved how her work stood out amongst others because her style does not fall into conformity; through her use of strong layouts, complex typography, and bold colors, her work breaks norms of typical commercial graphic design and does not scream her gender identity like I commonly find amongst other designers. When starting to research her more, I came across an episode of Abstract: The Art of Design on Netflix that focused on her insights and career; through direct interviews with Scher and her colleagues, I was granted a better look into her personality and thoughts and instantly knew that she would be my influence.

In my work, I aimed to capture styles from her various works to encompass different eras in her career. So, for this reason, I approached my project in sections: design elements, photography, and typography.

  1. Design Elements

I have to admit the overall layout of the poster changed a few times because I trapped myself within a box by only designing on a vertical canvas. One day in class, Pr. Layton reminded us that we can make our poster horizontal if desired; I changed my design right away and thankfully I did because I love it so much more. I also feel that it better represents Scher’s influence because the inspiration for that illustrated track in the background stems from her work designing maps which are typically always horizontal. Her maps were also painted, as were her early typefaces, so I added the artistic paintbrush strokes to the track to emulate this. She also tends to make use of all available space; therefore, there was no doubt in my mind that filling the middle of the track was necessary and the checkered pattern made the most sense to represent the finish line of the race.

  1. Photography

The photography in my project stands out as a main element of the poster but strangely was the easiest part to design. In Scher’s designs, she has a distinct photographic style that includes cut-out, two-toned portraits sometimes with stylized overlays. I knew how to achieve this style because of our previous Pop Art and Constructivist exercises. First, I was drawn to this certain image of cyclists racing down a track, so I brought it into Photoshop, cut it away from its background, adjusted the lighting, and changed its mode to grayscale. Then, I chose the crimson color from Indiana University’s official color pallet and created a halftoned image to showcase it. Finally, I decided that the photographic element should reference a specific piece of her work, Blade to the Heat for The Public Theater, so I created a second version of the image using IU’s official black and added it as a second top layer to bring out more detail and mimic the 3D quality in her work.

  1. Typography

Typography is the most important part of Scher’s influence. In the episode I watched, she says, “Typography is painting with words. That’s my biggest high. It’s my crack.” I knew I had to make creative and atypical design choices with the type to follow her influence correctly. At this point in my design process, I had only a cyclist image over the bland track illustration, so the choice seemed obvious. I would position the type along the track’s curves to make better use of the space. I had seen Scher do this in some of her work and felt that it would make more sense for my layout than trying to position straight blocks of text in an overwhelmingly round layout. Trying to fit lines of information into limited sections where separations between text naturally made sense did pose difficulties at first; however, I just kept making changes to their paths or the text placements and eventually landed on a layout that was readable and showcased all the important information.

Paula Scher stood out early on, skipping football games in high school to attend art classes. She studied illustration at the Tyler School of Art, where she fell in love with typography, influenced by contemporary culture like underground magazines and record covers. In the 1970s, she landed a job at CBS Records, designing album covers and working closely with artists—though they often dictated the creative direction. Her cover for Boston sold six million copies in a month, a success she finds ironic given her dislike for the design. Over time, she pushed typography to the forefront of her work, developing a bold, urban, and expressive style. Her poster for Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk became iconic and widely imitated. Later, she moved into environmental graphics, designing systems that could be used for navigation or a sense of place like the one at Rockaway Beach after Hurricane Sandy. Inspired partly by her mapmaker father, her painted maps are meant to provoke thought rather than provide answers. Though she didn’t initially see herself as a feminist, working in a male-dominated field revealed the challenges she faced. Today, she’s considered one of the most influential female graphic designers.

Prior to researching Scher, I never had a strong design influence. But I believe I have found the prefect influence for me. Aside from her design style, Paula is a top graphic designer with decades of successful work who started out having to prove her worth a young female in a male-dominated profession. I feel very inspired by her journey and hope to have at least an ounce of her success in the future.

Influence Poster: Dima Shiryaev

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Dima Shiryaev influence poster thumbnail
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Dima Shiryaev is a Russian graphic designer known for his experimental and diverse design style. His work includes posters for nightclubs, festivals, and exhibitions, notably collaborating with Kunznya House. What defines Shiryaev’s art style is the use of typography, bold geometric designs, and hand-drawn elements, creating textured and visually engaging compositions.

I chose this designer because I have been struggling to find my own style. Shiryaev’s style allowed me the power of creative freedom to incorporate different elements.

To represent his work, I viewed certain posters with similar styles, specifically the Samo DJ poster and The Villars poster. I appreciated the combination of loose, sketch style with contrasting bold, geometric shapes. To incorporate these, I illustrated the silhouette of the bike with the trackpad to give a sense of roughness. This is then used to cut this shape out of a box to create a cutout element. This element takes direct inspiration from the Samo DJ poster, creating a sense of depth. This allowed me to have more freedom in placement of elements, such as the headline placed behind the cutout. Similarly, the tires on the bike have different arrangement. The front tire is positioned on the top, while the back tire is hiding behind the cutout. This is to create a sense of depth, as well as to bring attention closer to the center of the page rather than the border. The use of contrasting color weighs into this as well, as the front tire is a bright, saturated yellow, whereas the back tire having a less saturated pink.

The second element I incorporated from Shiryaev is how he organizes each element. Many of the texts are written within boxes, cutting part of the text off. This gives a sense of roughness. I accomplished this by using the “Draw Inside” feature on Illustrator.

Another important element that forms Shiryaev’s style is the hand-drawn forms. This helps create a contrast against the cutout and boxes. Besides the tires, hand-drawn elements are used for the underlining of the headline and to separate sections for information about the race.

Other elements include minimal text, overlapping elements, different text alignments, vertical text, and contrasting color palettes.

Influence Poster: Paula Scher

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For my influence poster project, I chose to be influenced by American graphic designer Paula Scher. Scher is known for her branding designs and her unique use of typography. Some of her most known designs are her posters for The Public Theater. I chose to be influenced by her work because I like the way she creatively uses typography as the main elements of many of her designs. I also enjoy her use of bold colors and angled elements. 

Paula Scher began her design career as an art director in the 1970s. She has been a partner at design firm Pentagram since 1991. She has a BFA from the Tyler School of Art and honorary doctorates from the Corcoran College of Art and Design, the Maryland Institute College of Art, Moore College of Art and Design, and Columbus College of Art and Design. She also taught for over 20 years at the School of Visual Arts. Scher has won numerous honors and awards. Her work has been shown around the world and is permanently exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York. She is well recognized for her work on brand identities, promotional materials, and more for clients such as Citibank, Microsoft, Adobe, Coca-Cola, and more. As an advertising student, I find her work uniquely inspiring, which also led to my choice in using her for my poster’s influence. 

I specifically chose to be influenced by her poster work for The Public Theater, which won the Beacon Award for integrated corporate design strategy. Scher served as the in-house designer for The Public Theater for many years. These posters feature large street style typography. The unconventional typographic style began to pop up everywhere, having a significant impact on theater advertising going forwards. These posters feature bold typography, playfulness, vibrant colors, and collage-like compositions that blend large type, angled text, photographic elements, and some illustration. I really enjoy the slightly chaotic playfulness that the angled collages of typography adds to these posters and wanted to recreate this in my own poster.

I began my process for creating this poster by arranging the type in different sizes and angles to reflect the style of Scher’s typography in The Public Theater posters. I chose a simple, clean looking sans serif font, as this is what Scher used in all of these designs. I then separated the different sections of type with lines as Scher often does. My choice to make these lines dotted was in order to add more of the playfulness that The Public Theater posters have. I added the grayscale cutout of the cyclist, as this is also a common element in Scher’s designs. I ultimately decided to add extra outlining around this cutout as I enjoyed this playful element in some of The Public Theater posters. I chose the vibrant red as the background as it reflected both Indiana University and Scher’s inclusion of bright colors. Lastly, I changed some of the typographic elements to be black, as Scher often includes different colors in her typography. 

Overall, I would say I am happy with my final design for this Little 500 poster. Finding a balance between using the influence of another designer and still developing an original design was both challenging and fun. I feel as though my inclusion of large, clean, and angled typography reflects that of Paula Scher’s work for The Public Theater. Looking back on my process of developing the typography, I would have maybe tried to add extra text about the Little 500 bike race because Scher’s designs typically include a bit more text than this. However, I think the typography is still recognizably the main element in my design. Additionally, I am happy with the photographic element I included as well as my choice in the vibrant red.