Hello and thank you for being part of J465 this semester. Together, we will undertake a series of projects and assignments that are meant to build your abilities as designers and increase your expertise in the core Adobe programs that are the tools of the trade. You will be designing logos, illustrations, layouts and animations that will showcase your creative vision and your unique personal style.
You will use this site throughout the semester to post your work, as well as descriptions of your creative process and analyses of the finished products. As authors, you may post additional thoughts and reactions any time you see fit. As part of the class, you will also be designing and maintaining your own J465 website, showcasing your project and exercise work. To read the full syllabus for J465, please visit our syllabus site at www.stevelayton.net/j465/s25.
Good luck — and once again, thanks for being here.
The article I chose for this project is the DIY House, written by Nick Bilton. Throughout the passage, Bilton expresses his frustrating experience when setting up a DIY smart home. To visualize this experience, I collected ideas that would symbolize both the DIY element and the frustration these gadgets can cause. The illustration is a blueprint or an instruction manual on how to build your house, with speech bubbles coming out to add the details of the smart gadgets being implemented. There are symbols that depict errors and network disconnection to visualize the common struggles people can face with technologies. The illustration within the opening spread is framed with a silhouette of a smart phone, giving additional context of the smart technologies while also making the reader emerge into the experience firsthand.
The use of blue and white strokes weighs in on the idea of a blueprint. The bright, warm yellow symbolizes error and warning, which ultimately brings more attention as it contrasts with the rest of the simplistic visuals. The font used for the opening spread is Montserrat, as it is widely used in mobile applications and matches the simplicity.
The illustrations are used in the continuing spread, with a lower opacity level to use as a motif. The sidebar utilizes the same yellow used on the opening sheet to attract attention. Inside the sidebar contains cutout images of the smart gadgets introduced in the article to provide additional information about them.
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.
My Poster for the Little 500 Influence Project(Theophile Steinlen)
This is the final design that I decided to go with for my poster. My inspiration was Theophile Alexandre Steinlen. He was a French painter who had a very unique painting style. I used my typography to reflect his writing style by tracing his handwritten letters and forming them into the words I wanted them to say. I also attempted to create drawings with brush strokes that were reflective of the ones in his paintings. Below are the paintings that I used for reference.
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
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.
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.”
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.
For this poster, I drew inspiration from Seymour Chwast’s signature blend of satire, bold color, and playful visual metaphors. Chwast’s work often turns everyday objects into quirky characters or symbolic icons, and I wanted to bring that same energy to the Little 500.
At the heart of the poster is a bicycle made of cherries, an over easy egg, and a rain cloud. This gives a whimsical nod to Chwast’s love for blending illustration and concept. This unexpected bike functions as both a visual pun and an anchor for the overall composition. The winding green track beneath it adds motion and direction, guiding the eye through the design while echoing Chwast’s use of bold, simple forms to convey depth and story.
I used flat colors from a retro palette containing a mustard yellow, cherry red, olive green, sky blue, and cream peach to reflect Chwast’s printmaking aesthetic, and paired them with checkered patterns in the title to add texture and dimension. The playful gendered stick figures with quirky rear faces are a subtle nod to Chwast’s satirical tone, hinting at the tradition of the race while poking fun at iconography we take for granted. The typography was carefully planned with the title at the top, event dates prominently in the middle, and URL tucked at the bottom, ensuring everything feels cohesive yet spontaneous, just like Chwast’s designs, which are structured but never rigid.
Overall, this poster captures the spirit of Seymour Chwast by combining unexpected visual storytelling with humor, color, and a hand drawn sensibility. It’s fun, strange, and invites the viewer to look closer just the way Chwast would want it.
Seymour Chwast Design
Seymour Chwast is an influential American graphic designer and illustrator well recognized for his humorous and fun style. He co-founded Push Pin Studios in the 1950s, challenging the mainstream modernist design style with more artistic and unconventional approaches. His work includes posters, publications, books, and political art, and it frequently incorporates comedy, hand-drawn illustrations, and typographic experimentation.
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.
When I began designing the Little 500 poster, I aimed to capture the vibrant energy of the event while honoring Otis Shepard’s design principles. I was fascinated by Shepard’s talent for turning simplicity into something impactful, and it seemed ideal for the Little 500 event, which is a fast-paced, energetic event that requires a design reflecting its intensity. One of the initial aspects that crossed my mind was typography. Shepard had an incredible ability to use fonts that weren’t fundamental to the overall design. His typography consistently featured a clean, bold, and intentional quality, which I aimed to mirror. For the Little 500 poster, I opted for a modern sans-serif typeface (Futura Condensed) that I believed expressed a lot of Otis’s work. I wanted the text to stand out but also blend smoothly with the rest of the design, so it wouldn’t take over the other elements while still grabbing attention. Typography transcends mere legibility; it’s about establishing a tone, and I wanted it to reflect the dynamic energy of the event.
When it comes to color, this is where I really felt Shepard’s influence. I remembered how he used bold, contrasting colors and bright, primary ones that immediately catch your eye. I went with red and blue because they’re both vibrant and timeless. Red brings energy and grabs attention, reflecting the excitement and speed of the race, while blue helps balance things out, making the design feel more grounded. I used some cream and yellow and that helped the poster come together the most, in my opinion. The color contrast wasn’t just for looks; it was meant to make people feel something. I wanted the poster to give off a sense of urgency and excitement, so the colors had to work together to create that feeling, just like the race itself.
Otis Shepard’s Chicago Cubs graphics!
I also took inspiration from Shepard’s minimalist style. His designs were simple and to the point, never overcrowded. I knew my design needed to highlight the most important things: the cyclist, the event details, and the energy of the race. I worked hard to keep the composition clean, letting the cyclist’s image and the text stand on their own and tell their stories. It wasn’t about adding every detail I could think of; it was about focusing on what really captured the spirit of the Little 500.
Working on this poster really made me reflect on my design style and helped me focus more on making intentional choices. It’s easy to overcomplicate things, but this project showed me how powerful simplicity can be when done right. Like Shepard, I realized there’s a certain elegance in keeping things minimal, and that sometimes less really is more.
I’ve included two early sketches I worked on. They were a way for me to try out different ideas, like layout, the main image, typography, and color choices. I think they give a peek into how I tried to blend my own ideas with Shepard’s influence.
In the end, this project was more than just making a poster. It gave me a chance to really understand the power of restraint, clarity, and being intentional with my design choices. Shepard’s influence wasn’t just about copying his style; it was about embracing his mindset and applying it in a way that felt true to the event and my own creative process.
