November 5, 2013

Blast From The Bast: Designs of the 1970’s

The 1970’s

While the 1970’s is well-known in the political realm for things like Roe vs Wade and Women’s equality. But for the movie industry it was full of world-renowned movie releases, from Star Wars to The Godfather. For Star Wars the posters are futuristic and “spacey” they encompass the feel of the movies themselves.

star wars 1970

 

Along with Star Wars one of the other well-known movies from this decade which has a similar feel in itself and the poster is Star Trek. With beautiful colors and “out of this world” looks.

star trek 1970

 

Along with these two particular films of having the space feel there aren’t many others that I can think of that are like this. Although there are several movies in these series, there is no individual movie which is like it.

1970’s vs Today

The biggest difference between the graphic designs of 1970 and today is the culture, that in today’s culture we want to go for the older look instead of a modern or futuristic look like in the 1970’s.

October 30, 2013

Blast From The Past: Designs Of The 1960’s

The 1960’s

The race to space has begun, the red scares are occurring, and so much more. But in the entertainment industry there is a now multi-billion dollar franchise that is beginning, James Bond 007. Beginning with the original Bond, Sean Connery, but with this franchise came multiple movies in the 1960’s and several movie posters. The fact that Bond movies were released every couple of years means that people can compare and see the advancement in designs, which I’m going to do.

1962 Dr. No

dr no 007 1960

Starting with the first Bond movie ever Dr. No, the design of the poster is really appealing to me because of the design concept used. The concept of a brush or an oil pastel having been used for part of the poster. While the main characters are more of a traditional drawing. This look has become more popular over the years since this movie released. And it is a genius way of keeping the design simple.

1963 From Russia with Love

from russia with love 007 1960

The simplicity of design is continued with the next Bond movie with the depth or texture effect, being used with paints or color pencils. To describe it another way the artist used darker shades of colors to make the lighting realistic on the characters. Along with not cleaning up the stray lines on the drawing in the top left corner gives the poster a hand sketched look. This look can easily be made to look really good but at the same time someone who isn’t experienced at it can make it look really bad because it has a fine line of good and bad.

1964 Goldfinger

goldfinger 007 1960

One of the most iconic Bond movies Goldfinger, is the first of the 007 movies to include actual pictures from the movie itself. Including the famous golden girl, who was covered in gold which killed her. Yet the design of the poster while including several pictures, is still very simple because of the way it is organized. In a way that brings your attention to what the movie makers want you to know the most, that being Bond and his girl.

1965 Thunderball

thuderball 007 1960

The way that the poster is designed makes me think of a brochure, which is both a good and bad thing. The good side being that it gives you sections to look at, the bad it looks as if they didn’t put much thought into the design. Yet the design just like the other movies is simple which is great for the 007 movies because it doesn’t draw away from the action in them. It actually leaves you wondering what’s going to happen in the movie.

1967 You Only Live Twice

you only live twice 007 1960

I find it interesting how the movie poster for this poster actually shows more advances in design than any of the others so far. This being that the way the word “Twice” is angled and the shadow angled is something that is actually still a little hard to do today, even with all the software and technology we have. It is the fact you have to make sure the two versions of the word are aligned to make it look good.

1969 On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

on her majestys secret service 007 1960

This design is actually busier than the others in this decade, while it is getting more advance in the concept of design. But the fact that there is actually a different Bond in this movie could factor into this. I say that because in the past when Sean Connery was Bond the designs were simple and to the point unlike this one.

October 28, 2013

Blast From The Past: Designs of the 1950’s

The 1950’s

An era of technological advancements on many levels, from the color television to the television remote being invented, a great milestone if I do say so myself. But with the introduction of color T.V.’s comes a brand new area of design and advertisements. Companies now can show the brilliant colors of their product any day of the week, unlike in the past when advertisements were in the Sunday newspaper which as the name implies only came once a week. Although companies could now advertise on television in color, they still made advances in print advertising design. The designs no longer looked as if they were drawn by hand, they look like real photographs, like this 1950’s (Top) Pontiac ad. Compared to the ads of the 1940’s (Bottom) where they still looked semi-cartoon like.

pontiac 1950pontiac 1940

While the photographs still look as if they are not as realistic look as today’s photographs, they aren’t obviously hand-drawn. While advertisements are making these landmarks with photography, the film industry is making landmarks in their creativity and abstract designs. Like that of Vertigo by Hitchcock. Which shows what is now considered a simple spiral and blacked out figure of a man with the basic outline of a woman, in the 1950’s this was huge and unheard of. This along with the typography or text on the page, at this time using fonts which didn’t include being basic serif or sans-serif, which are the two most common font styles, was very edgy.

vertigo 1950

The difference between the 1950’s and now

The biggest difference between the 1950’s and now while obvious is the advances in technology. As well as the culture, being more technology savvy now the advertisements are going to be geared that way. Unlike in the 1950’s when the television had just come out.

October 20, 2013 Link

Vintage Advertisements with a Modern spin

Vintage Advertisements with a Modern spin

I want to start of by saying that I love the design of these posters. I love that they are vintage looking, although I can see how effects were used to make them look vintage. And for this reason I still believe “many designers what to create designs like the ones created in the 20′s, aiming for the “vintage” look, which don’t get me wrong is an awesome look which I really love to see and create.” Which I said in Blast from The Past: Designs from the 1920’s.

October 20, 2013

2014 Colors by Pantone

I will say find this helps me a lot because one of the biggest things I struggle with while designing is color. Well that and not being to harsh on myself, but that ‘s something completely different. Anyways knowing what colors will trend next year can really help a designer prepare with ideas for how to make them work.

October 14, 2013

Blast from the Past: Designs of the 1940’s

The 1940’s

While the 1940’s are more well-known for World War II. The decade was full of technological advancements, from the first televisions being purchased (although the first television was introduced at the 1939 world fair), to the invention of Velcro. But it was also a decade of great art and film, with Fantasia, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Miracle on 34th street, and It’s a Wonderful Life to name a few. Looking back, in my opinion the 1940’s was a turning point decade for many kinds of art. With television beginning there was a new market for advertisements, a new way into people’s homes.

The 1940’s of Design

The design aspect of the 1940’s while in the beginning was mainly for creating war propaganda. This changed drastically when the war came to an end, and one of the most iconic pictures of the time was taken. This being the one with the sailor kissing the nurse in Time Square.
sailor-kiss1

While the pictures were still black and white, and some films including two that are played every year at Christmas time these being It’s a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street. But the animations were all in color, the most famous from the time Disney’s Fantasia, Pinocchio, Bambi, and Dumbo. And these movies are still classics because of how great they are. But back to the graphic design aspect of era, the posters in these movies differ drastically. In the animated/cartoon posters there is a ton of color, and they have many features which draw your eye. While the live action movie posters are simple and have only the main characters and that’s it. But I will say one thing, there is something in all the posters that continues today and that is that they put the focus on the star of the movie. This is a concept in known to the art world as proximity and is one of the basic design principles.

The advertisements of the 1940’s

The advertisements after the war in the 1940’s were focused on the home, with the baby boomers beginning to be born. This brought about the need for a more baby “friendly” home and world altogether. Which brought about the need to focus on the safety aspect of things from cars to cribs. The things that today we expect to find out in an advertisement were just beginning to become relevant at the time. So they weren’t focused on side impact airbags or a vacuum cleaner built into the car, they were worried about well simpler things.

October 11, 2013 Video

How design can change anything

It has been said many times over the past 5-6 years that newspapers are dying, which they are. Or so I thought until I watched this TED talk. I hadn’t thought of design and newspapers in the way which is presented in the video. It amazed me and honestly has changed my perspective.

October 8, 2013

Blast from the Past: Designs of the 1930’s

The 1930’s

Following the Stock Market Crash of 1929, and the optimistic out look of the 1920’s the world’s art slowly became less and less optimistic, and by the time World War II broke out art was barely around for decoration purposes and with the war came war propaganda.

The difference from today and advances from the 1920’s

The differences between today’s designs and the ones of the 1920’s besides  the fact that we have much more advanced technology, the designs are dynamic in a way that can only be done with the simplest way and in a way that our current technology can get close to but not really get the same effect as the hand drawn designs. The advances from the 1920’s would be the fact they were able to create a poster such as the one for Frankenstein, were they have multiple scenes from the movie on the poster when they actually had to take still shots from the film and then draw on top of them in order to create the poster.

October 1, 2013

Blast from the Past: Designs of the 1920’s

Welcome to the first of several post about designs from the past as you could probably tell it is starting in the 1920’s and I will take you through every decade till we end with this year. So hold on as we get a blast from the past of designs, and in these post we will be taking a look at movie posters of the decade and various advertisements which were made during that time.

The 1920’s

Some quick history the 1920’s is when modern advertisements really started with Henry Luce first publishing Time in 1923, and the New York Post starting up after World War I, this being tabloid advertisements, the thing about these is that they were hand drawn but then put on a printing press to mass produce them but they still took time to create. The first advertisement posters were all hand drawn and took a lot of time to create, which is awesome because they were pieces of artwork not just something for a company to use to make money and to get people to buy their products.

Through out all of these advertisements, which at the time were the cutting edge, but now they are still amazing but are also vintage, because they are such amazing pieces of art. They have  everything in them which people who have degrees in graphic design and media go to school for, and this long before we have Photoshop, Word, or Publisher. They were made by hand and took hours if not days to create when today we can create similar designs in just a few hours.

The Uniqueness

What makes the graphic designs in the 1920’s so unique and great is because of how different they are from today’s designs. Especially since many designers what to create designs like the ones created in the 20’s, aiming for the “vintage” look, which don’t get me wrong is an awesome look which I really love to see and create. But the biggest part of this is that the “vintage” look that we see in the designs made in the 1920’s can never be fully recreated now, this being although we have so much more technology and more advanced tools then they did back in the 1920’s, it was the simplicity of the tools being used that makes each of the designs so unique compared to today’s designs.

September 30, 2013

The college experience

One of my professors said that there isn’t a standard college experience and I am learning that very quickly, but I wanted to share what my experience is like so far, but I’m going to do through photos and a design that I made.

lewisandrewProj1-1

This first one is just a simple grid of 6 different pictures but it descries Chi Alpha the Christian organization that I am apart of which is amazing, the next is KJ 5-2 who is one of my favorite artist, next is the front doors of my residential hall well because that’s where I’m living this school year. Next we have my Keurig well cause coffee is extremely important as well is food so then I have the line at the dining hall on my college campus and finally the view from my room well cause its just awesome.

lewisandrewProj1-3

Now we have my abstract design with my shirt, view from my room, my Keurig, and the line at the dining hall. I like this design because it makes it seem like any of the pictures could actually be the background and it makes it both geometric and awesome.