Artists whose work I like

Cassandre is amongst others, an artist whose work I like. Although originally a Painter; he started designing advertising posters as a mean to earn a living, before he thought, he could establish himself as a painter. His advertising work was mainly inspired by both cubism and surrealism. Having earned a good reputation over the years, he and some partners created an advertising agency called "Alliance Graphique". This poster was created for Dubonnet in 1932, a wine company.

This poster was designed in 1927. It was created to advertise the use of luxury transport. The text around the poster acts as a frame and it feels like you are looking at the poster through a window. He uses capital leters only and he has inversed the colours of the letters according to the background. The text has been translated in 3 languages, as the poster is advertising a product in 3 different countries. The design is very simple and inspired by cubism and futurism methods. The colours are yellow, blue, green and white. He has incorporated lines representing the railway.

JAN TSCHICHOLD (1902-1974)

Born in Germany, Jan Tschichold was a book designer, teacher, writer but mainly a typographer. He was trained in calligraphy, with his father being a sign writer. This gave him an edge and differentiated him from all other typographers as they mostly had a fine art or architectural background. During WWII, he took refuge to Switzerland where he spent most of his life. In his 20’s, he took a liking to Modernist after seeing a Bauhaus exhibition. He started publishing a magazine supplement as well as wrote his 1st book, where he clearly “did not like” all fonts except for the Sans Serifs ones. He strongly believed in the alignment of text. 10 years later, he slowly accepted the use of serifs typeface for body text. In 1947, Tschichold went to England in order to participate in the redesign of 500 paperbacks published by Penguin. He created the following typefaces: Transit, Saskia, Zeus, Sabon and a few others.

Casanova (1972)

This work is inspired by Modernism. Tschichold makes use of geometrical shapes. You can at first see both triangular and rectangular shapes. Mostly drawn, but also made by the composition of the letters. The main two colours are blue and white. Jan Tschichold uses a serif typeface for the title; very elegant, suggesting the film might be a romance. “Casanova” is written in red, the first 5 letters appear to be below the blue background, giving them this darker shade. The word “Casanova” seems to be pulled from under the blue shape and trying to reach for the top. The blue has a transparent opacity which makes the word appear of 2 different colours. Underneath “Casanova”, another name is written, however very hard to see properly, you can nevertheless tell that it a sans serif typeface is.
All the letters within the poster are written using capital letters, which is very characteristic of Tschichold.
Everything is aligned, per example the “C”, the beginning of the white shape and the text “Phoebus-Palast” with a surrounding border. Everything is also placed perpendicularly. Finally, in the middle of colours and geometrical shape, there is a circle with a black and white picture of a scene in the movie.

Penguin Paperback (1950)

Created in 1950, Jan Tschichold’s redesign of the Penguin Paperback ranges. He first started by a cover entitled “Selected Letters” by D. H. Lawrence. Jan Tschichold only made small changes and kept Young’s layout (the previous designer). He started by redesigning the Penguin logo. The use of typeface has also been “tidied” with the sole use of Sans Serif. The cover of “The Great Gatsby” then followed. Another few small changes were made. The layout stayed the same, however, this time he added orange lines on the beige part as well as between the author’s names, however those are only very small. Finally, a descriptive line was added.

HERBERT MATTER (1907-1984)

Born in Switzerland, he is the first designer to experiment intensely with photomontage. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Geneva as well as the Academie Moderne in Paris. Whilst in France, he worked with Cassandre. Having been requested by the Swiss National Tourist Office and Swiss resorts to design a campaign of advertising posters promoting skiing in Switzerland, he returned to Switzerland in 1932. His work requiring him to use photograph, he became also a photographer.

Advertising Posters for Switzerland (1934)

The Swiss tourist office, wanting to boost tourism in 1934 the first thing that you can see is the face of the young person. It seems to be pasted onto the poster. He has chosen a smiling person to represent joy, happiness and satisfaction. The poster is an advertisement to boost Switzerland’s tourism, emphasising on the skiing activities. The poster is monochrome apart for the use of a “splash” of red and the face of the young person. All the typography used is in capital letter. The white crosses splashed with red are representative of the Swiss flag. The background of the poster has a “Mountain” feel to it as well as people skiing. Although those are very small. Both block of text have been put perpendicularly.
The second one in the series is very similar. Matter chooses to use a monogram colour, grey and has added some text in red, to emphasize the red of the Switzerland flag. Once again, the people portrayed look happy.
This series of advertising poster communicate the well being felt on taking a winter vacation in Switzerland. The message is to get tourists to come over to Switzerland and ski.
This series of poster has been achieved by the manipulation of photographs.

America Calling (1941)

During the Second World War, Herbert Matter was commissioned by the Office of Emergency Management to produce posters, encouraging people to take part in the fight. This poster is very patriotic. Firstly by the blue and red stripes symbolising America’s flag.
Secondly by the positioning of the text and graphics following a strappy pattern. Lastly by using a picture of bald eagle, which is America’s national emblem? The eagle is also used as a symbolic representation of a plane, as it is a poster for the aviation army. The blue stripes can also be interpreted as wings (of a plane) simply by the way they are positioned.