Thursday, November 12, 2009

Design Inspiration


Beautiful poster by Design studio Heads of State which was influenced by the work of 1940s record pioneer Alex Steinweiss.


Stills from wonderous film titles created by Saul Bass.
Great use of contrast and such a sense of whimsy.
What a Master!!

I've already featured this book but it bears repeating.
Highly recommended.


Two great Rand book covers.

Began work on the poster today.
Step 1 = Flipping through my typography and book design books. New Vintage Type, Paul Rand, A Mano and Masters of Poster Design are four reference books that keep close by at all times.
The design studio Heads of State, Saul Bass and Paul Rand were very inspirational as always.
All are wonderous at contrasting textures and producing a simple elegant solution.

2 comments:

Ben J Hamilton said...

I’m with the bottom one myself. Nice lettering — and it’s sort of wonky/deformed much like how scurvy itself affects your health.

I’d like to suggest some things though — hopefully without sounding patronizing…you being experienced and me being an unemployed pleb.

Firstly, I thought it was all readable apart from the capital ‘i’s in the sentence after Scurvy. Might want to remove the flick/tail that leads into them.

Secondly, I liked the inked blue background used in the first three. Looks more textural (interesting). In fact, the more blotchy/scratchy it got, I think it’d be better.

Thirdly, I think the third one has the best contrast of type but favor the scurvy lettering in the last version. I always remember the idea that words aren’t read on a page, but seen. Right now, the last poster looks like it has two pieces of information; ‘scurvy’ and everything else. Think about the hierarchy of the text and how it relates (OR DOESNT) to each other. For instance, I’d expect the very last line to look completely different because it’s the least closely related to the word ‘scurvy’ — it’s talking about another 12 words.

Fourthly, as the information is not all about one subject, perhaps think about not using a centred layout and consider the movement of the eye. Maybe more than just placement and typeface will be needed to make contrast among the snippets of info. Maybe colour/frames/backgrounds will be needed — look at the list about Rand’s techniques again.

Jeez. Sorry for ranting…. Hope it helps anyway.

Alanna Cavanagh said...

thanks for all of this ben.
very helpful - especially the point about centred text. (i know you don't like centred text!)
may i say i don't agree with you about the background in 4 tho! the victorian ad cut of the boat gives it the 'scritch' which is then contrasted with the very flat plane of colour as in saul bass's work.
that was the attempt anyway.

i'm gonna take down the poster samples for now until after the campaign is up. am glad you got to see them before i did.