Art Deco & Today’s Posters

Art History

Art Deco is decorative art style that uses precise and bold geometric shapes and curves, as well as strong colors and lines. Now I’m not a big fan of Art Deco, but I can’t deny the fact that Art Deco works have the ability to bring back the “Roarin’ 20s” look and feel. It’s very retro! Be it architecture, posters or patterns, the Art Deco style reflects the playfulness and merriment of the 1920s’ that continued up until World War II. We can still see Art Deco in places like the Chrysler Building in New York and Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles. But in the world of poster design, it reemerged with period films like The Artist in 2011, and then with The Great Gatsby remake in 2013. Both of these movies are heavily influenced by Art Deco since they take place during height of this movement. As a result, this is reflected in their respective posters. The movie poster for The Artist features a condensed decorative typeface that is similar to other Art Deco typefaces. The posters for The Great Gatsby show the dramatic curves and the strong lines that define Art Deco. This is also mirrored in the typeface as well. The text is bold and blocky, and connected to the rest of the poster by the mirrored vertical and curved lines in the letterforms. Both of these posters give off a rich and retro feel to them. However, I find that The Great Gatsby emulates the Art Deco style more because of the setting and the plot.

Sources:

https://99designs.com/blog/creative-inspiration/art-deco-a-strong-striking-style-for-graphic-design/

http://www.mtv.com/news/2770606/art-deco-in-film/

Images from Google

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Pop Art & Packaging

Art History, Packaging

After visiting the Warhol this week, I remembered how much I like Pop Art. Pop art is based on our pop culture and the mass media. It’s complete opposite of traditional fine art. It uses bold and bright colors and recognizable imagery. Thanks to Andy Warhol, Pop art found its way into package design. We are all familiar with his Campbell’s Soup cans/boxes and Brillo boxes. Warhol once said that, “Pop art is about liking things,” and it’s because of his liking of Campbell’s Soup that he made his iconic works. He felt that, “it [Campbell’s Soup] was the quintessential American product: he marveled that the soup always tasted the same, like Coca-Cola, whether consumed by prince or pauper.”

Fast forward 56 years to this century, you can still find Pop art in packaging and advertising. Take this packaging concept for the Goode Coffee Company. It was designed by Allan Revah who wanted to show the energizing qualities of coffee and caffeine with strong, expressive visuals. The coffee cups and bags have abstract geometric patterns and shapes on them. They’re enhanced by the loud, bright colors, too. They clearly have a Pop art style to them. I personally think they’re reminiscent comic book works of Roy Lichtenstein. Even though the packaging differs from one another, they still manage to belong to one company’s product.

Sources:

http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/artsy-coffee-cups

http://www.warhol.org/education/resourceslessons/Campbell’s-Soup–Ode-to-Food/

https://www.behance.net/arevah

Dada Photomontages & Today

Art History, Movie Posters

The Dada movement came about as reaction against violence of World War I. The movement challenged art itself and included elements of strong negativity and destructiveness. In Meggs’ History of Graphic Design, it stated that, “Dada artists claimed to have invented photomontage…” This technique took found photographs, and manipulated them to create an unpleasant closeness to each of them. It also made the viewer create weird/forced associations amongst the images. The pioneers of photomontage work during the Dada movement were Raoul Hausmann and Hannah Höch. They had been excelling on this medium since 1918.

Today, we still see this technique in use in our current movie posters. The posters that immediately come to mind, for me, are Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Captain America, and Iron Man. Each of these posters combined images directly taken out from the film, images taken just for the film, and background images. Although the images aren’t dramatically juxtaposed like Dada montages, they are planned out like Dada montages. They are manipulated, as well, to have to create an interesting movie poster to entice audiences all over the world. Dada photomontages were the quintessential advertising technique, of that time, for the violence and destructiveness of war. Just like that, movie posters have been, and will continue to be, one of the key advertising methods for movie promotion all over the world.