I have been loving the general design of the last century lately and one of my favorite ways to evaluate design of a time is through posters. Over the last few weeks, I have gathered a few posters and would like to share them with you. To begin, poster design is cool in the way that it is limited. A poster has a certain size, is usually inanimate, and is intended to grab your attention and send a quick and short message. In the world of propaganda, we see many excellent examples of poster design that was efficient in delivering a message, whether or not the message is good or bad, the posters still got the job done.
Propaganda in Wartime
The design style in the early 20th century set the stage for poster design as a device to deliver pride, fear, information, etc to people and the styles stayed with the public after World War 2 was over.
Propaganda in Peacetime
As propaganda continued to be present in the lives of many people in the world, especially on the fronts of the cold war, designs matured, the message was delivered in new ways, and the image almost portrayed the entire message, without the need of a description or title. Below are images from the Soviet Union in reference to peace and the United States.
Continuing the Style
Designers have always has a soft spot for the classic designs of our decade and spoofs are one of the finest forms of flattery (as they say). One of my favorite sets of posters includes the following ones by designer Cliff Chiang (http://www.cliffchiang.com/) taking the classics and adding that little Star Wars kick to them.
The Style on Other Fronts
Although the propaganda style of the 20th century has always mad the "propaganda" feel, you can find the style all over in many places. Disney/Pixar designer/doodler Eric Tan (http://www.erictanart.blogspot.com/) has been making a series of posters for all of our favorite Pixar films for the last few years, giving fans another, yet clever, way to enjoy the films.
The last little bit of this design style I wanted to mention is on the topic of FlightControl, the little iPhone/IPodTouch game that has wasted sooo many or our precious hours on landing little planes. The design of this game of of the utmost perfection and I play it sometimes just to see the design and layout.
On that note, I was going to call it good but I came across a website, The Art of the Title Sequence (http://www.artofthetitle.com/), which offers a salute to those designers who are responsible for excellent title sequences. On their site I found the sequence for Catch Me if You Can (http://www.artofthetitle.com/2008/03/29/catch-me-if-you-can/) and Pixar's The Incredibles (http://www.artofthetitle.com/2008/03/19/the-incredibles/)
See the Incredibles videos at website, find the links above.
Ciao for now,
Sean
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