The Umbrella Girl

The Salt Umbrella Girl is recognized as Morton Salt's telegraphic metaphor since 1911. "When it rains it pours" has been their slogan just as long. This is the first time in history a product/brand was illustrated in such a way that describes its innovative benefit, which was the first salt mixture that allowed a smooth pour even in a humid environment. What attracts me to the retro illustration is its ability to be recognized and still in use for over 100 years! The design is clever and simply makes sense- a cheerful young girl who has a skip in her step and is celebrating Mr. Morton's bright idea. After he and the illustrator came up with the famous Umbrella Girl, Fedex, amazon, and I (heart) NY,  metaphors followed. I found this example of retro design in the book I Heart Design By Steven Heller.

Fun in the Sun

For this weeks blog post I found it very appropriate to elaborate on this design piece. If you did the homework last week this should look quite familiar to you. The style of the sun above is more modern, and playful, to me. The sun was designed by Alexander Girard for La Fonda del Sol Restaurant. Also, it seems as if the style is not quite a Mexican feel but multiple cultures in its identity. What appeals to me about the above design is that it has a hand crafted quality to it. Notice all of the rays are not the same shape and not evenly spaced. Girard's design represents optimism and still successfully demonstrate so without descending into chaos and disorder without confining strictly to modernism. I pulled this from I Heart Design By Steve Heller.

Animation

Here is something we probably are all familiar with and we can draw inspiration from: animated characters. What sparks my creative flow about these particular characters are the colors the animator uses. To me, this is what makes them really come alive. Just take a moment to think about what Pocahontas, Taz, Tweety, or even the Flintstones would like if they were in black in white. It would definitely not be the same. The artist who is responsible for the characters above is Tim Huhn. He is an animator who's work is represented in Workbook Illustration Volume 19.  

The National Art Collections Fund

The logo above (the heart collage) is a logo for The Art Fund which is a secret art collections in the United Kingdom whose objective is preserving various pieces of art. The collage represents all the different kinds of art ranging from sculpture, pottery, painting, music, clothing and others. The artists from JohnsonBanks firm collaborated and came up with a simple idea: a heart encompassing pictures of art and design pieces to demonstrate their love for art. Sometimes such a simple design can be dangerous territory for some designers because there is the chance that it will turn out cliche. However, in this case, I do not think that to be true at all. I think what draws me most to the logo is how they fit all the pieces inside to make the heart perfect. I came across this piece in the book Masters of Design Logos & Identity by Sean Adams.

London's Campaign

Given that this piece of design is a full spread, this is the first one that caught my eye when I was flipping through the pages of Masters of Design Logo & Identity by Sean Adams. I love the use of positive and negative this creates. If you did not notice at first, quite like I did, the icons on the top mirror those on the bottom. This is a logo targeting global businesses communicating that they are the best place to host a company. Instead of only referring to one of their attractions (such as Big Ben) the campaign is combining forty-five. The overall shape is varied and probably took a very long amount of time to make the logo appear somewhat random. When I look at this I imagine a loud, diverse, community with fun activities to do. Almost like Disney World.

The Modern Poster

Well look what we have here. A poster created none other than Will Bradley himself. He is a self taught graphic designer who was inspired from mostly the Art Nouveau movement. Using the strong line movement and ideas with Japanese design were his strong suits. He was a part of AIGA as well as the artist I chose to represent in my T-shirt design! He is most well know for the Bradley ITC typeface which was designed based off of his very own handwriting. What attracts me to his work especially is the craftsmanship and ornateness he brings into his designs. It is most interesting is to think that over one hundred years ago this peacock was considered cutting edge design, and now to look at it from a different view of "modern" gives it a whole new perspective. I pulled this clip for the book called A Century of Graphic Design, by: Jeremy Aynsley.

Glamorous Package Design

Once again, I have selected a piece of package design from the book Beauty & Healthcare: Package Design. The line of makeup and beauty products come from a company called B never too busy to be beautiful. Yes, I agree that is a very long company name. The blitzed containers appear to hold something very valuable and give off a European flare with its uniqueness. However, the product may appear to be European it is actually Indian. If I were in the makeup store (i.e. Sephora) I would definitely be drawn to this product and think to myself "Oo, sparkly! I'm gonna keep the container to put my treasures in it!".