Design Literacy: Understanding Graphic Design

work because his art isthe mechanical. “When I depart from the direct hands-on approach my work gets somewhat rote and sterile, ...

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Show Cards^389 The show card (or sho-card) was the quintessential form of early commercial art. It embodied essential design att ...

Functional design was essential: gothic type, flat colors, and sometimes the split-fountain technique—where two colors at the to ...

Razor Blade Labels^391 Some celebrities collect paintings and others, sculptures. Aga Kahn, Persian billionaire and husband to 1 ...

impressed with heroic, romantic, ironic, and nonsensical mnemonic names, such as Mac’s Smile, Merlin, Super Gam, 7 o’Clock, Tre ...

Trademarks were necessary for promoting the leading brands— and some not-so-famous ones, too. The Gillette Blue Blade company in ...

Japanese Matchbox Labels Don’t ask me why collecting matchbox labels is called “phillumeny.” It is not in most dictionaries yet, ...

comic animals, imaginary coats of arms, intricate ornamentation, and portraits of real and mythical beings. These were common na ...

winged cherubs framing a globe), while Shiyosegumi Seizo’s labels were heavily typographic, with tiny images integrated into the ...

Priester Match Poster^397 Lucian Bernhard The Priester Matchposter is so startling that it grabs the viewer’s eye in an instant. ...

progress of the industrial age. Berlin businesses routinely sponsored poster competitions as a means of identifying new talent f ...

emblazoned the brand in everyone’s memory. By chance, Bernhard tapped into the power of simplicity and created a paradigm of mod ...

Golden Blossom Honey Gustav Jensen In promotional advertisements Gustav Jensen ( 1898 – 1942 ?) called himself a “Designer to In ...

Weiner Werkstatte (Vienna Workshop) and the Glasgow School, whose products were imported through Danish retailers. Jensen was a ...

Advertising Fans Portable, collapsible, and durable. Before air conditioning, handheld fans were a necessity. In the hotter clim ...

French industrial exposition. The French pioneered a variety of formats for advertising fans that ranged from the classic folded ...