Design Literacy: Understanding Graphic Design

City, and an old Bell Telephone Company logo representing, well you
know. “Our vocabulary was based on dumb, really obvious, generic images
used for most commercial advertising,” explained Kalman. But the goal was
not nostalgia. In fact, Kalman insisted that the difference between nostalgia
(or kitsch) and appropriation is ultimately how the finished product is
filtered through the designer. Nuance is the key.
Early versions of advertisements for Florent employed quirky
iconography, too. One showed a raw steak, another a simple salt shaker
(both had the restaurant’s name but no address or phone number). As
Restaurant Florent’s popularity increased additional funds were available
for larger ads. M&Co. created a different ad every week, all orchestrated to
create a distinct mythology. Inexpensive stock photos and studio shots of
found objects conveyed a variety of ideas, the most emblematic of which
was a common three-dimensional menu board left over from the greasy
spoon days, complete with misspellings of the day’s specials. Others showed
arrows pointing to the shirt of a customer, humorously indicating what
specials had been spilled that day, a parody of an ecological chart. The most
fashionably design-conscious ad used words in the manner of dadaist
typography of the 1920 s to illustrate Florent’s food and drink menu.
Many restaurants and businesses have consistent identity
campaigns, but Restaurant Florent stands out for two reasons: it was a
pioneering effort in vernacularization (the return to commonplace elements
of commercial art), and it was a successful performance of various talents
brought together as a repertory producing the equivalent of scripted and
improvisational graphic design.