Designer (Advertised) Jeans
While recent advertising has been overwhelmingly digital, the contemporary graphic designer and former National Design Award winner, Stefan Sagmeister, relishes the opportunity to use his considerable...
View ArticleShocked and Appealed
Well, this is certainly pugnacious—but what propaganda isn’t, really? It takes no learned scholar to discern that this poster means business. Euphemism wasn’t really of interest to the United States in...
View ArticleSimple Yet Bold
Born on today's date in 1930, Ikko Tanaka was one of the giants of Japanese graphic design in the second half of the twentieth century. Tanaka began designing posters in 1954 and was renowned for his...
View ArticleWho is the Man Behind the Design?
There is—literally—a man behind the design of the post office in Pieter Brattinga’s (1931-2004) De Man Achter de Vormgeving van de P.T.T. This poster is for a 1960 exhibition by the Dutch postal...
View ArticleNothing to Prouvé
Born on today’s date in 1901, Jean Prouvé was among the most well-known French designers and architects of the mid-twentieth century. He was the son of Victor Prouvé, one of the founders of l’Ecole de...
View ArticleOut With the Old, In With the “Nowy”
What makes this theater new? The theater the text refers to depicts a historical landmark that represented a shift between the two World Wars and Poland’s sole source of entertainment at the time. The...
View ArticleRibbons in the Sky
With its dancing roll of printing ribbon, diving between a checkerboard game of multi-colored squares and symbols, this ad for Olivetti’s Divisumma adding machine makes simple mathematics look like...
View ArticleA Mystical Advertisment
Tadanori Yokoo’s designs are the result of an effortless combination of eclectic visual motifs from across time and borders. In this poster for Kanox, a Japanese production company involved with...
View ArticlePsychedlic Promotion
The Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco was “ground zero” for the counterculture revolution of the 1960s. The so-called psychedelic subculture that emerged in the Haight explored new possibilities in art...
View ArticlePushing Beyond the Frame
This poster, entitled Big Nudes, was originally displayed in 1967 at the School of Visual Arts Gallery in Gramercy to announce an exhibition of large nude paintings. This poster is the work of American...
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