Field Journal 9: Walder Swierzy

I was so intrigued by the poster of Jimi Hendrix by Walder Swierzy that I decided to look up some of Swierzy's  other pieces of work and found out a little more about him.

Walder Swierzy, a Poland native, had produced more than 1,500 posters in a wide variety of media. He has been recognized internationally for his work and has won 15 awards in his lifetime. He has focused mainly on creating posters of theatre, film, circus and  music. America's influence on Swierzy is "most notably American jazz performers and their instruments, shines through in his art with sparkling energy and bubbling good humor." (http://www.jazzartcollection.com/waldemar-swierzy-biography) .  

When looking up information on Swierzy, I was most attracted to his paintings of jazz musicians. The way he paints them makes you feel the movement and sound that is going on around the musician as he plays.  It is almost as if he is bringing his pictures to life.

Some hallmarks of Swierzy's style are the powerful color combinations, expressive color spots, sensuousness, vitality, dynamics and virtuosity of form. What also sets him  apart is the "multi-colored mish-mash of abstract items such as pasta-like lines, splashes, smudges, spots, dots and streaks giving the impression of randomness."

This picture of a drummer is my favorite poster I found of Swierzy's. I love the contrast between the bright colors and the black in the drummers cloths. the randomness of the lines and colors gives me the feeling of movement, it is almost as if the random lines are the sounds waves that people usually can't see yet Swierzy brings them to life. This is such an energetic poster that I really enjoy!






Credit :
http://www.jazzartcollection.com/waldemar-swierzy-biography
http://www.poster.com.pl/swierzy-6.htm

Field Journal 8: Corporate Identification - NBC

A major design activity around the 1950s and 1960s was giving visual identity to Corporate America. One of my favorite corporate logo is the colorful peacock of NBC.
NBC's very first official logo was created in 1942 based off of the logo that they had established for their radio station. The jagged waves on the left represent the radio station and the waves on the right represent television. This logo known as the microphone logo was their way of keeping their radio and tv networks connected.

In 1954, the Xylophone logo was introduced and was followed by the three-tone NBC chime, the same chin that is heard still today on NBC.

Color television became a big deal. With television now being in color, it allowed the NBC logo to be in color as well. In 1959 Fred Knapp created the first colorful and animated peacock logo. At this point, NBC was on the for front of having a  colorful logo which helped to promote color television.



A few years later in 1959, a new logo was released featuring the NBC letters simply together in black. This logo could be seen by itself or along with the colorful peacock and is known as the snake logo.


Three years later in 1962, the colorful peacock was redesigned to have smooth round edges and different colors.


The simple NBC logos were no longer in 1975 when they introduced a completely new  logo of a stylized "N". Unfortunately they logo did not last long since NBC was sued by Nebraska Educational TV who had been using the logo for 2 years before NBC introduced theirs.

In 1979, the abstract N had not completely left. A new logo was created with the return of the peacock. The logo combined the abstract N with the peacock on top of it, known as the "Proud N" logo.  The peacock symbol was originally made to advertise that NBC was broadcasting in color yet the peacock soon became NBC's primary logo.


In 1986, the Peacock logo which was introduced and redesigned by Chermayeff & Geismar, is still the current logo for NBC.  The current logo's peacock is made up of six feathers, reducing the number down from eleven feathers in the previous logos. The six feathers represent the six devisions of NBC; News, Sports, Entertainment, Stations, Networks and Production. This logo is one of the worlds more recognizable logos.

Fred Knapp sure knew what he was doing when he created the first colored peacock logo for NBC, and now look how far it has come.

Credits:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBC_logos
http://www.etiziano.com/I_love_logo_design/history_of_the_nbc_logo.html

Field Journal 7: Harper's Bazaar Legendary Designer Alexey Brodovitch

In 1934, Alexey Brodovitch was quickly offered the job of Art Director of Harper's Bazaar after meeting Carmel Snow at an Art Directors Club in New York. Snow described his work as "pages that bled beautifully, cropped photographs, typography and design that were bold and arresting" ( harpersbazzar.com). As a Russian immigrant from Paris, Brodovitch became a revolutionary figure in magazine design.  On of Brodovitch's signatures is his use of white space as seen in his  October 1947  and July 1956 covers.

October 1947

1956: The July cover makes a colorful
nod to modernism.

Brodovitch was never afraid to experiment with anything and everything. Here is a photo from 1945 depicting how he thought to use lipstick as paint. 

Another trait of Brodovitch was how he saw a musical type of flow with pictures and text. "The rhythmic environment of  open space and balancing text was [energizing]" (Magg p. 340). This concept of "a musical feeling" can be seen in one of his earlier covers that he did back in 1935.

The covers done under Alexey Brodovitch and a few years after him are so creative and interesting compared to the covers we see today. Its unfortunate to see that the covers of People Magazine look similar to the cover of Seventeen and Cosmo, just one celebrity posed on the front, nothing too original or creative about that. Although one of Brodovitch's last covers from 1958 was one of a women on the front, it seems much more interesting and artistic than the standard cover shot done today. 

November 2010

July 1958

Credit

http://www.harpersbazaar.com/magazine/140-years/bazaar-140-lookbook

http://www.harpersbazaar.com/magazine/140-years/bazaar-140-0607 

Photos courtesy of images.google.com

Field Journal 6: War Posters Now and Then

From the famous 1917 military recruitment poster with “Uncle Sam” on the front ( it is actually self portrait of the artist himself James Montgomery Flagg) to the current war posters of today, we have seen a shift in how the posters are being used. Initially when posters first started being used in association with the war, they were all positive recruitment posters. Most were colorful, looking very patriotic with the American flag or using the colors red white and blue, and having some sort of person on it. During the year and a half that America was involved in the war, James Montgomery Flagg produced forty-six war posters including the most famous military recruitment poster which is one of the most widely reproduced posters in history. Here are a few of his other posters. 

I would describe Flagg’s posters simple, classic and patriotic. The posters now a days about the current wars do not seem patriotic at all, instead they seem to mock what our current political leader is doing. 

I feel as though back around 1917 there was more of a sense of unity and pride for the people in the posters. Now the posters are a way for the American people to voice how they feel about the war and they don't rallying around our troops to support what they are doing. This posters become such an influence to the American  people that it can make it hard to understand and actually know what the president is actually doing about the situation. These current posters have much more power than people realize. Here are some of the more current war posters.