For the Graphic Design Timeline, the task I was given was to create two posters of two influential designers, containing information about them in their styles. I was given Josef Müller-Brockmann and Paula Scher, both being quite recent influential designers but with very different styles.
The posters were going to be A4, so I wanted to pick some of their posters for inspiration that would be instantly recognizable as their their styles, so I picked Paula Scher’s ‘The Public Theatre’ project and Josef Müller-Brockmann’s ‘Musica Viva’ poster. There were more abstract projects from Paula Scher that would probably better portrait her style but I thought they would be incredibly difficult to try replicate the style and I don’t think they would be easy to recognize as an A4 poster, as a lot of her work is intended to be seen on a very large scale.
I wanted to create posters that could be seen as their style of work, but not directly just recreate an isolated piece of work. For the Müller-Brockmann work, I created a similar shape construction using grids as he used in the ‘Musica Viva’ poster, but I experimented with the colour scheme, sizing and placement that I thought would look better on A4, whilst keeping to a similar size ratio of type with a similar typeface. With the Paula Scher poster, the intention for her original work was to create an identity system that could be used in a vast array of styles. The key aspects in common with that identity system was that it tended to stick to one or two-colour schemes along with black type, she almost always uses uppercase, and she uses different sizes and weights of the same one or two typefaces.
In the Paula Scher poster, I tried to create contrast throughout the poster through using different kerning, using condensed weights next to extended weights, using light weights next to heavy weights, using red type next to black type, so that the poster seemed as punchy as possible. If I were to design this poster again, I would focus on making the poster run vertically, with big type rotated 180˚, with shorter lines of text and more body text. This would be more in line with her style, but I designed it with a horizontal style because the information that I had better fit this layout.
Dan Rawlinson | Graphic Designer 