Designer Presentations

Kyle Cooper

He studied under Paul Rand. He has filmed many movies, including, Se7en, Spider-Man, and Dawn of the Dead. He experiments with typography and designs movie titles. He designed the openings for the Spider-Man movies. His designs comprise of flat color planes. He liked to animate text. It shows that he is a great designer because of his work for such diverse movies. I really liked his work. He's one of my new favorite designers. 

Shepard Fairey

This is the creator of the Obama "Hope" design. His work is influenced by Art Deco, and most of his work is dark black and red. Many of his political statements are hidden within his work. His fonts are bold and colorful. He liked showing his work on the streets so that he could communicate with the community. The "Giant" design he made was so interesting to people, and he was only making it for a joke. His design career began from there. I really like his Animal Farm poster because it's so decorative.

Designer Presentations

Stefan Sagmeister 

This designer worked with Tibor Kalman and his work is known all over the world. He really like how Tibor worked with typography and his entire design style. He uses many hand-written elements and photographs and typography out of objects; he was not a user of computers. He created designs for music, including album covers. He also works with the human body and faces. For an internship, he had the information carved into his skin. Very unique/different. His philosophy is to be honest. I love how he uses a lot of hand-writing.

Clement Mok

His work began in the 80s and worked for Apple, where he was able to work with specific applications. He worked on a variety of jobs, including: producing, designing, educating, web developing, software producing. His design style was comprised of geometric lines, bold colors, and he was great at creating logos. One of his main focuses over the last decade was on web designing. As he had many clients and projects, he became very well-known and worked with big companies--a couple of them being Adobe and Sony. 

Leo Burnett

He liked to create images around the product. Three main symbols he had were apples, black pencils and a hand reaching for the stars. Some icons he had were the Pilsbury Doughboy, Tony the Tiger and the bird from the Fruit Loops cereal. His website is so so so so so coooool.

Designer Presentations

Tibor Kalman 

His child life influenced his work and that ended up being a good thing. With his wife, he opened a design firm called M&Co. for magazines, film titles, and books. He believed in 'going green' and women's rights movements. M&Co. created a C.D. cover with talking heads, which influenced other designers. He created a design for matches, where the matches were arranged in a way that it made up a skyline design. He created very interesting watches. I loved seeing them. Especially the one where there was only one number and another where the numbers were all scattered and mixed up. With magazine covers, he liked mixing up the cultural backgrounds of people. For example, he made Queen Elizabeth look African. 

David Carson

Began his designs in the 1980s. He was a self-taught designers, however he did attend a design workshop. He was inspired by abstract-expressionists. He was also influenced by surfing--giving him a laid back style. He designed his own surf board. His designs looked very cluttered, asymmetrical and vividly colored. Technology had a major impact on his design style as the computer was becoming popular. He was an art director and an art designer from '83--'94. He is best known for his work with Ray Gun-- a magazine with experimental typography. The covers were very interesting-looking. 

Designer Presentations

Neville Brody

He was a designer born in London. He was impacted by Punk Rock 1977, as it was having a cultural effect on London, and his designs were not accepted by educators. He enjoyed designing for concert posters for college students. After designing a postage stamp with the Queen's head on sideways, he was almost kicked out of school. Along with is work being impacted by Punk Rock, Dadaism and Pop Art were other major contributors. Later on in his life, he designed record covers and worked on a magazine called The Face. He was also a designer of many typefaces.

Art Chantry


He grew up with a bad childhood as his parents did not get along and his neighborhood was dangerous. His experience as a child influenced his later designs. The Vietnam War also effected him and his designs as he was against war. He worked in an interesting way. He reused already-made images in new designs, worked with screen prints and carved wood, he used various typefaces and images, and he had a Dadaist philosophy. He was influenced by psychedelic posters and Pop Art. He discovered his love for graphic design as a college student. I really like how this man knew he wanted to be a designer, even though all other areas he studied in. Also, I like how his past life influenced his current designs. It makes the designs more special/unique.


Storm Thorgerson


He had an original style, for he used many photographs and layered them on top of each other, leaving a mysterious design style. He created many album covers, one being Pink Floyd. Because he liked working with people, he used many models within his compositions. Within the album covers, he incorporated musical elements. He formed a graphic design studio called "Hipgnosis" with Aubrey Powell. The studio specialized in creative photography. Dali was one artist who he found to be inspiring, although he said he wasn't influenced by other artists, he was using them as references. He directed a Pink Floyd video and won an award from the American Billboard Awards. He currently works with freelancers.

Designer Presentations

April Greiman 

When April was young, she danced with her mother and was influenced by the advice given to her. She was told to be strong and determined and to work hard in order to achieve. She had little knowledge of graphic design but was determined and eventually became aware of American Modernism. She learned a new way of design. She incorporated irregular spacing, angles and sizing, which was an original approach compared to other designers during that time. April found new ways to design rather than copying from the past. She turned 2-D designs into 3-D and also combined digital elements. I really liked her text because it was so randomly created. It really caught my eye when I saw it. 

Milton Glaser 

Milton founded the Push Pin Studios along with many other people. His designs were simple, yet they were very original. He founded the New York Magazine, WBMG ( a studio dedicated to magazine and newspaper design work), and Milton Glaser, Inc. His work was influenced by Art Nouveau and Pop Art. Two of his well-known posters are Bob Dillan with colorful, art nouveau-like hair, and the I love NY poster. 

Seymour Chwast

This designer was influenced by Walt Disney cartoons and he took image and text into consideration. He worked with woodcuts, flat colors, and the speedball pen. He incorporated Art Nouveau and the Victorian style into his work. He liked to surround the images with text. Logos and posters were created by this designer, and he preferred to design posters over anything else because he had a greater freedom to use imagery and text. I liked his work a lot because he was so random and created such interesting designs. 

Matthew Carter: Thesis

Being known as the master font designer, Matthew Carter has made a great impact on graphic design while influencing other designers because of his ability to invent a variety of fonts and utilize them successfully.

Psychedelic Posters

This short section in Chapter 21 was interesting because it was new design style—similar, yet different from previous styles—being introduced. Psychedelic posters were brought forth because of social activism. The name, psychedelic posters, was brought forth because of relating well with rock-n-roll and drugs. The posters were made up of particular elements, like, bright color, swirling forms, illegible lettering, and complimentary colors. They were hung on the walls of apartments more often than they were hung outside in the streets; university campuses were also popular places to display the posters. Instead of conveying a particular message, as with posters of other styles, their purpose was to make a point. Since the wording was swirly and hard to read, many people claimed that it was not readable, yet the younger audience was more determined to find out what was being said. Psychedelic posters were created by people who had taught themselves; music and dance were portrayed in the designs for their promoters. Some interesting people made impacts during the time of psychedelic posters, including: Robert Wesley Wilson; Victor Moscow; Peter Max; David Lance Goines. Wilson was the main innovator for this poster style. Mocoso was an artist who was actually taught, unlike the rest of the artists. Max created posters closely resembling Art Nouveau, but with a new look added to it—more imagery and soft colors. Goines studied calligraphy and used symmetry, line drawings, contour lines, and flat planes of color with his poster designs. By the time the 1980s came, photography and paintings were becoming limited-edition posters.

The most interesting thing I learned from this section of Psychedelic Posters was how similar it was to Art Nouveau, even though new ideas were added. The forms were organic and simple, with a flowy look to them, yet the color was much more bold and energetic. Within this poster style and art nouveau, both present motion because of the way the flowy lines are shown. But with the psychedelic posters, much more energy is felt because of the bursts of complimentary colors and swirly letterforms. It’s almost as if everything is coming alive; music can be heard when you look at the psychedelic posters.

The book claimed that many people could not read the lettering, and the style was more colorful and energetic than the previous styles, communicating well with the younger generation. Were the psychedelic posters accepted by elders?