The brief

Look around for a forthcoming event and design two posters.  Make the first poster full of details and descriptions about the event, when and where it’s taking place, what’s going on, how long it lasts, how much it costs and what to expect.  Include all the details you think are needed.  For the second poster, apply Occam’s Razon to pare back the information to a bare minimum. 

Milton Glaser

Milton Glaser is an inspiration when it comes to poster design.  The late Mr Glaser said, “Art Nouveau, Chinese wash drawing, German woodcuts, American primitive paintings, the Viennese secession and cartoons of the ’30s are an endless source of inspiration.  All the things that the doctrine of orthodox modernism seemed to have contempt for – ornamentation, narrative illustration, visual ambiguity – attracted us. (Grimes, 2020)

He was the founder of New York magazine, created a memorable Bob Dylan poster and produced designs for everything from supermarkets to restaurants.  A graphic designer who changed American visual culture in the 1960s and ‘70s and brought wit, whimsy, narrative and skilled drawing to commercial art at a time when advertising was dominated by modernism on one hand and the realism of magazines on the other.  “We were excited by the very idea that we could use anything in the visual history of humankind as influence,” Mr Glaser, who designed more than 400 posters over the course of his career, said in an interview for the book “The Push Pin Graphic: A Quarter Century of Innovative Design and Illustration” (2004). (Grimes, 2020)

Milton Glaser’s posters’ main focus is to attract his audience.  Mr Glasser describes a good poster, “I would say memorability, which means you can remember it; clarity and -curiously- mystery at the same time; clarity, ambiguity, mystery all of some kind of relationship to one another.  If things are too clear, they become uninteresting.  If they are too obscure, they become unread, so you have somehow, in all Graphic Arts problems, reconcile the issue of clarity and complication and contradiction.  I would say in this case what makes a good poster is your ability to become interested in it. (Poster Poster, 2022)

Milton Glaser developed typography called Babyteeth typeface.  I am curious to use this typeface in my posters and will create my design around this style.  

“Glaser’s inspiration came from a hand-painted advertisement for a tailor he saw in Mexico City.  He was inspired by that “E” as only someone unfamiliar with the alphabet could have conceived.  So he set about inventing a completely legible alphabet consistent with this model.” (Devroye, 2022)

Choosing an upcoming event

I have chosen a music festival as an upcoming event.  It is a festival at Mandela Square, a well-known venue in the heart of Sandton, South Africa.  This is a fictitious event.  Important information is the venue, date and website.  In today’s date and age, all information can be googled once the audience has a vague idea of the details.  As long as the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is in place, your event will show on the first page of google search.

Mood board and visual references

I paged through a magazine and my own collection of photos while drawing in my sketchbook. I let my imagination go and sketched any ideas resembling a concert in South Africa.  I collected swatches of Shweshwe fabrics to inspire African shapes and colours.  

Milton Glaser’s Dylan poster and the wave shapes reminded me of music.  I like the black and white contrasting with bright colours.  I tried the swirls in sketches 2 and 3 (figure 3), and the swirls became clouds in sketch 4.  I tried different motifs, shapes and silhouettes.  As I progressed in my sketchbook, I needed more visual references.  I searched Pinterest and Google to get an example of clouds and roller skates. 

In figure 4 are the visual references I used for my sketches.  Pictures 6 and 7 are more drawings from my sketchbook to generate ideas for the two posters.

Poster 1

My idea for poster one is to use text only.  This poster is full of details and descriptions of the event.  The main attraction is who will be performing at this festival.  I have used colour, text and shape to create the poster, using the Babyteeth as the title and hand lettering for the artist’s names.  My decision to use hand lettering is to give the poster an illustrative quality. 

I created my own brushes in Photoshop to give the poster a hand-paper look.  I made the brushes by photographing handmade paper and wrapping paper, and saving it as a brush in Photoshop.  I then used the brush as a stencil in a layer mask to apply the texture to the illustration.

Typography

I went back to my sketchbook to explore the typography further. The Babyteeth typography feels very 80s, with a pixelated mood that makes me think of the game “Pacman”.  I like the idea of having a “retro” feel to the poster, as the 1970s colours and typography is very fashionable at the moment. I found myself on the lookout for typography around me while running my daily errands and collected visual references of ideas that attracted my attention.

I then explored lettering ideas in my sketchbook by creating thumbnails.  I further refined the ideas to see how they resolve.  I decided to go for the 1970s heading and pair it with a simple sans-serif hand-lettering font.  The poster is already busy with all the lettering, so I limited the colour palette to simplify the design.

Poster 2

I will apply Occam’s Razon for Poster 2 and keep the design simple.  I have decided to keep open spaces between the clouds to attract more attention to the “Music Festival” title.  The date, place and website are in small print at the bottom of the poster. 

I like the idea of rollerskates in draft one, but it will be more fitting to have an illustration related to music (draft 2).  I further refined the poster to be more cohesive with Poster 1 by changing the heading and colours.

The finished piece is based on Occam’s Razor method to reduce the information to the bare minimum.  Milton Glaser’s work reflects the simplicity that attracts the eye to his posters.  I feel that too much texture could take away from keeping it simple.  I like the texture of a charcoal pencil microphone contrasting with the smooth background.  Once the poster is pasted on the wall with poster glue, it gets that iconic poster texture seen in the mockup below.

Glaser’s technique of layering smooth shapes with a palette of dynamic colours was famously distinguished in his 1967 print of Bob Dylan.  I was inspired by the same method in creating these posters.  

It is interesting to observe the optical illusion in Figure 13.  Both posters are A3 size, but the first poster with the darker colours appears smaller.

To conclude, the preferred way of designing a poster is to apply Occam’s Razor.  This method is evident in Milton Glaser’s work and other well-known graphic designers like Paul Rand (1914 – 1996).  It is also apparent in this exercise.  Poster 2 is more effective than Poster 1 in conveying the message and capturing the audience’s attention. 

Works Cited

Grimes, W. (2020, June 26). Milton Glaser, Master Designer of “I love NY” Logo, Is Dead at 91. Retrieved from The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/obituaries/milton-glaser-dead.html

Poster Poster. (2022, August 27). Milton Glaser. Retrieved from Poster Poster: http://www.posterposter.org/master-featured/glaser-milton/

Milton Glaser Inc. (2022, August 27). Milton Glaser. Retrieved from Milton Glaser Store: https://www.miltonglaser.com/store/c:posters/

Devroye, L. (2022, August 27). Type Design Information Page. Retrieved from luc.devroye.org: http://luc.devroye.org/fonts-24816.html