Posts Tagged ‘ornament’
Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012
No Phillumenist I, nor proper collector of anything, but like most graphic designers I love a nice bit of printed ephemera. I bought these matchbox labels in Thailand, and as far as I can tell they are mostly (all?) Japanese, made for the Chinese market and stone lithography printed. I can’t read the text (which might explain much) but the use of flags in some puts them in the second and third decades of the 20th century – beyond that my ignorance is complete, not that that hinders my enjoyment of them. What is going on in the example above for instance? A diminutive husband and wife extending hospitality to an outsized westerner? or two smartly-dressed children welcoming Daddy home (wondering why he could not afford a full-sized house)? Either way – the drawing, pattern, texture and colours are beautiful.
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Tags: decoration, decorative tradition, graphic design, inspiration, matchbox labels, ornament, packaging, phillumeny, printed ephemera, visual culture
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Thursday, January 27th, 2011
Tags: decoration, decorative arts, ephemera, graphic design, inspiration, ornament, packaging, print, traditional typography, typography, visual culture
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Tuesday, October 26th, 2010
I wrote on this blog some while back that I feared we were losing the art of decoration, in passing referring to Marian Bantjes as bucking that trend. With the publication of I Wonder she has singlehandedly rescued ornament & craft from untimely demise at the hands of modernist graphic design.
For those unfamiliar, Marian Bantjes is a Canadian illustrator/typographer/designer (there is no appropriate single word) living near Vancouver who after a decade in book typography and production reinvented her career to a extraordinary degree. She is a kind of missing link between contemporary design and the rich decorative craft traditions of the religious world(s). Her work is entirely secular but there is a strong sense of devotion in it, and she has a gift for creating something something truly extraordinary—spiritual even—from the most unpromising materials or observations.
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Tags: communication, creativity, decorative type, decorative tradition, graphic design, I Wonder, illustration, inspiration, Marian Bantjes, ornament, typography, visual culture, words
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Wednesday, April 7th, 2010
Functionality, clarity and rationality reign supreme in contemporary design. The Bauhaus casts a long shadow and analysis of function, distillation of meaning and removal of the inessential gives us the calm spaces, ordered structures and clear interfaces that we need to navigate our complex modern lives. It could be argued that decoration is anti-design. Style is inevitable, but ‘decoration’ is just for cakes and wallpaper, no?
There are areas of design where indulgent visual richness remains desirable and appropriate, a signifier of value and/or emotion. Decoration blooms sporadically now – our rapid cultural turnover often rendering it ‘tired’ before it can establish itself. It may not be a dirty word any more but beyond the confines of fashion and interior design, decoration often coexists uneasily with cool minimalism and rational typography. Are we are in danger of losing the art of decoration?
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Tags: creativity, decoration, decorative arts, decorative type, decorative tradition, design, graphic design, ornament, packaging, packaging design, St Germain packaging, traditional typography
Posted in blog, inspiration, typerbole, visualisation | No Comments »
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