Cassandre Project Update

Most of the work I have completed for this project includes research and design work. I have been working in Illustrator developing the design for the website's homepage. As is outlined in my project proposal, one idea I had was to develop the website design around one of Cassandre's more recognizable poster designs. I began the design process by collecting four or five images of the artist's most famous designs and comparing the layout of each to find which would make the best or most interesting site layout. I decided to use a poster (at left) which has a diagonal layout where the hierarchy in the piece moves from top left to bottom right of the poster—one that is a good example of the sense of movement that Cassandre created in many of his designs. The poster is one of many made for the Nord Express railway transportation company and therefore includes a train in the design. I am using a train in my design as well because I think it represents Cassandre and his contribution to the field of graphic design. Cassandre and his work were progressive and powerfully influential.

My design, while the layout and imagery is based on a particular Nord Express poster, also pulls in elements from other posters by Cassandre. While I utilized the blues, grays, and black for my design, I decided to use a color palette (blues, grays, and blacks as found in the original, but with yellow instead of red) similar to another Nord Express poster. I tried using red in the piece, but it was too harsh; the yellow works nicely though, I think.

Now that I have the home page finished, I will have to work, of course, on the linking pages. I am not sure yet how those pages will be designed, but I don’t want them to all look like the front page. I may just repeat a certain element from the home page on each linked page, or maybe just a simple geometric element generally referring to any of his designs and not one in particular. I also have to continue researching and writing the information that will be included in the site. All in all, I have a ways to go. (And I realize the type is not lined up at all, I'll fix it..)

Nord Express poster image from: http://www.travelbrochuregraphics.com/France_Pages/France_13/nordexpress.htm

AM Cassandre Website Project

Adolfe Jean-Marie Mouron, known as A.M. Cassandre, was born January 24, 1901 in Karkov, Ukraine. Over the course of his lifetime, Cassandre developed an interest in art which he pursued in his education and later in his career. Cassandre began his career as an artist by designing posters, possibly as early as 1921. These early posters were likely done in the caricature style following the German school of poster design, and few of them survive. In 1922, the young artist moved to his first Paris studio, where he began to sign his advertisements using the pseudonym, A.M. Cassandre. Cassandre originally planned on devoting his artistic life to painting, becoming a poster artist until he could make enough money to do so, but in 1923 after creating his first large-scale commercial project, Au Bucheron, discovered a great interest in the medium as he realized his art reached a much larger audience and as such was a more modern form and function of art than painting. Over the course of the first half of the twentieth century, Cassandre worked as a poster and type designer, lithographer, painter, and theater designer, becoming “one of the greatest commercial artists of the past century.” His influences include what were contemporary movements such as Neue Sachlichkeit, cubism, and surrealism which he brought together in the commercial art for which he is best known (Mouron, 2000).

For my creative project assignment, I will further research, analyze, and discuss the life, works, and influence of A.M. Cassandre and present my findings in the form of an interactive website. The website will be divided into different pages according to the type of information being presented. The first page will be the general Home/Navigation page with links to the Biography, Works, Cassandre and Art Deco, Cassandre Today, and the Conclusion pages. The Biography page, as the title suggest, includes the story of Cassandre’s life and his development as an artist. The Biography page will also include a timeline that will show important dates in the artist’s life and work and will serve as a reference to world events taking place during his time as well. The Works page will organize the 8-12 works in four different pages (with 2-3 images for each page) according to timeperiod since Cassandre worked for over four decades as a graphic designer. By separating the images by decade, the viewer will be able to see the evolution of Cassandre’s style. Each decade will be linked to the next for easy viewing of all images and will also be linked to the Works page. Each image, when selected will open in its own window with my analysis of the artwork’s design, etc. The Cassandre and Art Deco page will explore the influences that Cassandre and his work had on the Art Deco design movement of the 1920s and 1930s and will include images that correspond to my research-based analysis. The page Cassandre and Today will focus on how Cassandre’s influence reaches into today’s world of design and will show this using modern day works that reference Cassandre’s design aesthetic. The final information page will sum up the information of the previous pages and will act as a conclusion, stating why Cassandre’s work is worthy of study. All pages will also be linked to both the sitemap and the references page. The primary navigation will remain available on each child page, but not on any grandchild pages (such as the decade image group pages or the individual image pages).

The design of the webpage will be based on one of Cassandre’s most famous works, possibly the L’Atlantique poster or one of the Nord Express posters. Black and grays will most likely be prominently used in the website with the addition of subtle hints of color, along with the use of geometric shapes and line, as Cassandre’s Art Deco works include.

Information source:
Mouron, R. (2000). Cassandre. Retrieved February 2009, from http://www.cassandre.fr/

Wood Type Posters: 19th century and Today

The history of the wood type letterpress poster begins around 1828 with Darius Wells' development of wood type--a welcomed alternative to metal type which was only successful and practical for smaller-size print productions. As the demand for large-scale posters grew, so did the need for larger size type. Wood type could be made at any size, without the problems associated with creating large-scale metal type, such as surface unevenness due to uneven cooling of poured metal, the heavy weight of the type, and the overall expense of its creation. As I mentioned, the development of wood type solved these and other problems for printers. Below are some examples of both 19th and 21st century posters.

19th Century Posters

This (left) undated 19th century poster uses a variety of typefaces that make the poster chaotic and overwhelming to the viewer. The emphasis of this piece appears to be the word 'Gems' since it is both the the largest size and the lightest value text on the poster. The typeface used for 'Gems' seems to be a decorative version of a serif fat-face font and is used only once on the poster. Other fat-face fonts are also seen on this poster including regular and wide versions. Egyptian serif fonts are also used in both wide and regular versions. The poster also includes Egyptian sans serif fonts in regular and condensed types. 'The Secret' is printed in a variation on Robert Besley's type design that was an early form of Clarendon, as described by Meggs (p.136).

This poster is a later 19th century example of a wood type poster dated 1870. This poster contains about six or seven different fonts and font variations including both serif and sans serif fonts. The top font is a condensed Egyptian serif font, or at least a form of one, as classified by the abrupt, geometric serifs. This font shows up in other parts of the poster as well, including some less important textual information as well as the most prominent text in the piece, ‘Aurora Floyd.’ The second most important information is printed in again an Egyptian font, but as a sans serif instead of a serif. The most prominent sans serif type is used for ‘Friday Evening,’ as well as the names of the stars of the show. The regular (non-condensed) version of the Egyptian sans serif can be seen in the third line of type. So far I have counted four different type styles for the poster: Egyptian serif, both condensed and regular, and Egyptian sans-serif, both condensed and regular. A fifth type style on this poster is a fat face type style, as is evidenced by the thick-thin contrast with the strong, triangular serifs. This style is found on the second and fourth lines of type and is used when referencing the ‘Corps de Ballet’ near the middle and at the bottom of the poster. The next type used is the textual serif, possibly a Caslon or Garamond font or something similar. The text of this page is arranged in horizontal lines of information, each individual line using the same type throughout the line (except for ‘Ada Hart as Aurora Floyd’ where ‘as’ is a different typeface). The type style also changes from line to line, further separated by lines, making it difficult for the piece to have a strong cohesion. Emphasis is difficult to determine because there is so much text and so many different type styles and fonts, even if some are related. The fact that most of the type is the same weight also makes it difficult to find the emphasis as it all blends together.

The final 19th century poster, dated 1888, is much more visually organized than the 1870 poster described above. The designer limited the typeface palette to only two or three main typefaces, with perhaps a fourth used for textual information at the bottom of the poster. This poster has a clear emphasis, located at the top of the poster as opposed to the bottom half as in the prior example. The designer listed the most important information in descending order, and the less imperative the information, the less space and the lower its hierarchy in the organization. The poster is still sectioned off with lines as in the previous pieces, but maintains its unity due to the strong sense of hierarchy established in the design. The type used includes a regular Egyptian serif and a condensed version, as well as a couple versions of a fat face type. The textual information is done in a serif font, but I am not sure what kind.

Today's Wood Type Posters

This is an example of a modern-day wood type poster, one obviously created to advertise a community event, sharing a common purpose with the 19th century posters previously discussed. This poster is interesting compared to the previous posters in that it uses mostly sans-serif type where the old posters use mostly serif. In this poster, the sans-serif type is used for the main textual information--the part that is meant to stand out most--while the secondary information is done in serif fonts. In the 19th century posters, the serif fonts are used for primary information, while sans serif fonts were used f0r secondary information. This poster also uses several typefaces including a sans-serif used consistently throughout the piece for emphasized information, a serif for secondary and textual information, Cooper Black for 'Old Frenchtown Field,' and another used for some of the textual information that I cannot remember the name of (but I know I've seen it before). In layout, this piece is similar to the older posters in that it uses line dividers to separate part of the information, but they are used only to frame 'Frenchtown Community Day.' This piece is much more organized than the older posters, as it organizes the information in hierarchical order, making it much easier to quickly grasp the poster's message.

This poster shows the difference in how type is treated today in graphic design versus how it was treated in poster design of the 19th century. In this modern poster, type is treated not only as a communication tool, but as a design element. The way the text interacts makes the piece visually interesting but not in a way that is distracting from the ad's message.