COMPUTER

GRAPHICS AND DESIGN ESSAY:

I have chosen to look at the area of poster design. To create my project I have used
the vector graphics software called illustrator and also Photoshop. My project
involves a series of images that will be used as a lipstick promotion in the fashion
and make-up industry. The goal for my project was to create an alternative
approach to a poster advert that is to keep bringing it back to a minimal amount
of visual content, yet still having it be eye-catching and detailed. I wanted it to look
simple and sketchy giving it a more personal touch, rather than you typical
photo shopped, magazine look.

I have looked at illustrator, and the history of poster design, as well as some people
who have designed posters that have inspired the history of design and posters. The
reason for looking at poster design is because the way I have created my designs is
to be in poster form. I have made the designs so I have continued to take back more
and more to make it as simplistic as possible. I feel in the form of a poster, my
designs will be most effective and eye-capturing.

The History of Poster Design
One of the earliest forms of advertisement was the poster. In the early 19th century,
it began to develop as the standard and typical way of visual communication. They
were used as promotion material for a number of things, which included: soldier
recruitment, political parties, product and merchandise advertisement; and to
spread information and ideas to the community and general public.

Posters in this era very much influenced the development of typography. Going
back and viewing posters designed in this time in age, it is obvious that typography
was a major theme. This was very much because the poster were usually designed
for getting messages across and people wanted them to be able to be read from a
distance (therefore also required a large type size) enhancing its effects.

The poster soon became a world-wide phenomenon and the basis to the trade of
graphic design. Many artists in this time and still today believe that posters were the
most effective tool for communication, and despite the continual growth of
technology, digital and internet advertisements, posters are still successfully being
created and used for many reasons.

There were many successful artists around this era, such as Henry Toulouse-Latrec
and Henry van de Velde, who created some of the first well-known posters.


Poster designers and their designs:
The posters below are examples of some of the first promotional material in poster
form that had been designed.

Henri Toulouse-
Lautrec,
Moulin Rouge - La
Goulue,
1891

James Montgomery
Flagg, Uncle Sam, 1917

Henry van de
Velde, Tropon, 1898

All above images accessed from: http://www.designishistory.com/1850/posters/

Evolution of Poster design:

Early Broadsides:
Broadsides were used to issue public declarations and announcements; government
notifications and campaigns; and a range of commercial and private advertisements.
These however were not designed thoroughly; they were made quickly and roughly.

They were made in large quantities and distributed through out the town, to
community buildings such as local taverns and churches.

The intent of broadsides was to have an immediate effect meaning that they
mainly consisted of writing and text. This meant that the text was fairly large. Metal
type was used for text that was an inch or less anything above was created with
the use of wood type. Metal type was relatively expensive, required large storage
space and was very heavy. Wood type was very popular for commercial posters as
the larger letters had a greater effect on catching peoples attention. The invention
of decorative, woodcut letters for poster design, (in many shapes and sizes) was
created by, Darius Wells and William Leavenworth in 1834.

As printing technologies and artistic movements grew and evolved, poster design
became more sophisticated. Illustrations and graphic designs began to become
incorporated within the designs of the posters, as the use of graphic designers
became more affordable and people were able to customise illustrations to what
their poster entailed.

Image accessed from: http://www.designhistory.org/Poster_pages/Braodsides.html

The French Poster Craze:

1880 1914 The Belle Epoque:

The lithographic poster was first used in

the industrial revolution, when a new
middle class was created, to market
goods of the locals, and advertise
theatre performances and other
entertainment events. Eventually it
transformed into a form of art than
many of the middle class people desired
in their homes. In this era, illustration
and graphic design boomed posters
began to incorporate illustrations and
slowly move away from having the main
focus rely on text graphic designers
and illustrators began to become well
known and their work became very
valuable. Posters were still however the
main form of advertising, as the
magazine era had not yet become a
phenomenon.




This image was accessed from:
http://www.designhistory.org/Poster_pages/LaBelleEpoque.html


th
American Posters of the 20 Century:
20th century American posters became similar to that of the European posters and
vice versa. They both began to incorporate colour and begin to see posters as a form
of art, rather than just a way of advertising. People began to make a more secure
career out of poster design through illustration and graphic design. Colour was used
more frequently and a wide range of decorative fonts also began to be created
designing a poster was becoming much more highly regarded.

This image was accessed from: http://www.designhistory.org/Poster_pages/AmericaPosters.html

Illustrator:
Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Adobe
Systems. Vector graphics refers to software and hardware that use geometrical
formulas to represent images. Adobe Illustrator was first developed in December
1986 for the Apple Macintosh. Adobe Illustrator is the companion product of Adobe
Photoshop. Illustrator is used in the typesetting and logographic areas of the design
industry - Where as Photoshop is primarily used for the manipulation and editing of
digital photographs. From 1986, Illustrator has continued to evolve to enhance the
ability of design.

I have used Illustrator for my poster designs. As technology and digital design is
increasing the link between poster design and illustrator software is becoming
tighter.

The History of Illustrator:
In the year1988, Illustrator 88 the product name for version 1.8 was released in. It
introduced many new tools and features to the world of graphic design. Illustrator
was originally developed only for Macintosh. However, it now is used on a wider
range of platforms and softwares. In the early 1990s, Adobe released versions of
Illustrator for NeXT, Silicon Graphics, and Sun Solaris platforms, however were not
continued due to poor market acceptance. Version 2.0 was the first version of
Illustrator for Windows. This was released in early 1989. However, it failed.

Version 4.0 was the next Windows version. This version was heavily criticized as
people saw too many similarities between this and Illustrator 1.1. Version 4 was,
however, the first version of Illustrator to support editing in preview mode, which
did not appear in a Macintosh version until 5.0 in 1993.

In 1996, version 6 was introduced. Many changes were made in relation to the path
editing - many users of illustrator chose to use the previous version over this one.
This software began to support an outline font standard called TrueType and plug-
ins this greatly enhanced illustrators abilities to perform multiple tasks.

From then on multiple versions of illustrator have been created (including). All of
which have now evolved and been altered to cater for peoples need of design.
Today, the latest version of illustrator is version CC. This is the seventeenth version
and has many improvements within the program which include: a wide variety of
color, font and program settings syncing, saving documents to the cloud - as well as
other features such as a new touch-compatible type tool, images in brushes, CSS
extraction, and file packaging

Future Directions:
Modern technology and the use of digital magazines are becoming increasingly
popular in todays society. Many people fear that as a result of this, the use and
design of posters will become less frequently used as a way of advertisement. The
art of poster design has definitely become less regarded than what it has been in the

past. However, poster art and design still remains important in places such as
Holland and France. Poster design is still a very important element in many societies.
Today however, posters are just produced in different ways. Billboards are a form of
poster design in the way that they have the same intentions and are most often
designed in a similar way however may have very opposing outcomes in the way
that they appear.
Graphic design is becoming more and more of a popular and accessible industry.
Graphic design is everywhere. The only issue for poster design is that more and more
of the graphic design today is presented in a way that involves technology. It is
important, however, for people to be trained in this area of modern graphic design.
As this software has become so accessible from home, many people are creating
designs without being qualified this has lead to many designs with poor quality.

Courses:
There are multiple courses that can be taken to enable you to have a future in poster
design. This includes completing a bachelor of visual design or visual
communications which can be taken at a very wide variety of universities world
wide as graphic design becomes more important. A bachelor or degree in marketing
or advertisement is also advised to help aid in gaining knowledge of what people
desire and how to create effective pieces of work.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Graphic Design History, Broadsides,
<http://www.designhistory.org/Poster_pages/Braodsides.html
Designhistory.org2011 (date accessed: 13/07/2014)


Graphic Design History, Paris and the La Belle Epoque Craze,
http://www.designhistory.org/Poster_pages/LaBelleEpoque.html
Designhistory.org2011 (date accessed: 13/07/2014)

Graphic Design History, American Born,
http://www.designhistory.org/Poster_pages/AmericaPosters.html ,
Designhistory.org2011 (date accessed: 13/07/2014)


Design Is History, Development of the Poster,
http://www.designishistory.com/1850/posters/ DangerDom, (date accessed: )

Banks, Johnson, Thought For the Week, Whats Next For Poster Design,
http://johnsonbanks.co.uk/thoughtfortheweek/whats-next-for-poster-design/
johnson banks 2014 (date accessed: )


Wikipedia, Adobe Illustrator, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Illustrator,
Wikimedia Foundation Inc. 25 October 2014 (date accessed: )

Essay Plan:

Introduction

History of Poster Design

Evolution of Poster Design

Illustrator

History of Illustrator

Future Directions

Careers