SHIAOCHING DESIGN

So few weeks ago, I had another study of design history.  I was interested in Push Pin Studios because they made a phenomenal impact on visual culture from the 1950s to 1980.

Contemporary American Graphic Design

Push Pin Graphic

The Push Pin Studios reintroduced the illustration to be part of the design, and reapplied past styles and forms to their graphic design solutions, while designers in Europe codified Modernist graphic design into  so-called the International Style (Swiss Design), which focused on mathematical grids, simplified geometric forms, vibrant contrasting color, and free from propaganda and commercial advertising.

American designers, on the other hand, were attracted to individualism and expressionism. Among American graphic designers, two graphic designer students from New York, Seymour Chwast and Milton Glaser, found the Push Pin Studio in 1954. They borrowed from Surrealism, Expressionism, Art Deco, Pop arts, and 1930’s comic art, and transformed their style to posters, editorials, books, packaging, and magazines designs.

Milton Glaser Graphic Design

The Push Pin Influence
As Glaser said in his interview, Milton Glaser: To Inform & Delight, “I realized that history is not my enemy, I should use history as my raw material and incorporate to my design.”  They used art and graphic from Renaissance paintings to comic books as their sources of inspirations for forms, shapes, or visual ideas. For that, they often introduced new and unexpected forms.  In interview, he said, “Creating a puzzle is like activating the mind, they likelihood will remember it and respond to it.”  Push Pin combine art and design, which is why it was so attracted to viewers and readers.

Style

Quote from Glaser, Milton Glaser: To Inform & Delight, “I don’t like to be classified as Push Pin style.”  Indeed, it is hard to pin point what is Push Pin style.  According to Chwast, the desire to state the client’s message in as personal yet as accessible a vocabulary as possible. In another word, Push Pin represents a strong graphic personality and it often based on humors, plays, and surprises.

Push Pin Style Poster

I enjoy fashion illustration, and I thought it would be great to incorporated my illustration with vector image of butterflies, and here is my final piece of  my interpretation of Push Pin Style.

Image source from http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Obey/index.htm

image source from http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Obey/index.htm

So last week I blogged about “The Power of  Poster Design”.  While I was reading about Obama’s poster “HOPE” thru the internet last week, I found a very interesting online article “Obey Plagiarist Shepard Fairey” from a Los Angeles artist Mark Vallen. I don’t know who is Shepard Fairey until then.

For what I have read, Obama’s publicist, Yosi Sergant, suggested Fairey to create some art in support of Obama in late October 2007, and  Fairey got the permission from Obama campaign to design an Obama poster right before Super Tuesday.  He designed the original poster “Progress”  in one day. On October 2008, Fairey claimed he has printed  500,000 posters, 1,000,000 stickers, clothing, and other items with the image sold through his website.  If you are interested in Shepard Fairey,  just search on the internet, you will find tons of information about him along with the accusations.

Inspiration or plagiarism?

According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, to “plagiarize” means to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own without  giving the credit to the creator; to “inspire” means to influence, move, or guide by divine or supernatural inspiration.  For what I have read so far, I will have to agree with Mark Vallen.