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Five sources of knowledge for print & poster lovers

From vintage prints to contemporary poster art; from books and movies to blogs and podcasts - we selected five sources which are interesting databases full of print and poster stories, facts, galleries and news. Enjoy watching!

1. The Poster Boys

Two designers, Brandon Schaefer and Sam Smith, talk about the world of graphic design, explore the history of poster design, share their thoughts and influences. Among the podcasts prepared by Poster Boys you can find Cuban film posters, Penguin Books, episodes about designers such as Paul Rand, Saul Bass, an episode about the Polish Poster School and much more. Of course, you can not only listen but also watch - the gallery on Poster Boys blog shows nice poster selection, related to each discussed topic.

2. The movie - Graphic Means

The documentary which shows the story and process of graphic design production from the 1950s through the 1990s - from linecaster to photocomposition, and from paste-up to PDF. The independent film, directed and produced by Briar Levit is now in production and you can support it by pre-ordering your copy here. In the meantime - check the official trailer:

For more info and updates - check also the GM Facebook page.

3. The book - Posters: A global History

This publication by Elizabeth Guffey tells the story of posters from nineteenth century to the contemporary time: works of propaganda and protest, pop culture projects, advertising - both familiar and lesser-known examples from the Soviet Union, China, Eastern and Western Europe, the U. S. and elsewhere. It shows the lives of posters, describes where and considers why they were made.

4. Poster Poster

The website not only for vintage poster lovers, but also for those, who like to know the updates about contemporary posters, exhibitions, competitions and artists. An interesting part of the Poster Poster page is the "Masters" section where you can find presentations of famous, experienced poster creators from all over the world.

5. Poster/Blog

Facebook page about current poster exhibitions, competitions and publications. Follow it if you want to keep up with the news!

Posted: Mar 31, 2016 | Tagged: graphic design, history, illustration, magazine, poster, print, printing, publication, video, vintage, vintage posters

Inspired by vintage... Clips & animations

As we mentioned couple of times, we like to follow vintage things as well as to watch contemporary projects inspired by vintage mood, style and aesthetics: fashion, design, art, movies and animation. Here we have three examples from the last field: movie shorts inspired by...

1. Vintage books: this motion picture by Henning M. Lederer is a very nice set of 55 vintage book covers, with animated geometrical elements:

2. Vintage fashion: short video by Sabine Bein is a kind of animated journey across parts of vintage fashion history and profiles of the most popular fashion brands:

3. Vintage photos: in music video for "Zerbait Asmatugo Dugu" by Berri Txarrak (Direction & Animation: Joseba Elorza) motion vintage collages are connected with harder guitar sounds, which gives additional contrast:

Effects of connecting old and new things can be classy and nostalgic or funny and suprising - and that's the point! For more contemporary projects inspired by vintage things - check also our previous post When past meets future - modern projects based on vintage elements.

Posted: Dec 01, 2015 | Tagged: animation, music, photos, retro, video, vintage

Questions about the Future of Print

In the time when we have more and more technologic resolutions and digitalized versions of publications, we often ask ourlseves questions: What will happen with printing? Will there be a place for prints in future? And finally: Should we really treat digital and paper versions as opponents or rather think about them as resolutions, which can happily and effectively work next to each other?

In fact, those considerations are not only about the printing itself. They are also reflections about media durabilities (is digital medium always more durable than paper version - and what actually "durability" really means here) or about professions, roles and specializations of people, which participate in process of creation and distribution.

The Future of Print - documentary film by Epilogue, is an attempt to find answers to these and other questions related to printing, selling and saving paper publications. Even if the most part of this project shows books as main "heroes", it's definitely not only about them - it helps to think about this subject in wider way.

During watching the video you'll have an opportunity to meet printers, book sellers or people specialized in other areas related to printable projects, who share their stories and observations, worries and hopes. Thanks to them The Future of Print becomes a warm and a bit nostalgic journey through the world filled with the smell of print and with rustling of paper pages but, at the sime time, it's a crisp and honest report of what's happening now with prints and a forecast of what can happen next.

See the video below:

EPILOGUE: The Future of Print from EPILOGUEdoc on Vimeo.

Posted: Nov 23, 2015 | Tagged: print, printing process, video

Making of a poster: Lithography

It's been a while since we started our journey across poster creation and printing methods - after letterpress printing and poster stories it's time for another printing technique, lithography, which was often used by poster makers from the past. The name comes from Ancient Greek; Lithos means "stone" and graphein - "to write". The print is, in fact, placed on a stone with a smooth surface, which is a basis for this type of print. It was invented in early XIXth century and for that time it was a main method of commercial color printing until it was replaced by offset lithography - says Kate Desforges, visual artist and printmaker working on a stone lithography print at the Leicester Print Workshop. - It’s a very intuitive process. (…) I think that the intuitive part of it challenges me and I like that. (...) In any other printmaking technique is a certain physical boundary between the image and the artist's mind and the reproduction of this image on the matrix in front of them. In lithography there is no intermedium, there is brain, hand, stone.

You can listen to this story and see the whole process here:

Kate Desforges - Stone Lithography from Bill Newsinger on Vimeo.

Posted: Oct 30, 2015 | Tagged: lithography, making of a poster, print, video, vintage posters

Paper magic, part II: playing with shadow and light

In the first part we showed tiny, richly decorated paper theaters in which colours and shapes played the main role. Now it's time to revive the paper (and not only paper) forms using light and shadow.

Shadow puppetry - inspiration and tradition

The one of greatest inspirations for that kind of art can be found in shadow puppet theaters, which are popular in various cultures, especially in Asia (Indonesia, Thailand Malaysia, China, India, Nepal) but also in Turkey, Greece or France. Shadow puppetry has an old tradition - for example, the earliest references to it came even from the 8th century. In traditional shadow theatres are used three-dimensional wooden forms or flat leather puppets.

Silouette animation

Contemporary shadow puppets are made from various materials, such as paper, wood or plastic. Today such puppets are used not only in special theaters but also in short animated movies or music videos.

The foremost pioneer of silouette animation was a German film director, Lotte Reininger. She made her motion pictures more than ten years before Disney. Below - one of her works:

Here you can read more about this creative woman.

And another example of this kind of animation - Les Trois inventeurs from 80's made by Michel Ocelot - French writer, designer and director of animated films and television programs:

Dioramas

Dioramas are miniature worlds with tiny props and figures. They also have quite long tradition, which reaches up even to the 6th century. Of course, when we're talking about miniature worlds, we also must mention about vintage dollhouses, which are a great inspiration for contemporary diorama creators.

Like shadow puppetry, dioramas also are made not only of paper, but it's quite popular material, often used for creating this type of little landscapes. For example, Tatebanko, very popular in 17th century, was a Japanese art of making dioramas out of paper. Some of those paper creations look quite similar to paper theaters.

Here are contemporary paper cutted dioramas and theather of lights, inspired by vintage mood. First - Boucheron, Theater of Lights - an interactive experience created in paper art and stop motion, which shows 120 years of history of the famous french jeweler Boucheron:

Boucheron, 26 Place Vendôme, Héliodon from Barthélemy Antoine-Loeff on Vimeo.

And paper diorama, prepared as an effect of cooperation of Cognac house Courvoisier and creative agency White Label; the installation was unveiled as part of L'Atelier de Courvoisier: