AdamsMorioka, 20th Anniversary poster, 2012

I imagine being an interior designer is a hard job. So many people seem to have revolting taste. How do you tell a client that the orange deep shag carpeting and gold columns are tacky? As graphic designers, we face the same issue with typography. I’ve worked with clients who have the most beautifully designed offices, filled with Mies van der Rohe and Eames furniture. But, they invariably pull out a horrible piece of typography and suggest that for the logo. It isn’t the client’s fault; they don’t have the same OCD issues around a correct serif resolution that we do.

For my entire career, I’ve been a typographic purist. We managed to maintain with a handful of tried and true standards. We avoided trendy fonts and anything slightly degenerated or techno. In the past year, however, things have changed. We recently used ITC Avant Garde as a starting point on a wordmark. We re-purchased it, because I deleted it from every computer a decade ago. Last week, I designed a poster for our twentieth anniversary with ITC Bookman Swash Italic. What’s next, clown outfits for everyone at the studio? Linen paper?!

Once, when a client showed me a brochure with Avant Garde, I explained that this was the same as wall-to-wall green shag carpeting. Alternatively, Univers was a fine, tasteful, and well-made area rug. If I’ve accepted ITC Bookman, have I moved into liking Harvest Gold appliances? Is that so wrong? Perhaps the severity of my rules needs to be examined.

Ed Benguiat, ITC Bookman Italic

United Airlines advertisement, Bookman Italic 1965

United Airlines advertisement, Bookman Italic

United Airlines advertisement, Bookman Italic 1965

Walt Disney World Pirates of the Caribbean sign, Bookman, 1973

Share This Story

Disneyland, A Pictorial Souvenir, 1976

It’s amazing to me when I meet another Los Angeleno who has never been to Disneyland. Are the communists? Did they grow up with abusive and cruel parents who built a Carrie closet? Do they hate the idea of fun? Of course, they typically tell me “It’s not my kind of thing.” Or, “I don’t understand the attraction of contemporary mass market spectacle.” Boring, boring people.

When I was a kid, I had a copy of “Disneyland, a pictorial souvenir”. I know every detail of every image. The images paint such a nice story of a lazy day with family, rock and roll fun with teens, and exciting (but not overly exciting) adventures. When I looked through this recently, I began to decode the images. Yes, OCD, yes geeky, yes, too much emphasis on deconstruction in art school. I found several running themes.

1. Old people and People with hats.

Hats signify an exciting time. There are many matching hats on old people and kids. Old people let us know that Disneyland can be enjoyed by everyone. I know this is true. I’ve been there with my grandparents. Although they preferred that we visit each land in a counter-clockwise direction and never jump between sides of the park.

“I’m cranky, and old-fashioned, but nice to my odd grandson and will wear a funny hat.”

“I’m just like my grandfather, and we love the same things. Hats."

"I'm Nikita Khrushchev and old, but we still enjoy Dumbo.”

“I’m a foreign sailor, and I like to go on dates with American girls."

“My grandmother has some wacky hat fashion sense, but she bought us these hats.”

2. Nuns

There are nuns all over the place in the Disneyland visual landscape. They show up on preliminary sketches, and in souvenir books. I don’t think there is any hidden religious subtext. This has more to do with the supposed cruelty of nuns who slam rulers on Catholic school children. Nuns are not thought of as carefree, anything goes, kinds of women.

“We’re nuns and we’re hardcore. But even we love Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.”

3. Blurry motion

These say “speed.” Disneyland can be a crazed, fast paced, and thrilling place. Everything is fast: a hip dance scene in Tomorrowland, Rocket Jets, America the Beautiful Circlevision, the Peoplemover, and the Mad Tea Party Teacups. The Teacups are, and Rocket Jets (now the Astro Orbitor) were, indeed, too fast for me. All that spinning. But the Peoplemover and Circlevision were fairly slow paced. This was good. The Peoplemover had a hard fiberglass interior. I would not want to be in a Peoplemover whipping around the bend that fast, slammed against the hard seat, or in a Circlevision theater with guests throwing up.

"Stop fidgeting, I am not trying to throw you out"

"For the love of God, slow this thing down."

Scary

Nobody drives this fast in D.C., except a Mission Impossible scene

4. Leg details

From a child’s point of view this must be what Disneyland looks like. These tell us that cast members are cleaning, the costume characters will interact with children, and there are horses. We also don’t need to involve ourselves with details such as individual people.

"No we don't work here."

5. Lingering

Many images show people meandering and lingering. They stare into a shop window on Main Street (why, I don’t know. The door is two feet away). Others look at unique items in the One of a Kind Shop, or watch the The Royal Street Bachelors in New Orleans Square. This tells us that there is time to relax, saunter, and discover stuff to buy. Unlike most of the stores I visit, here I can and linger and not be asked to leave. The downside of these images is the message that it’s okay to walk really slowly down Main Street, 8 abreast. It’s not. Some of us need lunch.

See, again, a boy with freaky feather hat. This is a Fascinator in England.

"I don't think I've ever seen anything as interesting as these, um, huge pepper mills."

"Oh my Fred, so exciting. Stand away and don't think about touching my wig!"

6. Darkness

Whether it’s real night outside, or simulated night in the Blue Bayou, these images are indicators that Disneyland is not just for kids. You can have dinner with your middle-aged friends or neighbors. You can take your spouse on a special dinner date while the kids hang out in Fantasyland. Or you can throw caution to the wind and get groovy with the young adults.

What is it with people who used to have coffee with dinner?

I believe the women on the left is the wig woman. These people are square.

If you're Tricia Nixon, this is your wicked sick scene

Share This Story

Tomoko Miho, poster, 65 Bridges to New York, 1967.

Whenever Noreen and I have attended a conference together, or spoken together (which is rare), she is surrounded by a coterie of fans. Of course, I’m typically waving and shouting, “I’m over here!” She’s always excited to meet new people, but isn’t so good at hearing compliments. Hard to believe, but she’s rather humble. The one compliment she has the most trouble accepting is when a young Asian woman tells her that she is her hero. This happens often. If I were a young Asian woman, I would say the same thing. I understand the issue, being someone’s hero, or ideal is a lot of pressure. One wrong word, and, bam, it’s over.

I remind Noreen that she said the same thing when she was starting out to Tomoko Miho. Whenever I see the movie, Two For the Road, with Audrey Hepburn, I think about Tomoko Miho. In the 1960s, she and the remarkable Jim Miho spent half a year touring Europe in a silver Porsche. They visited designers and must have been the chicest people in every restaurant or little village.

Miho’s work is lucid, minimal, true to international style modernism, and speaks with clarity. But it also allows for spontaneity and the unexpected. In her words, she “Joins space and substance. It is that harmony that creates the ringing clarity of statement that we sense as an experience, as a meaningful whole, as a oneness-as good design.” And, of course, she was Noreen’s hero.

Tomoko Miho, poster Great Architecture in Chicago, 1967.

Tomoko Miho, early 1950s

Tomoko Miho, poster and symbol, Omniplan Architects, Dallas, 1971

Tomoko Miho, poster for Champion Paper, 1971

Tomoko Miho, poster, National Council of Architectural Registration Boards, 1978.

Tomoko Miho, poster National Air and Space Museum, 1976

Tomoko Miho, packaging design, Neiman Marcus, 1972

Audrey Hepburn, Two for the Road, 1967

Share This Story

Hubert Hilscher, 1967

As a design student, I was repeatedly told to study Polish poster art. This was in response to my work that was deemed, “too tasty, too polite.” I spent hours looking at these posters and…, nothing. They made no sense to me, and I could not understand what they meant, how they arrived at this odd aesthetic, or what they had to do with my work. Today, I realize the value of these posters. They transcend the expected. They follow an aesthetic that is fearless and non-traditional. And they allow for gesture and passion.

Now I find myself suggesting the same thing to my students. My students come back and say, “Professor Adams, I don’t understand what they have to do with my work.”  To which I say, “Look at them again.”

The CYRK (circus) posters were designed during the golden age of polish posters, from 1962 to 1989. The state commissioned these posters to promote a new, modern circus. The designers followed this assignment with non-literal, suggestive forms. Often, these contained hidden anti-Soviet and anti-Communism symbols.

In all honesty, they still mystify me. I can imagine how Josef Muller-Brockmann designed a poster, or Alvin Lustig, or even Yusaku Kamekura. They are beautiful and mysterious, but are from a culture so far removed from my reality, that Martians might have designed them.

from the Lou Danziger Collection

Maciej Urbaniec, 1970s

B. Bolianowski, 1976

J. Rozycki, 1975

Jan Mlodozoniec, 1966

Maciej Urbaniec, 1970s

Maciej Urbaniec, 1968

Waldemar Swierzy, 1970s

Waldemar Swierzy, 1970s

Waldemar Swierzy, 1970

Waldemar Swierzy, 1970s

Waldemar Swierzy, 1968

Roman Cieslewicz, 1963

Roman Cieslewicz, 1962

Share This Story

Dave Willardson, detail, Chiquita Banana Girl, 1977

On my first day at art school, a student two years ahead told me emphatically, “You need to know how to airbrush.” As freshmen, we used colored pencils and gouache. In the junior level studio, they all used the airbrush. The sound of the spraying and chug of the motor was often interrupted with, “sonofabitch!” I was frequently concerned that my career would never happen because I couldn’t use an airbrush.

For those of you who only know the spray paint can symbol in Photoshop®, an airbrush is a machine that is like a fancy can of spray paint. A compressor runs a stream of air through a nozzle that has paint. To make an image, you mask off the areas you don’t want painted, and smoothly spray. Then you take off that mask and make another one. The airbrush sounds easy. I’m sure you may be thinking, “so what, I can use spray paint.” But it clogs, splatters, your masks pull off other paint, and you shout “sonofabitch!” a lot.

My inability to use the tool only makes my admiration for the masters of airbrush greater. Digital perfection and high-definition may be in vogue today, but I think it’s time to celebrate this great work. It was a southern California art form that screams Venice Beach, roller-skating, Xanadu, Sunset Strip, and palm trees. And even better, the guys who were the airbrush kings, such as Charlie White, were the most laid-back, down-to-earth, and just plain nice people I’ve ever known.

Dave Willardson, West magazine, 1971

Peter Palombi, poster, 1972

Dave Willardson, American Graffiti, 1973

Peter Lloyd, Kansas, 1975

Charles White, Star Wars, 1976

Charles White, Business Man's Lunch, 1976

Dave Willardson, Rolling Stone, 1976

Peter Palombi, Suburban Hooker, 1976

Tim Nikosey, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1978

Share This Story