Restored 1958 Dan Reisinger Brussels Exposition Poster

It’s taken me a while, but I finally got around to having my Dan Reisinger 1958 Brussels World’s Fair poster restored. “Restored” is perhaps a strange term here—when I received it, it was in its original condition: folded five times. These posters advertising the 1958 Exposition in Belgium had been mailed out in envelopes, and so in order to get it to look good in a frame, I had it professionally linen-backed. The folds were ironed out, and so the composition of the poster really shines now. So I’d say it’s more “improved” than “restored.” Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get a very good shot of it on the wall due to reflection, but hopefully at some point I’ll figure out a way to capture this thing in all of its glory. In the meantime there are still some yummy close-ups in the original post.

Tags: 1950s, Dan Reisinger, eBay, mid-century, modern, paper, poster, printing, restoration, typography, vintage, World's Fair

A Link to the Past

NYU Gallatin AlumniLink Mentor Program Brochure

I’ve been on a bit of a “ribbon lettering” kick lately. For this brochure/identity design, I was heavily inspired by a number of different sources, both old and new.

I wanted to conjure the notion of “link,” without using a cliché chain illustration in the process. The idea of roads and paths intersecting felt apropos to the concept of mentorship, and after doing some Wikimedia Commons research on such structures, I came up with a lettering style based on the look and feel of junctions or interchanges.

"Link" lettering, process

I wanted the composition of the piece to be simple and adaptable. For inspiration, I perused my copy of Meggs’ A History of Graphic Design (best textbook ever), and came across a simple-yet-gorgeous modernist poster by Lester Beall designed in 1937 for the Rural Electrification Administration. According to Philip Meggs, the poster was intended to be “understandable by illiterate and semi literate audiences,” and although my derivation was a bit more complex, I figured it would probably get the point across fairly easily to very literate university students.

After the basic concept was designed and approved, my brother Devin Korwin helped out with some last-minute Cassandresque shading, just as he had for the “Listening to Wine” poster.

Tags: 1930s, A.M. Cassandre, Devin Korwin, font, Gallatin, identity, Lester Beall, lettering, logo, mid-century, New York, NYU, paper, Philip Meggs, poster, type, typeface, typography, vintage, wordmark

Holiday present: A.M. Cassandre Photoshop Airbrush Tutorial

A reader wrote to me today to find out more about how the airbrush effects were achieved in the Gallatin “Listening to Wine” poster design. The design had been based on the feel of many wonderful posters by Adolphe Mouron Cassandre, whose dramatic shading effects defined an era of 20th century advertising posters. As a holiday present to all who may stumble upon this post, here’s a quick and dirty tutorial to help you experiment with the stippled airbrush texture effect made possible by Photoshop’s dissolve blending mode:

1. Start with a new Photoshop document, with a blank white layer as the background.
2. Create a new transparent layer on which you will use your “airbrush.” (It’s a best practice to create layers instead of destructively airbrushing directly on the background.)
3. On the new, transparent layer, create a circular selection using the Elliptical Marquee tool.
4. On the Layers palette, click the “Add layer mask” button (looks like a shaded rectangle with a white circle inside). This will create a layer mask from your circular selection, allowing you to work on the layer without having to worry about losing the original selection shape.
5. Click on the Layer 1 thumbnail to make sure that the layer itself is selected and not the layer mask. It’s sometimes difficult to tell which is currently “active.”
6. Select the Brush tool from the tool bar (or press “B” on your keyboard).
7. From the Brush palette, select a brush that is soft, round, and large. The exact size will depend on the application, but you can use the [ and ] keys on your keyboard to scale the brush up or down while you’re using it.
8. Also from the Brush palette, use the Mode drop-down menu to change the brush’s blending mode to Dissolve.
9. Make sure that the Foreground Color is set to something other than white (black is a great color to practice with), and then click and drag your brush tool across the canvas. You should see a speckled effect on the feathered edges of the brush. If you were using the “Normal” blending mode instead of dissolve, the feathered edges would be soft and clean and would lack the texture that “Dissolve” offers.
10. You can vary the effect by changing the brush size and also by altering the Brush palette’s Opacity or Flow settings. Experiment in order to find the effect that works best for your application.
11. Use additional layers and layer masks just as you would use vellum and stencils in the real world. Layer mask “stencils” help to define the boundaries of the shading effect, but the brush itself defines the look. Another advantage to using layer masks, rather than simple selections, is that the “overspray” is accessible if the mask needs to be moved at any point in the future. It’s like having a stencil that can travel through time!

Tags: 1930s, A.M. Cassandre, font, Mostra, paper, poster, retro, technique, tutorial, typeface, typography, vintage

Dan Reisinger Brussels Exposition Poster, 1958

Just scored this wonderful Dan Reisinger poster on eBay, from the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair. It even came with the original envelope in which it had been mailed to Sarkes Tarzian, Inc. / WTTV in Bloomington, Indiana, from Brussels, Belgium in 1958. According to Wikipedia, Mr. Reisinger won first prize for this poster design for the Palais International de la Science (International Hall of Science). I’ve actually had quite a difficult time finding any other images of this poster anywhere else on the Internet, besides the French version depicted on danreisinger.com. I’m looking forward to learning more about it—but I think the first step is to have it linen-mounted and framed.

[View with PicLens]

Tags: 1950s, Dan Reisinger, eBay, mid-century, modern, paper, poster, printing, typography, vintage, World's Fair

Devin’s Debut

Gallatin Listening to Wine poster, first draft, straight out of Illustrator, and before Devin's Magic

For a recent NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study poster design, my brother Devin Korwin contributed his Wacom tablet skills and helped make a good poster design great. We were inspired by the gritty-yet-soft shading techniques used by advertising poster artists such as Adolphe Mouron Cassandre in the earlier half of the 20th century. After designing the layout, the illustration, and typesetting the copy (in Alternate Gothic and Mark Simonson’s Mostra), I handed my file over to Devin for him to add his artistic touch. The shading alone adds so much depth and interest to the design, but the aged paper texture puts the icing on the cake.

Whereas Cassandre must have got messy with stencils and airbrushes, we digital cheaters can achieve a pretty decent looking analog using Photoshop’s “dissolve” blending mode.*

I’m finding it really cool that I get to work with my brothers on occasion. My other brother, Zach, has been helping out with WordPress sites, most recently including donzukas.com (which I still have to make a portfolio entry about!)

Tags: 1930s, A.M. Cassandre, font, Mostra, paper, poster, retro, technique, typeface, typography, vintage