Oscar Wilde Cover: Week 4

This book cover was designed by Stefanie Posavec. The illustration is very striking but the type is still very beautiful without competing with the illustration. The type is a combination of sans serif and a hand-done-looking script. This is a paperback cover for Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and the intended audience is anyone who would like to read this classic, whether for school or leisure. The thin, geometric sans serif creates easy and instant recognition of Wilde's work, while being very stylish and modern, like Wilde was in his day. The script title hints at Victorian hand-written letters. The title fills the space behind the young man, creating space between the illustration and the type. It looks a bit like he is turning away from the type, like how Dorian turns away from his portrait in the book. This strong conceptual connection is inspiring and is a great example of creative typography for my own work.

Modern Type, #3

This example of modern typography is from the book Graphic Styles : From Victorian to New Century. The specific example I want to write about is the top image which is a poster designed by Max Burchartz. The use of bold, all caps, sans serif contrasts nicely with the placement of the photos. It's a poster advertising the Schubert Festival in Austria, which holds concerts for classical style musicians to this day. The box of text draws attention to the information within and the text runs up to the edge of the box, though it doesn't look like too much. The point size changes create a clear hierarchy. I think that this organization is a great example to reference to in my work.