Graphic Design

 

Who better to illustrate this than Milton Glaser,

from his book ‘Art is Work’, Thames & Hudson, 2000…

 

 

For the visual equivalent

of an oxymoron, consider his haunting AIDS logo.

(Milton is perhaps best known as the designer of the world famous “I©NY” logo.)

 

And if you want to create ambiguity, then why not use the ambiguity that the medium of the printed surface itself creates?

The printed surface pretends that what is depicted is real – there’s a tree, a bridge, a mountain, a cheetah…

so why not create an unexpected fake ‘reality’

 

  

Milton Glaser,  ‘Art is Work’, Thames & Hudson

 

It’s a nice touch.

 

Delude people into thinking there

 is a secret to reveal – make them want to

fold back the corner to reveal more clearly what’s underneath…

fix something that is not supposed to be…

make them want to

remove the bits attached with masking tape… what’s underneath?

Did some malicious student stick them there?

 

But these were not really secrets, they were surprises.

Of course, try as they might, passers-by of these posters could not

reveal these secrets. The ‘turned over corner’ will not fold back, and the added bits too are printed, not real.

As he points out, shallow space is much easier to counterfeit than deeper three dimensionality.

 

And as a final deliciously wicked touch,

 he even cut the corner off the poster on the left so it even had the right shape.

 

To get attention,

lead people to a false belief,

Lure them with a secret that does not exist

and get them to act on it so they discover the world

 is utterly unlike their preconceptions.

 

Create that ‘oh!’ moment, and you have them.

If you are into graphic design, Milton’s book is packed with such marks of genius,

so get someone who really loves you to buy it for you. Failing that, remortgage your house and buy it yourself.