12.11.15 | Reading Assignment 3

Ladislav Sutnar Originally a painter, Sutnar's works have a very deliberately codified and engineered look to them: from company catalogs to brochures, I definitely enjoy the level of consistency, restraint, deliberation in color usage and overall sense of modernism his works employ.

The cover to Venus illustrates an element of Sutnar's works Graphic Design, Referenced does not: outside of his catalog and brochure works, he has a number of illustrations minimalizing the female form - distilling it as opposed to trivializing it, rather. In this case, the whole package results in an interesting composition: the almost thrifty use of shapes making up the head and hair also nicely space out the page, while the massive type on the left gives it a contemporary, almost early-2000s feel (this was produced in 2011).



Otl Aicher
Aicher's reach generally consisted of graphic work for small corporate entities, and - notably - the 1972 Summer Olympic Games in Munich. His color use is generally cool, especially in his advertisements for the Olympic Games, and his breadth of works pertaining to establishing corporate identity are likewise interesting without feeling overbearing.

This particular pictogram of Aicher's for the 1972 Olympic Games wasn't specifically covered in the book, though the composition overall is incredibly interesting and resourceful; including blacks and whites, it only uses a total of six colors, relying on color theory to provide standout illustrations of minimal "stick figure"-esque illustrations against complementary background colors. The vertical columns dividing up the information give it an almost metropolitan feel, while similarly to Kamekura the illustrations of the figures themselves are expressive and determined, bordering on abstractions with the shooters on the far right.



Cato Partners
Somewhat similarly to Aicher above, Cato Partners, started by Ken Cato, eventually expanded into a wide array of umbrella-corporate locations, albeit with specializations focusing on local partnerships per a given area. With locations in various parts of the eastern and western worlds, design influences are evident while not predominant, fixating mostly on towering human forms in tangible applications. These silhouettes are often integrated into the fixtures of their buildings, rather than appearing alongside them like cut-outs; a certain "tiling" effect gives many of them a sense of depth, having been worked into brick and mortar. Their non-human (read: abstract) works are similarly interesting due to the levels of depth they convey, often making full use of the three dimensions they're presented in.

The Jiafu logo clearly emphasizes the core tenets of Cato Partners: emphasis on local business as well as an illusory sense of depth and interconnectedness in its illustrations. The type is bold and serves as an effective eye-catcher transcending language barriers. While information is given in both English and Chinese, as it's for a company in a large port town known as Guangzhou, its heavy sans-serif type provides a level of integrity and gravity sure to attract attention. The orange "wall" going partially behind the bolded type is also a nice touch, with the visual of it "streaming through" the logo resembling a sense of lateral movement similar to that found in the FedEx logo.