Bowie Album cover- Psychadelic

Album back

Album cover

  

This is an album back and cover to a Bowie vinyl, Diamond Dogs. I added the back of the slip because I think the dog legs are an interesting part of this piece. It certainly stuck in my mind enough to include it as part of the picture. The art style is strange, looking at David Bowie it looks very close to a photograph but when you look at the two in the back it is a more painted style.

The function of this cover is to provide interesting visuals while listening to David Bowie's music.

Though the graphic style isn't obvious in this design it seems to be psychedelic with the strange images and colors. 

Star Trek T-shirt- Contemporary Retro

Hopefully the 'U.S.S. Enterprise' on this T-Shirt will spark some familiarity in most people. If you're really lost in the reference you can simply look to the bottom left to see 'Star Trek', a famous Sci-fi classic.
Though it is not a retro throw back of the style used in the years of Star Trek, (post-modernism), it is a throw back to the design of the ship. The style of this shirt is contemporary art. Though it puts a graph in the background to suggest that the designer is considering precision and scale in schematics, it is purely for the looks. As Star Trek is based loosely around actual scientific ideas so this shirt is gesturing towards the genre.
With how famous Star Trek is in today's retro saturated designs the function is to look awesome. For wanting to wear something awesome they get your money and possibly other people's money if they happen to like Star Trek.
As a fan of classic science fiction and current cinema I had to get this T-Shirt when I saw it on a run to the store. It turned out to be as comfy as it was attractive and it is probably one of my favorite shirts.

Movie Review: Natural Born Killers

The beginning of the movie starts the viewer off with an example of the main characters many killing sprees. It seems like they’ve just been sitting in the diner, bored until the main female protagonist fires off from being insulted by a man who starts provocatively dancing at her. In due time she starts beating the man to a pulp and soon her boyfriend joins in by fighting with the man’s friend. They could have stopped there but then they decide to kill everyone in the bar minus one guy whom they chose by ‘eenie meenie miney moe”. It’s interesting to notice how she started the provocative dancing without realizing the consequences of what could happen when dancing in front of a group of men. This scene shows the viewer the severity of how insane the anti-heros are. Mickey and Mallory didn’t have a plan for this killing, neither do they, in most cases, for the rest of the movie. They do as they please without suffering consequences, for a while.

Black and white film is used interchangeably with color. A pattern seems to form of the black and white being used for when they are doing a crime and color being used for the high they get off of their life wasting explorations.

In the beginning credits the cinematography is very wild, as the camera attempts to capture the strange life that Mickey and Mallory live.The lighting has a crazy amount of colors and it’s hard to focus on just one thing. Sometimes animation is used to get across a spiritual feel to how Mickey and Mallory feel for each other.

The movies signals are contradictory. Warning signals go off in my head as certain inappropriate situations come up, inappropriate situations that happened in Mickey’s past, but the movie treats it as if it’s an everyday occurrence and even uses canned laughter as I personally am in horror. It’s very expressional to do this, the brain makes connections and you understand why, but it’s very unusual and almost uncanny.
The idea of making connections through expressive motifs of past media is how it is connected to the graphic style of the era, Post-modernism. Just like in Post-modernism, it embraces effects used in the past (canned laughter) and uses them to their advantage to get across an idea or feeling. For example, canned laughter was used in old 1950s sit-coms to cue laughter from the audience, but in Natural Born Killers it was used to press an idea of how much abuse Mickey was receiving on a daily basis in her home life. Post-modernism took people's knowledge of past references to make people understand and make connections in their head on the tone to the story.

Knowing how the two characters connected through their hardships makes one understand the reason why they adorn violence. Violence is how they took care of Mallory’s molestive father and neglective mother. The tragic past lead the viewer to connect, on some level with the anti-heros. Had Mallory not had as terrible background she would not have committed such despicable crimes in the future. Honestly they’re a very broken couple, trying their best to get thrills from murder to mask the terrible feelings of their past.

This movie reveals the disgusting nature of humans. I find the irony in their quote “tonight’s movie will be Escape From the Planet of the Apes’, during the prison, hilarious as the entire movie makes the entire planet sound like a jungle.

Spring Casemate Publishers Magazine- Swiss Style

This is a Casemate Publishers magazine that I got in the mail. Its function is to provide different books on military history, science and defense studies. The artwork of the title is simplistic and uniform with the color scheme being very minimalistic. The red sun is precisely set in the upper middle part of the picture, with black waves and ship just slightly asymmetrical. It is very obvious that the cover for casemate publishers is Swiss Style. Ignoring the ‘Casemate’ brand, most of the font is even in that of Typographic style.

What attracted me to this piece were the reasons that made it Swiss Style. It is simplistic and bold in its flat silhouettes. Red with gray scale is naturally an eye catching scheme so it really stood out to me. There is detail in the rippling waves’ silhouette and the ship's’ edge that makes this a complex piece.

Parkland Brochure-Contemporary

This is a brochure cover that advertises the Parkland 2016-17 Theater. It’s function is to get across the feeling of acting and performance immediately. Just throwing a glance in the direction of this colorful brochure should entice one to pick it up because of how dynamic the shots are.The typography matches the white dividing lines between each picture and even has a simple little jester to the left, also in white. I got this on the first day when walking to my art classes. Most brochures are made for each year so, needless to say, this is a piece of contemporary art design with no real references to the past.
I can relate that simple cartoon jester to the old Jump Start PC Games back in 2009. It is very similar in it's pose and star at the top and as soon as I figured it out it sort of blew my mind. You won't be able to find an image of the little figure I'm referencing, so I took a screen shot of it.

See how similar? Even though it seems so long ago it is still contemporary graphic design, with some possible references to Late modernism with it's simple shapes and single representing the horizon line.

Anime Central Lanyard-Contemporary

This is a free lanyard that came with my Anime Central ID card. It's function is to keep the ID out and visible without having to worry about it slipping away or getting lost. I found it quite considerate of the corporate system to provide a free lanyard while making it look so visually appealing.
The spacing and relatively same sized objects allow for a pattern to be formed by a wide variety of little pictures. The little pictures are caricatures of items associated with subjects that Anime Central may delve deeply into or simply gesture towards. For example, an illustration of a gaming controller can be seen at the very left. Since there are multiple panels involved in gaming this makes a lot of sense to include the picture, for gamers to associate with. Something to be less associated with would be the rocket, but, hey, it looks cute doesn't it?
The artistic function of this lanyard is to give cute cartoonist images for the wearer to associate with. I personally like to keep it as a souvenir, just in case I ever need a lanyard.
This is a piece of contemporary design, as it was more currently made.

Suicide Squad Movie Poster-Contemporary

This is a movie poster I received on the first day of taking a field trip to the very class that I write this for. The movie 'Suicide Squad' is just as colorful as the poster, though the choice of making the theme cereal escapes me. They could have been going for the idea of the movie being 'overdone' or in the cereal's case 'too sugary' as there are apparently only marshmallows and no nutritious food to consume. The movie is all about the villains, there are a lot, and they all have backstories. The movie puts a lot of emphasis in each of their reactions to the scenarios they are put into while maintaining suggestions to the plot. It is this way in which the movie could be seen as 'sugary sweet' or 'overdone'.
The purpose of this poster is to show the 'nothing but naughty fun' movie now in theaters. With an amalgam of bright colors it's an easy attention drawer. The main characters in the movie and their special weapons are represented as marshmallows.