Response

While I was snowed in this week, I plowed through the massive reading Jan assigned to us for the week. It was kind of nice to have a few extra days to mull it over because it was so interesting. I love seeing how magazines have changed over time. I really loved this 1957 Vogue feature:

The red of her lips and fingernails really pop and make a statement for themselves. For a spread about eye makeup, I thought the photo concept was genius. By photographing her peeking through her fingers, the designer also got to incorporate a stand out red as well as multiple beauty elements, lips, nails, eyes. The eyes on the right side are so strange! They stand out in a very 3D, graphic way. Usually, designers don't pull the eyeball off the model, so I thought this was an interesting idea. 

As the article stated, Europeans were less likely to play up white space in their designs because of their circumstances. As nations tried to recuperate after WWII, magazine designs were valued according to their functionality and ability to put as much on a page without cluttering it. There wasn't as much money to print excess pages, so the designs were less likely to incorporate white space. How interesting. Who knew? Here's a great example of the American obsession with white space from a 1957 Playboy cover:

One of the stories that caught my eye in my blog this week was the "stroboscopic titles" of Gaspar Noe's new film. (I have no idea who Gaspar Noe is, but he's obviously immersed in the European techno world. Here is Noe's typographical work for his own name:

Ahh, it kind of gives me a headache if I look at it for too long. Using the O as his center allows this design to work, but I don't think I could be so techno-hip. Not my favorite, but I can definitely say that it grabs my attention!