Graphic Style Lab: Develop Your Own Style With 50 Hands-On Exercises

Cover
Title
CONTENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PREFACE: PERSONAL STYLE: PRO AND CON
INTRODUCTION: HAVE FUN . . . PLAY
NO. 1 A GLOSSARY KNOW THE STYLES YOU’RE PLAYING WITH
NO. 2 PLAYING WITH OLD–NEW–STYLE
	1. Create an album cover that parodies famous 1920s Russian avant garde design using a photo of yourself
	2. Create “tour guides” for different historical styles, featuring historical and contemporary applications
	3. Redesign an existing mass-market coffee package to make it more appealing to an upscale consumer
	4. Touch the heart of an acquaintance through a designed gift
	5. Invent a beverage company that is represented by a venerable heritage, yet is of the moment, and design the label for its signature product
	6. Typographically make advertisements or promotions for something using American wood type
	7. Combine vintage and contemporary styles to personalize a beer brand
	8. Create the identity — logo, signage, menus, and matches — for a restaurant that has a vintage French bistro theme
	9. Conceive and design the packaging for a stationery product that has a vintage veneer yet is a useful gift today
	10. Use Italian commercial typographic references to make an artist’s book
NO. 3 PLAYING WITH VISUAL VOICE
	11. Use cut-and-paste collage to mash up multiple styles and images into a cohesive visual statement on a specific theme
	12. Transform a souvenir postcard into social protest
	13. Repurpose Soviet agitprop posters to celebrate something entirely contemporary
	14. Design a chair that is symbolically based on a famous person using styles that express his or her period of time
	15. Express a personal voice in a public space
	16. Create a vintage typographic identity for a regional restaurant
NO. 4 PLAYING WITH ATTITUDE ATTITUDE
	17. Transform a digital idea into an analog outcome
	18. Evoke 1920s decorative style with twenty-first-century attitude
	19. Design posters that convey graphic commentary on issues of importance for you and society
	20. Make a visual pun from a well-known logo, word mark, or trademark
	21. Design a DVD box set for a recent action film using type that represents the plot and time period of the movie
	22. Create distinctive signs that you can use to sell produce in a grocery store, farmers’ market, or vegetable stand
	23. Parody any well-known rock-and-roll poster from the ’60s to promote a contemporary musician
	24. Use familiar yet novel graphics to shout out a new food product
	25. Find a palatable way to express extreme violence using Saul Bass expressionism
	26. Using only drawing, painting, and/or hand lettering, design a series of book jackets for the cannon of modern literature
	27. Use delftware pottery designs as a narrative element
NO. 5 PLAYING WITH SIMPLICITY + COMPLEXITY
	28. Use silk screen or letterpress to reproduce a series of inspirational signs and posters with bold wood type or metal lettering
	29. Use airbrush to create a streamlined heroic representation on a poster for a sporting event
	30. Conceive a series of recruitment posters for a college continuing education program
	31. Create optical iterations of the letters
	32. Provide distinct identities for a single company’s various products
	33. Use familiar objects in unexpected ways
	34. Design maps with distinct stylistic personalities
	35. Make what is a frequently impersonal experience into a more comfortable one through a product designed in a friendly, nostalgic package
	36. Transform sound into visual representation of music
NO. 6 PLAYING WITH Symbolic TYPE
	37. Create a blackletter typeface that is old and new
	38. Design custom lettering based on classic banknotes, deeds, or stock certificates
	39. Design a typographic sign, billboard, or mural that looks both old and new
	40. Design a book cover or poster that combines different styles of lettering into one startling typographic approach
	41. Make words into signs and signs into words
	42. Use movie house vernacular as a title for a theatrical performance
	43. Reinterpret classic circus poster lettering
	44. Design illuminated typographic compositions that are simultaneously almost unreadable and ornate, yet entirely legible
	45. Make a facsimile of vintage New York tabloid newspapers
	46. Design typography that represents, symbolizes, or illustrates an individual’s personality. (It can be a friend or well-known person)
	47. Create a series of designs in various historical styles
	48. Make a series of silk-screen gig posters incorporating various vernacular styles, each with its own distinct character, but also with your own personal style
	49. Design a stylized comics poster that is dense with different layers and characters, yet perfectly readable
	50. Use any small everyday thing (paper or object) to make a poster with a message where the “thing” that you select is conceptually appropriate
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS