Massimo Vignelli: Informational Poster

Communication Studio II

Overview

Through an array of projects focused on a “Design Hero,” I will be building on the communication design concepts and skills from Communication Studio I. With emphases on visual hierarchy, typography, and story-telling, I will first develop familiarity with the existing guiding principles then take risks, explore, and play to create harmonious, striking, communicative visuals and interactions in my own way. From making mistakes, reflecting, and learning, I hope to develop my own design process and principles, contributing to my ability to create strong, engaging visuals and my overall growth as a designer.

Design Heroes

Feb 4, 2021

Hans Wegner

The first designer that came to my mind was Hans Wegner, a Danish furniture designer during the modernist era. I was drawn to his work because of a personal experience interacting with one of the chairs he designed. I remembered going to a furniture exhibit and sat on one of the chairs in the chair sector. Without knowing back then, the chair I sat on was designed by Hans Wegner. It was ordinary, yet very elegant and comfortable. The experience was so memorable, and the name had stuck with me ever since.

Massimo Vignelli

For this second designer, I did not have someone specific in mind; however, I knew that I wanted to select a designer who has some communication design work. After doing some internet surfing, I came across Massimo Vignelli’s work. Although a lot of his work was made many decades ago, they are still prevalent in today’s life. I was not only interested in the simplicity and the use of type in his work but also was drawn to his philosophy of functionalism and timelessness, which I wanted to learn more about.

I ended up choosing Massimo Vignelli as my design hero since I wanted my projects to be around a designer with visual work. I also found Massimo’s quotes to be very powerful and wanted to learn more about his method of working.

Research

Feb 9, 2021

Following the guiding questions provided in class, I began researching Massimo’s life and design. I also wrote a 1500-word biography to help me understand him more. My research and essay can be accessed through the notion link below:

Design Hero: Massimo Vignelli

Informational Poster

For the first project in this series of work, I will be making an informational poster for my design hero. The poster is intended to introduce Massimo to people who do not know him. It should captivate them as well as introduce them to his life and work through the use of typography, scale, color, and imagery.

Initial Exploration

Feb 16, 2021

Moodboard

In order to create a poster that is representative of Massimo Vignelli, I started by making a mood board. By immersing myself in his work, I could better understand his color and typographical choices. I also read two of his books — The Vignelli Canon and Vignelli: From A to Z — to understand the design principles behind his work. The mood board works that I like, a color palette, 3 portraits, and Massimo’s favorite typefaces––Helvetica and Bodini. Essentially, the mood board will serve as a visual guide for my poster creation process.

Sketching

Moving on from the mood board, I drew out some poster sketches. At this stage of the process, I wanted to explore with type and images as broadly as possible before scoping down in the next step. In these sketches, I mainly played with how I can introduce Massimo’s work and using different portraits throughout time. In one of the sketches, I used the NY MTA map Massimo designed in 1972 as a timeline. I also started incorporating grids into my sketches as Massimo was a strong advocate for the use of grid structure in design. Massimo also used a lot of negative space in his work to create emphasis, which I tried to imitate while providing all the information required from the project prompt.

Digital Sketches

Transitioning from drawing, I made some digital sketches in Illustrator to better visualize the poster. This process still did not involve any refinement as the aim was to further explore and capture as many ideas as possible. I first tried to recreate my hand-drawn sketches then as more ideas popped into my head, I would just throw those new elements onto my Illustrator board before they slipped away.

Feedback

At this point of my exploration, I scheduled a meeting with Brett to talk about my process and get some advice on my work. Here are some key takeaways from the chat:

1. The poster should suggest the work of the designer but doesn’t have to be exactly imitating the designer’s style, so you can be more expressive with type.
2. Massimo was great with the use of type. How can you incorporate that in your work?
3. Play with the hierarchy. You might set the quote to be bigger than the name.
4. How do you make the poster reflective of yourself? Make it Bon.

Initial Posters Iterations

Feb 18, 2021

Gathering All the Elements

Up until this point, my work was still very loose; therefore, to move forward, instead of using placement texts and photos, I wanted to gather all the elements for my poster. This process would allow me to know the constraints that I am working within. The first element I focused on was the quote:

“Design is permanent. Styling is ephemeral.”

I chose this quote as it reiterates Massimo’s idealogy in a very concise and memorable way; the statement is powerful and representative of Massimo’s honest and simple style.

The next element I focused on was Massimo’s work. Drawing inspiration from the icons he designed for the New York MTA in 1972, I curated his work in circular cutouts and added color tints.

I then edited my essay down to two short paragraphs and created the content for the timeline. I also saved a bunch of portraits that I can later choose from when I try to incorporate Massimo’s picture into my poster. Making these elements tangible gave me a direction to start experimenting with the composition of the poster without getting lost.

1st Direction

Keeping the feedback for my sketches in mind, I began working on my poster with a focus on type and scale. From the chat with Brett, I really liked the idea that the quote might be the biggest element in the hierarchy, so I started moving in that direction. Massimo’s words were powerful and well-known; thus, it is reasonable to give it the highest priority on the poster. I tried different variations of how the quote can be laid out on the poster, mainly playing with scale, color, and juxtaposition.

I picked the colors black, red, and white since these colors were commonly used by Massimo and other modernist designers. The first part of the quote––“Design is permanent”–– was in red as I believed this was the most important part of the quote and should receive the most emphasis. The later part of the quote––“Styling is ephemeral”––had less importance; therefore, I put it in white and scale it down so it would not take up as much visual attention as the first part. I also lowered the opacity of the latter part to make it seemed as if the words were fading away, representing the quality of being ephemeral. Arranging the quote on the poster, I realized that the third composition worked best because the first two were a bit hard to read when I showed them to my peers.

After being somewhat satisfied with the quote, I then added other elements onto the poster according to their level of importance to maintain the visual hierarchy. Using guides and a grid, I tried to invoke a sense of structure through the alignment of some elements.

2nd Direction

For the second direction of the poster, instead of using the quote as the main emphasis, I changed the main point of focus to the name. I also played with the idea of using the subway map as the structure for the timeline. For Massimo’s work, I still used the same circle cutouts to create an allusion to the MTA signage. The work was put but in the background with lowered opacity, so they would not compete with the elements in the foreground for attention. From far away, I wanted people to perceive them as just color dots. Only when they walked in to examine the poster, they would realize that Massimo’s work is represented inside these dots. I thought this might add more depth to the poster and make it more intriguing. I also add a grainy-paper texture effect to the poster, mimicking how Massimo’s subway map was first printed.

Here are my poster iterations:

Feedback

1. For the left poster, the timeline can be more distinguished from the other elements. Maybe consider using a different typeface.
2. The scale of the timeline could be smaller. When printed, they will look really big.
3. The quote can be even more emphasized. Consider keeping just the “Design is permanent” part. This might allow for more space to play with scale.
4. Could play with the scales of dots. Varying sizes can make the poster more visually engaging.
5. The way the picture is cropped for the left poster is a bit awkward.
6. The right picture is too grainy.
7. Overall, there are some elements that are working on both posters. Maybe think of a way to combine these elements onto one poster.
8. Fix the kerning!

Choosing a Direction

Feb 25, 2021

For next class, I have to bring in one poster iteration; therefore, this weekend, I narrowed my poster iterations down to one direction before starting to refine it. I decided to go with the first direction iteration as I enjoyed how my eyes moved through the composition more. Although I did not choose the second direction, I still wanted to incorporate its use of the subway map into my poster since it was an important part of Massimo’s work. Doing so would also allow the timeline to be more interesting.

During this process, I first began by trying to find the right placement for the quote. Since the word “permanent” is quite long, placing it horizontally made it look squeezed, so I decided to place it vertically instead. This allowed for the quote to fit more comfortably on the poster even when I increased its scale. After getting the placement of the quote to work, I then paid attention to the kerning of the letters. Decreasing the distance between each letter helped tighten the quote and make it neater. Moving on, I changed the arrangement of the dots. I created a mix of vertical and horizontal orientations to add more visual variety. After tweaking these elements, I scheduled another meeting with Brett to show him my in-progress work.

Feedback

1. Maybe add more dimension to the subway. Use different shades of gray to create depth.
2. Look at how images are cropped inside the dots. Pay more attention to that. Some are cropped in an uninteresting way.
3. The portrait can still be treated better. Feels a bit out of place.
4. More dates can be added to the timeline to represent Massimo’s prolific life.
5. Tint overlays on the dots make the work look muddy.

After the meeting, I continued to make changes to my poster. I first edited the portrait of Massimo. By using a picture with higher fidelity and really focusing on his face, I hoped that my use of portrait would be more powerful than my last iteration. To make the portrayal of his work clearer, I took out the color tints in the dots. As for the subway, adding a touch of drop shadow and changing the values of grey were effective in create the subtle depth I wanted in the background. I also decided to show the full 4 digits for each year as it was more communicative as a timeline than showing the last 2 digits.

I took a break since I felt like I had been staring the iterations for too long and was losing sensitivity to the details on the poster. Coming back to it again Monday night, I got more feedback from my friends in studio and from Hannah. I decided to make a more cohesive timeline and adjust the alignment of different elements before putting my single poster iteration on the class Figma board.

Feedback

1. Margin for the excerpt is too tight.
2. Make the name pop up more.
3. Fix how works are being shown in dots. Words inside them are distracting.
4. Slight variation in dot sizes make them look unintentional.
5. Portait is still too distracting. Also looks a bit unprofessional.

Poster for Final Crit

Mar 2, 2021

For this last iteration, the overall structure of poster pretty much remained the same; however, I changed the images inside the dots and chose a new portrait. After being pretty satisfied, I then worked on the rags of my writing, making sure that there were no ophans, widows, or weird gaps. For the type, I chose to go with 12/14, which seemed like an appropriate proportion. I then did a test print before printing the actual poster out on the tabloid oversize paper and tiling them.

From the test print, some colors seemed to appear darker than on the computer; therefore, I had to readjust them. Besides the color, overall, I enjoyed how the other elements looked, especially with the scale of the quote, which I thought really stood out.

Here is the poster I brought to final crit:

After the final crit, I ended up tweaking the position of the the name a bit more.

Here is my final poster:

Reflection

Overall, I am pretty satisfied with how my poster turned out, especially with the use of scale for different elements to establish hierarchy. Making this poster, I also realized my tendency to, sometimes, play it too safe. In the beginning, I tried to follow Massimo’s simple style and was afraid that my work would not represent him well enough; instead of designing a poster for Massimo, I tried to become Massimo, following every rules and principles he established. This limited my options, and I felt a bit stuck. However, toward the end of the project, I realized that Massimo’s philosophy is not only about using clean modenist typography or imagery but is more based on designing with an intention. As long as I have a clear intention for my design decisions, I should not be afraid to explore. I hope to carry this understanding to my other projects this semester.