There is no better or longer-lasting application of the graphic designer’s craft than the art poster—illustration, typography and colour combined to make art. Long after the brochures are land-filled and the website has vanished, a well-crafted printed event poster will remain on walls of offices and homes, reminding us of a great moment, communicating our passions or adding colour to our lives. We unabashedly take our inspiration from the great practitioners of the art form— A. M. Cassandre, Fix-Masseau, Seymour Chwast, Peter Max, Milton Glaser, Abram Games, Neville Smith, Guy Allen, Paula Scher, Michael Schwab, Erik Nitsche… and many more.
BAUHAUS - WALTER GROPIUS ICONOGRAPHIKA
The school of art and design at Dessau, now a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site, was the second of three school campuses for the Bauhaus movement and certainly the most iconic of the three. Designed by Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, the building remains today the quintessential expression of minimalist Bauhaus ideals — the unification of the principles of mass production with individual artistic vision and the combination of modernist aesthetics and industrial materials with everyday function.
B-58 HUSTLER - ROBERT WIDMER
ICONOGRAPHIKA
Robert H. Widmer was one of America’s most accomplished military aircraft designers. Over a 50-year career with the Convair-Lockheed Martin continuum of companies, Widmer often anticipated new aircraft requirements, and had ready designs for the B-58 Hustler and the F-16 Fighting Falcon when the Air Force came knocking. Other projects included the Kingfish spy plane and the Tomahawk cruise missile. Widmer pioneered many advanced aviation technologies including fly-by-wire control, stealth technology and unmanned aerial vehicles.
THE SHEPHERD
ICONOGRAPHIKA
Each Christmas Eve since it was first read nearly four decades ago, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation plays a recording of a forty-minute broadcast of Frederick Forsyth’s supernatural and haunting ghost story called The Shepherd. Forsyth wrote The Shepherd in a day as a Christmas gift to his wife. As it turned out, it was a Christmas gift to the world, to Canada. . It is Christmas Eve in the story, as it is tonight, and the unknown pilot is trying to get home for Christmas when everything that could go wrong does. He finds himself over the North Sea at night, in winter, in the clag and without radio, navigational aid or time.
MONTEBELLO – C’EST MAGNIFIQUE!
The signature winter flying event for the Canadian Owners and Pilots Association is the ski-plane fly-in on the frozen Ottawa River at the magnificent Fairmont Chateau Montebello—the world’s largest log structure. For the design, we were channeling the beautiful and iconic ski and travel posters from the 1930s to 1950s of the Laurentian ski region of Quebec—sunny skies, breathtaking architecture and plenty of healthy winter activity and clear day flying.