1 One of the most common questions I get at a conference or speaking engagement is,
what or who were your influences?
Or what is your inspiration?
There's so many graphic designers
that I find extraordinary,
and it's always tricky to narrow down that enormous list just to a few.
But there are some that stand out, like Alexander Girard,
an amazing colorist who worked both in
graphics and environments across all kind of media.
Or Sister Corita Kent, who
used silkscreen and working with young people created a whole new voice of a generation in the 1960s.
Again, psychedelic colors combined in odd ways that are completely unexpected.
And
the great Margaret Larson,
one of the best art directors of the 20th century,
often overlooked, but a remarkable individual who
tackled color in ways that was often completely incorrect,
but amazing.
I
saw Bass.
He was the first person to call when the phone was installed at the Adams Morioka offices.
He asked what I needed,
and I said advice,
which he kindly gave me for many years.
His work changed how I thought about graphic design.
I saw the film titles for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho in my first year in school.
It
was so minimal, with one typeface, geometric bars, and black and white.
How could something so simple,
with so few elements, be so dynamic?
The color of the title sequence of Vertigo gave me the freedom to work with color boldly and unapologetically.
He worked in big swaths of color.
Rather than small, itsy-bitsy pieces,
he uses an entire frame of red over this eyeball.
Imagine this on a giant movie screen in the theater.
The motion, typography, and color all tell a story.
And his print work challenges us to look at color as iconography.
Very quickly, we can see from the colors of the flags on each of these negatives that
this isn't an international film festival.
And
even this set of matchbox covers that Saul does design, which,
again, are never anything close to being timid.
There
was always something funny about Saul's work, also.
If you're going to have an affair in the afternoon,
what's the first thing you might do?
Well, one would hopefully pull the shades down.
He explained to me that he made the imprint on this poster with potato.
That's pretty exciting, considering how tied we are now to digital technology.
And
his approach to the poster for the movie The Magnificent Seven,
which was based on the Seven Samurai,
takes the idea of these Japanese marks and combines the Western together.
Next, Lou Danziger was one of my mentors at school,
and he's been a lifelong friend.
He just turned 100.
At first, I couldn't understand Lou's approach using metaphors and symbols.
I was so caught up in everything New Wave.
If it had flying type and exciting colors, I loved it.
But I look back,
and I recall very few of those items.
But I do recall almost all of Lou's work.
I recognize later in life how brilliant this work is.
It
makes the viewer think and solve a visual problem,
and that's what makes it memorable.
Here,
for One Coat Rubber Cement, the Flax logo,
an F made of squares,
also contains a 1.
Lou's work is smart, clear,
and it's beautifully crafted.
From
him, I learned that a good idea is the most important part of any solution.
Work should feel effortless, never forced.
Here,
to create skyscraper landscape,
he simply took paint tubes and used a Sharpie to draw windows on them.
He
didn't use CGI,
high-res Photoshop,
or any kind of serious work to try to force the
idea.
He simply lets it be.
On
this cover for UCLA Extension,
he uses the ladder as a metaphor for education,
which is perfect.
He
crossed the street, took a picture of his own extension ladder against his house,
and let it be what it was.
Tying
the idea into the concept is the most important part.
And here, for an ad for the
camera, Lou
takes images from his own negatives and combines them to tell the story that he intends to explain.
So,
this camera is the only 35mm SLR camera with interchangeable lenses.
Lou
took European modernism,
this idea of a Bauhaus approach,
and he combined it with a Southern California aesthetic,
taking the idea of color and light from Los Angeles,
and interweaving it into the simplicity and modernism.
Rather
than a
stark black and white or gray cover for the Wilshire House,
a hotel in Beverly Hills,
he uses bright yellow and
red.
And
with color, Mary Blair is my hero.
She's
best known for designing It's a Small World at Disneyland and Walt Disney World.
Her
color approach is joyful, optimistic,
and forward-looking.
It is bright and exciting.
She
always twists things slightly,
and that's what makes it so spectacular.
Rather
than simply having a pink background,
Mary
Blair uses salmon.
And rather than the color of the shading as just gray,
it's got a slight brown tone to it.
Or
adding metallics when they're unexpected.
Combining the green and the purple
with black and then copper on top of them.
The color and the shape all work together,
and they all have a sense of depth and excitement and a sense of hierarchy and scale.
She
used colors in ways I could not ever imagine.
It was as if she could see 10,000 more colors in the world than I could.
The
Grand Canyon Concourse mural at the Contemporary Hotel at Walt Disney World
is a multi-story masterpiece in ceramics and color.
Each
tile is hand-painted,
adding texture to the incredibly complex color palette.
Recently,
I re-watched the 1967 movie How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.
The colors of the sets,
wardrobe, and every item are magnificently tied together.
The
colors are bold,
unexpected,
but at the same time,
delicate and unique.
Every
set has its own personality and tells its own story.
Of course, on the credits, when I was watching them,
Mary Blair was the color consultant.
She combined colors that broke the rules.
Her work taught me that sometimes that's the right approach.
After all, it's color, not heart surgery.
And
there are always others that I continue to add to.
I could talk for hours about all of my influences from art.
This
painting by Sir John Edward Everett Millais of Ophelia is one of my favorites.
The delicate flowers that are flowing within the piece and the bits of gold on the surface,
all telling the story of Ophelia from Hamlet.
Or
architecture,
when Lance Wyman took the 1968 Olympics and used it as an opportunity to pour color across Mexico.
And travel.
I always take tons of photographs whenever I go anywhere.
After all, it's just digital pixels that you're using.
So why not shoot it all?
You can always go back later.
You might find something unexpected.
For example,
the sunset that typically I would say,
well, there's a million sunsets.
But I had to catch this because of all of the distinct tones of gold and yellow combined with the dark green of the grass.
There
could be illustration,
such as this Bob Peake image that my mother had framed in her house the entire time I was growing up.
And
the world around me.
Like most designers,
I'm adding to these images all the time.
These, by the way, are tiles at the Los Angeles International Airport.
And
photography is a great source.
Examining
the color and the light and the kind of film that was used.
And the tones and how they come together adds a whole new layer to the idea of narrative storytelling.
And
sometimes even things that might not be in the very best of taste are perfectly fine.
The points to find influences everywhere, every day.
Now,
this isn't a visual inspiration,
but a quote from the Rodgers and Hammerstein play Carousel.
It's one of my big inspirations and has guided me through my career and turned out to be pretty accurate.
The
world belongs to you as much as to the next fella,
so don't give it up.
And
try not to be scared of people not liking you.
Just try liking them.
Keep
your faith and courage and it will turn out all right.