Mirko Ilic recently judged the prestigious 2014 Golden Bee Global Biennale in Moscow (as well as helped the parallel Moscow exhibition of SVA NYC subway posters). He returned to New York all aglow, proud of the selections made for the impressive catalog and exhibition. I asked Ilic to tell us about 10 images that made his day(s).
Kum-Jun Park: “Grand Prix”What is fascinating about this series is how dramatic it looks in person.Also it has a beautiful mixture of Asian and Western tradition. The Digilog601 type is created out of almost electronic, circuit-like elements. When they are overlapped, flipped and mirrored they create a feeling of Korean or Asian typography. The designers managed to do that in so many ways that there is almost no repetition on posters. In the meantime, each poster from very far looks like traditional Korean imagery.
Fozouni Farhad: “Theatre Poster”The combination between Farsi, calligraphy and Western alphabet created this old and new feeling, with very unusual graphic elements. On top of that the poster has a chopped bottom corner which makes an additional interesting shape.
Ralph Schraivogel: “Type Director’s Club, Tokyo Exhibition”I especially like how the designer managed to write “TDC” in one line/one stroke with perfect usage of negative and positive space, and put vertical text in the middle of the black and white lines in the middle, making everything a bit more Escheresque. A perfect meeting between Swiss and Japanese sensibilities.
David Torrents: “Pirulí, Pirulón, Pirulero”I like this poster because it reminds me of the time of Russian Constructivism or Futurism, when they would use existing printers’ elements, overlap and overprint them to create new shapes (in this case very abstract shapes). It also reminds me of the experiments of Ghost in the Underblows by Alvin Lustig. And all of this is done digitally.
Jianping He: “Jianping He. Flash Back Exhibition”Jianping He is a Chinese designer living and working in Germany. This is a poster for his show in Japan. Again, a merger of different cultures at their best. The European alphabet (however you want to call that) hanging on black and white branches almost looks like Japanese/Chinese brush strokes on rice paper.
Lex Drewinski: “Mein Kampf”Very appropriate usage of red and black. With a perfect simple image telling it all.
Jerzy Skajun, Joanna Gorska: “Bydgorskie Stories Theatre Play”I like the simplicity of this poster and the nice combination between photography and typographic/graphical elements. This is one of the series posters.
Katarzyna Zapart: “Hamlet Theatre Poster”There is something uncomfortable and disturbing in this image where hard flesh is covered with tar. Two things which are not supposed to go together created a perfectly disturbing image for Hamlet.
David Clavadetscher: “Toys and Games”I like k3 elements which met on this poster—the Swiss Grid and toy Legos creating pixels of a Space Invader arcade game. Perfect. And all that on a Swiss red background.
Peter Bankov: “One-Man Exhibition in Prague”It’s very hard to take one of the hundreds of posters which Peter Bankov did last year, but this one is special to me because Peter created this for his own poster show and symbolically painted a perfect portrait of himself—the small dark container, spilling his guts all over the paper/poster. The blood, guts and tornado that twist the typography around are Peter.
HOW Poster Design AwardsJohn Foster of Bad People Good Things wants to see your poster designs—from music and movie poster designs to typographic posters—in the 2014 HOW Poster Design Competition & Awards. This is your chance to gain recognition regardless of how many years you have under your belt.