Campari Advertising and Italian Poster Design

Artist, G. Mora, 1894 Published on Compari.com site.

I have always had a fascination with Italian poster art that specifically promoted food and drink. This week studying the works of Adolfo Hohenstein, the “father of poster design” in Italy, was a visual feast. Hohenstein and his contemporaries, Leopoldo Meticovitz and Leonetto Capiello designed posters for the Campari Company in Italy.  These artists brought the energy and form of Art Nouveau to Campari. Compari had already been in business for years. Prior to this era, other artists started the poster tradition. G. Mora created the first poster for advertising in 1894.

Artist, Leonetto Cappiello, 1921,
Published on leonettocappielloposters.com

Leonetto Cappiello started out as a caricature artist and in 1904 he abandoned caricature to devote himself to poster art. Campari has retained that visual edge first introduced in Adolfo Hohenstein’s work. Moving through the times, they employed artists to carry on the poster tradition in the current artistic style of the time. 

Artist, Fortunato Depero, 1925, posted on Campari.com

CorreColTempo Artist, Fortunato Depero,

Other Campari artists include Milton Glaser and Fortunato Depero.  Depero was part of the futurism movement and he applied his style to advertising and graphic design as seen in his poster for Campari Squisito al Seltz,1926.

Artist: Ugo Nespolo, 1990

While incorporating photography into its advertising, Campari has retained its deep graphic art roots. Campari Art Label Project was started as a way to keep the connection to art. This year the company has issued a ‘limited edition’ bottle featuring artwork by contemporary Italian pop artist and set designer, Ugo Nespolo. Nespolo pays homage to Leonetto Cappiello’s poster, Spiritello by incorporating the same energy, focal point and gesture as in the original art. The Spiritello character is still wrapped up in an orange peal, yet he floats in a busy sea of color. This limited edition label is intended to celebrate the Campari love of art.

Since posters were physically more accessible for viewing than fine art, they became the defacto ‘art for the masses’. The visual vernacular persists today.  Cheap reprints are available on the internet and are used primarily as decoration in cafes, restaurants and homes.  The Campari web site gallery is worth a look  With any luck, I hope to someday visit the real gallery at the Compari headquarters in Milan, Italy.

Sources:

http://www.csun.edu/~pjd77408/DrD/Art461/LecturesAll/Lectures/lecture05/Futurism.html

http://www.cappiello.fr/anglais/biography.htm

http://www.artfact.com/artist/hohenstein-adolf-u34nea7s6b

http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Ugo_Nespolo.html

http://www.camparigroup.com/en/press-media/brands-history/campari.shtml
http://www.camparigroup.com/en/press-media/multimedia-kit/spirits/downloads-campari.shtml
http://www.leonettocappielloposters.com/showproduct.aspx?pid=457571

Week Four

Bernard Maybeck, Christian Science Church, Berkeley

I have always been smitten with the Arts and Crafts movement.  Naively, I only attributed this era to beautiful homes and buildings in the Bay Area built by Bernard Maybeck, a California architect and U.C. Berkeley professor who frequently designed in the Arts and Crafts style.  According to Meggs’, this era in art was a reaction to the “social, moral and artistic confusion of the Industrial Revolution.” Mass production during the Victorian era instigated a backlash that called for a return to good materials, beauty and quality workmanship.  Artists of this period not only produced beautiful objects of art as a reaction, but also felt an intrinsic connection and responsibility to the physical welfare of the worker. Its goal was for artistic as well as social reform.  This inspiration sparked a revival in areas such as book design, printing, and typography.

William Morris led this movement and established Kelmscott Press in 1889. This press revived hand-made books, looking back to books produced in the 1500’s for inspiration. In looking to the past, he drew inspiration from Nicolas Jenson’s Venitian roman letterforms.  Morris was ultimately responsible for creating three typefaces: Golden, (based on Nicolas Jensen), Chaucer and Troy.  His faces combined with decorative borders, frames, initials and title pages revived the hand-made book. But his aesthetic treatment of typographic pages had a larger effect on the future of book design. Morris felt that “well-designed pages affect the reader’s perception and comprehension” according Clair, Bustic-Snyder (A Typographic Workbook)  His sense of design and focus on readability profoundly affected the discipline of graphic design for years to come.

Thought leaders of this time, John Ruskin and William Morris saw themselves not only as artists but also as social reformers. I have great admiration for this sentiment. Living in Silicon Valley in particular, I see a disconnect between commerce and the artist. Industrialized zones have squeezed out all but a few communal studio spaces and costs are prohibitive.  Art teachers in lower socio-economic K-12 public schools, continue to vanish.   The irony is that high-tech innovation thrives on the creative thought process. 

Interior, Bernard Maybeck Architect

The Arts and Crafts movement was a powerful reaction that re-sets an aesthetic sensibility. I sense a similar backlash happening now, in the 21^st century, with a perception that ‘cheaper, lower quality’ commodity products are being imported from other nations. As developing nations continue to fill the void of cheap labor for developed nations, future generations will be confronted with their own response. Perhaps future Arts and Crafts type movements will continue to be the echo to this cyclical economic phenomenon.

Week Three

as viewed in Wikipedia - example of Bodoni

 I am fascinated with the transformation of typefaces. In particular, the Roman typeface was continually modified through the ages. This week we saw the transformation into the ‘modern’ version produced by Bodoni. I imagine most people aren’t familiar with the origin of this word.  According to the New World Dictionary (second college edition), the term as it relates to printing means “a style of typeface characterized by heavy down strokes contrasting with narrow cross strokes.”  “Of or relating to the period of history after the Middle Ages, from c.1450 A.D. to the present day.” So far we have seen Roman script transformed in various iterations as hand written script and carved into stone.  As printing spread from Germany to Italy, Germany clung to Gothic-style type while printing in Italy encompassed Roman-style type.  In Venice, Johannes da Spira employed Roman type in his printing operation. Types designed by Sweynheym and Pannartz are examples of typography based on the letterforms developed by Italian scribes.  Their version of Roman type morphed from a hybrid of capital letters of ancient Roman inscriptions with a flavor of Caroline minuscule.  After moving to Rome, they recreated their typeface into what Meggs’ describes as, “a more fully Roman alphabet that became the prototype for the Roman alphabets still in use today.”   Eventually the Venitian style of Roman type was transformed yet again into Romain du Roi, also known as transitional roman. Based on mathematical formulation, it had, “an exaggerated difference in weight between the stem and hairline stroke, reduced bracketing, and created thin, horizontal, squared-off serifs.”- according to a Typographic Workbook by Clair & Busic-Snyder.  Romain du Roi literally means Roman of the King and was designed for exclusive use by the royal printing office of France. While Caslon carried on the tradition of Old Style roman typographic design in the early 1700’s, Giambattista Bodoni took the Roman typeface to a new standard that became known as modern.  He incorporated hairline serifs and made the thin strokes of his letterforms the same weight as the hairline serif.  According to Meggs’, he achieved his goal of giving roman letterforms a “more mathematical, geometric and mechanical appearance” that created standardization of the Roman typeface.

Week Two

Contemporary chop, 2008, Made in China

Rock painting by Sophie Grant, Sept.,2012

The fact we have gone from the invention written language to the Internet age in roughly 5000 years is remarkable. The need to communicate has always been a driving force.  This drive has taken us from petroglyphs to the ancient writing of hieroglypics and cuneiform to Hangul, (Korean), Greek and Roman alphabets. The democratization of knowledge has been enabled through the written word. According to Megg’s History of Graphic Design, “Alphabets put literacy within the reach of ordinary people.” The invention of printing by the Chinese made China the “first society in which ordinary people had daily contact with printed images.” In the West, small, illuminated manuscripts were easy to transport and further enabled the dissemination of knowledge. Like early computers, huge manuscripts were extremely expensive and time consuming to make. They were reserved the privileged few. A large manuscript could require the "skins of three hundred sheep."  Paper, invented by the Chinese, became the cheap alternative to parchment and vellum. Attempts at moveable type, possibly with the Phaistos Disk (as early as 2000BCE), and then with bronze in Korea continued the pursuit of communication. Unfortunately both technologies had their flaws.  The beautiful illuminations in Celtic, Spanish, Roman, Gothic, Judaic and Islamic manuscripts used imagery to entice and to educate. 

Contemporary petroglyphs, 2012. Encinal Afterschool.

I couldn't resist showing off the beautiful chop given to me in China. I was finally able to make a good impression on rice paper.  I figured out it helps to slam the chop with force. I also used a thin magazine below to provide a bit of cushion. This chop is an example of relief printing.  It has both positive and negative carving as found during the Han Dynasty (300CE - 500CE).  I am also including some contemporary petroglyphs made by my after school students at Encinal Elementary, Menlo Park.  The students 'carved' their images with sharp tools into foam core. They rolled  tempura paint over the surface with brayers and sponges  to give a 'stone' look.  The students also did rock painting with pastel on brown paper.

Week One

Authors: Phillip Meggs & Alston Purvis, 
John Wiley & Sons, 5th ed., c1998
image posted on Foothill College Bookstore site

The study of graphic design provides an integrated look at many interesting things colliding all at once: art, history, political upheaval, social change and technological breakthroughs. I enjoyed reading the prefaces in Philip Meggs and Alston Purvis, Meggs’ History of Graphic Design.  I had never given much thought to the phrase graphic design. I figured the term always existed.  Now I know the term had been coined in 1922 by an American typeface creator and book designer, William Addison Dwiggins.  The role of the graphic designer is profound. She/he must constantly innovate upon past advancements and incorporate new media such as the internet and motion graphics.  The graphic designer is the ideal ambassador and implementer of the German word, 'zeitgiest' which according to Meggs, means "the spirit of the times, and refers to the cultural trends and tastes that are characteristic of a given era."

I fundamentally believe that our aspirations and perception of self is driven by what we see. Visual propaganda can be used for positive change and personal growth. I am keenly interested in design that promotes the positive. Thinking back to when I was a child, one of my friend’s parents lined their hallway with 1960’s and 1970’s posters containing antiwar, peace and love messages. These images are imprinted on my brain and I am sure helped formulate who I am. My favorite image is the well known, "War is not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things" poster, created by Lorraine Art Schneider. This poster became the logo for the anti-war organization, Another Mother for Peace. I didn't see this poster in our textbook, but after reading the preface I realize difficult editing choices had to be made.

Poster created by Lorraine Art Schneider, 1966
Posted on Another Mother for Peace site.