Herbert Matter Poster
Herbert Matter helped shape 20th century Graphic Design.
This project began as a study on Herbert Matter’s design practice, to create a poster of him by replicating his style. Naturally, the first step would be to research more about him, and his past. He was both a photographer and graphic designer, born in Switzerland in 1907. He moved to the United States in 1936, where he continued to produce works he would be recognized for decades to come.
There were several common elements I noticed when observing Matter’s works. He made use of his photography skills in his graphic designs, so many of his works included strong photography, mostly by ways of photomontage. His designs were also primarily black and white with selective color added in, mostly being blue skies and red text, and sometimes skin color or other details as well. He also utilized straight lines often, in patterns and as accents. In his later works, he used curved and warped lines often as well.
For the elements of my poster, I wanted to pay homage to his two homelands by including photos of both the Swiss Alps and the New York City skyline behind a portrait of him. I also considered adding birds flying as well, as many of his works also included birds as focal subjects, but I decided against it in the end. I wanted to include line motifs as well, so I made a diagonal line pattern to go over the background, and the type would also be arranged diagonally to compliment.
Compared to what I envisioned in my thumbnails, I ended up putting the Alps in front of the NYC skyline rather than behind; I underestimated how pointy skyscrapers would look compared to a mountain range. I think that the foreground naturally occurring in the mountains works better regardless of shape, as I could overlay more photos of different mountains along the same range over each other. Combined with the city, they create a nice gradient, where the white at the bottom contrasts well with the camera equipment in Matter’s hand in the photo chosen. This photo in particular also has Matter with a cigarette in his mouth, which I think creates great visual movement from the pattern in the background, to the cigarette, then to the text at the bottom.
The typography is a bold, blocky sans-serif font similar to the ones that Matter liked to use. I made the text elements red and on a multiply layer, to simulate ink printing on the poster. A grain effect was added to the photo, and skin color was added on as a multiply layer here as well. Again, I wanted to include birds, but it seemed too visually busy on the poster and it seemed strong without them. All in all, I feel satisfied with how this study came out.