Anepic's blog

Interview with Amazing Designer Jonathan Haggard

Anepic — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 13:08:21 +0000

If you love poster design then you probably have stumbled across Jonathan Haggard before. Amazing typography, gorgeous colors and witty social commentary are common tools of Haggards trade. Keep in mind though, once you’ve seen this you probably won’t ever look at propaganda the same way. Enjoy!

Well, let’s start with the usual. Who are you and where are you from Mr. Haggard? What is your brief design background?

My name is Jonathan Haggard and I usually go by the moniker skryingbreath. I was born and raised in California; my current residence is San Francisco, California where I'm attending The Academy of Art University to build my portfolio and get my degree in Web Design and New Media.

Design has been something I've been fascinated with since I started creating minor user experience ideas with Winamp skinning. Though, I quickly realized that whenever I told a pretty girl I made skins I got a confident decline to my phone number invitation. Switching things up and doing a ridiculous amount of scientific experimentation with typography and advertising paid off, and I got the girl too!

Your poster work and photography are really truly amazing. How did you get into the poster / print realm of design?

To be completely honest I somewhat fell into it. I started making these simple and ugly typographic renditions of Daft Punk songs, and figured I'd print them once I saw a show by my biggest influence - Scott Hansen/ISO50. After realizing the freedom that the print world allows, designing and thinking of substantial concepts became easier.

Since most of the client work I receive is identity/layout dominant, posters give me a chance to exercise total control and execution of a concept from beginning to end with no other input or distractions.

I know you're heavily influenced by propaganda aesthetics. Care to elaborate on how that came about?

Through type experiments and looking for inspiration via FFFFOUND or flickr streams, I found myself returning to the basic principles of design that are so gracefully combined in vintage Russian and German propaganda posters. Balance, repetition, contrast, dominance and solid concepts executed in the most perfect manner to convince a population to follow an idea.

This built itself into an obsession, and I'm always on the lookout for anything propaganda related.

Music often finds its way into your artwork as well. Do you work with musical artists often? Or just as inspiration for personal pieces? Both?

I have worked with musicians' logotypes and identities. Most of the time I have a great idea while listening to a song for the 900th time in a day, decide to make a poster about it and then email it to the musician. It really pumps me up when they respond, even just a “thumbs up, kiddo”. It's a thrill I haven't found elsewhere.

One last question, is there any sort of art or design work that you aren’t currently doing that you wish you were? Why or why not?

What a coincidence; I just started a course on motion graphics which is something I admire from afar but have never participated in. It seems like the ultimate skill to have and make pretty stuff and then add an entirely new dimension that alters everything. I'm confident I'll get a handle on motion graphics and be posting kinetic propaganda soon.

Jonathan Haggards Website: http://jonathanhaggard.com/

Jonathan Haggard on DeviantArt: http://skryingbreath.deviantart.com/

Some Artworks

30 Amazing Retro Posters and Flyers

Anepic — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 10:43:31 +0000

This week I ran into some cool retro designs for posters, fliers and brochures. I thought I would share them for my next Retrography Post. I love the style and feel of this ‘old paper look’ they all kind of have. I keep seeing the coolest gig posters and club flyers with this style. There’s some awesome typography, some propaganda influences and some really cool colors! Enjoy!

Retro style design has always been around. Yet it seems that in the last few years it really has jumped off quite a bit. There are tons off awesome typographics coming out now as well as really cool gig posters and fliers like in this post. If you have any retro designs that you'd like to share with Retrography please send them with your username to alecsince87@gmail.com.

Adam the Velcro Suit

Scott Hansen

Jonathan Haggard

Horacio Lorente

About Author

I'm Alec Schmidt - a graphic designer from the US. I have an obsession with type, color and creativity. I hope to share tons of cool stuff with you here at Abduzeedo! You can also find me on Twitter:@Anepic .

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Photographic Masterpieces by Kim Høltermand

Anepic — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 10:07:00 +0000

If you’re not familiar with the work of Kim Høltermand you need to be. His photographic masterpieces scream of minimalism and moody tones. His work is extremely distinct and really has an epic style. If you’re a fan of photography this is one for you!

Kim grew up in the suburbs of Copenhagen and throughout his childhood grew an interest in drawing. He had drawn from an early age but hadn’t taken art seriously until he got to college. Kim worked as a graphic designer while his interest in photography grew. He got his first SLR only a couple years ago and things have really taken off for Kim since that moment. Kim specializes in architectural photography. In a quote from himself “I heart Architecture”. Aside from architecture Kim also takes some really amazing nature and landscape photos, and has been thinking recently about beginning a to work with film. Here are some of his amazing works!

For more information visit Kim's Behance page at http://www.behance.net/Holtermand

About the Author

I'm Alec Schmidt - a graphic designer from the US. I have an obsession with type, color and creativity. I hope to share tons of cool stuff with you about art and design! You can also find me on Twitter:@Anepic.