Craig Ward is a graphic designer, whose work I really like as he uses interesting materials to enhance not only the style of the lettering, but in some cases the meaning. His work is striking as he often uses contrasting colour such as black on white. I particularly like how he often manipulates the text in ways that are incredibly simple, yet effective. His success as a designer is reflected by his awards eg. the Communication Arts Award of Excellence in 2014 and 2015. I chose him as my research artist in terms of typography because I like how the text contradicts with the image being seen .
There are two different types of font being displayed in this poster. Parts of the top poster are ripped off to reveal the second poster. I think this technique is vividly interesting as it creates an illusion to the viewers.
Even though the work looks really simple and ordinary, this artwork is actually extremely satire, in other words, it doesn’t really make sense because of the fact that ink and water being mixed together is shown visually along with the statement that ‘ink and water don’t mix’.
Colour is the major element in this poster; the sentence in red has caught more attention than the sentence in white because the white letterforms recede from the red, hence the red letterforms advance towards everyone’s eyes and bring out the message that ‘bad typography is everywhere’ whereas ‘good typography is invisible’.
This is another though-provoking work by Craig Ward. The letterforms were distorted by the stains of ink which actually look like blood stains; it visually reinforces the word ‘broken heart’. A broken heart literally marks the end of one’s life, but it could also be interpreted in a metaphorical way hence it said ‘Don’t die’.
TIFF LAW 