art nouveau

How Fun – A Promotional Photo Series!

Vintage Needles and 1910 calendar

One of my goals for the year is to challenge myself with something new. That opportunity came along right away in January when my walking partner proposed a brilliant collaboration. Since then we’ve been busy planning, scheduling, designing, and doing whatever in preparation for a big opening this Friday, April 1. No April Fool jokes happening here!

In the meantime, I want to share some vintage advertising I found stashed in a drawer. For the rest of the week I’ll be posting these and a few more treasures on my Instagram. Be sure to check them out!

Art Nouveau in advertising

I’ve always loved art nouveau and according to this history, it was a popular medium for advertising from the 1880s until World War I. This is the cover to the 1910 calendar above.

Advertising copy for wright's Fancy Patent Flour

Who says copywriters aren’t fun? Or creative? This reminds me of the Rollings Reliable Baking Powder story contest in Anne of Green Gables!

Stay tuned until Friday!

The Cobbler’s Children Go Unshod

Adunate Word & Design logo

You know how it goes…the landscaper’s yard is the messiest, the doctor’s kids are the sickest, and the designer’s logo is the most outdated.

Well, hopefully mine isn’t the most outdated.

For the last year I’ve been working on giving things a new look—my logo, my website and my blog. Oh, but it’s going slow. All for good reasons, of course, since I credit awesome clients to keeping my own projects at bay. But, when it really comes down to it, I’m afraid the proverbial cobbler’s children syndrome applies all too well to me.

Sigh…

When I started Adunate in 2005, I didn’t have a definite idea of the direction I wanted my business to go. I didn’t know exactly what it was to be.

For that reason, I purposely designed my logo to be generic in style.

Now, five years—almost six—and many business plans later, Adunate is growing and developing. My markets are the building, preservation and energy industries; plus non-profits and religious organizations. I’m also looking to do more for food, coffee and wine businesses. These days I’m feeling confident in my identity and I’m ready for a new logo!

Here’s my thought process throughout this sometimes frustrating, other times productive creative exercise:

The word Adunate (pronounced A-doo-nah’-tay) is a Latin verb meaning unite, or integrate. I chose this for a business name because I unite words and design, the very elements of successful communication. Naturally, I want my logo to convey this thought. I want it to show the uniting of parts to equal a whole—a whole that is greater than the sum of all its parts (artists refer to this as gestalt).

With this thought in mind, I’m sticking with a variation of the identifying element of my first logo. Quilters know this as a log cabin pattern. Builders use it in hardwood flooring and tiling. With its simple, geometric lines, this pattern represents the Arts and Crafts movement of which I’m so fond.

Yet, as I examine my business and my clients, I realize I need further beauty to this logo. Not frilly beauty, but something organic, graceful and fluid. I need some Art Nouveau.

So, this is my new logo so far. What do you think? (It’s still in the greyscale stage because a logo must first work in one color before it can work in multiple.)

The challenge now is coming up with just the right typeface for the name Adunate. I’m playing with scripts, san-serifs and everything else. Well, if it goes like it’s gone so far, this may take a while.

In the meantime, any ideas?

 

 

Art Nouveau for Earth Day

[Abstract design based on curv... Digital ID: 1553695. New York Public Library

Abstract Design, Public Domain, New York Public Library

With today being Earth Day, what better day to feature one of my favorite design styles—Art Nouveau.

Art Nouveau (French for “new art”) was a very organic and naturalistic period celebrated in the late 1800s-early 1900s. It’s considered a “total art,” meaning the style was adopted in architecture, interior design, glass, ceramics, jewelry, clothing…you name it.

I absolutely love Art Nouveau in graphic design!

Clémattes. Digital ID: 818620. New York Public Library

Clémattes, Public Domain, New York Public Library

“The essence of Art Nouveau is a line, a sinuous extended curve found in every design of this style,” describes William Hardy in his book A Guide to Art Nouveau Style.

In layman’s terms, curved lines are the quintessential characteristic of Art Nouveau. Free flowing swirls, motifs of flora and fauna, muted colors—you got those and you’ve got Art Nouveau.

[Original soft front cover.] Digital ID: 96814. New York Public Library

Original soft front cover, Public Domain, New York Public Library

Interestingly, many Art Nouveau artists were literary figures as well. The expressive way they integrated text and imagery was a forerunner to graphic design as we know it today.

Mucha Exhibition Brooklyn Muse... Digital ID: 1259223. New York Public Library

Mucha Exhibition Brooklyn Museum, Public Domain, New York Public Library

To know Art Nouveau is to love Alphonse Mucha. He’s the ultimate representative of the period and his work is awesome.

Paul Greenhalgh, a leading scholar of the Art Nouveau period, describes Mucha’s depiction of women as “one of the most enduring of the style.”

Glamorous. Feminized, with long flowing hair. Mucha used emotion to capture the power of the female consumer, a successful theory used in advertising still today.

Ideas. Emotions. Image. Want these for your business? Email me today!