Blog Post 5 – Elizabeth Lin

April 16, 2019April 18, 2019

“See life as a 10-year-old. Dress like an 18-year-old. Think like a 25-year-old” – Theo Dimson

Theo Dimson:

Theo Dimson was a graphic designer known for his art deco style movie and theatre posters.

He began his career with a 3 year apprenticeship with Art Associates Limited in Toronto. After freelancing for 7 years, he rejoined AA as a vice-president of creative design. In 1965, he became president and director of a new partnership called Reeson Dimson and Smith Ltd. Later, it was named Dimson and Smith Ltd and it kept this name until Dimson created Theo Dimson Designs Inc. in 1985 where he was president and creative director.

February 10, 2019February 10, 2019

Postwar Prosperities: André Francois (1915-2005)

André Francois:

André Francois was a French graphic artist, cartoonist, and illustrator whose career formed a bridge from the beginnings of modern graphic design to the present. He had contributed many roughly drawn, darkly satiric cartoons and covers for many well-known magazines, including 57 covers for The New Yorker. Since the 1940s, his exquisitely witty and elegantly executed illustrations have earned him an enduring international career- in the US, Europe, and Japan- and he has been a major influence on many of the best-known illustrators and designers of the past 5 decades in these places.

Throughout Francois’ career, he devised commercial advertising and poster graphics, designed ballet and theatre costumes and sets, and wrote and illustrated children’s books, including his own. In addition, he also designed countless book covers for Penguin Books, playing cards for the art director of Simpson Piccadilly and graphic works for the 1937 World Exhibition in Paris. He also used to have numerous one-man shows, but since 1960, his time has mainly been devoted to painting, engraving, collage, and sculpture.

October 19, 2018

Realism, Pre-Impressionism, and Pre-Raphaelites: James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler:

James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American-born artist credited with spearheading the Anglo-Japanese style in fine art. Delighted by Japanese art, he incorporated Japanese aesthetic into his imaginative compositions. This can be shown through his celebrated signature style of a limited colour palette and tonal contrast while skewing perspective to show a new compositional approach that emphasized the flat and abstract quality of his paintings. He also depended on the theory of “art for art’s sake”, meaning art needs no justification. As a result of this theory, he gave musical titles to his paintings, such as “Harmony” and “Symphony”, because he thought that music was the most abstract of all arts. These abstract titles then made viewers more focussed on his manipulation of paint rather than the subject matter.

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