© 2024 Robert Sickles
I was an old-timer at age 43 in graphic design classes at the School of Visual Concepts. Preparing for my third career change, I felt conspicuous among a class of mostly twenty- and thirty-somethings; they made sure at every opportunity to shake their young heads and insinuate that I was out of touch and out of style. Yes, I know I’m being unkind and judgmental about them, but that’s on me as well since I allowed them to sting my ego.
It wasn’t a creative art school in the sense of “finding your own voice.” We were being trained for an entry level job in design, and that job is very much defined as following trends, being hip to whatever is current, and conversely, to be aware of the fine line between passe and retro.
Specifically, I’m talking about the short lifespan of fonts, colors and graphic decoration. You look around to see what other designers are doing and, unless you are the darling harbinger of innovation, you must keep in step. It would seem that’s what most customers want. But I reasoned that there is value in emulating a retro look when it’s called for. A 1950’s theme roadhouse should have an appropriately designed menu. An exhibit of early Impressionist paintings should have signs and brochures that fit the era. This seemed to go over the heads of the younger students.
The assignment was to design a bread wrapper. The teacher said we could make up a baking company and any sort of bread product.
The other part of the assignment was to design it within the parameters of a certain style from the list we’d been studying. Our teacher had touched on such styles as Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Modernism, Pop Art, and so forth.
I concocted Earthtones All-Natural Multigrain Bread, produced by the fictitious Bread Brigade, who I imagined to be a social-revolution co-op bakery with “Politically Correct Nutrition” as their motto. It was a play on The Red Brigade, who were an extreme Marxist movement in Europe in the 70’s.
The style I chose was called Soviet Constructivism which is easier to show than describe. It’s characterized by allegorical images, block lettering, and sparing use of color. It was the typical look of the propaganda material of the early Soviet Union, and has some application nowadays for campy ad designs and posters and such for art film. It fit the nature of my imaginary bread company. Here are some examples from old Russia:
The color scheme for my design was earth tones, for the name of the bread of course, and fonts were represented to be angular and hand-cut, as in the Soviet style. The image of the harvester looks like old Communist-era propaganda posters. When the due date came around, we were to take turns pitching our work to the class for review and critique.
The Bread Brigade, Earthtones Bread
When I presented my design to the class, the reception was cool. I saw students and teacher signalling skepticism: head cocked, forefinger pressing the cheek, eyebrow arched, biting the lower lip, a scowling or dubious expression. There came the critique, and the comments were in line with the body language, such as “kinda weird, Bob” and “I don’t get it, what is it saying?” My teacher just shook his head and sniffed a giggle, only saying, “Ohhhkay... moving on... who's next up?”
I was indignant! Well, I admit the execution of my design was not brilliant. Not to mention I chose to “work for” a 1970's-inspired Marxist bakery! This was the early days of computer generated design; back then, anything hand-drawn would appear much too 1970's. Jeez, nowadays we're nostalgic for the old times when people used their hands! Anyway, my made-up “client” might have been happy with my rough draft. I can imagine many an unsold loaf going stale on the store shelf, though, as customers would be put off by the Soviet thing!
By the way, a couple of years later, I was grocery shopping and couldn’t help turning my head to see a row of local bakery bread loaves labeled in a red & black design, strangely reminiscent of my Earthtones. It even had a woman in overalls holding a harvesting sickle and a sheaf of grain. Maybe I was just a little ahead of the trends. Don't you just want it to be my teacher or one of those pompous students who got paid for designing it?
Our second assignment was to design a series of four postage stamps, commemorating anything we wanted. I tdecided I'd honor the 400,000th anniversary of mankind’s discovery of using fire. I wish I had saved it to show you! For the class, however, no one got my humor and it went over about as well as the bread wrapper.
Valuable lesson learned: get out of design school ASAP and go find a job.
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Comments
What is the saying? Those that can get the job done and those that can't teach. As far as I'm concerned you were/are the BEST DESIGNER I ever worked with. You go Bob
You're just ahead of the curve fella! They weren't true artists to scoff at your visions.
I am proud to be
married to a truly creative artist. (It was pretty crazy to think that at 43 you were an old timer!)
good..and edifying
You forgot to mention how you and your lovely Linda now make two kinds of homemade bread...still being artistic present day!
Bob, I loved your graphic art story art work, and I thought it was very creative. It surprised me that the professor and students didn't jump on it. The whole package said, "Winner" to me. Jeepers, I wish I were that creative! It is never too late to venture into something new. My dad and grandfather worked on the railroad for 40 years each. That is stability. My husband was a chemistry teacher and then went corporate for not just one company but for three others ( although in the same field but different products. I started in the business world and ended up in education with volunteers positions in a variety of fields. Kudos to you my long=time friend!