Pop art, one foot into graphic design

Although pop art technically speaking is more of a fine art movement, I believe that graphic design cannot be mentioned without stating pop arts influences on it. First off, pop art targets popular culture and advertising. What is graphic design but a means to market one’s self? Most designers clients need some work done to advertise their products, a graphic designers job it to find a way to make the clients product more appealing (popular). This movement emerged in the mid 50s to the late 50s and lasted through the 60s. One of the leading artists in this movement was Andy Warhol who was not a graphic designer. Pop art was influenced by comics as well which in turn came to influence comic books themselves. Now I shall be looking at one of Andy Warhol’s works and relating it to modern graphic design as we know it today.

 This here is a typically Warhol pop art work. Looks like a photo manipulation, in which the colours are more saturated than the original photo and contrast is increased. These prints ever not individually unique, but there were multiple copies made. Here we are seeing the same ideas of graphic design applied to fine art.

 In this modern piece by Shepard Fairey we see a graphical photo manipulating which has become almost as iconic as Warhol. In both se see a play on colour and contrast. Although the two works have their differences one can see how Warhol inspired Fairey to crate such a work. 

 Before the label graphic design was created, many fine artists were said to have inspired graphic design, which is completely agreeable, therefore with that respect one must also give importance to artists who were not graphic designers in our modern day and age but how left their foot print anyway.