graphic design | Outside The Lines

Segmation - Art that Sells Broadway The versatility of art is not easy to define. Art is an umbrella term that encompasses different mediums, genres and styles. Each medium of art is attractive on its own, but when several types of art come together, a fresh, deep, enriched level of art is born. For instance, this is the case when music, dance, storytelling and graphic design collide. You may be wondering where these diverse art mediums intersect. On Broadway, of course.

Erick Pipenburg (@erikpiepenburg) has one of the most interesting jobs in America; he is the senior theatre editor at the New York Times. Recently his job has taken him away from Broadway stages and into the studios of graphic designers and photographers who create promotional posters for hit shows.

“Behind the Poster” is a category on the New York Times blog, Artsbeat. In this genre of his professional art medium, writing, Pipenburg interviews the talented visual artists who are on the front lines of theatre show productions. He has gone behind the curtains of shows like “The Visit,” starring Chita Rivera; “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” starring Neil Patrick Harris; and a new play, “Stage Kiss,” which is promoted by an abstract poster that is made up of lipstick kisses on paper. Each time, Pipenburg’s interview reveals a story that goes beyond the script and into the lives of all the artist who create and promote the play.

To better grasp what Pipenburg does, read the response from freelance illustrator Julie Furer Knutson, who created the poster for “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” playing in Seattle, Washington:

“I wanted this to scream ’60s. That blue is very of that era. When I was a kid we had a couch that color. It seems everybody had that couch back then. I guess it was Danish-designed and had that very plain but textural fabric to it. The characters keep drinking to hide what’s going on in their lives. They are outward with their rage, but they are hiding behind the alcohol. I thought white for the title really exposes things.”

Here is the New York Times article that contains this poster review and five others: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/31/arts/posters-the-fine-art-of-selling-theater.html.

Erick Pipenburg is revealing another element of art that goes into creating shows that grace Broadway stages each night. He is showcasing the tapestry of art mediums, styles, and genres that go into producing show-stopping productions. In a way, he is identifying the many parts of a fulfilling, multi-dimensional work of art.

Art is often made up of several pieces. No art program knows this better than Segmation. Paint-by-number has been allowing people to become artists for years. Now, Segmation is making paint-by-number a digital phenomenon, too. By putting together the pieces of artful imaging, you can be an artist. Have you tried SegPlay PC or SegPlay Mobile yet? Click here to learn more about the software that can transform you into an artist: http://segmation.com/. Piece by piece, you can, like Erick Pipenburg, expose a beautiful picture.

Read more Segmation blog posts about art and color:

Paper Quilling – Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

Can Elephant Art Save the Species?

What Is True About The Color Blue?

Be an Artist in 2 minutes with Segmation SegPlay® PC (see more details here)

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What do you call a graphic artist who does not need a computer?

A typewriter artist.

Born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Álvaro Franca is often called a graphic designer but may be better known as a typographer or type designer. He creates fonts.

What is your favorite font? You might use Calibri, Arial, Tahoma, or Times New Roman. Franca develops fonts that are seen online and in print. He has developed fonts for reading purposes and as parts of advertisements. He even designed labels for beer bottles.

Franca uses a computer to craft font types, but it is what he creates with a vintage typewriter that makes the 22-year-old artist most impressive.

In a collection of work titled, Typewritten Portraits, Franca creates portraits by using a vintage typewriter to strategically placing single characters on a blank sheet of paper. To deepen the complexity of his work, he defines, shapes, and shades the faces of infamous authors so they are recognizable and, in some cases, may be mistaken for sketch art.

The method for creating Typewritten Portraits was conceptualized by Franca in 2013. While he might be the first person to use a typewriter to recreate portraits of Jose Saramago, Charles H. Bukowski, J.D. Salinger, Jack Kerouac, and Clarice Lispector, he was not the first artist to use a vintage typewriter as an art medium.

In 2012, Segmation wrote a blog about vintage typewriter collector and artist Keira Rathbone. Rathbone lives in London and uses over 30 typewriters to create original works of art.

While both artists use typewriters, Franca and Rathbone have contrasting approaches to creating art. Using his computer, Franca created a method that allows him to know exactly where to put characters on a typewriter page. For instance, from the start, he maps out where to add the letter “m,” which is the character he uses to add depth and dimension to portraits.

Rathbone, on the other hand, does not sketch or outline any of her art. With a well-trained eye, she is able to create scenes from her imagination and recreate images she sees. By going over parts of a picture multiple times she produces the perfect amount of shading. This gives her images the level of depth and dimension that Franca factors in from the start.

These two artists live a world apart but both use typewriters to create masterpieces. Rathbone truly needs no computer while Franca uses his for precision. Watch the artists at work and let us know which approach you like better. Leave us a comment at the bottom of this page.