"Fantastique": Ken Bailey's Chat Noir

It was years ago that I first spotted this poster in a magazine, and since then, there has always been a place somewhere at the back of my mind that I would wonder of its origins. In fact, this poster inspired a crayon doodle that led to my own foreign food-and-animal advertisement poster, called “El Zorro Rosado Salchichas”. After some research, I learned that the poster was created by Ken Bailey, an artist born in 1953 in Salt Lake City, Utah who has owned the Bailey Nelson Gallery of Seattle since 1987. The gallery specializes in art styles such as Northwest Coastal, Southwestern, and Native American and features museum-quality examples of these styles. It also showcases regional artists, including Ken Bailey himself.

Ken Bailey is most famous for his vintage-style posters featuring advertisements that include domestic animals, mostly cats and dogs, and some sort of product, mostly food or drink (in one case, there is a poster with a horse advertising lotion). His style is very simplistic, utilizing cartoony and anthropomorphized animals that are endearing and humorous. These fictional advertisements are reminiscent, to me, of the advertisement of the 1920’s and 30’s.



My own Animal-and-Food Poster, from
2007 or 2008



He also has a series of “Stupid Pet Trick”s, such as “Cookie on the Nose”, “Play Dead”, and “Chase Your Tail”. These images are less clean than his advertisements, instead using a more childish and painterly look. The rest of his images still deal with domestic animals and are often humorous portraits or depict canine reveries, all the while keeping a whimsical and simple air.

Examples of Ken Bailey’s work: http://www.kenbailey.com/limited-edition-prints.html

http://www.randmcnally.com/poi.do?poiId=5375

http://www.globalgallery.com/search.php?af=ken+bailey

Graphic Design History: A Critical Guide by Johanna Drucker and Emily McVarish

Graphic Designer: Lai Reyes



The insert of a wedding invitation.



Lai Reyes is a Filipina graphic designer that specializes in Web and Print production. She graduated from De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde, a private Catholic college located in Manila, capital of the Phillipiness, with a degree in Multimedia Arts, in 2008.

The majority of her work utilizes patterns, such as polka dots or wall paper-like floral design that for the most part can be described as cute or even girly. This comes as no surprise, as it seems that most of the products are for cute occasions or girly enterprises, more specifically, weddings, baby baptisms, and fashion websites. There are also some childlike qualities in her work, such as cartoony drawings and slightly messy lettering, and in one case, pinwheels.



She also seems to exhibit a pleasant juxtaposition of modern and vintage. Her work utilizes very bold colors, which give her designs a very modern appeal and attests to technological advances allowing for such solid hues, however, many elements hearken back to the rustic, handmade quality of products of the recent past, as well as fashions and designs of heraldry and 19^th century England. These elements include the use of flourishes, actual or stylized frills and seams, the use of brown as opposed to black, both bold serif fonts and delicate cursive text, the use of heraldic elements such as scrolls or in one case a coat of arms, and the use of old wooden textures.





Sean's Eco Baptism

Tot Couture Website



Especially in the case of the design for the Tot Couture website, these aforementioned elements combine to have a sort of Lolita feel to them. However, in the case of the Sean’s Eco Baptism, there is a more casual, natural, contemporary feel.

http://laireyes.net/

Latin Alphabet, Part II: The Development of the Latin Alphabet



The Base of the Collumn of Trajan

The Latin alphabet, like all other systems of writing, can be traced back to the Proto-Sumerian Pictographic alphabets that were present prior to 3000 B.C. This evolved into the famed Egyptian Pictographic alphabet, which in turn led to the creation of Proto-Semitic Syllabary. This led to Proto-Phoenician Syllabary, which led to the Greek alphabet, which led to the Etruscan alphabet, which led to the Ancient Latin alphabet, which led to the Latin alphabet of modern times.

Ancient Latin Alphabet

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

V

X

Y

Z

The Latin alphabet that we know today isn’t far removed from the ancient alphabet used by the Romans, however there were some differences. The people of Rome, who spoke Latin, used only twenty-three letters in their writing; the same alphabet as ours, sans J, U, and W. K, Y, and Z, also, were not used in the normal writing of Latin, but were used to write Greek-based words only. Thus, only twenty letters were used to write actual Latin.

In the Middle Ages, in order to represent sounds in Germanic languages that were not a part of Latin, the letter “W” was added, as well as the letters “J” and “U”. Thus, the letter “V” was more or less replaces by the syllable “U”, with “V” going on to only denote a consonant “v” sound, and the letter “J” was added as a consonant sound as well, at times replacing the letter “I” (as in “Julius”).



It is interesting to note the absence of J, U, and W in this alphabet. In the Latin language, there is no “j” sound, nor is there any “v” sound. They also did not distinguish the “w” sound from the “u” sound, using the letter “V” to denote the “u” sound. Ecclesiastical Latin does not always make these distinctions in pronunciation, as it is heavily influenced by modern Italian. Imagine my surprise when I learned in my Latin I class that the phrase  “Veni, vidi, vici,”, a famous supposed quotation of Julius Caesar in 47 BC upon after defeating Pharnaces II of Pontus at Zela, is not pronounced with “v” sounds, but with “u” or “w” sounds, rendering it in Classical Latin as “Weni, widi, wici.” (Also as a side note, the “c” is commonly pronounced as a “ch” sound in accordance with Ecclesiastical Latin, but is pronounced as a “k” in Classical Latin.) In addition, “Julius” would be better written as “Iulius” if one wanted to better portray in modern terms the Classical pronunciation, (or “IVLIVS”, if one wanted to be really Classical). Knowing all this, it is always fun trying to pronounce the word “Vesuvius”, which in ancient Latin would be written as “VESVVIVS.”





A clip from a comic I'm working on featuring
the manor of Senator Augustus.



Graphic Design History: A Critical Guide by Johanna Drucker and Emily McVarish

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/Europe/Italy/Lazio/Roma/Rome/Trajans_Column/home.html

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/latin.htm

http://www.wikipedia.org/

Latin Alphabet, Part I: The Spread of the Latin Alphabet

The Latin alphabet is noted for being the most ubiquitous system of alphabetic writing, especially in western civilization. This comes as no surprise. The Roman empire (the first users of the Latin alphabet),  at its peak, controlled every Mediterranean coastline and a good portion of Europe, spreading the writing system to the places that would become Spain, France, Portugal, Italy, Germany, and England (among others).



The Extent of the Roman Empire, 100 AD





The Latin language led to the creation of the Romance Languages. The most well-known Romance Languages are French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian, but also include more obscure languages such as Catalan, Occitan, Sardinian, and Rhaeto-Romance. These languages evolved from dialects of Vulgar Latin during different periods of Roman occupation. Many of these languages are widespread, with Spanish being spoken by over 358 million people worldwide. As these languages spread, so did the Latin alphabet on which they were based.

Also because of Rome’s imperialism, the Latin alphabet is used for Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, and even some Slavic Languages.

Centuries later, many of the victims of Rome’s , such as Spain, France, and England, would become mighty forces of imperialism themselves and would carry this writing system around the globe, including to what would later be the United States of America, noted for its political and economic influence.

Now, the majority of countries use the Latin alphabet either as their primary system of writing, or in addition to another system. Even in countries that use another system of writing, the Latin alphabet is still often used because of the widespread use of Romance and Germanic languages, and also because of the ease of communication and the incentives of capitalism.

In short, the spread of the Latin alphabet is equally as zealous and infectious as the influence of the empires, countries, and people that utilize it, and the aggressive colonization of the Roman empire has left a legacy that affects even our method of speech around the world.

http://www.britannica.com/

http://www.wikipedia.org/

The World Book Encyclopedia

http://www.euratlas.net/history/europe/100/index.html