Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Verna Bhagrava Shakes Things up with Simplicity


For today's design spotlight, I wanted to take a look a this great minimalist card created by Creative Director Verna Bhargava and her team. Their objective was to design something that encouraged people of various disciplines and backgrounds, everyone from scientists to artists, to attend a symposium about the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. I'd say they succeeded. 


The postcard brilliantly merges science with design. The winding curves covering the main side of the postcard are a clever nod to the Richter scale. 

And by using a textured brush instead of uniform solid lines to create the waves, the viewers mind is able to treat the shapes more abstractly. It's like looking at a cloud - everyone's going to interpret it a little differently. When I look at them, my mind conjures up images of shaky mountains and collapsing roads.

It's not pleasant imagery by any means, but it's exciting and it lends a sense of urgency to an event that occurred 25 years ago.


The back of the postcard demonstrates just how confident these designers are. There's only one bold brush stroke. Everything else is text. But you know what? It works. It's aesthetically pleasing, it draws the eye, and it makes a topic some might find mundane interesting again.

Kudos to Verna and everyone involved. 


Interesting side note: As if this great design wasn't enough to motivate people to attend, Mother Nature decided to lend a helping hand - Verna and her team launched this project 1 day after California was hit by a 6.1 earthquake.

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Do you have examples of a great postcard design?  We'd like to see them!  Simply use the Comments feature of this blog and let us know a little about your project -- we'll respond with how to send your images to us. Thank you!

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