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My paper research on Adolphe Cassandre, and below are my criticized on his three pieces

In conclusion, Cassandre has a style of design of realism, symbolism and formal typography. By critiquing three of his pieces, we can see the relation between them technically. Overall, the U.S. lines poster is quite different from the Normandie but closer to the Etoile du Nord poster in the way of showing only part of the objects. US lines showed only the funnels of the liner while the Northern Star showed only the rail tracks. But in the meaning, both the US Lines and Normandie are related to “marine”. In design, the painting gives a lot of information that words alone can not describe and that can say how impressive and interesting Cassandre left a worthy treasure cleverly to us, to his generation, our generation; it is also his messages and story about the past life.

The United States Lines poster, produced in 1928 for United States Liner. In general, the picture has a vertical perspective neat image of graphical blocks.This poster demonstrates Picasso’s cubist influence on Cassandre.

The ship is not described in a whole body, Cassandre only used a part of the ship- the three funnels, but they are not painted in entirely except the middle one, the first and the last one are seen only half - with the purpose of representing the whole image of this liner. And his choice of colors: red, white and blue which is known as the symbol of the United States is part of the symbolism incorporated in Cassandre’s design. These three columns also imply the Cassandre’s signature of design when they are shown smaller and shorter from left to right, or his view from a small angle to larger field.

His practice on the brightness and shadow, the white blur outline surrounding the funnels which is darker from left-half to right-half, this detail gives spectators the impression of almost rectangular shapes offers more touch to the realism, look like the real funnels the sun light would be very bright and set from the left side, it gives the impression that the ship is sailing to the left.

This time again are the three obvious styles of whitespaces and typography. Text is organized apart, in bottom which leave more breadth to the poster. The ‘United States Lines’ is aligned center, written in the shading color with the funnels and stands on an area of a white box around to made it visible.

This poster was designed in the 1930’s, during the period of mass immigration to the United States- the promised land. And this poster, in my opinion, would include a meaning that is a desire of Europeans would sail towards the light with US Lines…. “Sail away with me, what will be will be ….” a song I’m thinking while looking this poster.

This poster “The North Star” was first designed in 1927, and did cause an absolute revolution in the advertising field. Even though this is used to advertise the Pullman train for the travel between France, Belgium and the Netherlands, Cassandre produced this without an image of a train, in a break with tradition and the beginning of his style of design. The rail tracks disappear into the horizon and join together into one point. So, where is the Northern Star going to? Where would be the destination? It gives the impression that Pullman’s customers can travel to the end of the world.

And in the very top, very far in the horizon, the colours get lighter, as if life is more radiant there and that is our destination. The white image of the star look like a very funny child running and the star’s shadow spreads onto the railway looking like a person walking. The images appeared from bottom to, from huge to tiny, seems from near to far, from departure to destination, from present to future. Besides, the analogous color of blue-violet in the picture provides the quite and more whitesapces to the whole poster. These are all factors assigned to Cassandre’s style of observing “objects from a low angle to make it seem larger than life” (Lot database).

Again, his typography, aligned center, arranged apart the very bottom of the poster leaving the image more whitespaces and appeared more clean. The names of the companies are organized surrounding the image like a frame. This, again demonstrates his style of formality, structure and solidity. His fonts chosen have shadow, are quite blurred, one overlapped each other and can count more than 2 different fonts which is not recommended in design. Why is it? A break in the rule again?

The poster was designed in 1935 for a French ocean liner named Normandie. The poster is well known by world class designers, especially in France. This typifies the formal with straight lines, symmetrized curves, whitespaces, the typography, the brightness and contrast.

In this poster, Cassandre described the French liner by successfully using symmetry. The lines and curves are analogous by both sides: right and left and they join into a very top point and toward the front of the ship. The image of Normandie’s chimney towering high into the sky opposed to the very tiny dot of water, birds at about one sixth of the vessel’s height, brings to viewers the feeling of massive proportions in height, in size, so that this liner seems almost invincible. Although the sea is known as nature’s most powerful force, the water just plays an insignificant role. By using the horizontal straight line separating the image and the text area, Cassandre leads viewers to think that the sea is tamed and totally conquered by the power of Normandie. In addition, the skeleton of this liner is very well placed in vertically middle of the scene. The whole piece gives spectators the idea of a ship of superlatives - the most enormous, the fastest, the most luxury and unique greatest ocean liner of all time.

Cassandre one more time insist on the superlative of this ship. He designed the birds that are not very easy to see on very right top of the poster, the smoke from the chimney and the light fall on the right part of the ship. They all prevent the picture from being sterile and add more sense of realism.

Regarding the typography, the texts are aligned center and placed apart, in a quite clear area of the design. The chosen font is quite square, solid with capital letters that are masculine, strong and convincing. But the white text in middle “French Line” is almost unreadable; it is not only because of its irregular font or its color, but also because of the overlapping of its neighbour’s text lines that hides the ownership of the liner. The intent is to target not only France but also spread throughout the world. And the last lines appeared in red with the information “For luxury liners and only distinctive class”. These points all take part in establishing the elegance, the standard and the luxury of the Normandie liner.

Last but not least, the whitespaces and the choice of gradiant color, lighter downward, that would leave a very quite transmission, add more depth and larger view to the picture.