Calligrams: Indepth analysis on Oscar Wilson

Oscar Wilson

Context 
Oscar Wilson is a contemporary artist who designs mainly for advertising of places and other companies like Nike, Puma and Visit London. He has been designing for companies since 1996 to the current date. This is a poster and advertises for visit London to encourage people and tourists to come to Camden.

Meaning 

In this piece Wilson seems to represent London life in a way that we probably wouldn't expect to see it. If they were advertising London you would normally expect to see Big Ben or the London eye but instead uses the statue of the gorilla in Camden to encourage people to come and visit, so it is not just representing London as a whole but the area they specifically want them to visit. Wilson's work represents more the promotional side than any emotional sort of meaning. 

Aesthetic

The techniques that this artist has used is rather clear in his work. He has hand drawn some of the piece first and has then scanned it into illustrator. He has then used certain effects like bold, bulge and warp to make the letters fit into the shape of the animal. He has used the same font all over his piece but has changed the sizes again to be able to fit them into the shape of the gorilla. Wilson seems to limit himself on colour on this piece and is not really seen to experiment with the mixing of colours, because of this it doesn't create any texture onto this piece and looks rather flat, however the bulging of the lettering makes up for this as it does give a sort of 3D effect.

Personal response 
I have chosen to look at Oscar Wilson because we have currently been looking into typography and the different ways we can create typography. I have seen other types of calligrams using advertisement and so researched into this and found Oscar Wilson. When I first saw this piece of work I thought it looked very interesting and wanted to look into it more. On getting a closer look into this piece I was looking more into the words used in the image of the gorilla it was all words to do with London Zoo and the things to do at Camden. The type of font that he has used reminds me of the psychedelic pictures from the 60's, because of how similar it is.The work inspired me to create my own calligram and to experiment more with the use of colour in illustrator.

This is my own version of a calligram. To create this I first made a list of words to do with perfume and then drew the outline of a perfume bottle. I had to carefully inspect my work as to make sure that there were no gaps when I went over it with fine liner as when put in to illustrator the colour would spill into other parts of the calligram.

One of the major differences of my piece and the artist’s piece is the use of colour. He has limited himself to at least 4 shades of grey, where as with mine I used four totally different colours which are all very bright. I think this does make mine stand out more and if both were used for advertising mine would be much more noticeable and easier to read. Another difference is the use of the black outline on the words; again I think this does help people to see the words more. What I like mostly about his work is the fact that he has warped the letters to fit into the shape whereas with mine I have just used a simple and bold font.   

Similarly I am technically advertising for perfume brands just like he is advertising for London because I have put names of brands like Coco Chanel and DKNY in my calligram.