Designing the Little 500 poster through the lens of Josef Müller-Brockmann’s work was an exercise in restraint, structure, and purpose. Known as a key figure in the Swiss International Style, Müller-Brockmann emphasized clarity, order, and functionality in graphic design. His iconic Musica Viva posters and his seminal book Grid Systems in Graphic Design guided my process, showing me how structure can elevate visual communication. I wanted to emulate Brockmann’s Beethoven poster in particular. I started by sketching the composition of the wheel and adding elements of Brockmann’s influence as I went. I eventually got a good idea of how I would make it in Illustrator, mapping out where the typography would go.
Initial sketch
As I transitioned to the digital phase, I focused on incorporating Müller-Brockmann’s key principles: clean geometry, typographic hierarchy, and grid-based composition. The biggest challenge of this process was staying true to Brockmann’s minimalist style while simultaneously communicating to the audience that the centerpiece is a bike wheel. The grid design on the right side of the wheel signifies the motion of the spinning wheel. Brockmann’s work does not typically incorporate bright colors, but considering this is an IU event, I felt like the bright red was a must-have.
Josef Müller-Brockmann began his design journey in Zurich, Switzerland, where he studied architecture, design, and art history. He later opened his studio and became a leading figure in Swiss graphic design, known for pioneering the International Typographic Style. His work emphasized grid systems, objective communication, and the use of sans-serif typography to create clarity and order. Over time, Brockmann’s designs evolved from more illustrative compositions to purely abstract, structured visuals that prioritized function over decoration.
Poster for the Zurich Town Hall by Müller-Brockmann
My influence of choice for Project 2 is Erik Nitsche. The Swiss designer, famous for his posters for General Dynamics, drew my attention by the dull and dark backgrounds contrasted by bright primary colors. In my own work the color of the cyclists draw inspiration from the color used on the album Mendelssohn created by Nitsche. I wanted to create a similar color collage as the one on the album. Sticking to four cyclists per lain, I wanted them to have that same scattered feeling as in the album along with the color inspiration.
Album cover by Erik Nitsche
Nitsche’s Atoms for Peace poster was another inspiration for my poster. Nitsche’s poster has vertical motion directing the eye to the top of the poster presenting the message. I used the cyclists to create motion moving down. The sans serif font I used in my poster, Conthrax, was inspired by the font Nitsche uses in the Atoms for Peace poster.
General Dynamics poster by Erik Nitsche
Erik Nitsche started designing around 1936, working in Hollywood, on magazines. In 1955 Nitsche designed a series of modern and sleek posters for General Dynamics in order to outshine competitors in a blossoming atomic age. Nitsche’s modernist and clean, sleek is what drove me to choose Nitsche has my poster influence.
For our second project, I took inspiration from Josef Müller-Brockmann. Müller-Brockmann’s work was influenced by Bauhaus and constructivism where he eventually became known as one of the pioneers of Swiss graphic design. He opened his own graphic design studio in Zurich in 1934 where he worked as a freelancer, soon joined by collaborators in 1936. He then began the communication agency Müller-Brockmann and Co. alongside with being a consultant for IBM.
Click the image to view the poster PDF!
I came to the decision to use Müller-Brockmann as I felt that I could come up with a clear vision for a poster when looking at some of his past work. His work really stood out to me with its minimalist vibe. I really thought that his style would be able to create a poster design that is able to effectively communicate the information related to the Little 500 race.
Some of the key elements from Müller-Brockmann’s design style I tried to include were sans-serif typography, asymmetrical layouts, and use of negative space. These were the features that I saw across most of Müller-Brockmann’s work and felt it was crucial to incorporate them into my design.
The typeface seen on the poster is Helvetica. Most of Müller-Brockmann’s work uses the Akzidenz-Grotesk typeface, but I was unable to find the font for free online, so I thought Helvetica would be a fine substitution. Müller-Brockmann does not really do anything special with his type, he just uses a clean sans-serif typeface. He does usually include lots of text in work, and I tried to include as much as I could without it getting too busy.
Automobil-Club der Schweiz, Schützt das Kind!, 1953
Musica Viva, 1958
I took inspiration from Müller-Brockmann’s Automobil-Club der Schweiz, Schützt das Kind! for the photographic elements on the poster. While photographic imagery was not a staple of Müller-Brockmann’s style, he does have some artwork that utilizes it and I thought that its inclusion would make for effective design in this case. I also really liked the diagonal directional force from his posters for Musica Viva, especially the one from 1958. I felt that the diagonal direction of the cyclist paired the two inspirations together well. I included the other cyclist in the bottom right to fulfill that element of asymmetrical balance, as well as the inspiration from the Automobil-Club der Schweiz, Schützt das Kind! poster.
Lastly, the use of negative space was a huge feature from Müller-Brockmann’s work. A lot of his designs were very minimalist and left a lot of open space. It seemed like it would be a crucial part of my design to not overcrowd the poster. I again tried to incorporate the use of asymmetrical balance with my negative space by leaving lots of openness to the top-right and bottom-left of the “Little 500.”
For this project we looked to some of the greats to get inspiration for the Little 500. Little Five is a famous bicycle race held annually at Indiana University Bloomington. It started in 1951 and is modeled after the Indianapolis 500, but with bikes instead of cars. It’s argued as the biggest week here at IU, and with that it’s advertised and talked about the whole Month of April. We were tasked with creating a poster for the event but in the influence of a famous graphic designer.
When looking at some designers to get inspiration from I found myself circling back to Lucian Bernhard and George Olden, two amazing designers with vary different styles. because I was so stuck with who I would pick I decided to sketch some of my ideas down and see what style my vision would look best in, muted black and white photo collages or sketch style colored designs. I the end I went with Lucian Bernhard.
Lucian Bernhard was a German graphic designer, type designer, professor, interior designer, and artist. He is best known for pioneering the Plakatstil or the poster style movement, characterized by bold, simple designs with flat colors and minimal text.
With my designer now picked it was time to work on my poster. like I said before I already sketched out two ideas one was a close up on a bicycle seat and the other I wanted to do a race track with a racer on it.
The bicycle seat one was pretty straightforward, the only thing that stumped me was choosing the color way. I know I wanted to stay with the cream, red, and black color palette, I just didn’t know how to format it the way I wanted.
In the end I narrowed it down between these two color ways
next I worked on font and copy placement, I wanted to do a similar fort to one you find in Lucian Bernhard’s designs. I found a font called Attic Antique Italic, I thought it resembles perfectly with fonts Lucian Bernhard uses. but also for fun I went with a simple font called Transat Black just to see. in the end I went with Attic Antique Italic, I just looked better and more cohesive to me with the design.
And these were the final designs I turned in because I couldn’t ick what color way was better.
at this point of the project I was just messing around with more ideas I had so I ended up making another post for this project. this poster shows more of the racers. and combining 500 into the actual drawing of the racer.
I stared making the design as a vertical poster but I looked too smushed so I switched it to horizontal and it was much much better.
click to see the poster better!
this is the final design for the horizontal poster and I think it Turned out perfectly.
overall I have a lot of fun with this project, even though we have to “copy” a creative style I still felt like I had a lot of creative freedom.
For this poster, I drew inspiration from Seymour Chwast’s signature blend of satire, bold color, and playful visual metaphors. Chwast’s work often turns everyday objects into quirky characters or symbolic icons, and I wanted to bring that same energy to the Little 500.
At the heart of the poster is a bicycle made of cherries, an over easy egg, and a rain cloud. This gives a whimsical nod to Chwast’s love for blending illustration and concept. This unexpected bike functions as both a visual pun and an anchor for the overall composition. The winding green track beneath it adds motion and direction, guiding the eye through the design while echoing Chwast’s use of bold, simple forms to convey depth and story.
I used flat colors from a retro palette containing a mustard yellow, cherry red, olive green, sky blue, and cream peach to reflect Chwast’s printmaking aesthetic, and paired them with checkered patterns in the title to add texture and dimension. The playful gendered stick figures with quirky rear faces are a subtle nod to Chwast’s satirical tone, hinting at the tradition of the race while poking fun at iconography we take for granted. The typography was carefully planned with the title at the top, event dates prominently in the middle, and URL tucked at the bottom, ensuring everything feels cohesive yet spontaneous, just like Chwast’s designs, which are structured but never rigid.
Overall, this poster captures the spirit of Seymour Chwast by combining unexpected visual storytelling with humor, color, and a hand drawn sensibility. It’s fun, strange, and invites the viewer to look closer just the way Chwast would want it.
Seymour Chwast Design
Seymour Chwast is an influential American graphic designer and illustrator well recognized for his humorous and fun style. He co-founded Push Pin Studios in the 1950s, challenging the mainstream modernist design style with more artistic and unconventional approaches. His work includes posters, publications, books, and political art, and it frequently incorporates comedy, hand-drawn illustrations, and typographic experimentation.
For this project, I took inspiration from the designer Mari White. I really wanted to go off the beaten path with this assignment and looked for inspiration from lesser-known contemporary designers with a distinct styles. I found Mari White by accident on Pinterest and followed the links to their website, Behance site, and Instagram. Their “poster experimentations” series, which was done out of a desire to rekindle their creative spirit, really spoke to me because of their energy and dynamic use of layered elements.
There isn’t much on the internet about Mari White apart from examples of their work. They’re a brand designer based in Tampa who has more recently designed band tour posters and shared a fair bit of personal artwork. I think this poster says a lot to me about them:
Mari is contemporary not only in their designs, but in their experience as a designer in the age of social media. The “poster experiementations” designs deviate significantly from their cleaner brand work and are more reflective of their internal artistic passion. I think this is why I was attracted to these designs in the first place.
The main typography is hand-lettered. Many of Mari’s designs feature uneven lettering that look as though they’ve been cut out of paper and pasted onto the poster. Although I kept my letters a bit cleaner, I wanted to hand-letter to get that spontenaiety. I tried to imagine what it would look like if I were to cut out the letters from a sheet of paper. In some of Mari’s designs, the letters have a darker double behind them, resembling a drop shadow. I also used this technique on the letters and on the red background shape. For the location, dates, and url, I used a royalty-free font called “Paper Johnny” that mimicks this cut-paper look.
Mari’s designs use lines criss-crossing in and around the typography to create a sense of energy and motion. In this spirit, I included lines in my design which are patterned with the checkers associated with racing. As Mari does, I passed these paths over and behind the main lettering.
The colors for this poster came from a couple of different places. The red of the background shape comes from the IU brand guide to link the poster to the Little 500 and to the school. The cream color, however, comes from Mari White’s tendency to use a cream color like a faded paper in their poster designs.
Over everything, I used two different paper textures. Mari White’s posters make generous use of texture, especially paper textures. For the background of my poster, I used a texture that is closer to linen. The main elements are textured with something more similar to contruction paper, like someone would use to cut out letters for a physically assembled poster.
Ultimately, I don’t think my design looks like something that would have come from Mari White. I was greatly inspired by their dynamic lettering and use of lines and abstract shapes, but Mari’s designs tend to be much busier than mine and I use a lot more rounded shapes. Even though I went back and forth between my design and Mari’s as I worked on this project, I think my unfamiliarity with their technique hindered my ability to mimic it, and I got a little carried away with my own ideas as I worked on the poster. I would like to try something similar again, perhaps with a little more focus on colors—especially the way the colors of overlapping elements interact—and using more varied and interesting shapes.
When I began designing the Little 500 poster, I aimed to capture the vibrant energy of the event while honoring Otis Shepard’s design principles. I was fascinated by Shepard’s talent for turning simplicity into something impactful, and it seemed ideal for the Little 500 event, which is a fast-paced, energetic event that requires a design reflecting its intensity. One of the initial aspects that crossed my mind was typography. Shepard had an incredible ability to use fonts that weren’t fundamental to the overall design. His typography consistently featured a clean, bold, and intentional quality, which I aimed to mirror. For the Little 500 poster, I opted for a modern sans-serif typeface (Futura Condensed) that I believed expressed a lot of Otis’s work. I wanted the text to stand out but also blend smoothly with the rest of the design, so it wouldn’t take over the other elements while still grabbing attention. Typography transcends mere legibility; it’s about establishing a tone, and I wanted it to reflect the dynamic energy of the event.
When it comes to color, this is where I really felt Shepard’s influence. I remembered how he used bold, contrasting colors and bright, primary ones that immediately catch your eye. I went with red and blue because they’re both vibrant and timeless. Red brings energy and grabs attention, reflecting the excitement and speed of the race, while blue helps balance things out, making the design feel more grounded. I used some cream and yellow and that helped the poster come together the most, in my opinion. The color contrast wasn’t just for looks; it was meant to make people feel something. I wanted the poster to give off a sense of urgency and excitement, so the colors had to work together to create that feeling, just like the race itself.
Otis Shepard’s Chicago Cubs graphics!
I also took inspiration from Shepard’s minimalist style. His designs were simple and to the point, never overcrowded. I knew my design needed to highlight the most important things: the cyclist, the event details, and the energy of the race. I worked hard to keep the composition clean, letting the cyclist’s image and the text stand on their own and tell their stories. It wasn’t about adding every detail I could think of; it was about focusing on what really captured the spirit of the Little 500.
Working on this poster really made me reflect on my design style and helped me focus more on making intentional choices. It’s easy to overcomplicate things, but this project showed me how powerful simplicity can be when done right. Like Shepard, I realized there’s a certain elegance in keeping things minimal, and that sometimes less really is more.
I’ve included two early sketches I worked on. They were a way for me to try out different ideas, like layout, the main image, typography, and color choices. I think they give a peek into how I tried to blend my own ideas with Shepard’s influence.
In the end, this project was more than just making a poster. It gave me a chance to really understand the power of restraint, clarity, and being intentional with my design choices. Shepard’s influence wasn’t just about copying his style; it was about embracing his mindset and applying it in a way that felt true to the event and my own creative process.
For this project, I took I took Inspiration from April Greiman. Greiman was a pioneer in embracing computer technology as a design tool.
She was born in 1948 in New York. In 1970 she graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute with a degree in Graphic Design. Shortly after graduating, she then enrolled in the Basel School of Design, located in Switzerland.
There she was mentored by Armin Hofmann and Wolfgang Weingart. Hofmann specialized in grid-based designs, that were minimalistic. Weingart’s work focused on typography and he was later dubbed the father of new wave typography. Both of these artists’ works were very representative of Swiss graphic art at the time.
Wolfgang WeingartArmin Hofmann
Greiman’s art style is categorized as New Wave, and she is known as the one who introduced this style to the US. Her style combines a lot of the analog techniques of her mentors and the digital techniques of her time. She blends bold post-modern aesthetics with technology.
Her work often features vibrant colors, often red, blue, green, yellow, and pink. Her work features a lot of photographic imagery mixed with geometric shapes. She layers opacities in a way that creates its own pattern. She is also known for using experimental typography. She embraces texture.
One of Greinman’s defining pieces was a design for an issue of Quarterly Design. The piece is titled Does It Makes Sense? and was produced using MacDraw in 1986. She layered textures of pixilated videos, text, and environmental imagery to create the piece.
Does It Make Sense? April Greiman
I chose April Greiman because I wanted to learn more about female Graphic Designers because I feel like I haven’t learned about many in my classes. I chose her because I loved her use of vibrant colors and how chaotic her works look at first glance. This might be an insult, but I don’t mean it to be. When I look at her work I see a grown-up Lisa Frank Illustration. Her work gave me the same feeling I got when I was little and saw Lisa Frank’s work. It was fun, happy, and bright. Below are a couple of Greiman works I took inspiration from to create my poster.
sci-arcFreedon, Equality, Liberty, Property, SecurityCover of WET Magazine
COLORS
When choosing colors I had a lot to choose from. Greiman’s pallet is large and often untamed. I decided to tame mine and stuck with three colors, cyan, magenta, and yellow. I felt these colors worked together in a harmonious way. They also reminded me of the new wave aesthetic even though the CMYK color model came out long before Greiman was born.
I also chose these colors because of the emotions they evoke. They are vibrant and lively and if they could move I’m sure they would move fast. I felt these colors worked perfectly in the context of a bike race.
TYPOGRAPHY
For my typography, I took inspiration from Freedom, Equality, Liberty, Property, Security, and the cover for WET Magazine. I liked how the typography was placed on colored boxes. This reminded me of fortune cookies. I also liked the typography she used, in the WET cover. She uses a mix of bold and light sans-serif fonts. I like the simplicity of the light font against the dramatic background, so I used light fonts throughout, Benton Sans, to be exact.
VISUAL ELEMENTS
For my visual elements, I wanted to incorporate the use of layered opacities. I did this by taking a stock image of a bike racer and doing a halftone pattern. I made three copies, one pink, one blue, and one yellow. I then set their opacities to roughly 60% and arranged them in a fashion that created movement and three-dimensionality.
I incorporated white-colored blocks around my text, much like Greiman. I also wanted to incorporate the use of a gradient. Therefore I made the background a gradient from cyan to magenta. I also wanted to incorporate some sort of pattern, so I added the rows of dots. To add even more movement. Lastly, I wanted to incorporate geometric shapes, so I made the images square. Added a defining box to the title text, and added two triangles to the corners of the piece. This not only added clutter, to resemble Greimans work but also it balanced out the poster.
REFLECTION
This project was fun! I liked researching Greiman and learning about how she got started, and what her inspirations were. In regards to my poster, I worked on this for a long time. I actually had another completed poster that I was going to turn in then changed the layout because I felt my first one was hard to follow.
First Draft
I liked exploring these vibrant colors, as I tend to stick to strict and simple color palettes. In my earlier draft, I also used a digitalized typography that resembled the type in Freedom, Equality, Liberty, Property, Security but ultimately did not like that typography on my new design.
I had a hard time figuring out how to create the dot grid and ended up doing it in a way that was quite tedious. I’m sure there is an easier way. I ended up making a row of dots that got progressively smaller then using the grid pattern to extend them past the first row.
Overall I like my design and I think it takes a step back from Greimans. It’s much simpler than her work but still has multiple nods to her work. I feel I did a good job of combining my style and skills with inspiration from one of the women pioneers of graphic design.
My Little 500 poster is influenced by Seymour Chwast, a legendary graphic designer, illustrator, and typographer, born in 1931 in the Bronx, and now 93 years old. Chwast is celebrated for his bold, vibrant colors, playful typography, and whimsical tone. His hand-drawn, quirky, cartoonish aesthetic has become his signature style.
Chwast’s work spans a wide variety of mediums, including posters, book covers, advertisements, and children’s books. He often incorporates humor and clever visuals into his designs. Below are examples of Chwast’s work that inspired me for this project.
Bailey Cappella, rider for Kappa Alpha Theta bike team, finishing first in the Little 500 race in 2024.
When I first selected Seymour Chwast as my influence, I didn’t have a clear idea of how to integrate his style into my poster. However, after researching his work, I began to appreciate his illustrative approach. This inspired me to create an illustration of a Little 500 photo. I immediately knew which photo I wanted to recreate: the moment my friend Bailey Cappella crossed the finish line at the end of last spring’s Women’s Race. Bailey and I are both in Kappa Alpha Theta, but unlike me, she’s a member of the bike team.
Click the image to see the full pdf version of my poster.
After tracing the photo of Bailey, I decided what to do next. I knew I wanted to give the poster a border because almost all of Chwast’s pieces include borders lining the edges of the page. For inspiration, I turned to his work of Judy Garland. I was drawn to the way he outlined her shape and decided to do the same with Bailey’s figure. It took a few tries to get the outlines just right. I aimed for a slightly wonky and quirky look, staying true to Chwast’s style.
Next, I selected the colors for the outlines. I debated whether to draw from Chwast’s palette or take inspiration from The Little 500. Ultimately, I decided to use the colors of the flags in the Indiana University Student Foundation (IUSF) logo. Since IUSF organizes the Little 500, I felt it was fitting to incorporate their influence into the design.
Finally, I worked on adding type and the border. I chose letter colors that matched the outlines. For the border, the answer became almost too obvious: checkers, representing the iconic checkered flag waved at the finish line of the race.
Overall, I am very pleased with how my poster turned out and I hope that Seymour Chwast would appreciate it.
For my influence project, I took inspiration from Paula Scher’s work. When choosing my influence, I wanted to look for a female graphic designer. Not only did I find one, but I believe I found the ultimate female graphic designer. I came across her work when looking for female graphic designers in general, and I loved how her work stood out amongst others because her style does not fall into conformity; through her use of strong layouts, complex typography, and bold colors, her work breaks norms of typical commercial graphic design and does not scream her gender identity like I commonly find amongst other designers. When starting to research her more, I came across an episode of Abstract: The Art of Design on Netflix that focused on her insights and career; through direct interviews with Scher and her colleagues, I was granted a better look into her personality and thoughts and instantly knew that she would be my influence.
In my work, I aimed to capture styles from her various works to encompass different eras in her career. So, for this reason, I approached my project in sections: design elements, photography, and typography.
Design Elements
I have to admit the overall layout of the poster changed a few times because I trapped myself within a box by only designing on a vertical canvas. One day in class, Pr. Layton reminded us that we can make our poster horizontal if desired; I changed my design right away and thankfully I did because I love it so much more. I also feel that it better represents Scher’s influence because the inspiration for that illustrated track in the background stems from her work designing maps which are typically always horizontal. Her maps were also painted, as were her early typefaces, so I added the artistic paintbrush strokes to the track to emulate this. She also tends to make use of all available space; therefore, there was no doubt in my mind that filling the middle of the track was necessary and the checkered pattern made the most sense to represent the finish line of the race.
Photography
The photography in my project stands out as a main element of the poster but strangely was the easiest part to design. In Scher’s designs, she has a distinct photographic style that includes cut-out, two-toned portraits sometimes with stylized overlays. I knew how to achieve this style because of our previous Pop Art and Constructivist exercises. First, I was drawn to this certain image of cyclists racing down a track, so I brought it into Photoshop, cut it away from its background, adjusted the lighting, and changed its mode to grayscale. Then, I chose the crimson color from Indiana University’s official color pallet and created a halftoned image to showcase it. Finally, I decided that the photographic element should reference a specific piece of her work, Blade to the Heat for The Public Theater, so I created a second version of the image using IU’s official black and added it as a second top layer to bring out more detail and mimic the 3D quality in her work.
Typography
Typography is the most important part of Scher’s influence. In the episode I watched, she says, “Typography is painting with words. That’s my biggest high. It’s my crack.” I knew I had to make creative and atypical design choices with the type to follow her influence correctly. At this point in my design process, I had only a cyclist image over the bland track illustration, so the choice seemed obvious. I would position the type along the track’s curves to make better use of the space. I had seen Scher do this in some of her work and felt that it would make more sense for my layout than trying to position straight blocks of text in an overwhelmingly round layout. Trying to fit lines of information into limited sections where separations between text naturally made sense did pose difficulties at first; however, I just kept making changes to their paths or the text placements and eventually landed on a layout that was readable and showcased all the important information.
Paula Scher stood out early on, skipping football games in high school to attend art classes. She studied illustration at the Tyler School of Art, where she fell in love with typography, influenced by contemporary culture like underground magazines and record covers. In the 1970s, she landed a job at CBS Records, designing album covers and working closely with artists—though they often dictated the creative direction. Her cover for Boston sold six million copies in a month, a success she finds ironic given her dislike for the design. Over time, she pushed typography to the forefront of her work, developing a bold, urban, and expressive style. Her poster for Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk became iconic and widely imitated. Later, she moved into environmental graphics, designing systems that could be used for navigation or a sense of place like the one at Rockaway Beach after Hurricane Sandy. Inspired partly by her mapmaker father, her painted maps are meant to provoke thought rather than provide answers. Though she didn’t initially see herself as a feminist, working in a male-dominated field revealed the challenges she faced. Today, she’s considered one of the most influential female graphic designers.
Prior to researching Scher, I never had a strong design influence. But I believe I have found the prefect influence for me. Aside from her design style, Paula is a top graphic designer with decades of successful work who started out having to prove her worth a young female in a male-dominated profession. I feel very inspired by her journey and hope to have at least an ounce of her success in the future.
