Barbara Kruger

My latest Pinterest addiction has been all things Barbara Kruger. I rediscovered her work last week and immediately became nostalgic for an artist that has inspired so much for me in the past.

It started back many years ago during one of my Foundation classes at Emily Carr. Our assignment was to study an artist picked at random for us, and then create you’re own piece in their style. The artist assigned to me was Barbar Kruger. I was immediately drawn to Kruger’s strong use of typography mixed with images of feminism and her critique of consumerism. I found it fascinating that she had started as a graphic designer at Mademoiselle magazine before moving into the art world.

I was newly vegetarian and had just finished reading John Robin’s Book ‘Diet for a New America’. I was pretty taken back by the images of factory farming and chose this as my subject matter combining it with some recent MacDonald’s ad slogans. During the class critique, many controversial topics were discussed — which was the goal of the piece.

It’s still one of my favorite projects. I learned a lot about typography, the impact of the image and how to combine them in a simple way to convey a message. To this day, I still design using the principles I learned from that long ago Barbara Kruger project.

 


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