Portland is quite the hotbed for design. I wonder if it will be the next Minneapolis or Nashville.

Those posters are great Darrel, I really like the integration of a simple, yet distinct. design with the illustrations.

These posters exemplify great design. I do wish the poster thumbnails were a bit larger though. I'm going to get myself a couple of them.

Given that I work in the design field here in Portland, I have to say thanks for the kind words.

This poster exhibit is actually part of a design festival that is in it's second year. The festival is a showcase for all the different disciplines of design (architecture, fashion, graphic, interactive, furniture, advertising, and film and video. It's largely funded by an urban development commission. While there are some rough spots to be sure (some well noted in the article), it is a grand vision and on many levels quite inspiring.

The keynote speaker this year was Marcel Wanders of Moooi (formerly of Droog Design. Last year it was Yves Behar of Fuseproject.

It's interesting to hear an outsiders perspective of even part of the show.

But more to the point of the tri-met posters. This is also the second year of this campaign for the transit system. The first year was equally well executed. A few of the illustrations can be seen on Jeff Foster's site (ta Portland based illustrator of the first campaign). These images are quite large for the web. So take a look at images 12, 13 and 14 to get an idea. While they aren't in the context of the graphic designed poster (type can be a beautiful thing as we all know) I'm sure you can appreciate the art itself.

Cheers from Portland.

Oh BTW click on the the thumbnail images and you'll get an even larger view. Sometimes people miss that.

I hate to always play a bad guy and ruin everyone’s fun, but these posters are great examples of illustration. That’s about it. I applaud the artists for their creativity, but placing them in the same bag as “Great Graphic Design” is like putting the bread in with the milk. It’s the wrong thing to do.

If anything they fall in the genre of advertising, not design (Which in my mind are completely different). Large focal image with supporting type set to lead you back to the main image. No more, no less.

Large focal image with supporting type set to lead you back to the main image. No more, no less.

Good design is also knowing when to leave well enough alone and not overwhelming your primary imagery with design for design's sake.

Jeremy you are not ruining anybody's fun, don't worry. Mostly, because your comment is not fully correct. Yes, the posters' main focus are the pretty illustrations but did you notice the color coding in the top and almost-bottom bands? The typography which is not part of the illustrations? The attention to white space? And, even with the small thumbnails the typesetting looks very well considered. I would, myself, call that graphic design.

> If anything they fall in the genre of advertising, not design

How so? The use is what makes advertising be advertising. Not the look, not the use of illustration, not the typesetting. Although graphic design done by advertisers tends to have bad look, bad use of illustration and bad is putting it mildly for the horrible typesetting.

Jeremy: nice to read your encouragement of discussion. Just curious, how do you define graphic design in its finest form?

It's all design.

;o)

There is a sizable difference between design and Great Design. While good design is all about maintaining a balance of positive/negative space, incorporating a strong grid system, or not, activating the edge, giving the viewer closure, strong typesetting (if you can’t set type get out of the business), blah, blah, blah. There are to things keeping it from Great Design.

These posters are not Great Design and are maybe good design at that. What separates design from Great Design are 2 things in conjunction with negative space, grid systems and the rest of the blah, blah, blah. Originality.

The most important aspect of Great Design is a big thing called originality. Originality is not the color- coding in the top and bottom bands nor is it knowing when to leave well enough alone. Originality is about doing something different in the modernism-plagued society we have created. Originality is not about doing whatever the client wants to collect a check at the end of the week. So due to the lack of originality these posters are not Great Design.

As far as the advertising comment I made goes, I was not as clear as I should have been. So I apologize if I’ve offended any one. This leads me to the second thing. Design is an art. This idea of the designer as an artist and not a "Mac operator" is bastardized in a corporate setting but hey, what’s not? The designer is an artist, well, the good designers are. Just because my little brother is computer literate doesn’t make him a designer because he, the artist, puts nothing of himself in to his work just the ideas of another person or business. (I used to work in advertising and this is pretty much how my firm worked, some may not work this way.)

So in closure, this is how I define graphic design in its finest form. I would include a picture but nothing from the past few years is really worth looking at. But why should we look at what has already been done when we can be thinking about what hasn’t been done.

So now that you are finished reading my rant, remember I do not think that these posters are not design, or good advertising. They are just in no way shape or form Great Design!

Jeremy:

You are confusing the terms design and graphic design.

Design does not have to be original. In fact, lots of great design is highly derivative. In terms of the business of graphic design, I could argue originality isn't a prerequisite to greatness, either. In terms of art, I could still argue that, but would tend to agree with you more in that realm.

And now for something different.

I know that I am chiming in a bit late with this one, but I just stumbled upon the web site for ID Branding, the Portland based branding agency responsible for designing the Tri-Met posters. Although the site lacks the high quality images I believe you were hoping for, it does showcase several other uses for the illustrations that were commisioned for the project.

The images can be found in the Portfolio section under Case Studies.