Geometric Designers

Franco Grigani

Franco Grigani is another Swiss designer (as well as a painter and architect) but his backgrounds and imagery seems more busy and dynamic than other Swiss designers. He studied architecture in Turin and graduated, after that he took part in demonstrations for second wave of futurism which included abstract geometry and constructivism.

He features a lot of lines in his work whether there guiding they eye or contrasting with other imagery, also his backgrounds and imagery contain most of the colour whereas his text seems to black and grid structured over the top.

His design work is very typical of Swiss design that was around when he was designing. It features illustrative focals or photography as well as experimenting with colour and sense of depth. He didn’t seem to have a set of particular colours he preferred, instead using the right colour for the job in hand. White was often featured in his work and often balanced this piece out.

Quim Marin

Quim Marin produces modern interpretations of swiss design, typically using pastel colours and geometric shapes. He also uses Swiss inspired typefaces.

He makes very clean 80’s inspired posters, but the digital aspect of the posters is more obvious, sometimes layering to create focals, or a section of a photograph with a gradient. Almost like he experiments with focals and then structures them in a Swiss format with typography added as well.

Morten Iveland

Morten Iveland creates 70-80’s inspired Swiss pieces, using simple shapes and or imagery to engage the audience. He uses very mild colours which also gives a retro feel and look, also the typefaces he uses seem to reference 70’s design. We would say that it’s the strong compositions that makes these interesting. Each piece features a grain that is similar to typical Swiss design pre-nineties, this gives each piece a vintage feel, like they’ve been weathered. Another feature that seems to repeat his use of thin lines, and text which isn’t typical of old Swiss design but doesn’t feel out of place.

Yusaku Kamekura

Yusaku Kamekura was a Japanese designer with strong sense of Swiss design. He did some design for 1964 Olympics.

His posters are very intense and simple, often being known as colourful minimalism. He used Swiss structure for text lightly and then featured interesting visuals often circular or as a scene.

His constituent use of circles adds a running theme through his work which adds a sense of a strong style and also seems like a style where he’s most comfortable. His other work features softer, less abrasive colours with a more interesting composition and also more texture is utilised. Most of his text is in Japanese writing which works well but can create awkward shapes in large groups of text.

Tilman Zitzmann

Tilman Zitzmann is a designer with a blog called geometric daily. He designs a simple new piece of geometry every day, experimenting with shapes, lines and textures. Tilmann’s geometric experiments are simple but effective always managing to be interesting to some degree, he experiments with layering of geometric shapes as well as creating pattern with shapes and colours. He also plays around with composition and contrast sometimes using half shapes and juxtapositions them together.

Tilmann also seems unprejudiced when it comes to colour selection, using pastel colours, dark shades and also blander colours often contrasting them with other colours inside the piece. Some pieces seem more artistic than design but there all experiments so it’s not a bad thing.