Michael Doret, Graphic Designer, Illustrator and now font designer shared his inspiration at a seminar at the Art Institute of California "It Began in Brooklyn" (photo: Heather, Danielle, Michael & Lyndsay)
Growing up in New York, he spent much of his childhood at Coney Island (an outdoor amusement park by the sea), unbeknown to him this would become a subliminal source of inspiration throughout his life's work. The bright neon signs, the flashing lights, the fonts and styles, the Steeplechase face.
These are a selection of Michael's logos, print work and a very famous record cover for the band KISS. Can you see the Coney island influence?
For most of his career, he designed one off solutions to the design brief he received, but in recent years has branched out to font design. Inspired by the old metal Gevaert photo sign Michael saw in a Paris flea market, he created his first font "Orion" with an Art Deco, geometric style.
The quirkiness appealed to him and that was the main challenge to create a font whose letters joined seamlessly with it's strict angular connectors yet the outcome remained unique, like a commissioned logo.
"Metroscript" was inspired by scripts and hand lettering between 1920s and 1950s and vintage sport memorabilia.
Although he didn't want it to be only referred to as a baseball font, the launch poster for "metroscript" ironically featured a baseball player. With Michael's love and passion for Brooklyn Baseball, was baseball his inspiration? What do you think?
We used Michael's "powerstation" font for our blog title, Michael was inspired by a piece of work he did for Hershey's Time's Square Flagship store in NYC.
If you still haven't seen anything you recognize.... here is a very famous logo, designed by Michael for the NY Knicks basketball team.
Inspiration for design comes from anything and everything, you may have been influenced by things you've seen and you don't even realise it, just like Michael.
I went and visited Canters Deli in LA over the weekend and enjoyed some great food and was also able to share some info with the people I was with on the Canters type face. Really cool!
ReplyDeleteIt was a pleasure meeting you all at my talk. I really enjoy doing them, and feel good that you all got something out of it. Anyway, thanks for this great post!
ReplyDeleteThanks Michael, we really enjoyed hearing what inspires you and meeting you in person.
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