Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Purely Decorative

In our everyday lives there's no burning need for decorative borders, but they're nice. They're usually there for a reason. The elaborate baseboards at the foot of interior walls were put there to keep the mop from dinging the plaster. The leather hem on a car coat keeps the sleeve from fraying. In fashion, in the built landscape, in graphics, minor extras usually have a practical reason. Making them look nice is just a courtesy, which may be why designers are so polite. I did these decorative borders for Lisa Catalone, who was designing a neat mailer for a school back east. Besides the useful illustrations, I did lettering that she turned into a font, and these decorative borders which she used to make the individual cards look special, which is what made people linger over them and read what they said.

1 comment:

  1. I like 'em! Interesting how even snippets of borders show an illustrator's hand.

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