2

This is a package from a swiss brand called Geigy. It’s made in the 60s. What technique has been used to create the ant would you say?

enter image description here

1 Answer 1

5

It is very likely made using silkscreen or lithography.
Since these designs seem to have been made using stencils cut out of paper, I think silk screen printing would have been the more practical approach. The grid-like outlines of the shapes also corroborate this type of printing. (Of course, consequential prints were probably made using offset printing.)

I believe this is a photograph of a prototype for this box of the ant-killer Neocid, since even the folding lines seem to have been printed.

The source of your image can be seen here: 'Graphic Design Manual, Principles and Practice', by Armin Hofmann.
He was part of a team of designers who were employed by the Swiss pharmaceutical company Geigy in the 1960s to advertise their products to doctors and in medical journals (as direct advertising to the public was prohibited).
Hence the artist of this particular packaging is an unknown student (see image below).

Detail of page 20 of Corporate Diversity: Swiss Graphic Design and Advertising by Geigy, 1940-1970, Lars Muller Verlag, 2009

The style is called International Typographic Style, which is also known as Swiss Style.

2
  • Great! I know very little about "analogue" drawing techniques. Could the ant have been drawn with ink, a thick brush, cut from a black piece of paper or something similar? Commented Apr 27, 2022 at 15:30
  • @TonyBolero Yeah, I think it was cut from paper, and then printed using silkscreen, but it's hard to figure out the exact process based on this image alone. I also wasn't able to find anything on the processes used during the creative stage of this campaign, and some of the artists might have had different techniques to begin with.
    – Joachim
    Commented Apr 28, 2022 at 18:16

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .