caligram in depth analysis oscar wilson.

Oscar Wilson

This work was created by Oscar Wilson, he's London based and has been illustrating from 1996 to now. The work i called 'Totally London' its a series of different caligram pictures, that advertise places to go in London. i think the target audience for this could be tourists but also anyone who lives in London as they might not have been to everywhere in London or there might be places they don't know about. I can imagine these pictures being used a posters at train station, bus stops and tube stations and also advertising pages in magazines/newspapers. The work is a typography project, i've chosen to look at this piece because I'm looking at experimenting with work that is similar using typography as the main theme overall. 

I've looked further into the understanding of his work by looking at the work on his website, from this i have discovered that he does a lot of work in advertising and even done a piece for a book cover. I think his work has a theme of representing london life, its typography work that promotes the places in London to visit.  The title of the work is 'Totally London' this obviously hints that the work is going to be about London, the fact the logo for it is a like a road sign with a postcode gives the idea the work is to do with the different places in London. The work is based on making people in London aware of all the different places they can visit. Oscar Wilson uses things that represent London e.g telephone boxes, red buses, black taxi's when he makes bis caligram's because these are things people associate with London. 

I think that Owen Wilson hand drew his design before scanning it onto the computer & using adobe illustrator to add colour & make the finishing touches. I think he drafted the picture by hand several times to experiment with how the text would fit into with different sizes and fonts. Oscar Wilsons use of colour creates the illusion that from far away there is not text involves it just looks like solid colours. He uses a colour palette that represents the object he's chosen. The work he produces is not in scale with the sizes of the actual object, the picture is much smaller than in real life. The lines and colour in this work are essential as they influence the whole theme & final piece of this picture. 

I chose to look at this work because Owen Wilsons 'totally london' is a good example of caligrams, the show how 1 theme can influence the picture, words, colour & fonts you use. I've discovered that even just chaining the colour scheme of the caligram can alter the overall perception of the  work. I dont  understand why Owen Wilson used a gorilla in his totally london work as everything else he used was related to London but i don't see the relevance to the gorilla. Owen Wilson's work is similar to Sarah Kings work, she also creates caligrams but hers are slightly different in the fact she uses just one colour & her caligrams are more realistic.