Posters With a Punch

Posters With a Punch

For inspiration with a shot of adrenalin, check out "Modern Dog: 20 Years of Poster Art (not canine-related)." Robynne Raye and Mike Stassburger, the principals at Seattle-based Modern Dog, have been breaking design molds since 1987. This book, beautifully displaying 226 posters, is a testament to their unwavering energy and creativity.





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Steve Heller provides an incisive foreword, setting the stage as only Steve can. "Modern Dog: 20 Years of Poster Art" also contains two interviews with Modern Dog, one by James Victore and another by Rick Valicenti. Together these articles are an excellent appetizer before getting to the main course: the simple and clean presentation of the work.


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You can view most of the posters in the book on Modern Dog's web site, but the book includes Robynne and Mike's funny and insightful commentary on each poster, some of their working sketches, and the backstory on a few assignments. That's well worth is price of the book. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll laugh some more. But most importantly, you'll be invigorated by Modern Dog's versatility and determination.

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  • Robert Newman

    I've always liked the Modern Dog peoples' posters a lot, but am I the only one who thinks that their style, especially in the 80s and 90s, owes quite a bit to that another great Seattle poster designer, Art Chantry? For anyone who was a designer in Seattle during that period, Art is the great influence, the godfather, the grandmaster. Modern Dog is like Art Chantry with some business sense, and without Art's politics and punk genius. They definitely have chops, though. But Art is the Nirvana to their Stone Temple Pilots.

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