Ephemera

Surprisingly I've come across something that's been a very big inspiration to me for a long time but I haven't know that there was a name for it. I was thinking about how my end product is a collection of things: poster, zine, coaster, bookmark, sticker sheet and was wondering if there was a name for this other than a 'collection'. 

I remembered Dom saying a word to do with multiple pieces of printed matter but I couldn't remember what it was so I started digging and realised it was Ephemera! After looking at the word description I realised that this was the name for all of the 'random bits' that I've been inspired by for years. 

I started collecting random bits of printed matter a few years ago: bus tickets, flyers, posters, tea bag labels etc etc because i was inspired by all the random collections that I would see online. Anything that I found that 'looked nice' I would add to my collection, but I've always been a big fan of all the vintage items I would see on Pinterest too. I've realised that when you search up ephemera a lot of it is quite naff, old maps and sheet music etc. but I'm inspired by the things that have really interesting graphic qualities. 

I think it's really interesting that a lot of ephemera is designed so beautifully but is "only meant to last one day" or "one use" - with Glad Print, I'm kind of going against that grain by designing things that have double uses, and can be used time and time again.  

Examples of ephemera that I've saved for inspiration previously:

I've always been really inspired by the 'look' of ephemera without knowing what it was. The typesetting has that blocky, unique feel to it and is so bold. It's always been the type and the grids that interest me. 

Examples of art that I've been inspired by that has an ephemera feel to it:

Robert Rauschenberg 

R. B Kitaj

Micosch Holland

I've always kept my interest for fine art and looking back, the kind of art that i'm into definitely has an ephemera feel to it. I've been obsessed with Robert Rauschenberg for a while now and wrote an essay about him for A Level Fine Art. I wrote about how he would make art out of the scattered, unwanted waste of New York - so it's no wonder why his art feels like ephemera when it's literally made out of the stuff. Similarly in the image by Holland, you can see the use of ripped up pages from books of his time, an image of a chair from a furniture catalogue that he probably had lying around. 

Not too sure what the point in this blog post was but I just got excited about my new design discovery and could probably write an entire essay about ephemera in art and design. To conjure up some sort of relevance to Glad Print - don't think that my designs from this stage will suddenly start looking like vintage bus tickets, but I think its more about the idea that's relevant.  Designers would put a lot more effort into something that was only supposed to be used once, accidentally making things look a lot more interesting than they really were? I think that's quite interesting.