Ever need to explain the life and death of Darth Vader to a friend, but didn’t have time to sit through the 13 hours and 23 minutes of the Star Wars saga with them? Fortunately, some Italian designers have solved that problem with a pictogram that tells someone everything they need to know about the Dark Lord.
The History of Darth Vader (source: H-57)
“The History of Darth Vader” is part of a series of historical pictograms that explain and satirize the life arcs of iconic people in history (real or fictional). The posters — created by H-57, an advertising and design studio located in Milan, Italy — came from a collaboration with the blog-slash-studio First Floor Under.
For the H-57 principles — Matteo Civaschi, Gianmarco Milesi, and Sabrina Di Gregorio — this isn’t the first (nor probably the last) Star Wars themed project. According to the official Star Wars blog, the three are huge fans of the Saga. Last September, H-57 initiated a series of typographic posters to benefit children. Each poster depicts a key character, built exclusively from type fonts.
They printed some as gifts for customers to show H-57’s creativity. Then the images of Darth Vader, Yoda, and a Stormtrooper — using typefaces with names like Bodoni Bold and Helvetica Light Condensed — were posted online and within days went viral.
A pet cat gets credit for inspiring the designers, having knocked Civaschi’s Darth Vader mask to the floor and into little letter-shaped pieces.
Use Your Force To Help Children posters are raising money for Make-a-Wish (source: H-57)
With help from Lucasfilm, posters for the “Use Your Force to Help Children” campaign were available on eBay — through the end of this month — with proceeds going to Make-A-Wish Italy, part of the worldwide organization raising money to grant wishes to children with life-threatening medical conditions. The poster for the November exhibit of these special canvas editions is also worth a look.
Star Wars is a popular subject for other artists at FFU. For some other Star Wars related work, check out the illustrations of different perspectives on famous Saga scenes using the signature dangling legs of FFU. That art is credited to designers at TBWA/Italy. Also, illustrator Liam Brazier has a series of abstract posters of Star Wars characters.
h/t: @panah
