Artist & Graphic Designer 3: Corita Kent

Corita Kent, (aka Sister Mary Corita) was an artist best known for her screen printing work, which you'll find in a gallery in East London in Kings cross: in the House of illustration. Her work became well known in Swinging 60"s where her work was quite political and covered current affairs about trending topics. Such as Racism, War and Poverty, expressing her views and. concerns in her screen printing.

Here is a YouTube video I watched when I visited the Kings Cross art gallery 2/3 years ago showing her screen printing joinery. 

https://www.aiga.org/medalist-corita-kent-2016

Here is a link- showing Corita Kent's work there was a whole section dedicated to her screen printing work. https://www.houseofillustration.org.uk/whats-on/current-future-events/corita-kent-power-up/

The artwork she is best known for is her 10 rules piece- which has a Harry Potter like aesthetic showing ritual and the whimsical.

10 Rules

This piece is the piece Corita Kent created alongside many other screen prints. the 10 rules, was used for a class project who was very work orientated and as a nun she believed in these rules for work and to follow in life- you could say its like the golden rules.

This fact, about this piece was an interesting find:-  'Some Rules for Students and Teachers, attributed to John Cage, who passed away twenty years ago this week. The list, however, originates from celebrated artist and educator Sister Corita Kent and was created as part of a project for a class she taught in 1967-1968".

This fact was found on this link below:-

https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/08/10/10-rules-for-students-and-teachers-john-cage-corita-kent/

This piece here by Corita Kent made me think of her for this project because this piece refers to rules and I felt that lockdown is made on political rules.  I was thinking about creating a poster similar  to this concept seeing as Covid 19 is to do with rules. it made me think like Corita Kent.  I like the concept of this piece but the only thing that bothers me about this poster is the arrangement of the typography.  As it isn't legible and the justified text is too close together and the spacing of the characters on the type is too squished together and is hard to follow, another thing that annoys me is the text is at different alignments say for instance some of the text looks left aligned, some of it looks centralised and some of it is right aligned- its all over the place basically, which I could guess is intentional but its just something that bugs me.

It jut mildly irritates me that you can hardly read/understand the text, there's a lack of legibility, where all the characters are squished so close together- I don’t think the justified text was at it’s Sunday best in this case.

I like this piece, for the concept of it and I like the choice of font too.  If i did do a design like this i would perhaps arrange the text better so its more legible.  Having said that the text where it is a bit squwiff...  it gives me a bit of a 

Harry Potter vibe, as previously mentioned. 

Harry Potter Typography

You see what I mean? This typography is very mystical and exciting to look at- I personally find a love for this type because its exciting and easy to remember because its so striking. I feel with the typography with that screen print (10 rules) I would of preferred it if the text was like this and more structured. 

Here is some more artwork by Corita Kent

Her work here is very exciting and striking- very simplistic and typographi, all showing her political views of poverty, racism and war.