Toulouse-Lautrec

I recently attended the Toulouse Lautrec exhibit at the Art Institute in Chicago. It was quite interesting from the perspective of a web designer. His lithographs were in a sense the websites of his day. They were posters advertising venues and events which were inteded to be distributed widely, just as many websites do today. Because of the lithograph technique used, his prints were limited to only a few colors - a style that many web designers adhere to out of choice. Because of the limited number of colors his limited use of texture, his works lend themselves to having text written directly on the artwork. Much of his work is reminiscent of modern magazine covers in which part of the image covers parts of text. While he is careful to leave the "Ambassadeurs" title at the top legible, by covering the "s" partially he draws the users eye, and cleverly draws attention to the title.