I was working on a new poster yesterday and last night, that was a study on the new Tiana’s Bayou in Disneyland Resort, California. It’s a rethemeing of Slash Mountain as the source material of this attraction is problematic to say the least.
Anyway, I was thinking as I was working on it, that the style of the design is very floral and nature based. The attraction is based on The Princess and The Frog, the 2009 last hand drawn animation Walt Disney studios ever made, which is set in 1930’s New Orleans. So there’s lots of swamps, and veins, and dancing and jazz and everything that made the 30’s Deep South what it was. And I thought to myself, ‘I must look up and see if there is any historical version of this in the Grammar of the Ornament’.
And that’s when it hit me; what I’m making is a version of that book for Disney Parks. ‘The Grammar of the MAgic Kingdom’ as it were!
I’m on my way to the library now to see the printed version of that book to get an idea of how it’s put together, I’ve only seen the ebook version thus far. But if I can use that as a blueprint, I might be able to start pulling together the book I want to make.
One thing I need to look out for, is that the ebook and reviews I’ve read online have made it seem like there isn’t much analysis in the GOTO which I something I want to do. But the idea of laying our examples of work from “around the world” and then using them to make a design philosophy is exactly what Owen Jones was doing in the 1850’s!!