We’ve often heard that the military arms race has driven technological innovation, but does that also influences the arts? Well this certainly seems to be the case in terms of the Dazzle Ships.
Look it up in Wikipedia, where they write that Dazzle camouflage, also known as razzle dazzle or dazzle painting, it was a family of ship camouflage used extensively in World War I. Credited to artist Norman Wilkinson, though with a prior claim by the zoologist John Graham Kerr, it consisted of complex patterns of geometric shapes in contrasting colours, interrupting and intersecting each other.
Dazzle attracted the notice of artists, with Picasso notably claiming cubists had invented it. The vorticist artist Edward Wadsworth, who supervised the camouflaging of over 2,000 ships during the First World War, painted a series of canvases of dazzle ships after the war, based on his wartime work.
Anyway, 1st prize for narrative branding goes to the Imperial War Museum in Manchester who in collaboration with design house Patternity created this stunning range of gifts. Way to go!
Fleet of Dazzle
Subscribe to newsletter