The graphic language of cows

Giles and I were talking about cows because he wrote about how he had a nice chat with some the other day.

I've always been a fan of cows partly because they are easy to talk to and partly because the black and white ones have a nice graphic quality against the fresh green grass. That's always appealed to my visual sensibilities.

Here's a good picture of that phenomenon by Guy. Lovely stuff.

All this reminded me of the magazine Pentagram's DJ Stout used to design. It was called Dairy and it featured a big portrait of a cow on the front cover of each issue. Not messing around, big, glossy portraits of cows.

I went to visit DJ Stout in 2010 when I was in Austin for SXSW. He had some of the portraits on the studio walls.

And let's not forget Matthew and his cows.

Picture by Russell

Cows, pretty much their own design system.

 

UPDATE:

Mayo has reminded me of Gateway 2000 and their excellent cow packaging boxes.

UPDATE:

I spotted this on the way to work and it reminded me of the Innocent cow vans back in the day when everything was nice.

UPDATE:

These bins by Hackney Council which I wrote about on this blog thirteen years ago.

 

I'm sure there are others. Send 'em my way.

Comments

[elishoes]

Mike Petre, a NZ artist, has created a series called Field Study, totally about the graphic quality of cows...
https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/Field-Study-320/BBC28EC20553AE46