This is certainly a sight for sore eyes: a printed wall calendar for 2020, inspired by famous spectacle wearers past and present, ranging from Gandhi to Ga Ga, Elton John to Audrey Hepburn.
Brought to you by design studio Supple and copywriting firm totalcontent, 2020 Visionaries focuses on familiar specs and the little-known stories behind them.
Supple went all ocular on the design, basing the creative on graphic illustrations of the iconic face furniture, judicious use of the Optician Sans font, and a take on the traditional opticians' Snellen vision test chart on the cover.
The glasses illustrations are reproduced true to size. The lenses reflect not only the identity of the wearer but what they might see through them. For example, January poster boy Michael Caine's lenses feature a couple of speeding Minis, a nod to his iconic British heist movie The Italian Job.
totalcontent’s Jim K Davies says: "I had the idea for a spectacles-based calendar a couple of years ago when I saw '2020' printed in a newspaper. The research was a real eye-opener. Most interesting find? Elton John doesn't need specs anymore, thanks to the lens implant surgery he had in 2003. It was a shame not to include Dame Edna though. Her extravagant glasses don’t have lenses, so, unfortunately, we couldn’t use her."
Designer and illustrator Yee Poon adds: “After Jim suggested a 2020 calendar of famous spec wearers, we explored loads of ways of featuring the glasses, before focusing on the idea of reflections. We decided to keep things pure and simple, taking our cues from eye-test cards for colour, typography and minimalism."
The 2020 Visionaries calendar is supported by a pop-up microsite by web design agency Our Name is Mud, along with a link for donations to Guide Dogs for the Blind, one of Supple's clients.
Creative Director Matt Powell said: "When we saw the calendar, we immediately thought it would lend itself to an online quiz and we could have some fun with opticians' iconography. The red and green screens lend themselves beautifully to right and wrong and using some clever mask effects, we could mimic the way test lenses work."
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