small world. big fun.
(Somewhat of a) Warning: While reading this post, a very famous song may or may not get stuck in your head. So you may or may not be slightly annoyed with me at the end. I personally think it's worth the read, BUT if you want to abandon ship now, I understand. Otherwise, keep reading, but consider yourself warned ;)
This month, the "It's a Small World" ride turns 50 years old! To celebrate with them in my small way, I thought it'd be fun to share a design with y'all that I created back in 2009, inspired by Small World, as well as the artist behind the art, Mary Blair (my favorite!!)
Walt Disney and Mary Blair looking at original designs for the Small World dolls
fall 2009
So in the fall of 2009, I was enrolled in a couple of art classes in the evening at a local university. One was my first full graphic design class, and it was also the first time I was able to study what is now probably my favorite design program, Illustrator. Over the course of the semester, we had to create a fictional restaurant or bar, a logo for it, an invitation to an event it would host, and a full menu.
Being the big fan of Disney that I am, having both vacationed there for many years and worked there for two years, my mind went into imagineering mode, and I created a restaurant that would fit in perfectly, at say, Downtown Disney. I called it the 2nd Star for two reasons — Peter Pan is my favorite animated film, and since the "second star to the right" provided direction to a destination (Neverland) in the film, I thought it was a creative way to play on that idea for a direction/destination to my fictional restaurant. And too, I love stars. :)
When deciding on what kind of art I'd be "exhibiting" there, it only made sense to me to feature a Disney artist. Mary Blair, for some time now, has been my hands-down favorite.
Some of Mary Blair's conceptual art for Small World. So fun, right?!? Click on the image to see more of her art—but please be sure to come back when you're done! :)
Her art is primarily happy, vibrant, extremely colorful, and whimsical. Among many other projects, she is known for creating the concept art behind Disney's versions of Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Pan. She also created the very large mosaic inside Disney's Contemporary Resort. AND, she was asked by Walt Disney to help design much of It's a Small World! Which brings me to my post today.
the process
When coming up with the concept for this piece after studying Mary, I decided to focus on and create a design inspired by Small World. I loved the use of simple shapes and happy colors, so I primarily went with complimentary shades of green and pink and tossed in a little yellow and white to help it pop against a warm and earthy brown.
To help me decide which types of shapes to draw, I studied an image very much like this one:
It's a Small World entrance at Tokyo Disneyland
And from that image, I created this stylized, invitation-sized version below of the Disneyland entrance with all pertinent event details printed on the front and back sides. I wrote the intro question and the "small world. big fun." headline, and then used some information I'd learned about Mary Blair to help invitees know more about the artist we'd have on display.
Five years later, there are some changes I'd make, but for the time, it was pretty fun! Especially for a very young design project :)
Front/back design including crop marks; click on image to enlarge.
My favorite part of the invitation is probably the way I created a playful movement with the date/numerals on the bottom right. I thought it'd be a fun way to play up the date, again, taking inspiration from the original art. And it may have been the first time I realized how much I love to play with and alter individual letter or character forms, in the design world, known as glyphs.
celebrating 50
Here's a link to the original Disney Parks blog post about five fun facts you may have not known about this attraction that actually debuted at the 1964 World's Fair. And I'll share two of my favorites here:
Over the course of a 16-hour operating day at Disneyland park, the “It’s a Small World” theme song is played 1,200 times (!)
Since “It’s a Small World” can be found at five Disney parks on three continents (Disneyland park in California, Magic Kingdom park in Florida, Tokyo Disneyland, Disneyland Paris, and Hong Kong Disneyland) the iconic theme song is always playing somewhere around the world. (so cool!)
Screenshot from SmallWorld50.com
And one more way to get in on the fun is to head over to SmallWorld50.com where you can create a virtual small world doll on the site to benefit UNICEF (so fun to pick your own costume!) And/or if you're inclined to singing, you can participate in what Disney is calling an online global sing-along where you can record videos singing the (much loved or much hated . . . and I'm gonna lean towards loved if you're still reading, ha . . . ) famous song which is currently being played in multiple languages. Which is just really cool to me!
In summary
I love happy art, and I adore the art of Mary Blair. And I love the idea that we really do live in a rather small world. Despite barriers and differences, there is a sweet kinship that exists. We are much more alike than we often realize . . .
It's a world of laughter, a world of tears.
A world of hopes and a world of fears.
There's so much that we share,
That it's time we're aware . . .
It's a small (beautiful) world after all.