Artist: A.M. Cassandre

Grand-Sport, whose 1920s advertisement emphasized that all the great sport champions wore this cap, was a brand of the Sools hat company and the product was advertised as “the champion’s choice”. In the poster, Cassandre constructs an abstract form of a face and a smoking pipe with geometric white lines against the black background, as if he is attempting to use the least number of lines as possible to depict a human face. We can see the eye is simply depicted with a dot.  As for the yellow cap worn by the figure, Cassandre applies a sense proportion, a careful depiction of light, shadow and subtle tonal effect that emphasizes the soft and comfortable material of the product.  The extraordinary realistic rendering of the cap dominates the poster and dramatically contrasts with the minimalistic human face. This simple yet striking language of the poster immediately directs the viewers’ attention towards the cap, reflecting Cassandre’s design principle: to communicate with the masses in a language that can be instantly understood by the common man.