Designing "it's a small world" - Mary Blair

Designing "it's a small world" - Mary Blair

 Mary Blair was an American artist best known for the striking concept art that she produced for the Walt Disney Company. She contributed to the design of the "it's a small world" attraction in many ways.

Designing "it's a small world" - Mary Blair

 Blair is credited with the color scheme for "it's a small world". Her unique, amazing sense of color can be found throughout the ride.

Designing "it's a small world" - Mary Blair

 Mary Blair's use of color is characterized by a faux naive use of pure primaries 'straight from the tube'. These colors are often put in violent contrast to each other.

Designing "it's a small world" - Mary Blair

Designing "it's a small world" - Mary Blair

Designing "it's a small world" - Mary Blair

Designing "it's a small world" - Mary Blair

Designing "it's a small world" - Mary Blair

 Her use of color is reminiscent of Josef Albers color theories about how colors affects spatial perception. Families of saturated reds, ranging from oranges through violet to cerise, can be found in 'hot' regions of the Small World.

Designing "it's a small world" - Mary Blair

Designing "it's a small world" - Mary Blair

Designing "it's a small world" - Mary Blair

 Blair's witty, childlike and utterly charming style is clearly reflected in the theatrical sceneries. The buildings seem to be collages, made of colored paper that comes in a standard set of colors and shapes.

Designing "it's a small world" - Mary Blair

 All angular cutouts are lopsided, domes and circles have egg-shaped profiles and arches are taller than they are wide and slightly unsteady on their stork-like legs.

Designing "it's a small world" - Mary Blair

 Mary Blair's treatment of place makes one venue look a lot like all the others in the Small World, and reduces architecture to a kind of universal principle that changes only by degrees from Paris to Anaheim, and from Orlando to Hong Kong.

Designing "it's a small world" - Mary Blair

 The "it's a small world" dolls, with their big heads and tiny features, came directly from a series of Hallmark note cards designed under the Walt Disney label by Mary Blair in the 1940's.

Designing "it's a small world" - Mary Blair

 While it has been popular to think of "small world" as all Blair's creation, many other talented Disney artists contributed significantly to the ride. Marc Davis worked on sweetly funny details that enlivened the trip (like a trio of Dutch geese that quacked in time to the music or a five year old Cleopatra).

Designing "it's a small world" - Mary Blair

Designing "it's a small world" - Mary Blair

The Designing Disney Blog brings together people from all across the globe. But they are all connected in some way. They all share the same passion: Disney! In the past weeks, readers have sent me pictures from their hometown. In their own special way, they show us, that “it’s a small world after all”.
By USMAN AWAN