History of Graphic Design Apr. 6th

We start talking about Isotypes tonight. Isotype is an acronym for International System of Typographic Picture Education. Isotypes began in the early Constructivist movements then Bauhaus and finally, the Isotype movement begins. Isotypes become the seed for all sorts of modern corporate graphics and sign systems. The use of simple pictographs to convey information about directions, events, and objects have complex relationships in space and time; and are usually statistical in nature. Iconic abstraction and documentary photography reports directly, gainign a cultural authority. It was familiar iconography from early Plakatstil and propaganda posters. Information designers had the power to shape public opinion.

Design systems become pervasive metaphor for design. Ladislav Sutnar represents Czech art and is one of the most ardent advocates of pure visual education in his designs and writing. Visual unit becomes the double page spread- defined for function, flow, and form. Sutnar puts forward the following priciples:

1. Optical interest – Visual appeal arouses attention and forces the eye to action.

2. Visual Simplicty of image and structure – Allow and promote quick read of comprehension of content.

3. Visual continuity

Herbert Bayer – Milestone in making the complex accessible. World Geography – Graphic Atlas.

Images cast off neutrality, tradition and provincialism.

American design was reflected in its culture- egalitarian with capitalistic attitudes and values.

Addison Dwiggins used term Graphic Design first in 1922

In the 1940's, one saw steps toward an original American approach to modernist design reflective of European models. Lester Beal represents the modern art movement in America. Combined Dada and reductivist methods and strategies of the type case with nineteenth century American flavor. This was all during a time where Americans, on the whole, rejected modern art, instead preferring “traditional” American art.

Lester was well read, and as such, learned the methods of Lissitzky, Bayer, and Zwart , and produced art for advertising. Paul Rand, like Lester Beal, initiated an unique American approach to graphic design, which was built on European models, but placed an emphasis on content and meaning, avoiding the promotion of pure form. Through Paul Rand, other designers came to make Modern art through imitation. He felt that it was the designers job to make the unfamiliar familiar.

Alexey Brodovitch was the Harper's art director form 1934-1958. He taught editorial designers how to use photography effectively making it the dominate tool in editorial layout. Commissioned major European artists and designers to produce work for the Harper. His editorial design shifts the American taste towards an international style of design and dependence on photography.

Photographers – Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, and Martin Munkasi.

Claude Shannon, working at Bell Labs, modeled the problem in terms of Data and Signal Processing and thus heralded the coming of the information age.

International Style was based around the need for universal communication. The Swiss grid is established at this time to fill the need to set multiple languages in a document or book. The School at ULM developed a curriculum that addresses the new needs of this age, including the study of semiotics. Semiotics was a philosophical theory of signs and symbols. The School at ULM developed symbols for designing and building electronic parts.

Swiss Design is how we finish up the evening. They saw the designer as a conduit or facilitator for delivering important information with clarity and relevancy. Further, clarity of means and form was the ideal achievement. Finally, they believed solutions emerge from the close examination of content in the most economical way.

Theo Ballmer and Max Bill established Swiss Design in its early formal vocabulary based on a rationalist model. They produced proportional grids for structuring visual form in every detail. Swiss Design claims the grid as its own. Grids provided linear divisions of space which could be divided into harmonious parts. The idea of structure and discipline guided their artistic vision.

Anton Stankowski was a major contributor in Swiss Design, with the creation of visual forms to communicate invisible processes and physical forces. Similar to later Op Art, his art relied on the idea of the unseen and vibration. He expanded design to process the information provided by the in depth research of topics from science and engineering.

This all culminates in the Basel School of Design. They essentially published the books of design that were globally accepted. While they were “functionists” they advocated suppressing the personal and elevating a systemic graphic method. The graduates spread the style to educational institutes around the world. Emil Ruder, Armin Hoffman, and Josef Muller Brockman are names majorly associated with the school.

Hoffman is known for his design philosophy based on the elemental graphic forms of point, line, and plane. His ideals dealt with the dynamic harmony of opposing forces. Contrast and motion is all figured out by mathematical formula. Brockman wrote Grid Systems, the book that is seen by some as the Bible of design. He treated imagery as objective symbols, all lessons learned from Moholy, Matter, and Bayer.

The Swiss Movement had a major impact on American Graphic Design and the emerging field of corporate graphics. Swiss Design and American Design merges after separate paths of modernist art develop. Critics of Swiss design claim it suppressed the role of context and the voice of designers producing a rigid and severe style that had inflexibility and sameness of form.