History of Graphic Design March 23rd

We start the night with Art Deco. The true synthesis of so many of the preceding art movements. Futurism, Constructivism, De Stilj, and Cubism combine to idealize and promote the future and the machine age. The engines of war slowly become consumer products, but to make the consumer like these formerly vilified devices, the artists had to promote them in a cold, unemotional detached way. The propaganda of World War I revolved around the death and destruction of human life so much, it was a challenge to get people to trust these devices. But soon, the faith in innovation was restored and the machine age of art came forward. Air France posters to advertisement for the Underground, Art Deco presented motion and expanded thinking in a visual format. With the drums of war pounding, many of the artists from all the movements that combined to form Art Deco immigrated to the United States.

With the drums of war, though, comes propaganda. The Nazi's and the Americans utilized mythic realism to promote themselves, while vilifying the enemy. The propaganda of this era remains at the idealized form of itself. I feel that even today, if you were to ask teens about war propaganda, they are more likely to cite the not so subtle of the World War II propaganda than any modern form. Granted, this was in the era when posters were the mode of communication. Today, with television, the propaganda is more successfully integrated into others forms, that without training, I feel it would be possible to be unaware of the forces acting upon you. The utilization of the icons and ideals of the enemy to demoralize the opponent and promote patriotism successfully embeds the most negative emotions of the human condition in one's head. I can still clearly imagine the poster of the children playing as the shadow of the Nazi swastika creeps over the yard in which they play. It'll likely remain in my head forever, despite the war being so distant from my generation.

History of Graphic Design March 16th

De Stijl begins this week, bringing laws of equilibrium and harmony. The most straightforward horizontal and verticals all the break down of art, divorcing the art of the De Stijl movement from the natural world. Mondrian, Rietveld, and Oud exemplify De Stijl, producing art free of representation, based solely on form. Architecture and furniture exist merely as the meeting planes in space, pure form.

Swiftly, we move in to Bauhaus, the focus of the evenings discussion, and the school that breaks artists free of the master/apprentice constrictions, producing the first of many schools of art and design to come. It was an Intensely visionary period - possibility for a universal design that integrated aspects of society. They produced works, declaring the distinctions between fine arts and applied arts to be nonexistent. Their furniture and products showed form following function, invoking ideas of the Arts and Crafts movement. True art pieces that united aesthetics with the use of their products.

Jan Tschichold establishes the New Typography, as he calls it. He is unique in the history of design. He brings 20th Century typographic expression based on Bauhaus theories to the public. He manages to bring the ideas and ideals together and articulate them. He goes so far to declare san serif as the Modernist typeface. Further unique, he turns on his rules and dictums, saying that they are limited in use and not nearly as universal as he once proposed.

History of Graphic Design March 2nd

The Constructivist movement also emerged in Communist Russia as Suprematism, though the Communists would be loathe to associate themselves with Constructivism due to the political environment of the times. Suprematism established a vocabulary of geometric structure and form based on the perceptual effects of color and formal juxtapositions in the early 20th century. The graphics of the time, place, and political setting used suggestion and its subculture to produce pervasive works. The art was surprisingly had a theme of equality throughout, the emphasis being equality between the sexes.

Some of the important and influential designers discussed in class were Solomon Tellingster, the Steinberg Brothers, Rodchenko, and El Lissitzky.

The Steinberg Brothers merged the usage of photomontage, montage, and design. Using illustration and other elements of design in combination with photography, they were able to produce a large body of work that provided a real world context to their messages.

EL Lissitzky is the designer we talked about the most tonight. Through his careful navigation of politics (a dangerous field for artists) he managed to bridge the gaps between Suprematism and Constructivism. Using his skills in art and his position, he established a typographic standard for the modern movement. El Lissitzky succeeds at
the first book that is built on modernist ideals. The “Isms” of Art was the establishment of the grid as the groundwork for page layout. As an artist, he saw no distinction between the 2D visual arts and the 3D. Often moving into other fields, he was capable of capturing the movement and use of pure forms in three dimensional space.

Discourse - Looking Closer 3 - Tradition: Cliché, Prison, or Basis of Growth by Herbert Spencer

Key Points

Traditions – Accumulated Experience Passed from Generation to Generation. Provides a groundwork of restraints and rules, which can be broken, but are established with reason. Without tradition to form the base of artwork, artists will fall into unrealistic ways of thinking and planning.

Traditionalism – The negative aspects of traditions, wherein the traditions are elevated to a higher importance and used imperatively, rather than expressively.

The questioning of traditions are key to creativity but lacking any constraints, creativity will stagnate.

Innovation relieves the constraints of tradition, unfortunately, breaking the groundwork of previous lessons.

When innovation and tradition are both given respect, creativity is allowed to flourish.

Examples

David Carson's work is often seen as an irreverent break from tradition, forgoing legibility and readability for the overall look and feel of a piece, though as this piece suggests, his focus is communication. Carson often uses to formulate his pieces in such a way that tradition is questioned. Grouping and layering text is certain against tradition, but he questions the use of readability versus communication. Many of his works attempted to visual relate the article he was designing , rather than simply present the text in organized fashion.

Most modern movie posters can be seen as a perfect marriage of tradition and technology. Despite the evolution of technology and viable breaks from the format, movie posters continue to resemble posters seen during the Art Nouveau era and certainly bear resemblance to the very first movie posters. Tradition imposes an acceptable format for movie posters, while still giving flexibility to the designer.

Lastly, we come to Gutenberg's bible. Despite being made long before the writing of the article I read, Gutenberg exemplifies the use of innovation and tradition. His Textura type face was designed specifically to imitate and respect the traditions of the hand-written manuscripts, while embracing and utilizing to the fullest the technology on hand.

History of Graphic Design Feb. 23th

At the turn of the century, we see the foundations of all the aspects and motivations of Modern art. It begins with Bernhard, establishing a break from naturalism and illustration with his iconicity. Through reduction of the form and typography, he laid the groundwork for professional identity and modern advertisement. Plakastil or the “poster style” took advantage of graphic simplification and the intergation of word and image. These are both ideals that we as students are taught and retaught for the entire duration of our work. The Modern world expects designers to be able to distill any object into its simplest form. Plakastil is now associated with propaganda of the World Wars, representing the Axis powers in symbolic forms, rather than the Mythical Realism of the US and England.

In reaction to the wars, DADA and Futurism form, thereby completing the reactions and counter reactions in the art world, establishing all the forms and visual imagery that would penetrate the art of the 20^th century. Their entire body of work is based around the importance of signs. The linguistic sign versus the signifier and the signified. The knowledge that speech is an empty sign that has no true connection to the object that we associate with said speech allowed a break from the reverence and honor that typography had maintained for so long. Instead, the form of the type became subject to the matter and whim of the design, the poet, the artist. Suddenly, the artistic form is considered to “be” the sign, not a “representation” of the sign.

Herein, we find ourselves as modern designers, repeating the form and function of their work and pursuits. What they established as a counter movement, sacrosanct to the art of the time, is now considered to be the basics of artistic learning. The juxtaposition of signs, usually in opposition of each other, becomes the basis of design of the era. Through photomontage and surrealistic painting, the artists of the early decades of the Century infect those that follow with a duty to force the audience to question what they see.

History of Graphic Design Feb. 9th

We begin and end with Art Nouveau, a truly inspirational style and inspired movement, complete with its own reactions and counter movements inside of itself, acting as the first international style. The emphasize on organic forms and mysticism of France and England's Art Nouveau is then countered by the geometric forms and mathmatical systems of Germany and Vienna. The artist here claims complete control, setting the stage for modern graphic design. Text and im age are unified in both form and function, relying on an economical presentation of information, relying the gestalt to complete the image, allowing the audience to interpert and interact with the art itself. Cheret and Grasset usher in a balance of line, color, and space, working on what would be considered the beginning of the modern poster. This signifies the reactionary period against the reliance of mass produced industrial pieces, not polished enough to be called industrial design. Meanwhile, Gustav Klint and Peter Behrens embrace the design of the world around them, creating a language for industrial design, producing art for the people to be made quickly, taking advantage and embracing industry as a medium. Therein Art Nouveau comes full circle, making way for the "objectiveness" to follow.

History of Graphic Design Jan. 26th

The push from hieroglyphics to a formal standardized alphabet gives us insight into the both the limits and advantages of the written language. On one hand, we see the explosion of the Chinese logograms, with their 45,000 or more alphabet. Then we see the development of the 21 letter Phonetic alphabet, which later evolved into the 26 letter alphabet we use. We get to see the evolution of script based forms, based off the use of pens and cants, bringing us the uncial and half-uncial, and also the Rustic capitals.

After the development and standardization of the alphabet by Charlamange, we see the first typeface established by Gutenberg in the 1450s. The evolution of type follows quickly thereafter, changing from black face to the thin and delicate French influenced type of Jenson. The variation of the alphabets and the stylistic choices made then remind us how limited we are now, being bound to the forms and strokes of our alphabet, afraid to change it, less we destroy the definitive characteristics of the letterform that make it readable and understandable. Every perceivable thing is seen in printed form, evolving from a religious trademark to the standard form of communicating knowledge and standards of civilization.

Finally, we see the introduction of Romain due Roi, where we percieve the removal of the human element from the typefaces. Standardization of the serifs, strokes, and forms establish a modular form and basis for all subsquent typefaces.