Unit 3- Lecture 4.

Key points for tonight:

• Barbara Kruger- Word image combinations
• No innocent Speech- Jacques Derrida
• Cranbrook- Structuralism & Post-Structuralism
• Citational grafts- restructure mass media
• David Carson- attacks the type
• Postmodernism
• Sagmeister is big shit.
  

The ideas we looked at tonight are becoming more and more common around me. The idea of breaking the molds of type, and design are battling with the ideas of simplistic design right now. I tend to try both styles, however I generally lean towards the idea that "less is more." Postmodern design as amazing, however it doesn't always read with everyone, which can tend to make it bad for business... I can't survive off destroying typographic forms and playing with irony in all my designs. I don't want to just think on paper, just a production artist, but bring fresh ideas to the mix, but in a completely understandable method.

Unit 3- Lecture 3.

Tonight's key topics:

• Postmodernism rejects Grand Narrative, Enlightenment, and Modernism.
• Milton Glaser: design with humor.
• New Wave typography of the 1970's.
• Weingart starts use of MAC computers for experiements.
• Paula Scher: appropriation & copying of styles.
• End of History and Death of the Author.
• CSA design archive

In todays design world Postmodernism is still strong I believe. The idea of Appropriation is still an issue as well. Some people have the idea that copyright laws protect everything, but people still reuse ideas, leaving the original designer forgotten pretty often without any consequences. Advertisers bring back older ideas to sell new products the same way. Every day I go through probably 25-30 blogs looking at inspiration, I don't try to ever "copy" any of this work, but I'm sure it finds its way into my designs in all sorts of ways, but as long as I make it my own I feel its alright. Also I think that Jeff Koons is an amazing artist and shouldn't be blamed for stealing anything!

Design Discourse #2

Seventy-Nine Short Essays on Design - "Why Designers Can't Think"
-Michael Bierut

• Process Schools/ Portfolio Schools
• Process Schools = form-driven problem solving approach
• Portfolio Schools = The product, not process, is king.
• Value found in how design looks, not what it means.
• Today's designers "worship the altar of the visual."
• Design pioneers are well rounded intellectually.
• Modern educators push technology on design students.
• Students need to be exposed to more culture.

The above image is a great representation of this article because it shows how today's designers are not designing culturally, but just designing to please a client. The meaning of the mark in its culture was just disregarded. The firm tried to back the redesign with a bunch of graphs and mumbo-jumbo on emotions, but really they changed a line to get paid millions of dollars. There isn't a big meaning to the logo anymore, no connection that people make to the logo besides that it equals Pepsi. The author of the article explains that today's designers are in a vacuum that excludes popular as well as high culture, the pepsi logo only demonstrates popular culture because its stuck in our heads, but really means nothing.




El Lissitzky's " Red Beat the Whites" design is a strong visual to support the article because it shows what a classic designer could do with just intellect. He didn't have four years of design college to learn the principles of design, but just designed using his knowledge of culture. He wasn't "worshipping the altar of the visual," but nurturing the ideas and concept of design. When looking at Lissitzky's design you can tell he was trying to design for the people, not just for designers. His symbols are readable by everyone, and it didn't take knowledge of computers to do it. The author of the article explains that todays graduates are speaking a language only their classmates can understand. This visual shows how a designer can design for the masses.







This image is meant to show what a lot of designers a producing today, which is trendy design. Just visuals and effects showing off what we learn to do with technology in school, but not representing a bigger idea. It shows that designers are just learning programs, and basic ideas of design, but nothing more. People are just designing for these trends, but what will they do when its not cool anymore? Real proffesionals have a broad range of education, such as politics, history, science, etc. The graduates today don't know all of these other topics, and some do eventually learn, some try to fake it, but it needs to be taught in school. The author of the article calls it a cultural illiteracy which is a nice way of saying we don't know how to think outside of what we learn.

Unit 3- Lecture 2.

Key Points of tonight: Corporate identities and branding become essential for companies and products. Designers like Paul Rand and Lester Beal became major players of the New York school. Vignelli Associates developed Unigrid System used in National parks brochures & NYC subway system design. Saul Bass and motion picture credits were big development for design. The methods of New Advertising include visual statements with simple images, and not talking dumb to the consumer. Perfect matching of text and image let the audience participate in the advertisment. Conceptual ideas become very important in advertisment. Advertisment and Editorial design was greatly influenced by Photo-Typography.

We use the ideas of New advertising in not only the studio, but in every day life. We view hundreds of thousands of ads/commercials a day taking in so many different ideas. Advertisment today has started going back to some of these ideas of conceptual ideas to sell products, not dumbing down ad's for customers. The break thru of photo-typography has really influenced today's design. Overlapping and methods of working with leading have become important tools of design today. The ideas of pushing conceptual boundaries is something most designers try to use today, balanced with a simplistic style. My personal design is normally witty or drastic in its ideas and messages its trying to convey.

Unit 3- Lecture 1.

Missed class. I'll have it up soon.

Unit 2- Lecture 4, March 23rd

Art Deco Moderne was a big topic tonight. Illustrated posters in a style of Ludwig Hohlwien. The use of iconic 2D illustrations and bold design choices in posters. Propaganda posters from all sides in WWII are very influential for future designs. FUTURA GETS CREATED!! Herbert Matter makes incredible use of Plakatstil styles with Image & text combonations for communication.
These are some of my favorite historical posters. The styles they created with their illustrations can be seen coming out in my work with vector art. The use of micro + macro image and word combonations are essential skills used by all designers today and they are engrained into our brains here in school. The Swiss styles created during this time period are nearly perfect and helped bring graphic design away from so much illustration.

Unit 2- Lecture 3, March 16th

Today was a good day is History of Graphic Design. De Stijl and Bauhaus are two movements I've always been fascinated with. The use of purely vertical and horizontal in the design is fantastic and amazes me. The methods developed during the Bauhaus are what really make Graphic Design it's own medium. Type and image combinations with Modernist form and communication make for beautiful works by Herbert Bayer and Moholy Nagy. New Typography is very nice because of its use of diagonals and white space. Tschichold very important in revival of traditional typography. Dutch design is in it's own realm, they recycle ideas and use them in a new way. I love the printing arts they used. The ads and posters are so exciting and modern to this day.

A lot of the styles and techniques we saw today are very similar to todays modern design. The use of type and image is pretty much what graphic design is today. The use of random versus structure allows for designers today to create visual texture in our designs. Many of these techniques have been brought into todays motion graphics.

Unit 2- Lecture 2, March 2nd

Suprematism and its form and color led to Constructivist movement. Constructivist is the word of the day. With the rise of communist Russia a new and great design movement came along with it. Rodchenko and Lissitzky bring design as we know to a whole new level of modern. The way they developed high contrast, angles, condensed typefaces, bold shapes, and photomontages created a style that many try and fail to create today. Its so strong, and brute-like when you see it, but its comfortable at the same time. They abstracted ideas, typefaces, and geometric shapes to convey ideas which was completely revolutionary and blows me away still. The establishment of the Grid in the "Isms" book might be one of the biggest things we learned today for me. The fact that they almost use entirely San Serif means they are my best friends next to the swiss.

We use the ideas and techniques these men developed pretty much everyday in our studies in the studio. The grid is something that will be around forever, and I will never stop using. The boldness and strength of these designs is something many of us try to put into our own designs to stand out from our classmates. I personally like my designs to be seen, much design today fades to the background, and the constructivist techniques make work really stand out. I will use San serif all day everyday if nobody stops me.

Design Discourse 1

The Spectacle: A Reevaluation of the Situationist Thesis
Veronique Vienne

- creating is more satisfying than purchasing
- Situationists protest the commercial takeover of everyday life
- idea of "drifting" to defy traditional space-time
-"rerouting" to convey different ideas from images
- happiness is liberating, euphoric, mischievous, prankish.
-designers have assisted in commercial saturation of the enviroment
- Fight boredom with happiness that doesn't consist of shopping



This image shows a Walmart opening on black Friday. Its a representation of how the Situationists felt people would mistake material goods for happiness. The joy seen on the faces shows how much people have fallen into the commercial idea of happiness. These people should be making truly thoughtful and sentimental gifts, or spending time with their loved ones during the holidays instead of running each other over for a Sony tv. Nearly all corporate companies that make products have something in Walmart, its the epitome of what the Situationists want to leave behind so we can just live lives peacefully just going with the flow.



The image above is a graceful display of the Situationist method of rerouting. The maker took a simple caring image and with slight manipulation gave it an outlandish meaning. This is a great representation of commercialism in America. No one is safe anymore, children are raised on these ideas that shopping makes us happy. Like little girls just want to go buy dresses and what they see on tv, instead of learning from their parents or developing there own imaginations and creativity.



This is an Adbusters poster that fits the Situationists ideals perfectly. They don’t want Americans to just go out and buy buy buy all day long. They want people to stop, sit, look, and live life happily without having to hold a product or read an advertisement. Although its kind of ironic because this is sort of an advertisment, but its intent is reversed. The poster is for "Buy Nothing Day" by Adbusters. The Situationists felt if everyone in America didn't purchase corporate products, for just one day, and went to the park, or conversed with family, or just sat down they would have more fun than holding a product.

February 23rd, Lecture 1- unit 2

Today the major points we learned about were:
-Plakastil= or the modern poster style
The Futurist movement- appreciate war and machinery
The Dada movement- break all standards, no consistancy
Lucian Bernhard- started Plakastil with Priester matchs poster
Filippo Marinetti- typographic Simultaneity
Surrealism movement- picks up after dada, altered state to create.

The Dada movement really takes graphic design to a new level because it breaks the old standards which we today continue to use. The posters we saw today are the closest thing I've seen so far that look kind of like what we are doing today in design. It was nice to see some things breaking away from the grid. The idea of rejecting tradition was so amazing for the time, and doing that today is difficult because so much has already been done, being new isn't easy.

The ideas all of these artists were developing are still common today, a lot of designers like David Carson and Sagmeister use techniques like this, breaking out of the standards. Our poster art today is still completely derived from this time period. I unknowingly designed a poster like this last semester without really researching this at all. The surrealist style is also still used a lot by designers and illustrators. It was great to hear about ManRay again because I love his work and saw a lot of it at the Picasso musuem in Paris this summer. Completely fantastic still not matched today I believe in the way he combined imagery.

February 9th, Lecture 3.

We started out today diving into the Art Nouveau period. The artists had a lot of interesting influences to get to these incredible posters and icon images of women. I was astounded to hear that Art Nouveau was one of the first real international art movements. The colors of the later Jugend movement were outstanding, the pictures were illustrated so well. The idea of total design and the evolution into modern graphic design is still prevelant today. The geometrics and ways of problem solving are still used in the Studio today. The way they used geometric solutions can be compared to the way we use the grid system now. The way the Vienna Secessionists used minimalist techniques and white space is something I know I use personally, but had never even seen some of those posters. The change from curves, patterns, and florals, to clean edged, modern, and sophisticated designs has been the biggest jump from the old styles into the newer things like we have today. The theroies that they developed during those years have real significance to myself because I almost went to architecture school because of my love of Frank Lloyd Wright, and the Art Nouveau architecture. Those ideas are still in my head and find there way into my designs today. I think its pretty cool that I switched from Architecture to graphic design without knowing the connection between the two of them was so huge. Peter Behrens was someone I hadn't heard of but will not do more research on because he seems to be a real leader of the times. The last slide of the Underground logo with the font and layout was awesome to look at because I spent 3 weeks in Europe over the summer and saw that sign so often as well as the Metropolitan signs in Paris.

Febuary 2nd, Lecture 2.

Today we really got to see how the Industrial Revolution greatly effected type and design. The machines allowed for mass production, mass communication, and shoddy work. The creation of Slab Serif and Sans Serif typefaces drastically changed typography and the way type can be viewed. Chromolithography and packaging lead to the beginning of advertising. The Victorian period was not a good time for type or design, it lowered standards. Later type foundries began to design typefaces that illustrators had hand drawn, which I thought was interesting because it turns the tables on us modern designers. After the overwhelming industrial movement the handmade Arts and Crafts movement brought the connection between architecture and design.
In connection to studio design today everything we learned today is of great importance. Sans Serif alone may be the biggest advancment in design in the last 100 years. The way the Arts and Crafts movement brought design into modernist period today is still completely prevelant today even in my own designs. The old ways of mass production without regards for style and design are out the door and clean, well crafted products rule the market.

January 26th. Lecture 1.

Egyptian innovation triggered the development of the alphabet or written language. The Asian contribution was the invention of papers and early types of relief printing. The Chinese had an extremely profound impact with their visual communication and writing. The development of Mono Line writing drastically changed how alphabets were written and read. The evolution of the Codex, writing on smaller pages to create books, was very important in the evolution of writing. The codex was used for many religious documents, used to preserve teachings and show others. Illuminated manuscripts are created with incredible detail and gold leaf, sometimes jewels. Knowledge production became the main reason for book making to preserve human thought. The Caroline Graphic Renewal was the period of standardization of the alphabet and layout features. Printing in Europe begins the period of the 'incunabula,' beginning with Gutenberg in 1454. 42 Line Bible was first printed book, they were individualized after the plain black was printed. The development of the Roman alphabet using both Upper and Lowercase letters allows for more forms of typography to develop. Garamond breaks away to design and sell types to printers on his own. Romain due Roi starts to turn to the engineer instead of the calligrapher. Transitional types are starting to become standardized leading into the modern period. Bodoni and Didot leave all signs of the classical types in the past for a new modern design. More geometic, with more thick and thin variation placed on better papers and more open layouts. Overall elegance reduced and letters all standardized.