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.