An In-Depth Reflection

- Introduction

 This collection of 10 journals is an amalgamation of everything I have learned from this class during the quarter. This blog is a chronicle of my blood, sweat and tears over this past couple months and in it I analyze art movements, break apart design theories and apply liberal amounts of my own opinion into the mix. I hope you enjoy reading these posts as much as I enjoyed writing them.

- What did you learn? How do you see things differently as a result?

What I had initially hoped to achieve by attending this course was a greater understanding of the graphic arts and how it had evolved throughout the span of human existence. In a shallow sense, this was accomplished. This was more evident to me in the first couple chapters of the book as it described the origin and growth of written language. I found it interesting how the textbook painted a picture of graphic, representational art evolving alongside language, from the cave painting of our ancient ancestors to the illuminated manuscripts of the medieval era. I had never really considered the origins of language as the beginning of graphic design and I definitely found it an interesting theory.

- What did you not learn? Why was the class not valuable to you? How could it have been more valuable?

I now only have a very shallow knowledge of typography as it relates to graphic design, while I realize that this is not a typography course, it would have been nice to have a less scholarly (boring), and more hands on approach to all the terminology and variables that go into fonts. The book itself was not the most interesting of textbooks, and along with being rather dry at points, it also straddles the line of being far too opinionated at others. I found the author to be very biased for and against certain artists, which is not really what I expect from a history text. A new more engaging book, plus assignments in which we actually analyze the works by the artists would have been much more valuable to my learning experience.

- What new connections did you make regarding graphic design and the evolution of human culture?

I came to a realization about how society has used limiting information as a means of control and the route to power. As the spread of certain types of information evolved the playing field leveled a bit, but there are always those who limit the spread of information and so carve out for themselves an advantage. We see clear evidence of this in ancient Sumeria with the advent of city-societies. Even as reading and literacy became more of a vehicle for the masses by which they could educate themselves, society evolved a counter with which they could maintain a degree of control over people, advertisements. This was especially marked in the industrial era as factories needed to peddle their wares to their consumers. Looking at ads, and the governmental version of them, propaganda, there is a strong use of emotional manipulation for the majority of these works.

- What new interests might you have based on what you've been exposed to?
Though I studied Egypt a lot as a younger man, if feel as if there was an aspect of it that I was missing, and  the Books of the Dead I feel may be interesting to research and perhaps read. The act of inventive story telling as opposed to the chronicling of events has always been fascinating to me and perhaps I can learn something from those who have done it before me.

- How will you apply what you've learned to experiencing life, your understanding of other disciplines, your future career?
I'm going to apply the different methodologies and concepts at the heart of the art movements we've learned about and apply them to my own work. I hope to broaden my range as a creative force and perhaps by imitating the past and combining it with my own interests and focus I can synthesize great works and vastly improve my skills.

- What is the future of graphic design?
I feel that in the future this will become more prevalent as information now is catered directly to us using our habits and locations to target us directly as advertisements. The future of the graphic designer will be using these technologies and creating a seamless, aesthetically pleasing experience for the user. Think of it as web design for the mobile information junkie.

Module 10

In this module we learned about postmodern design and the origin of the digital revolution and the effects that they had on Graphic Design. There have been several advances by the same section of people that have greatly enhanced the lives and power of the individual artist and graphic designer in this digital age.

One of the companies that had the greatest impact was Adobe Systems. They invented PostScript, which was a page description language; a computer language that allowed for the printing of a bitmap image. After this language had been invented, Steve Jobs of Apple, asked them to adapt the language to be included in the Macintosh and to power their laserjet printer, the Apple laser-writer.

Macintosh

Laser-writer

In 1986 Adobe released yet another innovation that supported graphic design, the program, Adobe Illustrator. It allowed users to create postscript graphics changing line art and drawing forever.

A year later Adobe licensed Photoshop, a photo manipulation program developed by Thomas Knoll and with it's release on the Macintosh, digital photo manipulation was brought to the masses.

Module 9

For this reading we studied the latter half of the post modernist era of graphic design. What really spoke to me in these chapters was the explosion of poster design, from the highly political to the psychedelic mind warping of American poster mania. The creativity and the effect of past movements on the posters stood out to me. I was particularly drawn to the works of the artists Robert Wesley "Wes" Wilson. This poster for example.

The typography in the poster is so much more expressive and interesting than the clean, sterile look of the Swiss International style. This poster and the movement were about flowing line and playing with the shapes that one could make with typography.

There is a real influence from the art nouveau movement in his work. These two posters seem almost Mucha-like.

It's obvious to me that Alphonse Mucha's work had a rather large impact on Wes' style. The art nouveau line that takes place in much of the typography of the Psychadelic movement is taken a step further with the subject matter of the female form that appears in many of Wilson's posters.

It's also rather exciting to see poster art meant to encourage political activism. There is a quite inflammatory image that Wes produced in response to the Vietnam War.

The reminder to be AWARE I feel is an important one, for the times when we are not vigilant and allow ourselves to fall into complacency is when the meanest of us will take advantage.

Module 8

What I found intriguing about this weeks reading was the evolution of a artistic movement based on a mainstreaming of Typography. Most of the movements we have learned about have referred to graphics or images and the styles and techniques that were grouped together. It's refreshing to have a movement based around communicating with words in a clear way.

Swiss Modernism was a movement that emphasized communication over the attention grabbing of advertisements. It is fitting then that as the world began to move closer to the modern era and the world began to grow smaller with the development of mass communications that the International Typographic Style would arise.

Note the lack of serifs and the boldness of the type, communication is the key function.

A forerunner of the movement, Amil Ruder a typography instructor of the Basel School of Design taught that legibility and readability are dominant concerns and that type loses its purpose if it loses its communicative meaning.

The fonts in this movement epitomized this ideal. In 1954 Adrian Frutiger completed Univers a font with 21 variations.

This era was also the orgin of the popular font Helvetica, which is a traditional Latin name for Switzerland.

German designer Hermann Zapf would evolve traditions of calligraphy and Renaissance Typography into three typefaces that would also exemplify the movement 

Melior

Optima

And Palationo

Module 7

I found the immigration of many of the Bauhaus designers to be fascinating. I of course had heard of scientists and the like coming to America to escape from Nazi Germany, but had given little thought to the artists and designers of the country and the effect they had on American design. The fact that key figures in the movement such as Groipus and Marcel Breuer were teaching at Harvard and Moholy-Nagy created the Institute of Design in Chicago was mind opening for me. I have to say I like their tenet of form following function. The sleekness and simplicity of their designs is an interesting juxtaposition to the heavy ornamentation and decoration of the Art Nouveau movement, for instance.

And their application of design to architecture is also something that is inspiring. Below I have several images of the Dessau Bauhaus.

The building itself has a very fluid yet machine-like dynamic to it. The perfect center for a movement that was characterized by the unity of Art and Technology.

I also love the idea of such a place being a wellspring of ideas and innovation, a school based on innovation instead of stagnation and dogmatic thinking.

Module 6

The turn of the century was a turbulent time for the human race. There was great upheaval in the societal, social, political, and economic aspects of human life. It was a time of artistic experimentation as people sought a new way to express the emotional uproar that the events that unfolded around them had driven them into. Several artistic movements influenced by the time such as Cubism, Futurism, Dadaism, Surrealism, and Expressionism.

Cubism was an intriguing movement that experimented with human perception of images and forms through the use of geometric planes, shapes, values, and colors.

Pablo Picaso was the originator of the movement and enthusiastically played with the classical norms for human figure, by rotating, abstracting, chopping up and redistributing viewpoints.

Futurism was a movement characterized by a violent love of war, the machine age, speed and modern life. To quote their manifesto, their intent was to "Destroy the cult of the past... Totally invalidate all kinds of imitation... Elevate all attempts at originality... Regarded art critics as useless and dangerous... Sweep the whole field of art clean of all themes and subjects that have been used in the past... Support and glory in our day-to-day world which is going to be continually and splendidly transformed by victorious Science."

What I found so interesting about this movement is the experimental use of type that was implemented by so many of the poet/painters that embodied the movement. Filippo Marinetti, founder of the Futurists used typography to express emotion and feeling that is typically lost when translated from spoken to written language as well as a particular iconography in how the capitals seem to create the landscape of mountains and valleys the poem describes.

Filippo Marinetti "Montagne+Vallate+Strade x Joffre" 1915

I find a similar aspect in the more modern art of kinetic typography of which I've provided a small example of in the video below. There is the same type of emotional expression in the presentation of the words but presented with speed and animation. I think the futurists at the beginning of the last century would have accepted this as a part of their own movement had it been possible at the time.

As an experiment, try watching video again, but without sound and see if it still evokes the same feeling.

Dadaism as a movement embodied much of the violence and drive of the Futurist movement and took it to more of an extreme. The Dadaist claimed to be anti-art and had a strong negative and destructive element. The rebelled against the horrors of war, the decadence of European society, the shallowness of blind faith in technological progress, and the inadequacy of religion and conventional moral codes. They took the Futurist rejection of tradition, but instead of an embracing an idealized version of the future, there was only the present and the need to change it.

"Whoever reads the bourgeois press turns deaf and blind. Away with these stupidity causing bandages!"-John Heartfield

Surrealism was the searching  for the "more real than real world behind the real". As convoluted as that sounds, that quote sums up the movement quite succinctly. Art from this movement embodied the inner thoughts, intuition and feeling of the artists. It was at the same time deeply personal and yet could evoke a universal response from large numbers of people. 

"Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man" by Salvador Dali

Expressionism was the tendency to not depict objective reality but rather subjective emotions and personal responses to subjects and events. Visually there was a heavy use of symbols, with pronounced lines and color and value contrasts were intensified. The controlled geometric patterning and constrictive rules of realism were abandoned for thick paint, loose brushwork, and bold contour drawing. Expressionist fostered a deep and intense idealism that bucked the authority of the military, education, and governmental rule. There was a deep empathy of the poor and social outcasts, these were often the subjects of expressionists.

Wassily Kandinsky, Composition VII, 1913

There was also a deep focus on pictorial art during this time period, as radio and other means of electronic communication were far from being widespread, the art of poster-making was being refined and used to advertise and support propaganda and war efforts.

This art movement shares a grapic style with graphic artist Sheperd Fairey, who I was recently made aware of by a colleague of mine

Shepard Fairey

Module 5

Art Nouvea was an international decorative style that thrived for two decades at the turn of the 19th and 20th century. It encompassed a large variety of the design arts from architecture, furniture and product design, to fashion and graphics, influencing the posters, packages and advertising as a whole. The key visual quality of Art Nouveau is an organic plantlike line. There is a sense of a flowing energy or line throughout it as it forms, decorates, and modifies a given space.  Vine tendrils, birds, and the human female were frequent motifs from which this fluidity was developed.

Ukiyo-e was a Japanese art movement that took place around the time that Japan was first joining the world stage. It was an artistic style that was noted for it's prolific printing from woodblocks and screens. The flow and line of this style had a major impact on many European artists who would develop Art Nouveau.
Kitagawa Utamaro was a great example of a Japanese artist who embodied many of the traits and subject fixations that characterized the Art Nouvea movement. He had a great observation of nature and the female form. His work often included birds and plants, as well as many depictions of the female form.