Module TFD1064. Design for Communication DesignGraphic Design Group New Graphic DesignJosh GardnerU1262228Email : josh.gardner1@hotmail.co.ukBlog : joshgardner1.wordpress.com

FORM FOLLOW FUNCTIONan exploration of modernism and post modernism

24/4/13

PART IRESEARCH INTO

•Colour•Shape•Movements•Theories •Artists

Color in design is very subjective. What evokes one reaction in onepersonmayevokeaverydifferentreactioninsomoneelse.Sometimes this is due to personal preference, and other times due to cultural background. Color theory is a science in itself. Studyinghowcolorsaffectdifferentpeople,eitherindividuallyoras a group, is something some people build their careers on. And there’s a lot to it. Something as simple as changing the exact hue orsaturationofacolorcanevokeacompletelydifferentfeeling.Culturaldifferencesmeanthatsomethingthat’shappyandup-

lifting in one country can be depressing in another.

Warm Colors

Warmcolorsincludered,orange,andyellow,andvariationsofthosethreecolors.Thesearethecolorsoffire,offallleaves,andof sunsets and sunrises, and are generally energizing, passionate, and positive. Red and yellow are both primary colors, with or-ange falling in the middle, which means warm colors are all truly warm and aren’t created by combining a warm color with a cool color.Usewarmcolorsinyourdesignstoreflectpassion,happiness,enthusiasm,andenergy.

RED (PRIMARY COLOR)

Redisaveryhotcolor.It’sassociatedwithfire,violence,andwarfare.It’salsoassociatedwithloveandpassion.Inhistory,it’sbeenassociatedwithboththeDevilandCupid.Redcanactuallyhaveaphysicaleffectonpeople,raisingbloodpressureandres-piration rates. It’s been shown to enhance human metabolism, too.Red can be associated with anger, but is also associated with importance (think of the red carpet at awards shows and celebrity events). Red also indicates danger (the reason stop lights and signs are red, and that most warning labels are red).Outsidethewesternworld,redhasdifferentassociations.Forexample,inChina,redisthecolorofprosperityandhappiness.Itcan also be used to attract good luck. In other eastern cultures, red is worn by brides on their wedding days. In South Africa, how-ever, red is the color of mourning. Red is also associated with communism. Red has become the color associated with AIDS aware-ness in Africa due to the popularity of the [RED] campaign.Indesign,redcanbeapowerfulaccentcolor.Itcanhaveanoverwhelmingeffectifit’susedtoomuchindesigns,especiallyinitspurest form. It’s a great color to use when power or passion want to be portrayed in the design. Red can be very versatile, though, with brighter versions being more energetic and darker shades being more powerful and elegant.

ORANGE (SECONDARY COLOR)

Orange is a very vibrant and energetic color. In its muted forms, it can be associated with the earth and with autumn. Because of its association with the changing seasons, orange can represent change and movement in general.Because orange is associated with the fruit of the same name, it can be associated with health and vitality. In designs, orange commands attention without being as overpowering as red. It’s often considered more friendly and inviting, and less in-your-face.

YELLOW (PRIMARY COLOR)

Yellow is often considered the brightest and most energizing of the warm colors. It’s associated with happiness and sunshine. Yel-low can also be associated with deceit and cowardice, though (calling someone yellow is calling them a coward).Yellow is also associated with hope, as can be seen in some countries when yellow ribbons are displayed by families who have loved ones at war. Yellow is also associated with danger, though not as strongly as red.Insomecountries,yellowhasverydifferentconnotations.InEgypt,forexample,yellowisformourning.InJapan,itrepresentscourage, and in India it’s a color for merchants.In your designs, bright yellow can lend a sense of happiness and cheerfulness. Softer yellows are commonly used as a gender-neu-tral color for babies (rather than blue or pink) and young children. Light yellows also give a more calm feeling of happiness than bright yellows. Dark yellows and gold-hued yellows can sometimes look antique and be used in designs where a sense of perma-

Cool Colors

Cool colors include green, blue, and purple, are often more subdued than warm colors. They are the colors of night, of water, of nature, and are usually calming, relaxing, and somewhat reserved.Blue is the only primary color within the cool spectrum, which means the other colors are created by combining blue with a warm color (yellow for green and red for purple). Greens take on some of the attributes of yellow, and purple takes on some of the at-tributes of red. Use cool colors in your designs to give a sense of calm or professionalism.

GREEN (SECONDARY COLOR)

Greenisaverydown-to-earthcolor.Itcanrepresentnewbeginningsandgrowth.Italsosignifiesrenewalandabundance.Alter-natively, green can also represent envy or jealousy, and a lack of experience.Green has many of the same calming attributes that blue has, but it also incorporates some of the energy of yellow. In design, greencanhaveabalancingandharmonizingeffect,andisverystable.It’sappropriatefordesignsrelatedtowealth,stability,renewal, and nature. Brighter greens are more energizing and vibrant, while olive greens are more representative of the natural world.Darkgreensarethemoststableandrepresentativeofaffluence.

BLUE (PRIMARY COLOR)

Blue is often associated with sadness in the English language. Blue is also used extensively to represent calmness and responsibil-ity. Light blues can be refreshing and friendly. Dark blues are more strong and reliable. Blue is also associated with peace, and has spiritual and religious connotations in many cultures and traditions (for example, the Virgin Mary is generally depicted wear-ing blue robes).Themeaningofblueiswidelyaffecteddependingontheexactshadeandhue.Indesign,theexactshadeofblueyouselectwillhave a huge impact on how your designs are perceived. Light blues are often relaxed and calming. Bright blues can be energizing

PURPLE (SECONDARY COLOR)

Purple was long associated with royalty. It’s a combination of red and blue, and takes on some attributes of both. It’s associated with creativity and imagination, too. In Thailand, purple is the color of mourning for widows. Dark purples are traditionally asso-ciated with wealth and royalty, while lighter purples (like lavendar) are considered more romantic.In design, dark purples can give a sense wealth and luxury. Light purples are softer and are associated with spring and romance.

Neutrals

Neutral colors often serve as the backdrop in design. They’re commonly combined with brighter accent colors. But they can also be used on their own in designs, and can create very sophisticated layouts. The meanings and impressions of neutral colors are muchmoreaffectedbythecolorsthatsurroundthemthanarewarmandcoolcolors.

BLACK

Black is the strongest of the neutral colors. On the positive side, it’s commonly associated with power, elegance, and formality. On the negative side, it can be associated with evil, death, and mystery. Black is the traditional color of mourning in many West-ern countries. It’s also associated with rebellion in some cultures, and is associated with Halloween and the occult.Black is commonly used in edgier designs, as well as in very elegant designs. It can be either conservative or modern, traditional or unconventional, depending on the colors it’s combined with. In design, black is commonly used for typography and other func-tional parts, because of it’s neutrality. Black can make it easier to convey a sense of sophistication and mystery in a design.

WHITE

White is at the opposite end of the spectrum from black, but like black, it can work well with just about any other color. White is often associated with purity, cleanliness, and virtue. In the West, white is commonly worn by brides on their wedding day. It’s also associated with the health care industry, especially with doctors, nurses and dentists. White is associated with goodness, and angels are often depicted in white.In design, white is generally considered a neutral backdrop that lets other colors in a design have a larger voice. It can help to convey cleanliness and simplicity, though, and is popular in minimalist designs. White in designs can also portray either winter or

GRAY

Gray is a neutral color, generally considered on the cool end of the color spectrum. It can sometimes be considered moody or de-pressing. Light grays can be used in place of white in some designs, and dark grays can be used in place of black.Gray is generally conservative and formal, but can also be modern. It is sometimes considered a color of mourning. It’s com-monly used in corporate designs, where formality and professionalism are key. It can be a very sophisticated color. Pure grays are shades of black, though other grays may have blue or brown hues mixed in. In design, gray backgrounds are very common, as is gray typography.

BEIGE AND TAN

Beige is somewhat unique in the color spectrum, as it can take on cool or warm tones depending on the colors surrounding it. It has the warmth of brown and the coolness of white, and, like brown, is sometimes seen as dull. It’s a conservative color in most instances, and is usually reserved for backgrounds. It can also symbolize piety.Beige in design is generally used in backgrounds, and is commonly seen in backgrounds with a paper texture. It will take on the characteristicsofcolorsaroundit,meaningithaslittleeffectinitselfonthefinalimpressionadesigngiveswhenusedwithoth-er colors.

BROWN

Brown is associated with the earth, wood, and stone. It’s a completely natural color and a warm neutral. Brown can be associ-ated with dependability and reliability, with steadfastness, and with earthiness. It can also be considered dull.In design, brown is commonly used as a background color. It’s also seen in wood textures and sometimes in stone textures. It helps bring a feeling of warmth and wholesomeness to designs. It’s sometimes used in its darkest forms as a replacement for black, either in backgrounds or typography.

CREAM AND IVORY

Ivory and cream are sophisticated colors, with some of the warmth of brown and a lot of the coolness of white. They’re generally quiet, and can often evoke a sense of history. Ivory is a calm color, with some of the pureness associated with white, though it’s a bit warmer.In design, ivory can lend a sense of elegance and calm to a site. When combined with earthy colors like peach or brown, it can take on an earthy quality. It can also be used to lighten darker colors, without the stark contrast of using white.

In Brief…

While the information contained here might seem just a bit overwhelming, color theory is as much about the feeling a particular shade evokes than anything else. But here’s a quick reference guide for the common meanings of the colors discussed above:

Red: Passion, Love, AngerOrange: Energy, Happiness, VitalityYellow: Happiness, Hope, DeceitGreen: New Beginnings, Abundance, NatureBlue: Calm, Responsible, SadnessPurple: Creativity, Royalty, WealthBlack: Mystery, Elegance, EvilGray: Moody, Conservative, FormalityWhite: Purity, Cleanliness, VirtueBrown: Nature, Wholesomeness, DependabilityTan or Beige: Conservative, Piety, DullCream or Ivory: Calm, Elegant, Purity

MONOCHROMATIC Colour Scheme

Monochromaticcolorschemesaremadeupofdifferenttones,shadesandtintswithinaspecifichue.Thesearethesimplestcolor schemes to create, as they’re all taken from the same hue, making it harder to create a jarring or ugly scheme (though both are still possible).Examples:Herearethreeexamplesofmonochromecolorschemes.Forthemostpartwiththeseschemes,thefirstcolor(ifwelookatthisfrom left to right) would likely be used for headlines. The second color would be used for body text or possibly the background. The third color would likely be used for the background (or body text if color #2 was used as the background). And the last two colors would be used as accents or within graphics.

ANALOGOUS Colour Scheme

Analogous color schemes are the next easiest to create. Analogous schemes are created by using three colors that are next to each other on the 12-spoke color wheel. Generally, analogous color schemes all have the same chroma level, but by using tones, shades and tints we can add interest to these schemes and adapt them to our needs for designing websites.

This is a traditional analogous color scheme, and while it’s visually appealing, thereisn’tenoughcontrastbetweenthecolorsforaneffectivedesign.

Here’s a color scheme with the same hues as the one above, but with the chroma adjusted to give more variety. It’s now much more suitable for use in design.

Another example of a traditional analogous scheme. Andtheabovethememodifiedforuseinawebsitedesign.

COMPLEMENTARY Colour SchemeComplementary schemes are created by combining colors from opposite sides of the color wheel. In their most basic form, these schemes consist of only two colors, but can easily be expanded using tones, tints, and shades. A word of warning, though: using colors that are exact opposites with the same chroma and/or value right next to each other can be very jarring visually (they’ll appear to actually vibrate along their border in the most severe uses). This is best avoided (either by leaving white space between them or by adding another, transitional color between them).

A wide range of tints, shades, and tones makes this a very versatile color.

Don’t forget that beige and brown are really tints and shades of orange.

Another complementary color scheme with a wide range of chromas.

SPILT COMPLEMENTARY Colour SchemeSplit complementary schemes are almost as easy as the complementary scheme. In this scheme, instead of using colors that are opposites, you use colors on either side of the hue opposite your base hue.

Aschemewhereyellow-greenisthebasehue.It’simportanttohaveenoughdiffer-ence in chroma and value between the colors you select for this type of scheme.

Another palette with a wide range of chromas.

TRIADIC Colour SchemeTriadic schemes are made up of hues equally spaced around the 12-spoke color wheel. This is one of the more diverse color schemes.

Using a very pale or dark version of one color in the triad, along with two shades/tones/tints of the other two colors makes the single color almost work as a neutral within the scheme.

Alternately, using one very bright hue with paired muted hues makes the single bright hue stand out more.

TRIADIC Colour SchemeTriadic schemes are made up of hues equally spaced around the 12-spoke color wheel. This is one of the more diverse color schemes.

Using a very pale or dark version of one color in the triad, along with two shades/tones/tints of the other two colors makes the single color almost work as a neutral within the scheme.

Alternately, using one very bright hue with paired muted hues makes the single bright hue stand out more.

ChromaChroma refers to the purity of a color. A hue with high chroma has no black, white or gray in it. Adding white, black or gray reduces its chroma. It’s similar to saturation but not quite the same. Chroma can be thought of as the brightness of a color in comparison to white.In design, avoid using hues that have a very similar chroma. Opt instead for hues with chromas that are the same or a few steps

HueHue is the most basic of color terms and basically denotes an object’s color. When we say “blue,” “green” or “red,” we’re talk-

SaturationSaturation refers to how a hue appears under particular lighting conditions. Think of saturation in terms of weak vs. strong or pale vs. pure hues.In design, colors with similar saturation levels make for more cohesive-looking designs. As with chroma, colors with similar but notidenticalsaturationscanhaveajarringeffectonvisitors.

ValueValue could also be called “lightness.” It refers to how light or dark a color is. Ligher colors have higher values. For example, orange has a higher value than navy blue or dark purple. Black has the lowest value of any hue, and white the highest.Whenapplyingcolorvaluestoyourdesigns,favorcolorswithdifferentvalues,especiallyoneswithhighchroma.Highcontrastvalues generally result in more aesthetically pleasing designs.

TonesTones are created when gray is added to a hue. Tones are generally duller or softer-looking than pure hues.Tones are sometimes easier to use in designs. Tones with more gray can lend a certain vintage feel to websites. Depending on the hues, they can also add a sophisticated or elegant look.

ShadesA shade is created when black is added to a hue, making it darker. The word is often incorrectly used to describe tint or tone, but shade only applies to hues made darker by the addition of black.In design, very dark shades are sometimes used instead of black and can serve as neutrals. Combining shades with tints is best to avoid too dark and heavy a look.

TintsA tint is formed when white is added to a hue, lightening it. Very light tints are sometimes called pastels, but any pure hue with white added to it is a tint.Tints are often used to create feminine or lighter designs. Pastel tints are especially used to make designs more feminine. They also work well in vintage designs and are popular on websites targeted at parents of babies and toddlers.

Conclusion

❶Chromaisthepurityofacolor(ahighchromahasnoaddedblack,whiteorgray).❶Saturationreferstohowstrongorweakacoloris(highsaturationbeingstrong).❶Valuereferstohowlightordarkacoloris(lighthavingahighvalue).❶Tonesarecreatedbyaddinggraytoacolor,makingitdullerthantheoriginal.❶Shadesarecreatedbyaddingblacktoacolor,makingitdarkerthantheoriginal.❶Tintsarecreatedbyaddingwhitetoacolor,makingitlighterthantheoriginal.

Diffrent Magazine Cover Design Styles

Coversareessentialandtherearedifferenttypestoconsider.Whateverchoiceismade,iaskmyselfWhywouldthisworkwiththis magazine? What makes this unique or appealing? How does it set itself apart from other magazine in terms of color and style?

❶No-wordcovers.Thiswaspopularinthe20thcenturywherecoverswereseenmoreasart.❶Oneimagecoverwithonemainline—perhapsaholidayorseasonalthemesuchas“ThanksgivingIssue”or“SummerIssue.”❶Oneimagewithseveralfeaturecoverlines.❶BusycoverwithmanyimagesandwordsasdepictedbyUSWeeklyandAllYoumagazines.❶CoverswithallgraphicsasseeninWiredandNewYorker.

The Meaning Of Shapes:

“I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way, things I had no words for.- Georgia O’Keeffe”

Whatdoyoufeelwhenyouseeacircle?Asquare?Atriangle?Areyouaffectedthesamewhenseeinganobjectwithsoftgentlecurvesasyouarewhenseeinganotherobjectwithsharp jagged edges? Much the same way that lines have meaning, shapes have meaning and are an important building block in the visual grammar and visual thinking we have at our disposal as designers.

Shapeshaveanendlessvarietyofcharacteristics,eachcommunicatingdifferentmessagestoyouraudience.You’dbehardpressedtodesignanywebpagewithoutcreatingshapes. Even if your page is nothing more than paragraphs of text you’re laying down shapes on the page.

What kind of shapes do we have at our disposal? What do all those shapes say to our visitors? How do they enhance or detract from the concept you want to convey?

Shapes are two-dimensional areas with a recognizable boundary. They can be open or closed, angular or round, big or small. Shapes can be organic or inorganic. They can be free-form or geometric and ordered.

Shapescanbedefinedbytheircolororbythecombinationoflinesthatmakeuptheiredges.Simpleshapescanbecombinedtoformcomplexshapes.Complexshapescanbeabstracted to make simple shapes.

Designers use shapes to:

• Organize information through connection and separation• Symbolizedifferentideas• Create movement, texture, and depth• Convey mood and emotion• Emphasize and create entry points and areas of interest• Lead the eye from one design element to the next

• Types of Shapes

• Geometric shapes are what most people think of as shapes. Circles, squares, triangles, diamonds are made up of regular patterns that are easily recognizable. This regularity suggests organizationandefficiency.Itsuggestsstructure.Geometricshapestendtobesymmetricalfurthersuggestingorder.

• Natural/Organic shapes are irregular. They have more curves and are uneven. They tend to be pleasing and comforting. While they can be man-made (ink blobs), they are more typi-cally representative of shapes found in nature such as a leaves, rocks, and clouds. On a web page organic shapes are generally created through the use of illustration and photography. They are free form and asymmetrical and convey feelings of spontaneity. Organic shapes add interest and reinforce themes.

• Abstractshapeshavearecognizableform,butarenotreal.Theyarestylizedorsimplifiedversionsoforganicshapes.Astickfigureisanabstractshapedepictingaperson.Typographicglyphs are abstract shapes to represent letters. Icons are abstract shapes to represent ideas and concepts. Some abstract shapes have near universal recognition. Think of some of the icons you see in the software you use daily.

• Shapescanbeeitherpositiveornegative.Theycanbefigureortheycanbeground.Beconsciousoftheshapesyouformwithnegativespaceasthesearejustas,ifnotmore,impor-tant than the shapes you form with positive space.

There are truly an endless variety of shapes and combination of shapes, each communicating its own meaning and message. Often the meaning behind shapes is cultural (a red octagonasastopsign),particularlyasshapesarecombined.We’llconfineourselvestoadiscussionofsomebasicgeometricshapeshereandI’llprovidesomelinkstomorede-tailed sources of shape meaning beyond the basics.

Circles have no beginning or end. They represent the eternal whole and in every culture are an archetypical form representing the sun, the earth, the moon, the universe, and other celestial objects between. Circles are used to suggest familiar objects such as wheels, balls, many kinds of fruit. They suggested well-roundedness and completeness.

Circles have free movement. They can roll. Shading and lines can enhance this sense of movement in circles. Circles are graceful and their curves are seen as feminine. They are warm,comfortingandgiveasenseofsensualityandlove.Theirmovementsuggestsenergyandpower.Theircompletenesssuggeststheinfinite,unity,andharmony.

Circlesprotect,theyendure,theyrestrict.Theyconfinewhat’swithinandkeepthingsout.Theyoffersafetyandconnection.Circlessuggestscommunity,integrity,andperfec-tion.

Because they are less common in design they work well to attract attention, provide emphasis, and set things apart.

Squares and rectangles are stable. They’re familiar and trusted shapes and suggest honesty. They have right angles and represent order, mathematics, rationality, and formality. They are seen as earthbound. Rectangles are the most common geometric shape encountered. The majority of text we read is set in rectangles or squares.

Squares and rectangles suggest conformity, peacefulness, solidity, security, and equality. Their familiarity and stability, along with their commonness can seem boring. They are generally not attention getters, but can be tilted to add an unexpected twist. Think of web pages that tilts framed images to help them stand out.

Everyelementonawebpageisdefinedbyarectangleaccordingtothecssboxmodel.Webpagesarerectanglesmadeupofsmallerrectanglesandsquares.

In Buddhist symbolism a square (earthbound) inside a circle (eternal whole) represents the relationship between the human and the divine.

The Meaning Of Shapes:

Triangles can be stable when sitting on their base or unstable when not. They represent dynamic tension, action, and aggression. Triangles have energy and power and their sta-ble/unstabledynamiccansuggesteitherconflictorsteadystrength.Theyarebalancedandcanbeasymbolforlaw,science,andreligion.

Triangles can direct movement based which way they point. They can be used to suggest familiar themes like pyramids, arrows and, pennants. Spiritually they represent the reli-gious trinity. They can suggest self-discovery and revelation.

Thestrengthoftrianglessuggestsmasculinity.Theirdynamicnaturemakethembettersuitedtoagrowinghightechcompanythanastablefinancialinstitutionwhendesigningalogo. Triangles can be used to convey progression, direction, and purpose.

Spirals are expressions of creativity. They are often found in the natural growth pattern of many organisms and suggest the process of growth and evolution. Spirals convey ideas of fertility, birth, death, expansion, and transformation. They are cycles of time, life, and the seasons and are a common shape in religious and mystical symbolism.

Spirals move in either direction and represent returning to the same point on life’s journey with new levels of understanding. They represent trust during change, the release of energyandmaintainingflexibilitythroughtransformation.

Clockwisespiralsrepresentprojectionofanintentionandcounterclockwisespiralsthefulfillmentofanintention.Doublespiralscanbeusedtosymbolizeopposingforces.

Crosses symbolize spirituality and healing. They are seen as the meeting place of divine energies. The 4 points of a cross represent self, nature, wisdom, and higher power or be-ing. Crosses suggest transition, balance, faith, unity, temperance, hope, and life.

They represent relationships and synthesis and a need for connection to something, whether that something is group, individual, self, or project related..As with lines vertical shapes are seen as strong and horizontal shapes are seen as peaceful. Most everything said about vertical and horizontal lines can be said about vertical and horizontal shapes.

Curved shapesofferrhythmandmovement,happiness,pleasureandgenerosity.Theyareseenasmorefemininethansharpshapeswhichofferenergy,violenceand,anger.Sharpshapes are lively and youthful and are seen as more masculine.

The Meaning Of Shapes:

Modernism

Modernismwasaculturalmovementwhichwasputintouseandinfluencedmanyartistsbeforethedecadeof1914.Theartists and designers created this movement as a sign of rebellion against the late nineteenth century academic and

historicist.

Despite this, the 20th century is normally split into two parts: Modernism and Post-modernism.

A book which I rented out from the library that I thought would help me understand more about Modernism is “Modern- A Graphic Guide To - Ism” written by Chris Rodrigues and Chris Garratt.

The book immediately quotes a modernist writer named D.H Lawrence who said “…to read a really new novel will always hurt, to some extent. There will always be resistance. The same with new pictures, new music. You may judge of their

reality by the fact that they do arouse a certain resistance, and compel, at length, a certain acquiscence.”

The book immediately quotes a modernist writer named D.H Lawrence who said “…to read a really new novel will always hurt, to some extent. There will always be resistance. The same with new pictures, new music. You may judge of their

reality by the fact that they do arouse a certain resistance, and compel, at length, a certain acquiscence.”

What effect did Modernism have on Graphic Design?The term “graphic design” was not around when the modernist movement began and has only really been around since 1922whenabookdesigner,WilliamDwiggings,coinedthephrase.Itissaidthatgraphicdesignitselfisaproductof

modernism.

Lookingatvisualcommunicationbeforeandafterthe1900’sthereisanotablechange.Inasense,Modernismwasareductivemovement.Formwassimplifiedasawaytobreakfrompictorialrepresentation.

Thereasonforthisbreakatthebeginningofthe20thcenturewasbecauseitwasarevolutionarytime.Itwasfilledwith political, social, cultural and economic changes. The technological advances of our age was ever-expanding, the inventionofflight,phonesandradio.TherewasalsoariseofradicalpoliticalrevolutionsthatspawnedtheriseofNazi

Germany, Fascist Italy and Communist Russia. Many artists felt that the traditions of the past did not represent the time they were living in correctly therefore came to the conclusion they needed something new which led to the birth of

modernism, expressionism, cubism, futurism, surrealism and constructivism are just a few.

PostmodernismAs you can tell by the name of this movement, Postmodernism is the time after in which Modernism died out of fashion and evolved. This movement was created in the late 20th centuryandsimilarlytomodernismeffected:architecture,paintings,sculptors,writers

and many others.

Ilookedatthebook“PostmodernismStyleandSubversion,1970-1990”editedbyGlennAdamson and Jane Pavitt in order to help me with this research.

In understanding Post-Modernism, the book startswith a quote byHal Foster in 1985,“Postmodernism does it exist at all, and if so, what does it mean? Is it a concept or a practice, a matter of local style or a whole new period or economic phase? What are its

forms,effects,place?”

As soon as this statement/question was made, there was no shortage of responses to understanding postmodernism. Postmodernism had many subcultures that derived from it, for example: radical design, transavantgardism and radical electicism are just a few examples.Evenatitspeakinthemid1980’sitwashardtolocate.Incontrasttothemod-ernist movement, postmodernism was a collection of wry looks and ironic gestures. Mod-ernistsofferedanewoutlooksontotheworldwhereasthepostmodernistsofferedsome-thing broken and shattered. Instead of authenticity, postmodernism celebrated hybridity.

What effect did Postmodernism have on Graphic Design?

Unfortunatelyforthisera,postmodernismdidn’treallyhaveanimpactuntilthe1980’s.Manyartists remained anonymous in the work they produced as they felt it was too “risky” and toooffensiveforothercitizenstosee.Thefirstmostprominent featureofpostmodernistgraphic design is the reaction artists make to modernist designs and their response to it. The second most predominant feature is the erasing of the boundaries between high culture and pop culture. Graphic designers love and are drawn to new things, they were caught in this postmodernism world when they realised it wasn’t just a form of self-expression but a new technique which can again, be revolutionised into something new and a new form of truthful

visual communication.

“The practice of graphic design has from the beginning been intertwined with pop commer-cialism, but that does not mean that our values and ideals, or the lack of them, have to be dictated by the commercial marketplace. Just because thinking about design isn’t a popular

activity doesn’t mean it isn’t an important one.” - Mr. Keedy

Layout Design

Page layout is the process of composing text, image and negative space on the page to produce a balanced, and harmonious visual impact that would allow for a collaboration of the author of the text, the artist of the design and the reader to construct collectivelyameaningandamessageforthetext.Notexthasasinglemeaningorauniquemessage,anddifferentdesignscre-atedifferentmeaningsanddifferentmessagesforthesametext.Alayoutdesignerusuallyusesagridsystemtosubdividesapage into geometrical spaces that would constitute the grammar of layout design made up of vertical, horizontal, oblique and curved borders, margins, columns, inter-column spaces, lines of type, and negative spaces between blocks of type and images.

The visual grammar pf layout design forms its visual message

Layout design is more than just design it is visual communication. Newspaper, magazine, book and other paper media layout de-signers not only must make the layout visually appealing to the eye, but also tell and show the importance of the story, the text, and the message through their designs. Stories and photographs are not the only elements that convey a context to a reader; a gooddesignsuggestsacontexttoo.Thelayoutdesignofabook,onhistory;scienceorarthasalsoasignificanteffectonhowareaderwouldbeinformedaboutasubject.Thedesignscanhavedifferentlooksaboutthem.Theycanoccupyjustonenarrowvertical column, many columns, or they can spread over an entire page, Similar to the grammatical impacts of various tenses of a verb in a sentence, these visual grammatical variations change the dynamics of the visual meaning in the space and time. Gutenberg, Ludovico degli Arrighi,Johannes Itten, László Moholy-Nagy, Theo Van Doesburg, Kurt Schwitters, Johannes Molzahn, Max Burchartz and the other authentic layout artists are the ones whose works establish the new standards and criteria for the future. They can abandon all the aesthetically established conventions, except one; their new designs must balance the overall compositions of the page taking into considerations all elements of design namely; the composition of image, text, white space

theeffectsofcolorandtextureofitspaper.

Of course. the amount of space available will dictate a designer’s ability to layout the text. Creating a bold design, judiciously al-lotting areas of contrast and selecting appropriate typeface the composition should lead the reader’s eyes towards various parts of the page in a harmonious and unintrusive journey. In any layout, the negative space, that is the space without any content, plays a key role in this journey. The designer style should include an appropriate amount of negative space that would support the text arrangement in the composition. Whether the design is simple or complex, the way the story, photos, typeface and negative space are composed is a part of the visual communication package as a whole. If a page is designed poorly, the reader may miss the whole or the major part of content. A bad design may create fatigue, stress, and even provoke hostility towards the text or

the author.

At its most basic, the composition of a layout is determined by the two dimensional geometry of its typography, image, color schemeandthenatureofitstextualcontent;namelywhetheritistechnical,mathematical,poetical,philosophical,scientificoranything else . Various design choices; starting from geometric dimensions of pages, sizes of type, texture of the paper, column

CUBISMCubism is an art movement in the 20th century that completely changed European painting. Instead of viewing and displaying subjectsfromonefixedangle,Cubismbreaksthesubjectupintoamultiplicityoffacets.Thiswayseveraldifferentaspects/faces of the subject can be displayed simultaneously. Cubism presented a new reality in painting.

Inspired by Paul C?zanne and Georges Seurat, Cubism found its roots in the collaboration between Pablo Picasso (Spain) and GeorgesBraque(France)between1907and1914.TheCubistmovement itself was not very long-lived or widespread, but it didhaveamassiveinfluenceonlatter20thcenturyartmove-ments such as precisionism, futurism and to some degree also expressionism.

Theperiodfrom1910to1912oftenisreferredtoasthatofAnalytical Cubism. In an analytical cubist painting, the object was“takenapart”andreshapedwiththeuseofflatintersect-ing planes. Paintings frequently combine representational motifs with letters, the latter emphasizing the painter’s concern with abstraction.

DuringWorldWarI(1914-1918),PicassoandBraque’scollabora-tion ended. Despite this a core group of Cubist artists remained activetillthe1920’s.

Orphic CubismA special type of Cubism is orphic cubism or orphism. Orphism aimed to gradually dispense with recognisable subject matter and to rely on form and colour alone to communicate meaning. The movement also aimed to express the ideals of Simultanism-theexistenceofaninfinitudeofinterrelatedstatesofbeing.Itsmain representative is Robert Delaunay

Juan GrisAtfirsthepaintedintheanalyticstyleofcubismbutafter1915,hebeganhisconversiontosyntheticcubismofwhichhebecame a steadfast interpreter, with recognizable use of papier collé. Unlike Braque and Picasso whose works were monochro-matic, Gris concentrated on painting with bright colors.

Futurism

Futurism was a 20th century art movement. The Futurists loved speed, noise, machines, pollution, and cities; they embraced the exciting new world that was then upon them rather than hypocritically enjoying the modern world’s comforts while loudly denouncing the forces that made them possible. Fearing and attacking technology has become almost second nature to many people today; the Futurist manifestos show us an al-ternative philosophy.

AlthoughanascentFuturismcanbeseensurfacingthroughouttheveryearlyyearsofthatcentury,the1907essayEntwurfeinerneuen?sthetikderTonkunst(SketchofaNewAestheticofMusic)bytheItaliancomposerFerruccioBusoniissometimesclaimedasitstruejumping-offpoint.Fu-turism was a largely Italian and Russian movement although it also had adherents in other countries.

The Futurists explored every medium of art, including painting, sculpture, poetry, theatre, music, architecture and even gastronomy. The Italian poetFilippoTommasoMarinettiwasthefirstamongthemtoproduceamanifestooftheirartisticphilosophyinhisManifestoofFuturism(1909),firstreleasedinMilanandpublishedintheFrenchpaperLeFigaro(February20).MarinettisummedupthemajorprinciplesoftheFuturists,in-cluding a passionate loathing of ideas from the past, especially political and artistic traditions. He and others also espoused a love of speed, tech-nology and violence. The car, the plane, the industrial town were all legendary for the Futurists, because they represented the technological tri-umph of man over nature.

Marinetti’s impassioned polemic immediately attracted the support of the young Milanese painters ? Boccioni, Carr?, and Russolo ? who wanted to extend Marinetti’s ideas to the visual arts (Russolo was also a composer, and introduced Futurist ideas into his compositions). The painters Balla andSeverinimetMarinettiin1910andtogethertheseartistsrepresentedFuturism’sfirstphase.

ThepainterandsculptorUmbertoBoccioni(1882-1916)wrotetheManifestoofFuturistPaintersin1910inwhichhevowed:“Wewillfightwithall our might the fanatical, senseless and snobbish religion of the past, a religion encouraged by the vicious existence of museums. We rebel againstthatspinelessworshippingofoldcanvases,oldstatuesandoldbric-a-brac,againsteverythingwhichisfilthyandworm-riddenandcorrod-ed by time. We consider the habitual contempt for everything which is young, new and burning with life to be unjust and even criminal.”

ConstructivismConstructivism was an artistic and architectural movement in Russiafrom1914onward(especiallypresentaftertheOcto-ber Revolution), and a term often used in modern art today, which dismissed "pure" art in favour of art used as an instru-ment for social purposes, namely, the construction of the socialistsystem.ThetermConstructionArtwasfirstusedasa derisive term by Kazimir Malevich to describe the work of AlexanderRodchenkoin1917.ConstructivismfirstappearsasapositiveterminNaumGabo'sRealisticManifestoof1920.

The movement was formed by Vladimir Tatlin, and later prom-inent constructivists included Manuel Rend?n, Joaqu?n Torres Garc?a, Antoine Pevsner and Naum Gabo. The basis for the new movement was laid by People's Commissar of Education Anatoliy Vasilievich Lunacharsky with the suppression of the old Petrograd Academy of Fine Arts and the Moscow College ofPaintingin1918.ThefocusforConstructivisminMoscowwas 'VKhUTEMAS', the school for art and design established in1919.Gabolaterstatedthatteachingattheschoolwasfocused more on political and ideological discussion than art-making.Theartistsofthemovementwereinfluencedby,andused materials from, industrial design such as sheet metal and glass. Often these materials were used to create geometric objects.

Liubov Popovaworkedtowardstheculminatingpainterlyarcitectonics.Exploringfirstlyanimpressioniststyle,by1913,inCompositionwithFigures,sheisexperimentingwiththeparticularlyRussiandevelopmentofCubo-Futurism;afusionoftwoequalinfluencesfromFranceandItaly.InthepaintingTheViolinof1914thedevelopmentfromcubismtowardsthepainterlyarchitectonicsof1917-18isclearlyvisible.BeforejoiningtheSupremusgroupherpaintings,thearchitectonicserieshavedefinedtheirownartistictrajectory,quitedif-ferent to that of Malevich, Rozanova, Tatlin and Mondrian in abstract form. The canvas sur-faceisanenergyfieldofoverlappingandintersectingangularplanesinaconstantstateofpotential release. At the same time the elements are held in a balanced and proportioned wholeasiflinkingthecompositionsoftheclassicalpasttothefuture.By1918colourisused as an iconic focus; the bright colour at the centre drawing the outer shapes together.

DADAISMDadaism or Dada is a post-World War I cultural movement in visual art as well as literature (mainly poetry), theatre and graphic design. The movement was, among other things, a protest against the barbarism of the War and what Dadaists believed was an oppressive intellectual rigidity in both art and everyday society; its works were characterized by a deliberate irrationality andtherejectionoftheprevailingstandardsofart.Itinfluencedlatermove-ments including Surrealism.

DadaprobablybeganintheCabaretVoltaireinZurichin1916(bysomeac-counts on October 6), and there were active dadaists in New York such as Marcel Duchamp and the Liberian art student, Beatrice Wood, who had left France at the onset of World War I. At around the same time there had been a dadaist movement in Berlin. Slightly later there were also dadaist un-communitiesinHanover(KurtSchwitters),Cologne,andParis.In1920,MaxErnst, Hans Arp and social activist Alfred Gr?nwald set up the Cologne Dada group.

Interestingly, at the same time that the Z?rich dadaists were busy making noise and spectacle at the Cabaret Voltaire, Vladimir Lenin was writing his revolutionary plans for Russia in a nearby apartment. It is known that he was unappreciative of the artistic revolutionary activity occurring next to him. Tom Stoppard used this coincidence as a premise for his play Travesties, which includes Tzara, Lenin, and James Joyce as characters.

The French avant-garde kept abreast of Dada activities in Z?rich due to the regular communications from Tristan Tzara, who exchanged letters, poems, and magazines with Guillaume Apollinaire, Andr? Breton, Max Jacob, and oth-erFrenchwriters,criticsandartists.ThefirstintroductionofDadaartworktotheParisianpublicwasattheSalondesInd?pendantsin1921.JeanCrottiexhibited works associated with Dada including a work entitled, "Explicatif" bearing the word Tabu.

Dada'sinfluencereachedoutintosoundandmusic:KurtSchwittersdevel-opedwhathecalled"soundpoems"andcomposerssuchasErwinSchulhoff,Hans Heusser and Albert Savinio began writing "dada music", while members of Les Six collaborated with dada movement members and had pieces played at dada gatherings.

Layout Design in 20th century

At the beginning of the 20th Century, modern art movements such as Futurism, Dadaism and Constructivism revolutionized the European layout and typography. Germany was at the epicenter of this revolution, where young layout designers distanced themselves from the traditional approach of the publishing houses and printing companies, whose layout design and typographic culture was rooted in Art and Crafts movement or Art Nouveau style of the eighteenth century. At the same time Cubism departed from Realism and opened the vista for abstract art. Cubists analysed the representational art in three-dimensional view points and added a fourth dimension, time, which rendered the composition complex and rather unwieldy. But upon a more careful study they revealed a deconstruction of the geometry of spaceintorectangles,trianglesandellipsesinadynamictrajectorythatredefinedtheaestheticsofperspective.

In the aftermath of World War I, the German Die Neue Sachlichkeit, The New Objectivity, movement that was founded by Otto Dix and George Grosz may be characterized as an anti-war realistic style that was informed by their cynical stance towards the existing European socio-politicalpowerstructure.Thespiritofa“NewObjectivity”anditsideologicalstanceinfluencedlayoutdesignerslikeKarelTeige,El Lissitzky, Herbert Bayer, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Marcel Breuer, Jan Tschichold, Paul Renner, Kurt Schwitters and others. They fell in love with the “new” Grotesk typography, or what in the English speaking world is known as Sans-Serifs, and was supposed to represent the proletarian spirit of socially-oriented internationalism and fraternization of the new industrial society.

These young artists recognized the power of layout and broke with all previous design traditions, using type in the spirit of cubism, at un-expected angles or on misplaced curves; introducing extreme variation in type sizes; using drawn, abstracted letterforms; and generally ignoringtheverticalandhorizontalnatureoftype.Forthefirsttime,spacewasusedasadynamiccomponentintypographiclayout.

The Italian Futurist layout designers who were literary enthusiast, called into question the typographical philosophy of simplicity, clarity andtransparencywhichdominatedprintculturesincetheadventoftheprintingpress.LedbyF.T.Marinetti’s1909manifesto,theyusedthe metaphor of “second-hand clothes,” to describe the traditional layout designs of visual communication, particularly the layout of the book itself, which Marinetti called “stale” and “oppressive,” a symbol of the old guard that the Futurists were working against. He began experimenting with unusual layout and degenerated typography, creating poems that were simultaneously textual and visual, such as the 1919work“SCRABrrRrraaNNG.

Fibonacci’s Golden proportions When artists think of shapes with golden ratios they typically think of a golden rectangle where one side divided by the other.

The Golden Rectangle’s status as an eye-pleasing divider of space is well established. The Golden Spiral is made from quarter-circles tangent to the interior of each square.

The Golden Section is an aesthetically pleasing division of space that is often used by artists as the basis for measurements within their compositions. The mathematics behind thegoldenratioisheavilyconnectedtotheFibonacciSequence,whichbydefinitionbeginswiththenumbers0,1andtheneachsuccessivenumberinthesequenceisthesumof the previous two numbers.

0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55…

TakinganynumberinthissequenceanddivideitbythepreviousnumbertheresultapproximatesPhiorthegoldenratio.Ofcourse,thefirstfewnumbersinthesequencegivearough approximation , but as we continue along the sequence the division approaches 1.618 rather quickly.

As the following chart shows, designers can partition their layout space in a much simpler way than calculating the length of the sides which satisfy the golden proportion.

The construction of a golden rectangle is very easy and straightforward. First, construct a simple square. Then draw a line from the midpoint of one side (point A) to an oppo-sitecorner(pointB)andusethatlineastheradiustodrawanarcthatdefinesthewidthoftherectangle.Finally,completethegoldenrectangle.

There are many geometrical constructions that can produce a beautiful page, but the golden section is usually cited as the most successful. By adding a square, with sides equal the long side, to the long side it is possible to arrive at the next measurement in the sequence to give a bigger rectangle of the same proportions. This also works in reverse in order to make a smaller rectangle, that is subtracting a square with sides equal to the short side of the rectangle, and extending it to become a rectangle one can produce a smaller golden triangle.

Paul Rand.

“Don't try to be original. Just try to be good.”

was an American graphic designer, best known for his corporate logo designs, including the logos for IBM, UPS. He was one of the origina-tors of the Swiss Style of graphic design.

PaulRandwasbornonAugust15,1914inBrooklyn, New York. He embraced design at a very young age. He almost singlehandedly convincedbusinessthatdesignwasaneffectivetool.Anyonedesigninginthe1950sand1960sowed much to Rand, who largely made it pos-sible for us to work. He more than anyone else made the profession reputable. We went from being commercial artists to being graphic de-signers largely on his merits.

As his work developed, Rand assimilated the philosophy and visual vocabulary of European art and design, in particular that of the Bau-haus, Constructivism, Cubism, De Stijl, and Futurism. Rand believed that lines, shapes, and colours could become message-conveying signs and symbols in visual communications while simultaneously functioning as elements in an artisticcomposition.Forexample,ina1947poster promoting the New York Subways Adver-tising Company, Rand’s arrangement of dots and

concentric circles in vibrant colours becomes both an illustrative image and a dynamic com-position.

“I haven’t changed my mind about modernism from the first day I ever did it…. It means in-tegrity; it means honesty; it means the absence of sentimentality and the absence of nostalgia; it means simplicity; it means clarity. That’s what modernism means to me…”

Undoubtedly, the core ideology that drove Rand’scareer,andhencehislastinginfluence,was the modernist philosophy he so revered. He celebrated the works of artists from Paul Cezanne to Jan Tschichold, and constantly at-tempted to draw the connections between their creativeoutputandsignificantapplicationsingraphic design.

Walter DexelWalter Dexel, a German painter, typographer, designerandwriterwasbornin1890andstud-ied painting in Munich under the direction of HeinrichWölfflinandFritzBurger.Helaterreceived his doctorate under the tutelage of Botho Gräf. He was an active participant in the 1920sConstructivemovementandorganizedshows for Jena’s Art Union, which included ex-hibitions with Campendonk and Bauhaus artist Moholy-Nagy.

Dexel not only painted but also worked as a typographer and an advertising designer and designed interiors as well as stage settings

BauhausBauhaus was founded by Walther Gropius in Weimarintheyear1919asanart,designandarchitecture school. The goal of Bauhaus was to bring together art, handcrafts and architecture into one single synthesis of the arts. This guide-line is rather strongly oriented on the arts and crafts movement – however, Bauhaus opened itself for new technological possibilities, so that the way to industrial design was smoothed. The Bauhaus had a major impact on art and archi-tecture trends in Western Europe, the United States, Canada and Israel in the decades follow-ing its demise.

The Bauhaus was a school whose approach to designandthecombinationoffineartandartsandcraftsprovedtobeamajorinfluenceonthedevelopment of graphic design as well as much of 20th century modern art. Founded by Walter GropiusinWeimar,Germanyin1919,theschoolmovedtoDessauin1924andthenwasforcedto close its doors, under pressure from the Nazi politicalparty,in1933.Theschoolfavoredsim-plifiedforms,rationality,functionalityandtheidea that mass production could live in harmony with the artistic spirit of individuality.

Along with Gropius, and many other artists and teachers, both Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Herbert Bayermadesignificantcontributionstothedevelopment of graphic design. Among its many contributions to the development of design, the Bauhaus taught typography as part of its curric-ulum and was instrumental in the development of sans-serif typography, which they favored for itssimplifiedgeometricformsandasanalterna-tive to the heavily ornate German standard of blackletter typography.

El LissitzkyEl Lissitzky was a Russian born artist, designer, typographer, photographer and architect who designed many exhibitions and propaganda for the Soviet Union in the early 20th century. His development of the ideas behind the Suprematist art movementwereveryinfluentialinthedevelopment of the Bauhaus and the Constructivist art movements. His stylis-tic characteristics and experimentation with production techniques developed in the1920sand30shavebeenaninfluenceon graphic designers since.

Perhaps his most famous work was the 1919propagandaposter“BeattheWhiteswith the Red Wedge”.

In his early years he developed a style of painting in which he used abstract geo-metric shapes, which he referred to as “prouns”,todefinethespatialrelation-ships of his compositions. The shapes weredevelopedina3-dimensionalspace, that often contained varying per-spectives, which was a direct contrast to the ideas of suprematist theories which stressedthesimplificationofshapesandthe use of 2D space only.

Hemovedaroundinthe1920sandspenttime in both Germany as a cultural rep-resentative of Russia and, after he was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis, Switzerland in a Swiss sanatorium. But this never stopped him from working as he continued to produce propaganda posters, books, buildings and exhibi-tionsfortheSovietUnion.in1932Stalindemanded that artists conform to much stricter guidelines or be blacklisted, Lis-sitzky managed to retain his position as headofexhibitions.In1941histubercu-losis overcame him and caused his death.

THE STYLEThe Style (Dutch: De Stijl), also known as neoplasticism, was an art movement ofthe1920’swhichsoughttoexpressanew Utopian ideal of spiritual harmony and order. This pure abstraction and universality was reached by reducing art to the bare essentials: form and colour and even more precise the vertical and the horizontal directions and the primary colors of red, blue and yellow along with black and white.

PietMondriaan(Dutch,1872-1944),thegroup’s most renowned artist, published a manifesto titled Neo-Plasticism in 1920.PainterTheovanDoesburg(Dutch,1883-1931)publishedajournalnamedDeStijlfrom1917to1928,spreadingthetheories of the group, which also in-cluded the painter George Vantongerloo (Belgian,1886-1965)andthearchitectsJ.J.P.Oud(Dutch,1890-1963)andGerrit

Rietveld(Dutch,1888-1965).In many of the works under this move-ment, the vertical and the horizontal lines tend to slide past each other and do not intersect- for example some of Mon-driaan’s paintings, Rietveld’s Schr?der house and the Red and blue chair.

The work of De Stijl exerted tremendous influenceontheBauhausandtheInter-

Wim CrouwelThe concept of the total grid has been the brainchild of Wim Crouwel, a dutch graphicdesigner,bornin1928.HeisoneofthefivefoundersofTotalDesign,amulti-disciplinary design studio in the Netherlands.Crouwelstudiedfineartin Groningen before moving to Amster-damintheearly1950swhereheinitiallyworked for an exhibition design company. Because of his interest in architecture, and his spatial sensitivities he applied for commissions for cultural institutions, such as the Van Abbe Museum in Eind-hovenin1956,andtheStedelijkMuseumin Amsterdam shortly afterwards for which Crouwel was solely responsible to develop an identity by posters and cata-logues. It was at the Stedelijk that Crou-wel created his Neu Alphabet, an uncon-ventional typeface based on grid system.

In1963CrouwelfoundedTotalDesign,a multi-disciplinary design agency, that its hallmark was modular structuring and grids. With a systematic approach to de-sign projects, it created the identity for a large number of Dutch companies in-cluding some multinationals like IBM and Olivetti. Total Design altered the visual landscape of the Netherlands throughout the1960-70period.Inthe1970sCrouweldesigned the Dutch Pavilion for the Osaka World Fair, as well as numerous postal stampsfortheDutchpostofficeandacontroversial redesign of the telephone book using only lowercase letters.

Crouwel’s typeface was constructed using only horizontal and vertical lines creating an alphabet of all lowercases. Although only half of the letters were recogniz-able, with the emergence of personal computers, his modern typeface was

particularly aimed at digital systems in 1967.However,formanyCrouwel’stype-face appeared illegible. It challenged the design establishment, but Crouwel was happily engaged in the ensued controver-sy and readily confessed that he attaches a higher priority to visual aesthetics rela-tive to functionality. Crouwel has stated;

“I simply wanted to make a consist-ent alphabet on the basis of that grid of squares. I did not want any cluttering of verticalstemsanddidnotfindasolutionwithin the conventional structure of the characters. So I began researching the past, looking for alternative signs with which I could replace the conventional forms. One could have made them up, but I wanted them to have some kind of footing in the history of type”

His new typeface was redrawn by Brett Wickens and Peter Saville for the Joy Di-vision album, ‘Substance’ in the late 80s and then digitized and made available forusein1997byTheFoundry.Crouweldesigned a number of other fonts includ-ing Gridnick, an appropriate reference to his use of grid systems and Mr. Gridnick became Crouwel’s endearing nickname. ----

Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters

Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwit-ters(20June1887–8January1948)wasa German painter who was born in Hano-ver, Germany.

Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including Dada, Constructiv-ism, Surrealism, poetry, sound, painting, sculpture, graphic design, typography and what came to be known as installa-tion art. He is most famous for his col-lages, called Merz Pictures.

Whereas the raw material of most of the Dada montage of the times was photo-graphic and relevant, Schwitters took his from the streets. The montages, collages and assemblages that he constructed from all this gathered refuse have an extraordinary integrity of vision, but they are certainly not in any way political, and it is easy to understand how Schwit-ters’ comfortable artistic sensibility may havealienatedthelikesofHeartfieldandGrosz.

Max Miedinger

was a Swiss typeface designer. He was famous for creating Neue Haas Grotesk typefacein1957whichwasrenamedHel-veticain1960.Marketedasasymbolofcutting-edge Swiss technology, Helvetica went global at once.[1]

Between1926and1930,Maxwastrainedas a typesetter in Zürich, after which he attended evening classes at the Kunst-gewerbeschule in Zürich.

Later, he became a typographer for Glo-bus department store’s advertising stu-dio in Zürich, and became a customer counselor and typeface sales representa-tive for the Haas’sche Schriftgießerei inMünchensteinnearBasel,until1956,where he became a freelance graphic

Jan Tschichold was an important 20th-century Ger-man graphic designer who also gave a major impetus to the Swiss school. Jan Tschicholdbegantouseseriflesstypefacesanddesignedsimplifiedlayouts.Inaspecial1925issueof“typographischemitteilungen” entitled “elementare typog-raphie”, Jan Tschichold introduced in the form of theses the most important ap-proaches to the new typography design.

Tschichold had converted to Modernist designprinciplesin1923aftervisitingthefirstWeimarBauhausexhibition.Hebecame a leading advocate of Modernist design:firstwithaninfluential1925maga-zinesupplement;thena1927personalexhibition; then with his most noted work Die neue Typographie. This book was a manifesto of modern design, in which he condemned all typefaces but sans-serif (called Grotesk in Germany).

Paul RennerPaul Friedrich August Renner was born inWernigerode,GermanyonAugust9th,1878.GrowingupintohisteenageyearshestudiedGreekandLatinfor9years,and then moved on to study art at a high-erlevel,finishinghisformaleducationin1900.FollowingthisRennerbecameinvolved with design and became con-cerned with typeface and book design.

Duringthesummerof1924,Rennerstarted to work on what would become a typeface called Futura, his most well-known work. Futura was a very important type of the time, especially in Germany, as it was a movement towards the mod-ern roman letter and a departure from the Blackletter. Renner’s Futura has also become the inspiration and foundation for many geometric types to date, and for that alone he deserves mention. Dur-ing his career he designed two other typefaces, Plak and Tasse, which like Futura are also commercially available.

The Swiss Style The Swiss Style was founded in Switzer-landbyskilleddesignersinthe1920’s,despite this, the style didn’t become internationaluntilthe1950’sbutthemovementspreadlikewildfire.Keyele-ments of this movement was the use of the grid, sans-serif fonts and also asym-metric layouts.The style also uses objec-tive photography and illustration in order to create a visual language.

The main fact about this movement is that much of this was not published digi-tally, it was more on print-based things such as: posters, stamps and street signs etc. This meant that the Swiss designers cleverly were creating user-friendly in-terfaces and used things that they know people would use everyday.

The use of whitespace is equally impor-tant in this movement as it counts for both, visual compact and legibility. The styles main aim is to be able to commu-nicateeffectiveandefficientlybyonlyusing text that needs to be there, in this case, less is certainly more.

Duringthe1920sand’30s,skillstradi-tionally associated with Swiss industry, particularly pharmaceuticals and me-chanical engineering, were matched by those of the country’s graphic designers, who produced their advertising and tech-nical literature. These pioneering graphic artists saw design as part of industrial production and searched for anonymous, objective visual communication. They chose photographic images rather than illustration, and typefaces that were industrial-looking rather than those de-signed for books. - Richard Hollis (Yale University Press)

My favorite Desingers are:Josef Muller-Brockmann Famous for his Swiss style posters, Josef Müller-Brockmannhasalsowrittenaninfluen-tial graphic design book (Grid Systems in Graphic Design) which is still being read by web designers today. His design fea-tures elements of simplicity with minimal text, lots of white space and expressive images.

“The grid system is an aid, not a guaran-tee. It permits a number of possible uses and each designer can look for a solution appropriate to his personal style. But one must learn how to use the grid; it is an art that requires practice.”

Saul Bass (1920-1996)wasaBronx-borngraphic designer who took his New York style to California and became famous forhisworkinfilmandclassiclogode-sign. He studied in New York at the Art Students’ League as a teenager and de-veloped a unique style that is both recog-nizable and memorable.

Saul Bass’s Style.Bass is famous for his use of simple, geometric shapes and their symbolism. Often, a single dominant image stands alone to deliver a powerful message. These shapes, as well as type, were often hand drawn by Bass to create a casual appearance, always packed with a sophisticated message. His ability to create such a powerful message with basic shapes makes the work even more impressive.

Ray gun (David Carson)

While the contents of its pages were not related to graphic design, Ray Gun magazine proved to be an exploration of typography, layout and visual storytelling that would shift the approach of many graphic designers. The magazine was foundedin1992andledbytheworkofDavid Carson, who served as its art direc-torforthefirstthreeyearsofitscareer,whichlasted7yearsandover70issues.

Carson’s style of typographic experimen-tationinfluencedthedevelopmentofthe deconstruction style of design and a whole new generation of designers. The experiments by Carson and other Ray Gun designers were chaotic, abstract and distinctive, but sometimes illegible. The magazine’s radical subject matter often related to music and pop culture icons and the magazine became a reli-able source for the prediction of up-and-coming stars. Currently calling New York his base of operations, Carson was born in Corpus Christi, Texas and spent much of his early life in southern California where he was a high school teacher before becoming adesigner.Ingrainedwithinthesurfingsub-culture of southern California, Car-son started experimenting with graphic designduringthemid1980s.Notonlyadesigner,in1989hehasqualifiedasthe9thbestsurferintheworld.Hisinterestintheworldofsurfinggavehimtheop-portunities to experiment with design, workingonseveraldifferentpublicationsrelated to the profession.Transworld Skateboarding, Beach Culture, How Mag-azine and RayGun were among the pri-mary publications on which he worked. However, it was RayGun where he gained

perhaps the most recognition and was able to share his design style, character-ized by “dirty” type which adheres to none of the standard practices of typog-raphy and is often illegible, with the wid-est audience. After the success of Ray-Gun, and press from the New York Times

and Newsweek, he formed his own studio. David Carson Design was founded in 1995 and

is still home to Carson and his work .

Herbert Bayer was both a student and a teacher at the Bauhaus and worked in a wide range offieldsincludingpainting,sculpture,typography, advertising and architec-ture. In his early years as a student he studied painting with Kandinsky, but in just a short while he was teaching one oftheBauhaus’firstclassesontypogra-phy. The amount of work that he created before he was 28 was more notable than most designers entire careers of work. He spent time teaching at the Bauhaus, working as an Art Director for the Con-tainer Corporation and as an architect in both Germany and America.

In between his time at the Bauhaus and his career in America he spent time as the Art Director of Vogue magazine’s Berlinoffice.Hiscontributionstothefieldsofgraphicdesign,typographyandadvertising were many. One that should be noted was his design for a typeface that consisted of entirely lowercase let-ters. The German blackletter types were overly ornate for his taste and their use of capital letter for every proper noun was annoying. Logically, Bayer developed a sans-serif alphabet of lowercase letters titled “Universal”.

In1946BayermovedtoAspen,Coloradowhere he spent much of his time design-ing local architecture and posters for the localcommunity.In1959hedesignedan-other sans-serif typeface. Again it was all in lower case, but he called it “fonetik alfabet” and it contained special char-acters for the endings -ed, -ion, -ory and -ing. He is one of the most recognized designers to come from the Bauhaus institution and his theories of design are still taught in many schools today.

Joseph Albers

was a student of the Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany and was a prac-ticing artist in the fields of design, typography, photographer, painter, printmaker and poet. His most influ-ential work was created in the field of abstract painting and it showed an influence of both the Bauhaus and the Constructivists with its simplified geometric shapes. However, he also proved to be very influential to many other graphic designers and artists as a teacher at the Black Mountain Col-lege in North Carolina from 1933-49 and at Yale University in Connecticut from 1950-58.

His series Homage to the Square is an example of his disciplined approach to composition and color theory. To-wards the end of his career he and his wife established the Joseph and Anni Albers foundation in an effort to con-tinue sharing and promoting the the-ory that he had established during his career. His style and work represent a bridge between the European art of the Bauhaus and Constructivists and the new American Art that emerged in the 1950s and 60s. He was a teach-er and an artist his entire career, until his death in 1976 at the age of 88.

Herb LubalinThe Most people recognize the name Herb Lubalin in association with the typeface Avant Garde. And he was the typographer and designer behind its creation, after the success of Avant Garde Magazine and its typographic logo. But, his career spanned a much wider scope than that. One of the people behind the culture-shocking magazines Avant-Garde, Eros and Fact, he was a constant boundary breaker on both a visual and social level. Part of the founding team of the International Typeface Corpora-tion (ITC) and the principal of Herb Lubalin, Inc it was hard to escape the reachofHerbduringthe1960sand70s.

His constant search for something new and a passion for inventiveness made him one of the most success-ful art directors of the 20th century. HehadofficesinternationallyinParisand London and partnered with many talented individuals over the years including Aaron Burns, Tom Carnase, Ernie Smith and Ralph Ginzburg. A graduate of the Cooper Union in New York he spent time as a visiting pro-fessor there as well as designed a logo for them. Constantly working and achieving much success throughout hiscareer,attheageof59hepro-claimed “I have just completed my internship.”

collaboration of Ralph Ginzburg and Herb Lubalin, Fact, Eros and Avant Garde were culturally relevant publi-cations that pushed many of the ideas of1960ssociety.FactandErosbothsufferedrelativelyshortcareerswhilestillmanagingtohavesignificantcul-tural impacts. Avant Garde, on the other hand was quite successful and tenured a career that lasted a slightly longerperiodof3yearsand16is-suesbetween1968and1971.Allthreepublications provided Lubalin with a development ground to practice his emerging style of typography and de-signwhichinfluencedmuchofthedesigncommunityduringthe1960sand70s.

ErosThefirstofGinzburgandLubalin’sthreeproductions,Eroswasaquarterlyhardboundpublicationfilledwitharticles and photo-essays relating to the topics of love and sex.Duringtheradical1960sthepublicationwasreceivedwith both positive and negative reviews and Ginzburg was indicted under federal obscenity laws for the publica-tion of the fourth issue. The combination of the high cost of the hardbound publication and the legal fees incurred during Ginzburg’s court case cause the magazine to close down.

FactFact magazine was a similar venture by the two that was equally controversial, although it shifted the subject mat-ter from sex to culture and politics. The magazine was sued by presidential candidate Barry Goldwater for their publication of an article that said Goldwater was psycho-logicallyunfittobepresidentoftheUnitedStates.Thepunitive damages of the case caused the magazine to cease publication.

Avant Garde The most notable of the three, Avant Garde was reminiscent of Eros in its hardbound format and controversial content. The magazine combined as-pects of both Fact and Eros and pub-lished articles and imagery that were often sexual, critical of the American governmentandradicallydifferentthantraditional publications. While there was no direct legal actions brought against Avant Garde it was forced to shut down when Ginzburg went to pris-on for the Eros scandal.

Neville BrodyNeville Brody studied graphic design from 1977to1980attheLondonCollegeofPrinting.Intheearly1980sBrodybe-longed to the alternative music scene. As art director of Fetish Records, Neville Brody experimented with a new graphic language informed by ideas from the sub-culture. Brody mixed typefaces or inter-spersed typeface with decorative details such as geometric elements, symbols, and pictures. From1981to1986NevilleBrodywasartdirector of the magazine "The Face", for which he designed a distinctive typo-graphical appearance that inspired maga-zine designers and other designers world-wide.From1983to1987NevilleBrodydesigned the London program magazine "City Limits" and worked as a designer for "New Socialist", "Touch", and "Arena" magazines. In1988theVictoria&AlbertMuseuminLondon mounted a retrospective of Nev-illeBrody'swork.In1994NevilleBrodyand F. Richards co-founded Research Studios for Visual Communications and DesigninLondon.In1992NevilleBrodydesigned the image and branding of the House of Culture in Berlin. Neville Brody also designed the ORF (Austrian Televi-sion,1992-93)imageandPremiere(1991-94). Neville has designed several new fonts, includingBlur, Gothic, Pop and Six.

Emil Ruder Emil Ruder was a typographer and graph-ic designer who, born in Switzerland in 1914,helpedArminHofmannformtheBasel School of Design and establish the style of design known as Swiss Design. He taught that, above all, typography’s pur-pose was to communicate ideas through writing. He placed a heavy importance on sans-serif typefaces and his work is both clear and concise, especially his typography.

Likemostdesignersclassifiedaspartofthe Swiss Design movement he favored asymmetrical compositions, placing a high importance on the counters of char-acters and the negative space of com-positions. A friend and associate of Hof-mann, Frutiger and Müller Brockmann, Ruder played a key role in the develop-mentofgraphicdesigninthe1940sand50s.Hisstylehasbeenemulatedbymanydesigners, and his use of grids in design hasinfluencedthedevelopmentofwebdesign on many levels.

Armin HofmannBytheageof27ArminHofmannhadalready completed an apprenticeship in lithography and had begun teaching typography at the Basel School of De-sign. His colleagues and students were integral in adding to work and theories that surrounded the Swiss International Style, which stressed a belief in an ab-solute and universal style of graphic design. The style of design they created had a goal of communication above all else, practiced new techniques of photo-typesetting, photo-montage and experi-mental composition and heavily favored sans-serif typography.

He taught for several years at the Basel School of Design and he was not there long before he replaced Emil Ruder as the head of the school. The Swiss Inter-national Style, and Hofmann, thought thatoneofthemostefficientformsofcommunications was the poster and Hof-mann spent much of his career design-ing posters, in particularly for the Basel Stadt Theater. Just as Emil Ruder and Joseph Müller-Brockmann did, Hofmann wrote a book outlining his philosophies and practices. His Graphic Design Manual was, and still is, a reference book for all graphic designers.

Walter HerdegWalter Herdeg was very much a graphic designer. He studied at the Kunstgew-erbeschule in Zürich, created many differentcorporateidentities(justasthe practice was beginning to become a standard), and even formed his own design company with Walter Amstutz. What he is best known for, however, is the creation and publication of Graphis. An international journal of visual com-munication,Graphiswasfirstpublishedby Herdeg towards the end of the second World War.

The magazine showcases work and in-terviews from designers and illustrators fromallovertheworldinanefforttoshare their work with other audiences. In the beginning it served as one of what were, at the time, only a few vessels which exposed the western world to the design work being done in Europe. Herdeg served as the editor of the maga-zine for 246 issues (the magazine is still in publication) as well as the Graphis Design Annuals which showed the best and brightest work from the year prior to their publication. Graphis was a seminal force in the shaping of design culture and it continues to educate, expand and fos-ter the world of graphic design today.

Herbert Matter worked with a number of famous design-ers and artists during his career including Fernand Léger, Le Courbusier, Charles andRayEames,Derberny&Peignot,A.M.Cassandre and Alexey Brodovitch. Mat-ter was a master of using photomontage, color and typography in an expressive manner, transcending the boundaries between art and design. His design work often favored a heavy use of photogra-phy. His most recognizable works are the posters he created for the Swiss Tour-istOffice,buthisphotographyworkforHarper’s Bazaar, under the direction of Brodovitch, is equally impressive. A mas-ter in his profession, he began teaching photographyanddesignatYalein1952.He continued to teach and work, notable work from his later career includes the identity design for the New Haven Rail-road,untilhediedin1984.

Aleksander Rodchenko

Born in Russia in 1891 Rodchenko be-came an artist and designer of many mediums including painting, photogra-phy, sculpture, advertising and packag-ing. Heavily influenced by the upheaval surrounding the Russian revolution of 1917, he was one of the most prolific constructivist artists of the period. He was also a member of the Productivists, which pushed for the introduction of art into every day life, a concept which in many ways describes modern day graphic design.

His early focus was on painting before starting his career as a graphic de-signer, later he would experiment with photography and photo-montage. Most of his design work was for the Russian airline company Dobrolet, producing many packages, advertisements, logos and posters. His design work for other clients ranged from book covers to bookmarks, photo-montage and illustra-tion, and even set and costume design for various Russian theaters.

In 1921 he declared “The End of Paint-ing” when he exhibited three solid monochromatic canvases, one each, in hues of red, yellow and blue. He deemed that he had reduced painting to its logical conclusion and that there was no reason to continue exploring the medium. This opened the doors for the beginning of a new Utopian way of life, and way of approaching art. Rod-chenko’s work influenced so many of the designers of the early 20th century that it is impossible to catalog the vast reaches of the idealogy that he helped define during his career.

Max Bill (1908–1994),

Max Bill was born in Winterthur, Swit-zerland. An architect, painter, typog-rapher, industrial designer, engineer, sculptor, educator, and graphic de-signer, Bill was initially a student at the Kunstgewerbeschule and appren-ticed as a silversmith before beginning his studies in 1927 at the Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany, with teachers such as Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Oskar Schlemmer. Bill permanently settled in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1929, and in 1937 became involved with a group of Swiss artists and designers named the Allianz.

In 1950, Max Bill and Otl Aicher found-ed the Ulm School of Design (Hochs-chule fur Gestaltung-HfG Ulm) in Ulm, Germany, a design school initially cre-ated in the tradition of the Bauhaus and that is notable for its inclusion of semiotics, the philosophical theory of signs and symbols, as a field of study. Bill was of the view that “It is pos-sible to develop an art largely on the basis of mathematical thinking.” Over, the 1967-71 period, Bill taught at the Staatliche Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste in Hamburg where he was the chair of environmental design. As a graphic designer, he enthusiastically embraced the tenets and philosophi-cal views of this modernist movement. The majority of his graphic work is based solely on cohesive visual princi-ples of organization and composed of purist forms—modular grids, san serif typography, asymmetric compositions, linear spatial divisions, mathemati-cal progressions, and dynamic figure–ground relationships.

Richard P Lohse RichardPaulLohse(1902-1988)wasborninZürich(Switzerland)in1902.In1918he joined the advertising agency Max Dalang where he trained to be an adver-tising artist, but in his artistic career he startedwithfigurativeworksandgradu-ally moved to post-cubism style. Lohse worked for the Max Dalang agency until 1927,wherehebecameinterestedintheinternational avant-garde movements in both its artistic and political aspects. In1937Lohse,akeyfigureinthe“SwissSchool”, and Leo Leuppi joined forces to establish Allianz, an association of Swiss modern artists, promoting publica-tions, exhibitions and the dissemination of avant-garde art. He collaborated with Max Bill and Verena Loevesberg in the Zurcher Konkrete group, which was af-filiatedwithAllianz.In1938,LohseandIrmgardBurchard,hisfirstwife,organ-ise the “Twentieth Century German Art” exhibition in London. Soon after Lohse joined the resistance movement where he met his second wife Ida Alis Dürner. In1942Lohseformulatedhisconceptionof constructive painting, a style that was highly structural. In the words of Fr. W. Heckmanns;

His horizontal and vertical structures fol-low each other in serial and modular or-ders within the rectangular limits of the canvas. The essential content of his work is a rational interpretation of the rela-tionship between artistic practice and the problem of the form of social organi-zation, in short a human attitude towards the balance of law and freedom.Intheyears1947-1956,Lohsewasaneditor and designer for the swiss archi-tectural magazine bauen+wohnen or construction+habitation. A special edition

of the magazine was launched for Ger-manyin1952.Lohse’sstylewascharac-terized by his devotion to precision and clarity in his theoretical framework. He saw structure not as a preliminary founda-

Eye ( Rick Poyner)Founded by the British design writer Rick Poyner, Eye magazine began production in1990.Poynerstayedonaseditorforthefirst24issuesbeforeturningoverthe position to Max Bruinsma. The list of contributors over the past 20 years has includedmanyimportantfiguresinthedesign community including Erik Spiek-ermann, Ellen Lupton, and Stefan Sag-meister. The quarterly publication is an international review of graphic design and,asofJune2010,itisonits75this-sue.Itscontentsinfluencethestyleandperspectives of graphic designers, pho-tographers, advertisers and artists inter-nationally.

Armin HofmannArminHofmannwasbornin1920inWinterthur,Switzerland.Duringthe1937-39pe-riod, Hofmann studied at Kunstgewerbeschule in Zürich and apprenticed as a lithog-rapheruntil1943.From1943until1948HeworkedaslithographerinBaselandBerneandinhisowngraphicatelier.In1946,HofmannjoinedtheAllgemeineGewerbes-chule (AGS) in Basel, where he and Ruder established a world renowned advanced course in graphic design.

Kenneth Hiebert, a former student of Hofmann; recalls that in the early sixties, Hof-mann would occasionally bring in a Cassandre or Stoecklin poster and perfunctorily tack it to the wall. When the students cringed at this apparent maltreatment, Hof-mann would say, “A good poster can take it.” What he really meant was that the posters were not intended as museum pieces but as things that should weather the harsh treatment of the streets. In the words of Paul Rand

Hisgoals,thoughpragmatic,areneverpecuniary.Hisinfluencehasbeenasstrongbeyond the classroom as within it. Even those who are his critics are eager about his ideas as those who sit at his feet.HehadavisitingprofessorshipatthePhiladelphiaCollegeofArtin1955.Thencamean appointment at Yale University, where he regularly conducted working seminars in graphicartandbecamedirectoroftheadvancedgraphiccoursein1967.Hecarriedon teaching abroad in Ahmedabad, India. Hofmann’s book Graphic Design Manual: Principles and Practiceis is a seminal work in graphic design. He has created many posters, logos, color concepts, signage systems and art-in-building projects, as well as participating in many exhibitions. According to him “ primary in black and white posters is to counteract the trivialization of color as it exists today on billboards and in advertising.

Hans NeubergHansNeuburg(1904–1983)wasborninGrulich, Austria-Hungary (today Czecho-slovakia).attheagefifteenheenrolledat Orell Füssli AG in Zurich and graduated in1922.Aftergraduationheworkedatvarious positions in advertising, freelance graphic design, and magazine editor. Overthe1958-65heandisfellowart-ists Richard Paul Lohse, joseph Müller-Brockmann and carlo vivarelli established “NeueGrafik”magazine.Afterabrieftwo years period assuming the director-ship of the Gewerbemuseum in Winterhur in1962-64duringwhichhealsotaughtat the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm, and writing a number of books including GraphicDesigninSwissIndustry(1965),Publicity and Graphic Design in the ChemicalIndustry(1967)andConcep-tionsofInternationalExhibition(1969),he moved to Ottawa, Canada, to teach at Carlton University, School of Industrial Designin1971.

Carlo VivarelliCarloVivarelli(1919-1986)wasagraphicdesigner, painter and sculptor who was born in Zurich and studied at the re-nownedKunstgewerbeschulefrom1934-39andin1946becameArtDirectoratthe progressive avant garde Studio Bog-geri in Milan. During this time and when he returned to his native Switzerland he became one of the leaders of the Swiss Modernistsandin1958becameaco-founderofNeueGrafikmagazine.Inhislater years he concentrated more on his concrete art and sculptures.

HelveticaHelveticawasdevelopedin1957byMaxMiedingerwithEduardHoffmannat the Haas foundry in Switzerland. Haas set out to design a new sans-serif typeface that could compete with Akzidenz-Grotesk in the Swiss market. Originally called Neue Haas Grotesk, it was created based on Schelter-Grotesk. The aim of the new design was to create a neutral typeface that had great clarity, had no intrinsic meaning in its form, and could be used on a wide variety of signage.

In1960,thetypeface'snamewaschanged by Haas' German parent com-panyStempeltoHelvetica—derivedfrom Confoederatio Helvetica, the LatinnameforSwitzerland—in order to make it more marketable internationally

Neue Grafik Die Neue Grafik In1959fourzürich-basedgraphicdesignerslaunchedthefirstissueofNeueGrafikmagazine.AMagazinedevoted to the Swiss style of design and typography. The team of editors constisted of Richard Paul Lohse, Jo-sef Müller-Brockmann, Hans Neuburg and Carlo Vivarelli. The team signed some of their jointly written articles with the acronym "lmnv", formed from theirinitials."NeueGrafik"epitomizesSwisstypographyofthe1950s.Itwasthe new age manifesto for the design worldanditwasseminalinitsinflu-ence on international graphic design after WWII. The publication of the magazine proved an international suc-cess making the Swiss Style the Inter-national Typographic Style.

EmirgeEmigre magazine was published a total of 69 times, usually irregularly, over the years be-tween 1984 and 2005. One of the first publica-tions to use Macintosh computers, Emigre in-fluenced the move towards desktop publishing within the graphic design community. But that was not the end of its influence. Art directors Rudy Vanderlands and Zuzana Licko entranced designers, photographers and typographers alike with their use of use of experimental lay-outs and opinionated articles.

The focus of the magazine moved from culture to designers to design itself, with an increas-ing focus on the publication and promotion of varied articles on design by many different authors. The magazine also changed formats several times during its career switching from an oversized publication to a text-friendly reader and then to a multimedia format, from issue 60 to 65, which came with a CD or DVD.

Joseph Müller-BrockmannJosefMüllerBrockmannwasborninRapperswil,Switzerlandin1914andstudiedar-chitecture, design and history of art at the University of Zurich and at the city’s Kun-stgewerbeschule. He began his career as an apprentice to the designer and advertising consultantWalterDiggelmanbefore,in1936,establishinghisownZurichstudiospe-cialising in graphics, exhibition design and photography. According to his own account;

“ I became a graphic designer by accident”. At school I was loth to write much for compositions so I put in illustrations instead. My teacher enjoyed them and thought I had talent. He suggested that I should pursue an artistic career: gravure etching or re-touching, for instance. So I was apprenticed as a retoucher in a printing works. I lasted one day because I said that this wasn’t artistic work. After that I was apprenticed to two elderly architects. With them I lasted four weeks. Then I went to see all the graphicdesignersIfoundlistedinthetelephonedirectorybecauseIwantedtofindout what they did. Afterwards I enrolled to study graphic design at the Zurich Gewer-beschule.”

As a graphic designer, Müller Brockmann’s skills included letterpress, silkscreen, and lithography. His geometric style was demonstrated in “Musica viva”, a series of con-certpostersfortheZurichTonhallein1951.Itisarguablyclaimedthathisworkwasan adaptation of concrete art; which had been described by Theo van Doesburg around 1930,asworksofartthatarecreatedbymeansofart’smostgenuinemeansofcom-position and principles, entirely doing without allusions to phenomenon of nature and their abstraction. New realities were supposed to be created by forming colors, space, light and movement.

The style had to incorporate mathematical methods of spatial organization into graph-ic work, which drew on the language of Constructivism to create a visual correlative tothestructuralharmoniesofthemusic.MüllerBrockmann’s1955poster,Beethoven,was supposed to portray Beethoven’s music through a series of concentric curves, andhasbeenofferedasanexamplesuchanadaptation,andthisassertionhadbeenaccepted at its face value by many pundits, who were impressed by the novelty, el-egance and the simplicity of design. As Müller Brockmann has stated:

In my designs for posters, advertisements, brochures and exhibitions, subjectivity is suppressed in favour of a geometric grid that determines the arrangement of the type and images. The grid is an organisational system that makes it easier to read the mes-sage...The grid is an organisational system that enables you to achieve an orderly re-sult at a minimum cost. The task is solved more easily, faster and better. It brings the arbitraryorganisationoftextintoalogicalsysteminkeepingwiththeconflict.Itcandemonstrate uniformity that reaches beyond national boundaries, a boon to advertis-ingfromwhichIBM,forinstance,hasprofited.Objective-rationaldesignmeanslegibledesign, objective information that is communicated without superlatives or emotional subjectivity.

Saul Bass

Saul Bass was born in the Bronx district ofNewYorkin1920.Hisstrongpassionfor drawing was evident from his early childhood. Bass studied at the Art Stu-dents League in New York and Brooklyn College under Gyorgy Kepes, a Hungar-ian graphic designer who had worked withLászlóMoholy-Nagyin1930sBerlinandfledwithhimtotheUS.Kepesintro-duced Bass to Moholy’s Bauhaus style and to Russian Constructivism.

After spending several years as a free-lance designer, Bass moved to Los An-gelesin1946andfoundedhisgraphicdesignfirmSaulBassandAssociatesin1950.HisartistictalentwasnoticedbyOtto Preminger who invited him to de-signtheposterforhis1954movieCar-menJones.Untilthen,filmpostersweremostly made of a crude juxtaposition of photographic scenes from the movie and some collaged colored portraits of the starsofthefilm,butBassinsteaduseda dramatic composition of Dorothy Dan-dridge posing at the center of poster in black and white with her red accented skirt. Preminger liked the poster and askedBasstocreatethefilm’stitlese-quence too. Bass work for Carmen Jones illicittwootherfilmtitlecommissionsin1955,oneforRobertAldrich’sTheBigKnife, and the other for Billy Wilder’s The Seven Year Itch.

Preminger also commissioned him to do hisnexttwofilms;ManwiththeGoldenArm(1955)andAnatomyofaMurder(1959).Encouragedbythereceptionofhis work, Bass demonstrated his bold and stunning creativity for these pro-jects. Using, photographs of the actors in primary grayish colors of blue, red

and yellow in a tense and fragmented composition of irregular black rectan-gular surfaces, surrounding an ominous crooked black paper-cut-out of a heroin addict’s arm Bass created a master-piece of agony and tension for The Man With Golden Arm. It is said that; when Preminger’s movie arrived at US movie theatresin1955,anotewasstuckonthe cans - “Projectionists – pull curtain before titles” -- Until then, the lists of cast and crew members which passed for movie titles were so dull that projection-ists only pulled back the curtains to re-vealthescreenoncethey’dfinished.ButPreminger wanted his audience to see The Man with the Golden Arm’s titles as anintegralpartofthefilm.

I-D MagazineI-D, the British youth culture magazine, quickly became an iconic representa-tion of the new-wave and postmodern graphic design gaphic design aesthetics uponitspublicationin1980.Themaga-zine was designed by Terry Jones who utilized aggressive collages, heightened use of color, and experimental typogra-phy to achieve a striking, dramatic de-sign aesthetic. As postmodernism favors expressive designs and a rebellion against for strict constraints, and many of the designers who pioneered this movement were young, the design aesthetics of a magazine centered around a postmod-ern youth culture proved to be a perfect catalyst for such experimentations in ty-pography and image manipulation. An im-portant facet of postmodern design the-ory is the idea of anti-humanism, which explains that a universal principle cannot possibly be shared by all human beings, and insists that any principles must be determined historically and culturally

PART IIIVISUAL RESEARCH

• Magazine Mastheads• Magazine Front Covers• Magazine Logo’s

• Women’s Fashion Magazines

• Men’s Fashion Magazines

• Graphic Design Magazines

• Photograpghy Magazines

PART VIDevelopment and finished

magazine

• Logo • Front Covers• Inside spread

Logo Development

Herearemyfirstdraftideasformylogodesign.Iplayedaroundwiththenameandthendecidedthatthenamewaslongandwouldbeasquezetofitontothepage.Idecided then to play around with the main letter ‘NGD’

Computer Logo Development

Here are my drafts made up on the computer using illustrator.

I eventually went with the ‘NGD’ logo idea. i combined all the letters to make one shape/logo.

I then experimented with the lettering of NEW GRAPHIC DESIGN and how i would show that it was issue 1 in a way which i could incorporate it in with the design.

Final Logo Development

here is all my logo development, below is my finallogoidea.Idecidedtoplacethenameofthe magaine next to the logo, to explain the letters in the logo.

The typeface i used is Microsoft Yi Baiti

Front Cover Development

while i was developing my logo i started draft-ing a few front cover ideas and played around usng the logo as a main feature of the cover anddifffrentpositionsandstyles.

FORM FOLLOW FUNCTIONan exploration of modernism and post modernism

24/4/13

Final Cover Design

Hereismyfinalcoverdesignformymagazine. I choose to go for a fairly minamilitic look for m cover design. i wanted to incorpo-rte the issue nuber as part of the design as it would be a new magaine launch and could be used as a limited edition cover.

I tried many shapes as my main focues point of the design but choose a circle in the end as it shows free movement. ThecompletenesssuggeststheinfinitePerfectionandattarct attention. as it has no sharp edges i felt it settled well on the page and didnt take away much from the image behind.

I grayscaled the image behind and then choose red and its a powerfull striking tone and felt it summed up the Bauhaus movement.

I then set about decideding where i would place all the following information and decided to place my mast head at the top of the page as it where the eyes usually start on the page the underneath i placed the subheading. I placed the issue number in the middle of the page and then alligned the date to the bottom left hand corner.

unforunately i had problems with my perious laptop and lost all my work so i cant show therestofmyexperimentsortheoriginalfile.butiamhappywithmydesignandfeelitssits right on the page.

Magazine inside spread Development

Afterlookingatmanydiffrentstyleofmagazinesistartedtodraftdownsomeideaofdiffrentlayoutstylesandwithdiffrentamountofimages.

I decided that i wanted to go for a minamilistic look to my magazine and focus more on the photograpghy inside the magazine.

Afterihaddonethisandlookedatdiffrentaspectsofeachdesignihaddecidedonafewdiffrentlayoutsiwantedtotryout,ithendecidedonmycontentandwantedto do the opening page to each topic.

Type face/size experiments.

after i had designed the inside spread of my magzine i then had to decided which typeface i would use. i wanted one that was a sans serif typeface which was easy to use.

I experimented with:• Calbri • Garamond• Trebuchet MS• Verdana

Iprintedeachoneofintwodiffrentsizes.9ptand12ptandthenlookateachoneandthefloandreadabilityofthetext.Iusedthesediffrentsizesandiwoulduse12ptfortitlesand9ptforthemainbodyofthetext.

I decided to go with Trebuchet MS as i found it was the best looking and easiest to read.

Final Inside Spead Design

Herearemyfinalinsidespreaddesigns. 1stdesigninforanopeningspreadforthebauhuasthe2ndisainterview/factfileabout Walter Gropius. I choose the colours to portray power elegance and cleanli-ness and i feel work well together and keep with the style i wanted my magazine to be.

Final Magazine

Final Magazine

Conclusion.

Overalliampleasedwithmyfinaloutcomeandfelthatihavecreatedasimple/minamiliticmagazinewhichlookexpensiveand professional.

Unfortuenatly I had a problem over easter where my laptop hard drive collapsed which resulted me in loosing all my work un-tilligotbacktouniversity.Ideallyiwouldofliketooffcreatedafewmoreinsidespreadandevenofmadeanactaullmaganieand got it printed.

However i feel that i hae sucsessfully met the breif and fell i have improved a lot more with the way i have appoached this project and the way i went around developing my work.

Josh Gardner U1262228Module TFD1064. Design for Communication DesignGraphic Design Group New Graphic DesignEmail : josh.gardner1@hotmail.co.uk