Presentations May 13th

Leo Burnett
He started his own company known today as Leo Burnett Worldwide. He focused on creating an identity for the product, not obessing about how it was better than other products. And thus created some of the most well known icons such as Jolly Green Giant, Toucan Sam, Pillsbury Doughboy, Tony the Tiger, and the 7up 'spot.'

Clement Mok
His roots go back to Apple, as a software publisher/developer. Breaking off from apple he founded Studio Archetype and NetObjects Inc. While very good at logo designs, he was also versatile enough to do package design and product development.

Stefan Sagmeister
He began working for Kalman's M&Co design company. He then went to form his own design copany, Sagmeister Inc and has since then designed icons, graphics and packaging for clients such as the Rolling Stones, HBO and Time Warner.

Presentations May 11th

Tibor Kalman
After escaping Hungary and moving to the United States, Kalman began to work in what later became the first Barnes & Noble becoming the supervisor of their in-house Graphic's department. Then Liz Trovato, who later became his wife, and Kalman started up the Graphic's girm M&Co. He went on from there to become editor of Colors magazine.

David Carson
More of a Typography artist. His signature style used non-mainstream photography and his characteristic 'grunge style.' He became the art director of Transworld Skateboarding magazine. He went on to open his own studio and "work(ed) for Pepsi Cola, Ray Ban (orbs project), Nike, Microsoft, Budweiser, Giorgio Armani, NBC, American Airlines and Levi Strauss Jeans, and later worked for a variety of new clients, including AT&T, British Airways, Kodak, Lycra, Packard Bell, Sony, Suzuki, Toyota, Warner Bros., CNN, Cuervo Gold, Johnson AIDS Foundation, MTV Global, Princo, Lotus Software, Fox TV, Nissan, quiksilver, Intel, Mercedes-Benz, MGM Studios and Nine Inch Nails."

Matthew Carter
Another type designer, he helped with the transition from physical type faces to digital. Creating typefaces like the ones for the Bell Telephone Company. He created Bitstream Inc. with Mike Parker, one of the largest type foundries. He went on to start his own comapny Carter & Cone with Cherie Cone.

Presentations May 8th

Presentation One: Nevil Brody

• Influenced by punk, London college of printing
• Fuse Magazine
• No limitations, no holding back
• Research studios – change the cover of Time magazine
• Contrast in color, and unique typographic layout

Presentation Two – Art Chantry

Given by Me.

Presentation Three – Storm Thorgerson

• Pink Floyd moon cover
• Photography unusual
• Born in 1944 in potters bar, Middlesex
• Hipgnosis
• Munch, Dali, Maurice Sendak

Presentations May 6th

We covered three designers today. The first designer was April Greiman, who seemed to have a real knacked for combining various mediums in one harmonious unity. Victoria and I chose her as the best Graphic Designer out of the bunch because of her smooth transition from doing work by screen printing, and then later on moving to the computer. My quote that sticks foremost in my mind is the one that April's mother told her “You can’t fake the cha-cha.” The second designer we looked at was Milton Glaser, who did some amazing works such as 'I <3 New York' and the bob dylan poster in the History of Graphic Design book. He founded Push Pin Studios, and really explored color and form. Finally we talked about Seymour Chwast, another member of Push Pin Studios. This presentation was probably the best in encomusing the artist's creative style.

Thesis Statement

I had a hard time finding books for my artist. I went into the Lake Geneva Public Library and asked them to check the entire inter-library system for Wisconsin and they could not find any books! It was rather frustrating, but then I used the Carthage system and found a few. I'm looking for some biographical material but really having a hard time. Any suggestions?

In any case this is my thesis thus far:

Art Chantry, a graphic artist better known for his logo and poster work, uses a combination of psychedelic and pop art to create a unique style of design.

Psychedelic- Poster Mania

Welcome to the 1960s a time of hippies, drugs, and revolution. The poster designs from this chapter were really a combonation of contrasting colors with text, seemingly impossible to read. The section of the reading begins by talking about the social climate under which this style really grew, and then continues on to talk about some artist known in the psychedelic style (Robert Wesley and Victor Moscoso to name a few). When I looked into this more online, I found a link I wanted to share with everyone, it's a quick tutorial for making psychedlic posters using the computer.

http://psd.tutsplus.com/designing-tutorials/create-a-60s-psychedelic-style-concert-poster/

What I found really intresting was poster 21-48. Looking at the other examples it dosent seem to quite fit. I really like this last poster, and the unique style it convays.

Chapter Twenty and Twenty One

Chapter Twenty: Corporate Identity and Visual Systems

Chapter Twenty is a flood of logo and identity system development. Covering from the 1950s all the way to 1981 (creation of MTV logo) the pages of this chapter are filled with the iconic images of various famous logos still in use today. In the 1950s, television was just starting out, but already it was a powerful media. Images had to be designed specifically for the first TVs and their tecnical limitations. Looking at CBS in particular and the development of their logo we find an intresting quote: "Stanton reminded Golden of the old advertising adage, "Just when you're beginning to get bored with what you have done is probably the time it is beginning to be noticed by your audience. (Page 400)". It struck me as an important phrase in the fact that its true. My marketing professior said it takes a person five times before they will remember something, and the same applies to logos and assosiating that with a company. The CBS logo and other logos, AT&T, abc, and IBM, are still in use today showing how powerful some of the images created in this era became to be. Another aspect of this chapter is the development of the Olymic logo and the 'male' 'female' basic sighns and their development into things like on page 419. So basic of designs but yet so important and powerful. We get to hear about computers begin introdcued in this chapter, and that is my question for this chapter - what kind of programs were used? Can we see an example of how the programs worked?

Chapter Twenty One: The Conceptual Image

This chapter turns our eye from logo design, and the growth of idenity systems back to poster and its growth tword modern poster designs. Looking through the chapter, just flipping through and looking at the posters it seems almost a revival sometimes of earlier poster designs. Earlier styles meeting modern photography and concepts on layout and color. Graphic artist started to, once again, combine the fine art with the poster design. Starting with a simple image and few words, but evolving into the phycadelic style (page 438 to 439) of two color images filling a page and the text hidden admist the image. What I found intresting was the stated printing method. "In almost casual collage approach, designs were created from torn and cut pieces of colored paper, then printed by the silkscreen process" (page 425). I thought this was an archeic form of printing, and I wanted to know more about the process so I looked up what exactly is silkscreen printing is on wikipedia and will post what I found here for the class:

Screen printing is a printing technique that uses a woven mesh to support an ink blocking stencil. The attached stencil forms open areas of mesh that transfer ink as a sharp-edged image onto a substrate. A roller or squeegee is moved across the screen stencil forcing or pumping ink past the threads of the woven mesh in the open areas.

Screen printing is also a stencil method of print making in which a design is imposed on a screen of silk or other fine mesh, with blank areas coated with an impermeable substance, and ink is forced through the mesh onto the printing surface. It is also known as "silk screening" or "serigraphy".

Traditionally silk was used for screen-printing, that's where the name silk screening comes from. Now a polyester is used to do the printing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen-printing

Chapter Eighteen and Nineteen

Chapter Eighteen - The International Typographic Style

This chapter dealt a lot with typography and changes in the design world to be focused more on conveying a message, and less with the fine art. The important characteristics to look for to be able to identify pieces from this time period are: a unity of design, asymmetrical organization, clear meaning (no propaganda), and a lot of mathematically influences as to layout and design. It was assumed that through the use of math and other scientific concepts, because these had no external meanings, the result was abstract. The book talks about how this can lean more twords fine art, the attempt to be abstract that is, however because of this new direction it led to some of the modern ideas about layout and design and actually became more graphic design than fine art. But a lot of the other main ideas of design delt with typography, having a sans-serif font set in a flush-left with ragged-right margin. The book talks about sans-serif as "expressing the spirit of a more progreessive age" (page 356).

One aspect of the chapter I really liked and was intrested in was the design work of Max Bil and Max Huber. The combination of photography in such a unique manor was so new at the time. And making each photo it's own color, own image, to create a larger compositional unity admist such chaos. I can see where they came up with the design idea, but how did they create poster and such at the time? Printing using...?

Chapter Nineteen - The New York School

As Europeans escaped the after war effects, they moved to the US bringing with them their 'avantgarde' styles and European influnced design work. This really was America's introduction into the design world. The book contrasts the two designs as European being extreamly structured, while American design is more intuitive. All of these diffrent design aspects flowed together and melted in New York City, the incubator for American designers. Probably the aspects that make this type of design unique would be the photography combined with the playful use of font. A lot of magazine lay outs and ads are seen in this chapter, and while the main body is filled up with times new roman and other standard serif fonts, they make it intresting by doing things like in Figure 19-33 and 19-34, adding that extra flair. We also start seeing some intresting logos and design work (page 392) deaing with only typography - no image! One intresting design can be see in the magazine layout 19-36, contrasting colors but also unique flow of information in type layout. It's really eye catching! Comparing this to Chapter Eigteen, Amercian design used a lot more photography and organic vs inorganic elements. You start off the chapter with minimal photography elements to the end of the chapter and designs like 19-75 and 19-74 where the main aspect is a photograph. Comparing and contrasting this chapter with 18 and the european designs is so intresting. American design is very free and unrestricted while european is very organized and mechanical.

Sketches 2

Sorry about the late posting, but after crashing my computer 3 times when attempting to use my new scanner it was a bit difficult. Would everyone be able to meet in class? Sorry about the issues. I'll see if I can get a photograph of them on here.




Describe what it is: The first image is a poster design for Panic! At the Disco. Just a promotional piece.

Describe your concept behind the design: I apologize once again for the poor quality, but it's in the Glasgow school style. I have flowery, almost stain glass natural images flowing together and repeating to create an eye catching image. Then at the top and center simply the name of the band, I was considering adding information about either a concert or a CD at the bottom of the decorated image as to not take away from the flow of the design. As you can see I already have potential colors picked out.

Discuss the style of the design & typography, how it relates to history: The typography I drew is heavily drawn from the examples in our book. I added some inernal uniqueness baised off of where I thought a little more attention to detail should be. The style when I looked back on it was very geometric and yet had a lot of organic themes in it, very repetative. So I tried to incorportate all that in the repetition of the flower image. I think I might even go so far as to make the flower a lot more geometric, perfect circles or maybe triangles.
------
Describe what it is: The second image is a poster design for Panic! At the Disco. Just a promotional piece once again.

Describe your concept behind the design: This is in the Surealistic style, something crazy and yet flows together. Looking at some of Dali's work is where I got a lot of my insperation. We have so many images in this one design. A woman, with an orange for her eye, spegetti for her hair, with a crown and strawberry cloth on her head screams 'Panic!' in a block letter form. She's coming out from a fish's mouth who is dripping leaves onto the ground. Butterflies flutter out as she screams the word, dancing around a flower. Above the flower and intruding into the word bubble is a rather scary realistic image of an eye looking up inside of a picture frame as some fish float by, I gave the fish noses just to add to the unique style. This was probably the hardest image to create thus far! I'm more of a realist artist and so thinking so abstractly required a lot more attention than I thought it would. I'm still very unsure about this image.

Discuss the style of the design & typography, how it relates to history: When I searched for 'surealistic posters' on google I found this style of type to be very common. I think it contrasts greatly with the copus amout of abstract images within the drawing. The style of surealism I still feel not comfortable as an artist with. Any suggestion are welcome.

Favorite Posters

Here are the posters I found interesting:

Kitsch and Chapter Seventeen schniblets

Kitsch art is basically a knock off of the real art form. Over used objects thrown into overly cute and busy art works. A lot of the Kitsch objects I found online consisted of garden gnomes and easter images (lots of eggs). Probably the best definition comes from Wikipedia:

"Kitsch is the German and Yiddish word denoting art that is considered an inferior, tasteless copy of an extant style of art. The term kitsch was a response to the 19th century art whose aesthetics convey exaggerated sentimentality and melodrama, hence, kitsch art is closely associated with sentimental art. Moreover, kitsch (art) also denotes the types of art that are like-wise æsthetically deficient (whether or not it is sentimental, glamorous, theatrical, or creative) making it a creative gesture that merely imitates the superficial appearances of art (via repeated conventions and formulae), thus, it is uncreative and unoriginal; it is not Art."

The second part of our reading was from the book and talked about World War II poster designs. The goal of the poster when dealing with sensitive subjects like war, and other political issues is to move the viewer by playing with their emotions. Using simple images with only a short message was the theme. The kitsch style of the Saturday Evening Post images, is probably one of my favorites. I love that they went back to a traditional style of art, with overly dramatic poses and images, the lighting just fits it perfectly.

I really want to know why this style is so disliked, I can understand that some of these are 'overused' images, but I think that this step back to a more 'traditional' form of advertising is the best, a lot better than other art forms like cubism.

Sketches 1

Describe what it is: This is a poster design for Panic! At the Disco

Describe your concept behind the design: Its hard to tell in this quality, but it is a woman, holding flower to her face and above her head is written 'Panic! At the Disco.' I have various swirls, flower, and other decorations

Discuss the style of the design & typography, how it relates to history: This fits the art nouveau period perfectly. I have a woman figure, with 'speggitti' hair surrounded by flowers and complex patterns. Above her head written in a decrotive, hand written font is the name of the band.



Describe what it is: This is a poster design for Panic! At the Disco

Describe your concept behind the design: I used various bold fonts to create this dynamic poster. I wanted something almost like going to see a circus and in it I talk about fire eating and breathing, juggling knives and swords, just like would be advertised in a traditional Victorian poster. The problem is that the background should be a brown color and the text should be black and red, but sadly when I loaded it onto here it didn't work. I'll see if I can get a better quality upload here soon.

Discuss the style of the design & typography, how it relates to history: This is a great example of a victorian poster, text piled up on one another with so many kinds of font it will spin your head. I went with bold almost slab serrif fonts to portray this 'broad side' quality where you see the poster, get the important parts and go.

Chapter Fourteen - Art Decoratifs

This chapter mainly deals with the evolution of graphic communication and art in Paris, London, and American during World War I.

After World War I a time of economic abundance fell over the victorious, and celebration of the mechanical forms such as in cubism became more and more important. Cubism is best described through the words of Aldous Huxley, " ' producing' not a copy, but a simplified, formalized and more expressive symbol." Thus was born the term that describes the art from this time (1920s-1930s) : Art Deco. With art schools like the Bauhaus promoting the strict De Stijil and decrotive gemoetry helped to express love of the machine while still alowing the creative spirit to be fostered. The actualy term 'art deco' was created from the title of the Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris. Probably the most intresting part of this chapter is the unique fonts created during this time. In the art deco display type Bifur, the eye is able to fill in the missing parts and read the characters. Poster designs during this time take fragments of imgaes and put them all together in a sort of victorian jumble and use pure geometric shape and color to solve a communications problem.

My only question has to deal with the creation of these works, did they sketch then color? All hand done? How was 14-52 created?

After Class - March 11, 2009

This past chapter was intresting, I loved the simplicity of the communication. A basic image convaying a simple yet complex meaning, a true line of communication between the Graphic Artist and the Consumer. Victoria covered the materal from the chapter very well. What I liked best was the fun pictonary game we played. Using the art style and actually putting it to use! Some of the most effective images were the most simplistic. I'm excited to see where this evolves to next!

Chapter Fourteen - Pictorial Modernism

The goal of a poster designer is to convay a message to the viewer. It was difficult with influences such as cubism and constructivism. The designer had to find a happy medium between expressive and symbolic images and yet still pay attention to the over all visual organization of the picture. The reductive, flat-color design school called Plakatstil (poster style) is probably the number one design style that really was created in this time period. Simplification and reduction of naturalism into visual language of shape and sign. If you take an image into photoshop and use 'cut out' in the art effects, you can esentally recreate some of these images. It was drawing with a sizors more than a pen.

My only questions with this chapter is more the view of this art in the public eye. I really dislike the lack of attention in this art form and how haphazzardly its put together. What did people think of it?

Chapter Thirteen - The Influence of Modern Art

With the violence of World War one and the continuing evolution of human communication (the motion picture and wireless radio transmission) its no surprise that this greatly effected art and design as well. With the break down of society, tons of creative 'revolutions' that questioned long-held values of organizing space as well as the role of art and design in society. Moments such as cubism, futurism, Dada, surrealism, De Stijl, supermatism, constructivism, and expressionism directly influenced the graphic language of from and visual communications.

A lot of the art pictured really reminded me of some of the art we work on in Visual Communication and Graphic Design One, the basics of modern graphic design. However I was also really confused by some of the visual cues not matching up with the idea behind the ad. Even with a lot of the forgein language works. Figure 13-29 uses a 'B' as the main shape however, they talking about an ad for something that has nothing to do with a 'B.' Why?

Image Five

For this weekend's edition of picture relating to the chapter I have two images I actually photographed on my J-term 2009 trip to France. France is full of art and culture that we are looking at right now. Especially when dealing with Art Neuvou. One image I have presented is a photography of a street corner with a "metro" sign. Its hard to see in this photograph but the sign from the pole to the actual lettering is filled with detail and mostly flower and nature patterns. It is a symbol of the city, notable for its station architecture. However, I had issues when looking for actual history behind this icon. Anyone find anything?

After Class - March 4th 2009

In class we really reviewed the last chapter, going more in depth into the various artists style. What I found particularly interesting was talking about Frank Loyd Wright. He actually did a lot of work here in Wisconsin that I have visited. One particularly close item that is VERY unique is the church he designed in Racine, WI. It's a short building, with long 'thorns' sticking out from the curved top, very hard to discribe but it's often called the 'space ship' church. He did work for another church in Wisconsin that has a similar style to it ( http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/tt/2fe6a/ ). But this time a diffrent denomonation and a unique white and blue style, not like the dark brown of the one in Racine. Another building that can be visited, probably with a longer drive, is in Lake Geneva Wisconsin. Here, a student of Mr Wright designed the library over looking the lake. It's almost as if the characteristics normaly in Wright's work are now just over emphasized. If you are looking for directions or more buildings in Wisconsin, just ask!

Still no answer about the tea pots...? (read previous journal entry)

Chapter Twelve - The Genesis of the Twentieth Century Design

The chapter begins by discussing 'The Four.' A group of art students known as the Glasgow school, they consisted of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, J Herbert Mcnair, Margaret and Frances Macdonald. Together they began to create a unique style of geometric compositon combined with floral and curvillnear elements with strong rectlinear structure. At the begining, like with most new kinds of art, it was strongly disliked.

Probably one of my favorite artists in this chapter, who drew inspiration from The Four, Jessie Marion King, archived a distinctive art form with medieval-style fantasy illustrations. Her grace, fluidity and romantic tones widely influenced fiction illustration throughout the twentieth century.

The next session of reading ( 'The Vienna Secession') discusses the next evolution in the art process dealing with ads and the evolution on the 'art nouveau' style of drawing. The need to be unique and creative became so important that advertisers were required to commission their advertising designers from the artists and designers contributing to each issue to ensure a visual design unity. The exeptional linear and geometric design elements gracing Ver Sacrum's pages became an important design resource as the Vienna Secession style evolved.

The book then switched it's focus on the different German designers of this time period. It was a battle between simplicity and exactness and individual artistic expression. I've noticed that Graphic Artist like to confuse themselves by trying to choose between the fine art aspect of things, and the 'digital' (as i call it) part of their job. One really exciting part of this time is the London Underground, or subway. It was great hearing the history behind the simplistic sans serif very geometric icon.

My question really deals with this fight between the graphic designers and the 'art' graphic designers. Why was this such a big issue?

Chapter Eleven - Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau (french for New Art) was a style change in not only art, but architecture and applied arts that peaked in popularity at the turn of the twentith centry. Also known as Jugendstil, after the german magazine modeled after the style. It is characterized by organic, expecially floral and plant images. Probably the most well known peice created during this time for me would be in France, Hector Guimard's metro entrances shaped in the landscape of Paris.

When I was in France this J-term I saw a lot of this style of art all over. Drawings with thick outlines and then simplisitc coloring with floral decorations. I was really inspired by this style of art, and would like to try this out with some of my works, perhaps creating my own paintings. My only question is why this period was so brief and swift to end, I really feel it was a time of modern beauty and yet we quickly moved away from this style. I don't recall reading much on this style in the US, what happened back home?

Image Four

The modern poster. It's hard to believe but I don't think we've really evolved far from the Victorian style poster, that when it comes down to the basics, it's the same style. I took a look at Modern Dog ( http://www.moderndog.com/SWFX/ ) a graphic design firm out of Seattle.

First you have to break down what makes a poster 'Victorian.' First of a key part of Victorian posters are the multiple fonts, no white space, and various font sizes. If we take a look at the poster I posted here, it almost ends up looking like a ransom note. We have various fonts, not straight, in various sizes. No white space is left, that fear of leaving anything not colored or filled with text. I think these basic ideas are still shown in this poster. However, the unique and perhaps 'modern' part of the poster is the 'untidy.' Part of the Victorian mind set is that everything must be prim and proper. The tape and the cut out style of this poster is definitely not part of the Victorian style. Its interesting to even look at posters on campus and see how when it comes down to the basics, we haven't evolved that far.

After Class - Feb 27th 2009

Today I gave my presentation on the Victorian era. It was really fun sharing the History I found when searching for the style of that era. I really love the style, the complex intertwine of various fonts all squished together in a perfect chaos. After my fun quiz and we discussed my slides a bit more, we watched a youtube video on some Wisconsin actually still functioning traditional printing places. I would really love to go visit the place in Two Rivers, and I'm working on the details. Maybe some people in our class could organize a trip up north for a weekend? I'd love to work on something for our class!

Chapter Ten - The Arts and Crafts Movment and Its Heritage

As the age of the machine began to rise, it was noticed that in the production of machines not much thought was given to the athestics of mecognizums. John Ruskin pointed out that art and society had begun seperating at the begining of the Renaissance, and that the result was a decline in creativity, and a lack of aesthetic concern. Ruskin strongly belived the because something was beautiful that it was valuable and useful, becuase it was beautiful. Among Ruskin's followers, William Morris and his 'Red House' played a pivitol role in the evolution of design at the time. He created over five hundred patern designs for wallpaper, textiles, carpets, and tapestries. He used Ruskin's idea to reinovate the "tastelessness of mass-produced goods and the lack of honest craftsmanship." It was through this that the idea that art and craft could combine to create beautiful objects from buildings to shoes. They wanted workers to find pride in their work.

They talked a bit in this chapter about false advertising, what was some of the ads? Also, could we see some images of Red House. I think it's interesting to build and create EVERY part of a house.

After Class - Feb 15th 2009

Today we really summarized the industrial revolution and looked as some of the most important parts of the evolution. Nothing would have been possible without the creation of steam power, it took the man/animal power away and created a limitless source of power (as long as the person fueling didn't get sleepy). This eventually helped to create newer printing presses that became more and more typewriter-like (aka: line'o type). The main part of the typography of this time was developing specialized fonts for diffrent propmotions. Having a 'circus' font for a circus poster and so on. Lots of bold powerful heavy fonts that were streatched out and had a very tall x-height.

We then talked extensively about the development of photography and how it could be something so simplistic and artistic to something as powerful as civil war photography that can effect entire nations. My group in particular had issues with the earliest photography 'experaments.' In particular the image of the religious leader. We thought that the light exposed parts hardened, and thus when washed stayed on the metal. But it appears it was the opposite. Having, personally, an extensive background in photography I'd love to learn more and perhaps try my hand at some of these 'old time' ways of photography. In my photography class we actually built a camera out of cardboard and created the inverted images and then fliped them to created the correct shading. I'll have to remember to bring it back with me this weekend.

Chapter Nine - Graphic Design and the Industrial Revolution

As the industrial revolution settled into England (760 to 1840), the graphic designer became increasingly important when dealing with marketing factory output. As revolutions across France and America, people were becoming increasingly literate and now Graphic Artists could reach a greater audience. Leading people into the era of mass communications. Over the course of the nineteenth century the graphic arts began to separate design and production components. The range of typographic sizes and letterform styles exploded. And with the added bonus of photography, graphic design began to take on a whole new look. Broadsides and large letterforms became increasingly important. It was then that William Caslon began sand-casting large, bold typefaces. Demand for these block letterform was required of all sorts of clients, and so various kinds of thick block fonts were created. The design of these posters and broadsheets did not really involve a modern 'graphic artist.' All that was needed was basic organization.

A big part of the chapter talked about the changing views on children and their effect of typography. Victorian graphic design captured the values of the era -home, religion, and patriotism- in images of children, maidens, puppies, and flowers. Before this era, children really were treated as "Little Adults." But in this time period, there was a lot more development of toy books, basically colorful picture books, for preschool children. My favorite part of this chapter is the introduction of Japanese woodblock into Western culture. The beautiful basic images with simplistic coloring really are perfect for children's illustration. An art form, I personally adore.

My question for this chapter, why do graphic artists so negativily view victorian poster designs. Personally, I find the various font styles put together in a complex harmony beautiful and extreamly creative! What are the opinions and reasoning?

Image Three

This week we talked about more of the evolution of fonts and while wandering admits the wandering on the wilds of the web, I found this shirt! There were a bunch of more shirts with the different kinds of fonts. If you look farther down you can see the exact logo that even talks about Baskerville himself and the date at which the font was created. I think this is a really creative way to introduce fonts to people and the history behind them. Maybe even for geeky graphic designers. Good way to remember things on a test!

After Class - Feb 18th 2009

We mainly reviewed the previous chapter going into depth on the various fonts and men (mostly for now) who developed these new advances in the world of Graphic Design. The main focus of today's look at fonts was dividing it up into three type designs: old style, transitional, and modern. We discussed influencial people such as Casion, Baskerville, Didot and Bodoni.

My only question is clarification on the different serifs. I know that these are part of the clarification on the difference between the various styles, but I think we need a review.

Chapter Eight - An Epoch of Typographic Genius

The eighteenth century was a time of tremendous typographic growth and originality. In Paris, a committee of scholars was to established restore the quality of early printing by designing new letter forms using 'scientific' processes. To construct the new letter forms, a square was drawn, divided into a grid of sixty-four units. Each of these was only further divided into thirty six units, for a grand total of 2,304 itty bitty squares. The committee then began to create mathematical letter forms rather than those created by hand, this meant measuring out each form using drafting instruments. When creating italics, an even smaller grid pattern was used! The final production was called Romain du Rol. However, this new type face could only be used by the Royal Printers. So other typographers made similar fonts with distinct differences, to avoid confusion.

But the major problem with type was the fact that each committee had its own form of measurement. In 1737, Fournier le Jeune published the first table of properties and a specimen book. This presented over 4,600 characters and styles. What I would like to know is more about Jeune, in the book it states that he published his books at the age of thirteen! How could a thirteen year old publish such a powerful graphic design book?

Another intresting part of this chapter deals with the creation of the rococo style. Beautifuly lavished natural organic shapes decorated every page of text in the style of Louis XV, in pastel colors combined with ivory and gold. A good representation of the Sun King and his courty.

After Class - Feb 16th 2009

Today was actually pretty fun! We really got to participate more with exploring the information the text book gives us. After a quick review we divided into groups and attempted to promote a 'Renaissance Man' from the reading. We had Tory, pretty much the god of the written French Language. It was interesting to see how many different subjects he was considered a master in. It makes me look at modern society and how we have to pick ONE subject to major in. I love a variety of subjects, and yet I can only study one. How different would the world be if we could learn as much as we could! But I think we did a good job today on our presentation of Tory, so much so that the group voted him the REAL REN MAN! Woo hoo! It was hilarious hearing the other groups vote our man in. My group really worked well together.

But my question for today, is what should I make on friday, and how should it look?

Chapter Six and Seven

Chapter Six - The German Illustrated Book

With the help of manufactured printing means (thanks Gutenberg!) printing was practiced in over a hundred towns across Europe and greatly reduced the cost to that of only a fraction. So many different forms of communication were being created as well - religious tracts, pamphlets, and broadsides (or posters). This led to many problems between the old forms of book printing to the new faster more effective way, so much so that Parisian Illuminators attempted to file suits in the courts in an attempt to win damages from printers who were engaged in 'unfair' competition. Typography is THE major communications advancement between the invention of writing and electronic mass communications, Meggs states. With tumbling book prices, and the beginings of popular main stream novels (romance novels) it made reading more and more necessary. This changed the way people thought, following Maslows heiarchy of needs, people began to thing logically and have more linear thoughts leading to scientific expoloration. It fostered individualsim. Without typography its extreamly doubtful that the Protestant movement would have been been possible. Both Luther and Pope Leo X used printed broadsides and tracts in thelogical debates before a mass audience throughout the world.

Chapter Seven - Renaissance Graphic Design

The begining of the fourtheenth and fifteenth centuries in Italy are known as the Renaissance, which means 'revival' or 'rebirth'. However, the word is now generally used to encompass the period marking the transition from the medieval to the modern world. In the history of graphc design, the renaissance of classical literature and the work of the Italian humanists are closely bound to an innocative approach to book design. Type design, page layout, ornaments, illustration, and even the total design of the book were all rethought by Italian printers and scholars. However, the word is now generally used to encompass the period marking the transition from the medieval to the modern world. In the history of graphc design, the renaissance of classical literature and the work of the Italian humanists are closely bound to an innocative approach to book design. Type design, page layout, ornaments, illustration, and even the total design of the book were all rethought by Italian printers and scholars.

After Class - Feb 13th 2009

We mainly reviewed over chapter four, starting by looking at some of the art from that chapter and breaking it down. And really admire the time and effort that is placed in each individually created image. It was said that it would be impossible to replicate any of these images on the sole fact of time - no one has that kind of time. The first image we looked at was The Book of Kells, the Chi-Rho page. Earth tone ink and just the Celtic knots and detail in this image is so impressive. You start looking at one thing and find a million other aspects of the image. How do you begin to even plan something like that? Really awesome.

Image Two

"One of the features that has transformed and improved the face of the printing industry is the digital aspect. Now digital printing process predominates all over the printing world. This has paved the way for newer and better ways of production and has sped up the printing process itself. Effective digital printers and digital printing press has also helped much in the improvement of the industry. The digital printing press itself allows the printers to generate documents right on time. "

Its amazing how we've moved from the world of printing using a printing press, how time consuming and difficult it was taking each letter out and painstakingly placing each letter back in the right spot to print a new page for a book. Now we have printers and photocopiers that speed up the process so quickly. It would be interesting to see how the printing process would have been effected if we didn't switch over to the digital age.

Chapter Five - Printing Comes to Europe

With the creation of the written language humanity now had the means to store information, giving them the power to document knowledge and information and retrieve it at any later date. This gave things such as books, high value in every day life. The demand for books had become so high, it by passed the supply and kept on growing. The reason it was so hard to acquire a book was the means that were used to create such a thing. "A simple two-hundred-page book required four or five months' of labor by a scribe, and the twenty-five sheepskins needed for the parchment were even more expensive than the labor." Says Megg. This time and money spend in a single book made the cost and worth so high it was impossible to own a book unless you were a noble. This pushed inventors to find a more effect and cost effective means of creating books. The first real attempt at creating an effect means was the wood block print. Each image and lettering is cut from the same block of wood and printed as a complete word and picture unit. Playing cards and religious prints were really the early forms of this type of printing, and it was this same playing card that pushed the still illiterate culture in a new direction - teaching the ignorant recogition, sequencing, and logical deduction.. The 'game of the kings' was now something played by the lower class. However, the first really known prints with a fuction dealing with communication was the religious devotional prints.

Now with the more effecent printing with woodblocks, and the introduction of paper into europe, the demand for books continued to grow. However the mechanization of a book by production by something like movable type was something printers began to take a look at. But it was Gutenberg, living in Strasbourg in exile that changed all that. The key to his invention was the type mold, used for casting the individual letters. Each character had to be parallel in every direction and the exact same height. The chapter closes by discussing another methoid of copper plate printing.

My only real question is how long did it take to make a whole book, how many years? And how did people normally learn how to read, if not in school?

Terms from the Chapter:
Xyography - relief printing from a raised surface (Asia)
Typography - printing with independent, movable, and reusable raised letter forms on wood or metal
Watermark - translucent emblem produced by pressure from a raised design on the mold on paper

After Class - Feb 11th 2009

It was interesting in class today, we discussed the Asian history behind written word. The Chinese influenced the European culture greatly by creating some of the most powerful tools - gunpowder, comps, and more importantly PAPER! But their alphabet, a complex system of logograms numbering over 44,000 characters. But this didn't stop the Chinese, they came up one of the first printing presses. A huge feat in it self having to carve each letter individually at first into a whole block, when you wanted to write something new that means you had to re-carve a whole new board. It was a hard process until the idea of creating letter forms and holding them in cooled wax.
However, the evolution to the modern chinese is a process I think I would like to look more into. Taking Chinese, my self, for two semesters and how the characters ended up so abstract.

Chapter Four - Illuminated Manuscripts

Illuminated manuscripts are written books, produced from the late Roman Empire until printed books using a printing press replaced manuscripts in around 1450AD.The creation of these manuscripts was costly and time-consuming. It took hours to start by creating parchment or vellum, then to mix colors from a variety of mineral, animal, and vegetable matter. The most interesting color creation by far is that of deep blue. Created using a precious mineral only mined in Afghanistan it was made from lapis lazuli. I find this extremely interesting when looking at paintings and manuscripts containing this color, think how much that blue is worth! Gold and silver (less used) was then applied. Books were bound between two wooden boards covered in leather and then decorated with precious gems, ivory, or metal-work designs.

When it came to the production of an acual manuscript all work began in the monastic scriptorium, also known as the 'writing room.' The head of the scriptorium was the scrittori who understood both Greak and Latin and fuctioned as editor and art director. The copisti was the production letterer, who was trained in lettering style. The illusminator, or illustrator, was an artist responsible for the decoration or visual support of the text.

What I found most intresting in this chapter was the colophon or an inscription at the end of a manuscript containing facts about its production. The most intresting quote that the book is the one from a scribed named George who states "As the sailor longs for a safe haven at the end of his voyage, so does the writer for the last word." This illustrates how hard the production of a manuscript was!

With the creation of punctuation (early 19th century) it became some what of more of a musical notation to denote pauses and pitch changes for chants. With the adaptation of Arabic numerals, musical notation became one of the leading contributions of this modern form of graphic design.

The rest of the chaper discusses the evolution of illuminated text, and the various kinds, as well as Charlamaines influence on the modern alphabet.

The only questions I had from this chapter really delt with the colors that they used! I want to know the diffrent materals exactly used, how they were prepared, and what the final product was? I think that experaning this traditional way of paint making would be tons of fun!

Chapter Three - The Asian Contribution

In this chapter we were able to break away from the western alphabetic evolution and take a look at the evolution of Easter attempts at written language. The chapter began by discuss the various other contributions that the ancient Chinese gave to us: Gunpowder, calligraphy, and most importantly Paper and printing! The duplication of words and images, made possible the wide communication of thought, it was an excellent method, used later on by the Europeans, for spreading their language, culture, religion, and law throughout the world. Ts'ai Lun supposedly is considered the god of papermakers when he reported his findings in 105AD.

The first written Chinese came from Tsang Chieh around 1800BC. Inspired by claw marks from birds and footprints on animals he created a more abstract designs that were more pictograph basied. Simple nouse were developed first, and the written language slowly matured and even became enriched enough to include abstract ideas such as feelings, actions, colors, sizes and types. Chinese character then became logograms, or a sign that represents an entire word. Therefore there is no direct relationship between the spoken and written Chinese languages. So learning the total forty-four thousand characters was a huge feat, and you became very respected in the community if you achived such a thing! The earliest known Chinese (1800 to 1200BC) writing was called chiaku-wen, or "bone-and-shell" script because most of these pictographs can be found on tortoise shells and large animals' flat shoulder bones. This style of writing was more religious than anything and used in the art of divination in an attempt to foretell the future and communicate with the gods.

The next step in Chinese calligraphy was called chin-wen, or "bronze" script, once again named so because of the matreal it was written on. Bronze objects of musical insturments, weapons, mirrors, coins, seals, and even food and water bowls. Once again this was for religious reasons. However these characters were mre regular than in the bone-and-shell inscriptions.

The third style of Chinese calligraphy was created by the Prime minister Li Ssu (280 to 208 BC) and created a style known as hsiao chuan, or "small-seal" style. The lines in this style are more even and thicker, with more curves and cirlces in a graceful flowing style the most abstract of any of the earlier styles. Each character is balanced and fills the 'imaginary square.'

Finally there is the modern style of chinese called chen-shu (or kai-shu or 'regular') which has been in use for over nearly two thousand years. Considered the highest art form in China because of the controll the calligrapher has over each part of the image, and how the negative and positive space plays a factor in the formation of the word. This final form was the first t obe created using ink on paper (or silk) using a brush. Traditional caligraphy still plays an important role in religion and helping one conect to the Tao.

Eventually each calliraphic character was cut into a wooden block and printing became possible. Around 1045AD the Chinese alchemist Pi Sheng extended this process by developing the concept of movable type, a process that never fully became apart of Asia. I find this extreamly intresting, because most people claim that Gutenburg was the first to really have created this process. Because Chinese writing is not alphavetical, types were organized according to rhymes. It's extreamly intresting that the first movable type was invented in cultures whose written language systems were ideographs, so over fourty four thousand characters were required to create sentances.

Slowly all of these Chinese invoations slowly spread across into Europe arriving just in time for the European Renaissance.

After Class - Feb 9th 2009

Today we went over a quick review of chapter one. Learning more about the evolution of the written language. It was interesting to see how the introduction of the alphabet changed the entire writing world. With a phonetic based writing system writing became a lot easier for the masses to read. Scribes were not so highly held anymore but instead because there were only 20 to 30 symbols to memorize instead over over a thousand. Also to convey emotion become easier as well, which was a huge problem when dealing with pictographs. The masses could now read. What I think would be intresting to explore more is the effect of massing being able to read had on soicety? We stated in class that 'knowlage is power' and that even in modern society not all people can read. What happens when you give this 'power' to the ingnorant masses? I'd love to find out.

Chapter Two - Alphabets

This chapter highlighted the evolution of letters from being mere ideographs and pictographs to more of the phonetic lettering we have today. The early writing systems were unwieldy and required long, hard study to master. For centuries, the number of individuals who gained literacy was small. The invention of the alphabet was a major step twords easy human communication. An alphabet is a set of visual symbols or characters used to represent the elementary sounds of a spoken language. The hundreds of signs and symbols required for hieroglyphs were replaced by twenty easily learned signs. What was very intresting was the Semitic alphabetical script. It used thirty cuneiformlike characters to represent elementary consonant sounds, but there were no characters to signify vowels. It goes into a bit about the Arabic alphabet, but then continues on about the modern western alphabet and it's development through the greek alphabet and later the latin alphabet.

I found the evolution of the Aramaic alphabet to be the most intresting, how they created the shapes that they chose and why. Its such a more 'artful' form of writing with long thick strokes.

The only questions I have from this chapter are from the beautiful Greek signature seals. If they had such an advanced alphabet then why did tehy need to use Animals on their seals? And not just use their name?

Image One

While wandering amongst the billions of online images I began to search for 'modern' hieroglyphics. Where has the evolution of the pictograph taken it? And what I found was extremely interesting. I found a blog of a photographer ( http://tondro.com/2008/08/modern-hieroglyphics.html ) and she called this and one other photograph 'modern hieroglyphics.' These markings are actually for pipes when construction is happening in an area. A simple image to convey a simple meaning, 'water moves this way.' I found it a unique take on our current chapter and thought you would find it intresting as well.

After Class - Feb 5th 2009

Today we discussed the Chapter One reading. This included the basic forms of communication and their evolution. Starting the class off with a a group project. We were suppose to think of as many symbols for man and woman as we could, from the most simple to the most complex. We came up with a ton of different things, from the actual 'man and woman' sighs on bathrooms, to drawing little characters of a woman and a man. It was interesting that as the more complex the pictures got the more complex the meaning became. One example was that we used a beer can to represent 'man' and a martini glass to represent a 'woman.' The meaning became more complex and more abstract and it was harder to say 'oh that means woman,' it was more a sign of femininity. I think that's what helped the evolution of the common letter. As ideas became more complex and the wish to express them became important (the hierarchy of needs: http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/maslow.htm ) the need for a more effective way to write was required. We looked at 'scribe' in particular, how a picture of a scribe's tools became a hieroglyphs and eventually the need to quickly write 'scribe' devolved it, almost, to a simple slash on a page. When we were able to see the various ancient ways to write letters it was easy to see how we have gotten to the modern letter forms. It was really over all very interesting.

Our final discussion was on illuminated texts. The earliest illuminated text were those used for funeral purposes in ancient Egypt. As I continued my resurch I found the most beautiful works of illuminated text were those from around the dark ages normaly in bibles. I have one pictured here, a beautiful works of art and text. Each text and art was hand writen and treated very carefully. I wonder if there are still modern forms of illuminated texts, dose anyone still practice the traditional form of illuminated text?

Chapter One - The Invention of Writing

This chapter discussed the most basic forms of communication and their evolution over time. Starting with the most basic idea of creating a verbal form of communication and then moving that to images that represent a word. For example ">D" could mean "ox", but this eventually led to complications. What if you wanted to say "dead ox"? So then combining symbols became important to make a more complex idea easy to be seen. Eventually, emotions and other concepts became important in language and drawings became words. The chapter really discussed the Anicent Egyptian form of writing, or hieroglyphs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_hieroglyph).

One thing I found really interesting was the evolution of tools used to write and the kinds of materals used to write on, and the evolution associated with that. Starting with clay tablets and moving through to actual paper and parchment.

My only question I have left is how many writings are there that we just can't read? Who created these writings? Then the obvious questions that we just can't answer: Why? What do they say? Can we ever figure out what they say? Why can't we?

After Class - Feb 4th 2009

In class we talked about the most primitive form of communication/graphic design. Cave paintings! We took a look at cave paintings from France, some of which are the oldest in the world, and tried to see what understanding we could get from them. Most of the pictures were of animals, and we concluded that the dots on the animals were probably to show the best places to shoot and try to kill the animals. Almost like a dart board.

But before we looked at actual cave paintings we tried our hand at creating some of our own. Going downstairs to the 'cave' of a basement, we each scooped up some dark brown clay and were given a short phrase to try and re-create the message in 'cave painting' style not using any words or numbers. Most of the groups took the clay and sculpted figures to represent the various words. However, when you don't have a very artistic ability with clay it's hard to make a clear message. Our text was especially difficult to translate because it not only dealt with an object but the passage of time as well. 'There were three brown cats and two black and white cats.' So what we did was smooth out our clay and then draw the cats and a moon and sun. Ours was pretty easy to understand except for the 'passage of time' part of our sentence. I was really impressed with how creative my other classmates were. Especially "your smile (laughter?) in a window to your soul." I think that just by adding an open mouth, an open smile, might have made the whole thing easier to read.

I think that today made me appreciate the use of symbols to convey a meaning and how difficult it is to convey the exact message through only pictures if someone doesn't have the key to the code. So how do you explain the code if all you have is images as a form of communication? Did words come before the pictures, or pictures before the spoken word? It's a question that is bugging me.

I think playing with this concept of only images will help me look at my own graphic work and find the meaning I am trying to convey and if my true meaning really comes across, what visual cues give that meaning away?