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?