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.