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.
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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!