Franciszek Starowieyski, Stacks, 1974
Again, plenty of stuff to discuss: LOGO and its pioneers: Bass, Lois, Chermayeff & Geismar, Rand; Jazz Albums covers; Swiss Typographic Style (and its heroes); Stankowski's metadesign, & the amazing Polish School of Posters (1950s-1970s).
Pick your favorite while doing a bit of research.
11 comments:
Paul Rand and Chermayeff & Geismar's logo designs were the perfect examples of timeless design. A handful of the logos they designed have received no changes since their creation years ago. Most of their designs are just made of a few shapes or strokes, but still encompass so many elements of a brand’s identity. Using the principles of integrity, honesty, simplicity & clarity these logos have created an air of sophistication that not even time can alter.
Take Paul Rand’s ABC logo for example. This logo is instantly recognizable, and even though is was created in the 1960s it remains the same today. It’s ability to encompass everything the ABC network entails in just one color is a true testament to Rand’s genius. Even today it remains a staple in popular culture and is still minimalist enough to stand tall in the new era of design.
It is incredibly interesting how much power a logo can hold over a brand. It is what is seared into our brains after a pleasurable or painful experience with a company. It is what we associate with memories of the brand. If the logo is changed suddenly, it may create a change in personal perspective on a brand and therefore erase all the positive (or sometimes negative) emotions we hold towards the company.
Olivia GInsberg
Throughout the last class we discussed a broad spectrum of topics from individual artists and design movements to different styles and institutions of teaching. An artist I found particularly interesting was Waldemar Swierzy, an incredibly important figure in the history of graphic design in Poland. Sweirzy, who’s portfolio includes over 1,500 posters, a number many say may be a record, did not stop at becoming one of the finest poster artists in Poland. Impressively after an extensive career Sweirzy was one of the founders of the Polish school of posters in the 60s and 70s. What interested me particularly in our class discussion about him was the way he depicts counterculture with a simultaneously colorful narrative. In addition to his techniques the large array of clientele and his ability to withhold a creative presence is what I find most impressive. As we learned in class Sweirzy famously worked with the musician Jimmy Hendrix however after doing research on my own I discovered he also had the opportunity to create record sleeve designs for music by Liszt and Beethoven amongst many. This control of creativity amongst a diverse range of mediums Is something I pay a lot of attention to with my own artist career. Surprisingly, for example, logos I have designed are actively being used in many different industries. These industries include sporting events, musicians, actors, funeral parlors, and even dentist. As someone that has no where near 1500 pieces of completed work in their portfolio I can only imagine the true reach of his creativity.
-Harry Reid
Henryk Tomaszewski’s visibly hand drawn, irregular type used in his posters is such an inspiration to me today and perfectly bridges the gap between being playful while maintaining a sense of maturity and intentionality in design. His technique was close to painting, and his collaged type is reminiscent of Miro’s dancing shapes and Matisse’s cutouts. His design work is exceptionally strong because of the direct references to widely recognized objects, music, film, social themes, and the way in which he depicts these is very accessible and visually beautiful. He himself admitted to be on “a lifetime search for such signs which would be comprehensible to everyone.” He was head of the poster studio at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts from 1952 to 1985, where he taught up and coming designers and poster artists that went on to be very successful, and he did this without pushing his own techniques onto them, instead helping each student in their own growth and process.
Alejandra Moros
I did some research on Anton Stankowski and I found out that he is universally acclaimed as one of the greatest and most influential names in late-modernist art. Anton Stankowski was an eminent late modernist designer who created revolutionary concrete art, and highly innovative information materials. His influence on typography, photography, and graphic design was international. He studied graphic design, typography, and photography under the celebrated Elberfeld-born photographer Max Burchartz. Stankowski excelled in his studies and, even as a young student, he incorporated his exceptional creativity into his designs. Also, Stankowski established his own design company and was famously hired by Mercedes-Benz to design artwork for their entire racing series. Throughout his career, Stankowski noticeably drew inspiration from his vast experience in the fields of painting and photography. On another side, his commercial art always reflected the various styles that he had employed earlier in his work. He created iconic logos and visual identity programs for various corporations and cultural institutions, including Viessmann, Iduna, etc. He had a prolific career as a painter and filled about 100 sketchbooks, experimenting with color effects, behavioral adaptation, and textural directionalities. His work as a photographer was also exceptional and influential in its own right. To conclude, Stankowski’s unique contribution to typography, especially the book jacket he designed for Magdalene Droste’s book on Bauhaus, earned him a place in history.
Roman Moscato
Helvetica is one of the most essential typefaces of our time. The orginal name for Helvetica was Die Neue Haas Grotesk and was designed in 1957 in Switerzland. Helvetica has transformed our world and makes appearances in our everyday life. It would be almost impossible to go a whole day without encountering it at least once. The font was sans serif, which leads to a clean aesthetic. Because of the font's simplicity, it can be applied and marketed on almost anything. Part of the reason why Helvetica is so popular is the accessibility and availably as a free type font on Mac and PC. Apple themselves decided to knock off Helvetica in 2015 with their font San Francisco because of the readability of Helvetica on small screens such as Apple watches. Making sure that the font could keep up with the times, Monotype upgraded the font to Helvetica Now in 2019, bringing it into a more technologically advanced world. Helvetica Now is meant to be able to be sized up or sized down. Brands such as Burberry, Balmain, and YSL have opted to create a sleeker version of their logos in a Helvetica font. Many more fashion brands are wanting a cleaner look, keeping the presage but dropping the snobbery. Looking at brands like Off White created by Virgil Abloh, it is easy to see why. Helvetica feels young and fresh. Abloh sights the varsity of Helvetica for allowing him to incorporate many different design languages. On social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram, hepatica is used for its readability and the ability to make the text smaller or bigger without losing its aesthetic.
A small list of companies that use Helvetica in their logos
Nestle
BMW
TED
WhatsApp
Target
Jeep
NBA
American Airlines
The North Face
-Sam Zeigler
From the artists discussed in class, I was drawn to Jan Lenica for his dark humor and absurd style. Satirical humor is one of my favorite types of humor and creative outlet, so I was drawn to his style and I loved his work that was shared in class, especially Alban Berg Wozzeck piece and the blue Teatr Kopernikowi piece with the eye in the middle. I admire his versatility, as he worked in cartoon drawing, illustration, graphic design, posters, animated films and even more outlets. According to Wikipedia, he has won more than 20 awards through the years for his work. I virtually visited his work in MoMa online, and saw his dark pieces, which apparently reflect the experience of death and the loss of identity inspired by his teenage years having been when WWII ended. One of my favorite pieces from the collection was his Repulsion poster, which depicts a blue and green woman reaching for something above, with cut outs in her body that are shaped like hands grabbing her. This was created for a movie poster. It seems he had a consistent use of color in his work, using the same mix of blue and green in a majority of his pieces and a fairly consistent use of thick horizontal lines.
Meghan Morrison
The theatrical yet jarring work of Franciszek Starowieyski got him many exhibitions in Poland and all over the world giving him international fame. He was the first polish man to have a solo exhibition at the MOMA. His fame started after years of testing and exploring new styles of art for posters. Then in 1962 Starowieyski decided to stray away from implementing features from the film or play and decided to create posters unrelated to the production to fuel his own interest of baroque artistry. He merges deep forms of calligraphy into intellectual messages inspired by the 17th century and making startling and shockingly vile surrealist images look daring and beautiful. His design of the sensual female form and the other natural elements conveys his fascination with the beauty of life and death. This is what makes his posters so popular, is it gives an inside look into the human mind and how his mind works with his skillfully ornate use of metaphors and his use of the absurd and the grotesque.
-Max Speziani
When we spoke about Polish artists last class I instantly remembered an artist I found out about during quarantine last semester, Stanislav Szukalski.
The first thing that came to my mind when remembering him was actually his signature. Szukalski had created his own alphabet/font when he was still a kid in school and used it for the rest of his life. Intricate handwriting full of curves, each character so unique, and when seeing a whole paragraph written by him is like nothing you have ever seen before (very much so like himself). With this, I instantly noticed how much of a graphic designer he is after our class lectures. It is so true how someone’s identity, especially an artist’s, can be carried on the type they created. That was my memory of him.
His art varied from sculptures to drawings and poetry. Although his pieces portrayed such exotic characters, everything was done with so much perfection and realism. My favorite was his drawings, the reason why I remembered him when seeing the class polish posters from artists like Wiesław Wałkuski and Franciszek Starowieyski, such a different representation of the human form but with such a grandiose feeling to the images, very powerful.
Julia Martins
Netflix documentary: “Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski”
(recommend watching because it is very difficult to describe him)
https://www.szukalski.com
The Polish School of Art really fascinated me. I love political history so naturally i gravitated to this subject. The interesting thing to me was how capitalism and advertising spurred a growth in poster art which was then reborn after WWII for communist propaganda. It seems counter intuitive but also makes complete sense. The school really formed when there was a need for communist propaganda posters that matched soviet designs. The need for communist posters established poster art as an art form worthy of studying in school but it was only after laws were loosened and the government transitioned that poster art had its golden ages where artists were able to express themselves. I guess its just interesting how much this art form was able to pivot with each step and assert it's importance. These artists took full artistic freedom in making movie posters and made the posters how they see fit free of the demands of the movie companies wishes. The posters are fun, pleasing to the eye, at once both clearly an advert but so uniquely art. The 1967 Poster for “Cat Ballou”, by Witkor Gorka, is craftfully simple as it is reminiscent of a childs drawing. The movie stared Jane Fonda but you would never know by the poster art. I have never seen the movie but I wonder if Witkor Gorka saw the movie before painting this and if he knew who jane fonda was.
Emma Pitcairn
After looking at 1950s jazz album covers last class, I thought it would be interesting to research them more. Album design was important for the marketing of jazz music because it typically lacked lyrics, so one had to “read” the cover in order to gain insight about the mood, tone, and style of the music it was advertising. Their unique function and status as a new medium made this time period significant in the development of album covers as an art form. The overall trend in jazz cover styles paralleled the current aesthetics in the areas of fine art and graphic design. Covers additionally matched the style of their music: modern, abstract styles were used to illustrate spontaneous and dynamic music, while avant garde imagery was paired with avant garde sound. Many covers during this period explicitly reference movements like pop art, cubism, surrealism, and abstract expressionism.
Ellie Massaro
Of the many design movements of the 20th century that we explored last class, I was particularly intrigued by the experimentation and surreal visual humor of jazz album covers in the '50s and '60s. It was fascinating to research the emergence of album covers as a means of visually expressing the music within, operating at a unique intersection of the senses that allowed artistic innovation like no other. Jazz was incredibly integral to American culture and was most progressive kind of music of the time, attracting many young, forward-thinking designers to delve into new visual concepts and design techniques. Upon my research, I discovered that Reid Miles, a designer for Esquire magazine who worked for Blue Note Records in his free time, was not even a fan of jazz and preferred classical music. Despite this, Miles' work pioneered a Rennaissance of design in the music space; his experimental type and photo treatments have an effect that we can only try to emulate today.
Lauren Maingot
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