from typeface "distortion" (late 1990s) to 2000s maximalism

design for saatchi (2000s)

design for ferrari (2000s)

emmanuela harris, (2000s)

omatic design (2000s)

there are different names, glitch art, pixabay, holographic art, warp, etc. 

what do we see?

sedendipity, 

an unintentional distortion made by a digital crash has led to an entire, mind-bending sub-genre of graphic design.......

bold, rich colors,
pattern and texture saturation,
layering textures,
ornamentation is back,
avec-serif,
drawn typefaces,
 horror vacui!
mixing and matching vintage,

more distortion... typeface "morire" (the end of the grunge era)

Somewhere in the mid-2000s, clean lettering and subtle spacing experienced a resurgence in popularity, and the use of grunge typography went into decline: conservative became modern, and chaotic became clichéd. Fasforward to 2015: the reversion to classicism is nigh complete. Demand for grunge fonts comes from LatinAmerica and Europe rather than the U.S. (!)

jeffery keedy's manifesto

 

why jeffery keedy? 

not only is he an important graphic designer, he's also an accomplished design theorist.

here's jeffery's EMIGRE type specimens:

keedy is, guess what?,  a graduate of the Cranbrook Academy of Art, 

to be expected of a Cranbrook alumnus, keedy has been teaching design at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) since his graduation. 

keedy was also a frequent contributor to Emigre magazine throughout the twenty years of its publication. his designs and essays have been published in Eye, I.D., Emigre, Critique, Idea, Adbusters, Looking Closer One and Two, Faces on the Edge: Type in the Digital Age, New Design: Los Angeles and The Education of a Graphic Designer.

keedy's typeface Keedy Sans, designed in 1989, is distributed through Emigre Fonts.

he has also designed the Hard Times typeface which reassembles the elements of Times New Roman. 

according to keedy, the international style has been upgraded to what he calls global style.

so, what do we have?

1- keedy's "global style" is to 2000s what the international style was to the 1950s.

2- if the international style used typographic trickery to animate the frame, keedy's global uses the 4th dimension: time. it accomplishes this by looking like it was a single llime taken out of an animated sequence. 

3- what you see has undergone countless iterations and distortions.

4- the grid is not planned, but sort of process driven.

5- yet, the global style already looks familiar. 

what's the lesson here?

lifting and copying old styles was no longer seen as nostalgic. why? now, the past itself was considered to be an invention! (it's not, but that's a different story)

Jeffrey Keedy's emigre type (2002) borrows the geometric language of primary colors, red black, etc from constructivism, yet the design looks digital enough, this is what some call post-postmodern effect.

How are you doing in our ARH 346 class?

According to our syllabus, there are three grade parameters:

1. Attendance, 25%, 

2. Exams, midterm & final, 25% each, for a total of 50%

3. Posts for comments and project: 25%

_______

a) Suppose your attendance is 80%, you got an A in the midterm, and you have 9/10 assignments. 

or else,

b) Suppose your attendance is 70%, you got a B in the midterm, and you have 7/10 assignments.

a) Input the parameters and grades, and you have 25 points for the midterm, 20 points for attendance, and 22.5 points for your posts, for a total of 67.5.

b) Input the parameters and grades, and you have 20 points doe the midterm, 17.5 for attendance, and 17.5 points for your posts, for a total of 55 points.

Your turn #10 (& last post for comment!)

There's plenty to discuss: 1. Polish posters 1950-1970s, pick your favorite: Cieślewicz, Bodnar, Lenica, Flisak, Zamecznik, Gorka, Wałkuski, Tomaszewski, Świerzy. 2. The so-called self-conscious poster, 3. The amazing George Lois, or 4. Piet Zwart's typo-tect poster. 

If you are interested in exploring a future Polish-poster collection, click here,

or here. 

what do you see? the simple rhetoric of consumability

Lester Beall posters, mid 1930's

Your turn #9

Lester Beal, Fortune Magazine, poster, 1947

Dear class, there is plenty to discuss: forms of Dada collage, Bauhaus, our side of World War Two, Information Design, the difference between Propaganda and advertising, Kula Robbins' Jenny on the job, Herb Lubalin, Fortune Magazine, and the development of Logos. Logo stars include Giusti, Chesmayer & Geismar, Paul Rand, Saul Bass, Alvin Lustig, etc. And, of course, Graphic design does JAZZ & Shigeo Fukuda. 

I include the following, which I didn't mention: 

Otto Neurath's pictorial statistics,

Donald Cook and Shanowsky symbol signs,

The mark of Normal Rockwell,

The modern look of Lester Beal, 

Piet Zwart's TYPO TEXT.

Go ahead!

Your turn #8

 

Anton Stankowski's example of meta-design

Dear class: There is plenty to talk about: 

* Star designers of the 1930s, like Herbert Matter, Joseph Binder & Ladislav Sutnar. 

* Avantgarde stars like  Alexander Rodchenko, Malevich's geometric Suprematism, Marinetti's onomatopoeic graphic designs.  

* Nazi's Propaganda,  Leni Riefenstahl's 1935 Triumph of the Will (included in my announcement). 

* Graphic design developments like 1930s Neue Typographie and 1950s Swiss International Design, Constructivist posters,  

* The nine principles of Swiss typographic style.

* What are you, a less-is-more or a more-is-more advocate? 

Go ahead. Avoid echo chambers, even any form of A.I. copy & paste (shhhh, remember, I can tell). 😈

Cipe Pineles

cpie pineles, above, in her studio.

cipe for seventeeen, 1948

The graphic design career of Cipe Pineles (pronounced SEE-pee pi-NELL-iss) began when she was installed by Condé Nast Himself in the office of Dr. M.F. Agha, art director for Condé Nast publications Vogue, Vanity Fair, and House and Garden.

Through the 1930s and early 1940s, Pineles learned editorial art direction from one of the masters of the era, and became (at Glamour) the first autonomous woman art director of a mass-market American publication.

She is credited with another "first" as well: being the first art director to hire fine artists to illustrate mass-market publications; the first woman to be asked to join the all-male New York Art Directors Club and later their Hall of Fame.

After experimenting on Glamour, she later art directed and put her distinctive mark on Seventeen and  Charm magazines, until her death in 1991. Cipe Pineles continued a design career of almost sixty years through work for Lincoln Center and others, and teaching at the Parsons School of Art and Design (AIGA).

 pineles' cover for charm, 1955,

what do we see here?

1- Pineles' style is groovy, authentic; young women saw themselves in it (the polls prove it).  

2- she is the first designer to use fine artists to illustrate mass-market publications, which brought modern art to the attention of the young mainstream public.

3- let the epoch guide the design. 

4- typeface can be organic.