Your turn #7

I'm leaving this post open for comments for next week (also, if you have any question regarding next week's midterm exam).

the arousal of abstract meaning

The world we perceive is a dream we learn to have from a script we have not written, @ miami bourbaki.

A recent medalist with certain influences

Jennifer Morla, AIGA's 2010 medalist is president and creative director of Morla Design in San Francisco. She founded Morla Design in 1984 as a multidisciplinary design firm encompassing print, motion graphics and environmental design.

I find Morla's aesthetics akin to that of the International Typographic Style. Don't you?

Piet Zwart as a bridge between Dada and De Stijl

I feel I didn't express enough how important Piet Zwart is for the graphic design of the second half of the Twentieth-Century. What's important is that Zwart is a designer from the Netherlands who bridges the tradition between Dada's playful vitality and De Stijl's functionalism and formal beauty. What is interesting about Zwart is that he had no previous training in typography or printing.

I'd like to discuss this more in detail. Here is a cool site with Zwart's work.

Your turn #6

Expressionist vs. Surreal Lynch

This is the Expressionist Lynch, whereas this is the Surrealist Lynch. 

Your turn #5

By the way, who the hell is Banksy? 
Post your comment here.

Your turn #4

Robert Longo, Untitled, from the series Men in the Cities (1979)

Good class. At some point I'd like to come back to the social idea of decadence, i.e., how this aesthetic pursuit of the 1880's can be compared to the so-called "me decade" of the 1970's; that unstable balance between refined gratification and raw glut. In this regard, I recommend Social Disease by Paul Rudnick, a novel which restores the luster to decadent style by offering no apologies for the unabashed hedonism of its cast of totally self-indulgent characters. As Thomas Reed Whissen writes in his The Devil's Advocate: Decadence in Modern Literature,

They  devote every moment of the day and night, sleeping and waking, to the pursuit of sensory gratification. The only thing that gives them a moment's pause is the fear that they may not be burning brightly enough, not maintaining a maximum level of ecstasy.

Pick any theme you'd like from the series. Next Thursday we'll go at it. Go ahead!

(This post closes Friday, February 25@ 11pm).
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By the way, click here for some of Beardsley's erotica!

Your turn #3

It was nice to hear your comments! We'll keep that comment/discussion section as part of the regular lectures. Go ahead!

I'm closing this post Friday, February 18 @ 11pm.

Your turn #2

What's on your mind? We've covered more than 200 years since Gutenberg!

Your turn #1

So, for this initial post, I'd prefer you to pick a theme from all the different topics we talked about in class last night. Take advantage of this comment to ponder and briefly research a particular topic.

How to build your 150-word comment: Whether general or particular, try to be informative. Think through your point. Try to produce an argument. Please, avoid slang, capital letters, exclamation signs. Don't merely agree with an existing comment. Add something meaningful.

I'd recommend you start with Word. Open a file, elaborate your comment, spell-check it, polish it a bit and then cut and paste it onto the comment box. It's better to have it saved in case you loose it in the publishing process (accidents happen). Remember add your identity and become a friend of our blog!

I'll close the comment box next Thursday, Jan. 27 at 11pm. 

Miniature of Beatus of Fernando I & Sancha

Shortly after the Arab conquest, on the eve of the Carolingian era, a monk from Santo Toribio Monastery by the name of Beatus wrote certain Commentaries on the Apocalypse that deeply affected all of Europe.

The copies (made over the centuries and illustrated with expressive miniatures), are known today as “Beatus”. The magnificent Facundus Beatus, completed in the year 1047, is perhaps the finest example of the millenarian sentiment of this period. Commissioned by royalty, no expense was spared in its manufacture. Its lavish images marked the start of one of the most prodigious iconographic traditions of the entire history of western art.

Lascaux Caves

In terms of design, what do we learn from the Lascaux Caves? These early paintings point to early rituals of sympathetic magic. For the purpose of our course, they represent a process of abstraction from the real world ---> realm of ideas. The execution of these abstractions as symbols whether isolated ideograms or so-called petroglyphs exhibit an remarkable simplicity and economy.

La Villa Savoye de Corbusier

Luis: consulta este link excelente, para fotos de la Villa Savoye.

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FINAL EXAM TUESDAY 11 @ 5PM

Diego Singh: STALKER

Diego Singh's STALKER at Miami Bourbaki.

Ghariokwu Lemi

Ghariokwu Lemi is a Nigerian artist and designer who is most renowned for providing many of the original cover images for the recordings of Nigerian musician Fela Kuti. His work involves a variety of styles, often using vibrant colours and individuated typefaces of his own design. More than 2,000 album covers have been designed by Lemi, including covers for Bob Marley, E. T. Mensah, Osita Osadebe, Gilles Peterson and Antibalas (WKPD).

Ghariokwu's art oozes soul-drenched rawness with every stroke of the pen, creating a whole new language of album cover art that bristles with social and political criticism.

Eduardo Marin (Cuba)

EM is a member of the group Nudo (Knot). The images are filled with references to the less-than glamorous printed matter of everyday life in Cuba. Marin believes in satire as a way to convey seriousness.

"My work is a kind of archeology"

Gabriel Martinez Meave (Mexico)

Gabriel Martinez Meave is a self-taught graphic and typographic designer, illustrator, calligrapher illustrator, educator and author from Mexico. His sketches and letters, including Darka, Mexica, Rondana and Economista are distributed worldwide by Adobe. Currently he is a professor at the University of Anahuac in Mexico City.

Non-Format

Kjell Ekhorn (Norwegian) and Jon Forss (British) have worked together as the creative direction & design team Non-Format since 2000. They work on a range of projects including art direction, design, illustration and custom typography for arts & culture, music industry, fashion and advertising clients. They have art directed the independent music monthly The Wire and also Varoom: the journal of illustration and made images.

"We are trying to add expression to topography"

Markus Dressen

Markus Dressen has developed a unique aesthetics which runs through every page of his book. Dressen works are objects to unfold, touch, handle and see, as well as to read. He is a former student at the famous Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig.

Your turn #12

 New Acropolis Museum, by Bernard Tschumi (Athens, Greece).

As you've sen, design is an important medium of communication which expresses the values of the system within which it functions. Design inevitably perpetuates the ideology of the system it serves. In the 21st century the system is represented by the capitalist economic framework of mass production and mass consumption. This is less a result of design's intrinsic characteristics than of its necessary rapport with the cultural system that sustains it.

What's your thought? This is the last assignment for comments. Go ahead!

Air pollution (the China chapter)

Urban solutions

Perfect (re)touch

Adbusters

Recycling to Africa

Sustainable architectural design

Green homes

Your turn #11

What should we do with our trash? In the NYTimes.

But these next-generation incinerators, known as waste-to-energy plants, have not caught on in the United States, where most garbage is still hauled to distant landfills. What stands in the way of the U.S. adopting more of these advanced technologies?
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The NYTimes article brings to mind the idea of technology. For example, technology as the arm driving design.

Is technology a tool or has it taken (sort of independently of any subject's overall direction) a 'life' of its own? 

Don't be naive: Technology has become something to react to, rather than direct -just try directing your latest word processing package outside its parameters, setting up a new television set without its pre-loaded instruction, or servicing your own brand new car. Such technologies have been designed with an embodied 'will' of their own that designs the users' and the technicians' relations to them.

For further reference, see Tony Fry's A New Design Philosophy: An Introduction to Defuturing (University of South Wells Press, 1999).

Die Gestalten Verlag

DGV books canonize the ephemeral, rather than considering ‘what excellent design is really capable of: elegant, functional, and at times beautiful and surprising communication’. Robert Klanten, DGV’s editor-in-chief, told Nadel he saw ‘no need for commenting in the traditional 1980s pre-digital way. I try to let the designers explain themselves in their language and not in the teacher’s voice.’ In other words, this is visual culture in the post-literate age; and if you need it explained, it’s probably not for you the first place. There’s another more interesting question that hangs over DGV books: are they spotting design trends or are they making them? There’s a temptation to see DGV as a sort of black-polo-necked style lab manufacturing ready-made fads that sweep through the world of design and fashion, thus reinforcing its status as graphic design’s premier cool hunter. It was certainly the first publisher to spot the arrival of the new digital decorativeness with Romantik (2003); while it did not invent the trend for cartouches and flourishes that has infested visual communication in recent years, it certainly contributed to its promulgation.

Blek le Rat