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Design is History

A very good website for graphic design history here. You get a time table on the left hand side and a scroll down menu of schools & figures. A nice bio with clear images informs the artist or school. It's a work in progress!

Namaiki (Tokyo)

Those familiar with Namaiki’s insanely colourful objects and installations, mad graphics and psychedelic videos might be surprised to hear that they are now mainly working in the garden watching their plants grow. Oh, really? Indeed, the Tokyo-based foreign design duo, consisting of graphic designer David Duval Smith (NZ) and architect Michael Frank (UK), are not only celebrating their 10th Namaiki (naughty) anniversary this year: Still fulfilling the connoisseur’s high expectations in terms of silliness, madness and genius, they added another level to their recent fun and light-hearted installations by switching literally to more natural grounds. PingMag transcribed the essence of an afternoon in David’s garden introducing some of Namaiki’s inspiring thoughts as to why ending up working with living things is just the most interesting thing to do… (taken from Ping Mag)

Your turn #10

Filip Dujardin, courtesy DGV

We talked about lots of things: the digital magazine paradigm, paper vs. virtual. Designing entertainment & new cultural niches. What drives the selection of style, that is to say: typeface, grid, image and text placement, what's the demographics? Re-designing design. The new stars. A new world out there: rich, complex, difficult.

What's on your mind?   

Nylon

Jean Paul Gaultier CokeAd

Nylon

Aisle One

Aisle One

Almir Mavignier

Almir Mavignier (Brazil 1929)

Hurricane Projects: poster as a political medium

Jeff Boyes Pitt Meadows, Canada

A.. Vastagh, Nashville, Tennessee

 

Jason Thompson, Brooklyn, New York

 Allen Boe, Lincoln, Nebraska

The posters were part of the Hurricane Project, a collaborative effort to raise money for the victims of Katrina.

Your turn #9

What's on your minds?

Julie Joliat

Julie Joliat pursues her career between the two key graphic centers of The Netherlands and Switzerland. Recently based in Zurich after spending 4 years in Amsterdam and the Hague, she works in the field of graphic design and illustration mainly in artistic and cultural medium for: books, magazines, logos, corporate identities, brochures, posters, flyers, web design, and self initiated projects...

Logo trends for 2012

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Can Advertising Survive Digital?

In the Daily Beast, an interesting article by Dan Lyons:

In this brave new world, the role of advertising agencies would change as well. Instead of being a pack of well-paid liars, ad agencies would act more like consultants, helping companies figure out how to fix their businesses and improve their brand reputation based on actual accomplishments.

Your turn #8

Nicholas Gottlund, print on aluminum plates, via Juxtapoz

Polish posters, Cuban posters, LOGO! What's your take?

Freedom and originality

The Polish Poster is an original school, which goes from the mid-1950's to the early 1980's. There are two things that sets this school apart: search for freedom and originality. Polish artists try to create outside the box of Socialist Realism. In doing so they come up with a specific code-system, which is unique, and at the same time, universal. Two of the main underlying styles are a kind of Polish Surrealism and Polish Pop art.

By the way, this is a great page for Polish Poster History!

What's so (a)typical about the most typical face?

After this image appeared on Yahoo News, I posted something on miami.bourbaki about the riddle concerning "typical."

Your turn #7

Alicia Olink with Ray Gun, Fancesco Locastro, 2011

There is plenty to talk about: Bauhaus and its ripple effect, the war poster, information design, the masters: Lissitzky, Gabo, Moholy Nagy, the independents: Tschichold, Zwart, The New York School: Liberman, Herbert Matter, Saul Bass, Brodovitch, Sutnar, Lubalin, Pineles, the International Topographic Style, advertising vs. propaganda.

Go ahead!

Who needs Graphic Design Theory?

Helen Amstrong believes we do.

A Design Education Manifesto

I found this Design Education Manifesto by Mitch Goldstein I'd like to share with you:

School is hard. Design school is especially hard because so much of it exists within the abstract, the opinion. There are few, if any, absolutes as you go through design school. Much of design education is about learning some key techniques and then trying to apply them to your work in interesting ways. The following are some thoughts I have about how to go through a design program and get the most out of the experience, and beyond as a creative professional. More here.

Lady Gaga reaches 20-M t* followers!

Wow! What should we make of it?

Your turn #6

Jugend cover, 1901 (via Juxtapoz)

We've gone through an explosion of art movements & personalities. The main idea is the  design of the avant-garde: Cubism, Blue Rider, Expressionism, Futurism, Dada, Neo-plasticism, Constructivism, Surrealism, art for the people, art goes to the movies, propaganda vs. advertising, collage, photo-collage, the propaganda poster, (functional art ---> floor plans? ---> elevations?). Big names: Picasso, Kandinsky, Rodchenko, Marinetti, Duchamp, Breton, Dalí, Mondrian, Magritte, A. M. Cassandre, John Heartfield, etc. 

Go ahead!

Designing persuasion (early 20th century)

 

Two approaches, one in favor, one against. The important thing is to see that both persuasion and fear can be "designed."

Ken Russell's The Devils (1971), apropos of decadent Pre-raphaelites

Could not find Ken Russell Dante's Inferno in youtube

Your suggestion makes perfect sense: At the BBC Russell had his own "pre-raphaelite" company: Oliver Reed, Max Adrian, Murray Melvin, Christopher Logue (the one-time socialist poet). Iza Teller, and Judith Paris among others -names frequently found in the cast listings of his feature films. Russell is a music lover, who manipulates anachronism with almost baroque splendor (for which his work has been called "bizarre," "outlandish," "sick").

You get a good idea of Russell's bombastic style with The Devils, his 1971 film, banned by 17 local authorities in England. It attracted many scathing reviews. Judith Crist called it a "grand fiesta for sadists and perverts." Derek Malcolm called it "a very bad film indeed." However, The Devils won the award for Best Director-Foreign Film in the Venice Film Festival.

Your turn #5

Jean Delville, Idol of Perversity, 1896

There are plenty of themes: Art Nouveau, Symbolism, Aestheticism, Exoticism, Decadence, erotica, 19th century consumerism. Then there are the great artists of the epoch: Chéret, Grasset, Mucha, Dudovich, Koch, the Beggarstaffs, Toorop, Delville, Goudy, Beardsley, etc.

What are your thoughts?

OBEY's appropriation of Art Nouveau

 

 

Designing pork

Mark Bittman's food columns in the NY Times have recently taken an ethical-gastronomical angle. The issue at hand is McDonald's new requirements that its suppliers of pork  provide plans for phasing out gestation crates. Bittman writes:

This is important for the animals and for the entire meat-selling industry. Let’s start with the sows: a gestation crate is an individual metal stall so small that the sow cannot turn around; most sows spend not only their pregnancies in crates, but most of their lives. For humans, this would qualify as “cruel and unusual punishment,” and even if you believe that pigs are somehow “inferior,” it’s hard to rationalize gestation crates once you see what they look like. (For the record, defenders of the system suggest that crates prevent sows from fighting in group pens. There’s no space to argue that here, but it’s nonsense.)

This is when you come in because "designing pork" impacts our food design in terms of that seldom explored food topic: animal cruelty.

Is it better to eat an animal that lives a more humane life?*
__________
*When it comes to animal abuse and neglect, "humane" is generally used. Few have stopped to ponder why. I find difficult to hold a moral standard which ultimately serves the very purpose of killing the animal being protected. It's like saying: "I'll keep you happy until it's time for you to die" so, 1- you taste better, 2- I feel less guilty for eating you and -on top- treating you miserably."

Designing (cyber) dependence

I find this interesting article in the New York Times by Pamela Paul entitled "Don't Tell Me, I Don't Want to Know" addressing informational overload:   

The entire world has become this Dickensian series in which you are not visited by three ghosts but by eight million ghosts,” said Sloane Crosley, author of “How Did You Get This Number.” “I feel as if I see things about people that I don’t necessarily want to see, and then it’s lodged like a piece of corn in my subconscious.” Whether it’s via Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn, e-mail or some other form of Internet connectedness, the latest headlines from your super-successful frenemy from high school, the boss who fired you and the awful 14-year-old boy your daughter is in love with are now in your face. Sometimes you don’t want to know about these people at all. Other times, you don’t want to know quite so much.

So, do we want it or not? Paul reluctantly acknowledges that our choice is caught in vicious cycle:

Let’s be straight: it’s not just that other people’s minutiae bombard us regularly. Sometimes, we seek it out despite ourselves. Whether you call it low-buzz stalking, cyberstalking or the unsettling new term “creeping,” people can now browse around the edges of former intimates’ lives, learning much too much about them:

In other words, the bombardment works!, which is why we're bombarded in the first place. In case anyone ever thinks of personal (cyber)fulfillment, Paul cites that,

A study published last month in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking found that the more time people spent on Facebook, the happier they perceived their friends to be and the sadder they felt as a consequence.

In the end one feels Paul's title could be revised: "Don't Tell Me, I Don't Want to Know."

Your turn #4

 Auguste Belloc & Félix Jacques Antoine Moulin, Femme sur un lit, 1856

Plenty to discuss: photo as reportage, as art. Illustration as fashion, as natural science, as social mores, as war reportage, as the exotic. Harper's cultural contribution. Victorian design and Pre-Raphaelite design. And the emerging Arts and Crafts.

Next week I'll talk about a huge market for 19th century erotica illustrations, daguerreotypes and early photography: EROTICA!

Your turn #3

Koo-koo, "the bird girl"

Great class. There is plenty to talk about: communities of belief, early newspapers, charts, Blake, Romanticism, daguerreotype, political satire, photo-portraiture.

Pick your favorite topic!

Linotype Machine

Your turn #2

Incunabula by William Morris (1834-1896)

Hi. This class consisted of a more detailed survey of the history of graphic design right after Gutenberg and into the Counter-Reformation. We examined the impact of the new technology for 1- standardization, 2- new forms of reading, 2- a new market, 3- division  of labor, etc.

Simultaneously, one can see a stylistic development in typeface as such, which has two aspects: the inherent technological advance makes possible a different production of typeface styles as well as the proliferation of regional differences (for example, why is it that Gothic becomes so popular in Germany shortly after Gutenberg where as Rotunda, a similar sharp-cornered yet slightly more rounded script is created in Bologna?).        

(as we saw, some designers, such as Ratdolt, who worked in Venice, are good at both) .

We also talked about the book as a kind of architecture. Once we have printers and regional styles, we get a sort of "made in" constant. So we get, incipit, rubrication, border, frame, column, marginalia & illustrations, all aspects of standardization of the profession:

example of illustration inside the page using metal engraving, copper plates, an intaglio method

so-called column, they are explanatory notes around the text of the laws, in fact the type is set so that notes are arranged to surround the text in incunabula

Pick any of these themes or any variation of it. 

Beliefs were (and still are) formed by exposure to graphic representations

Emblematum liber, circa 1500's

Spicy Adventure, 1935

DC Comics, late 1950's