your turn #2

 marija tiurina's egg soldier @ juxtapoz

incunabula, gutenberg, gothic typeface, lower vs capitals,  imagines morti, the big star designers (plantin, manutius, ratdolt,  tory). then we discussed the types of the renaissance: tory and manutius' "new" roman, the bembo, the garamond, the bastarda. (we'll come back to tyndale's bible, maps and vesalius next week).

what's your take?

Erhardt Ratdolt's Euclid's Elements of Geometry

Erhardt Ratdolt's Euclid's Elements of Geometry (1482), a dazzling white-on-black design brackets the text, and incredible fine line diagrams in the wide margin visually define Euclid's terms.This is an interesting page on Ratdolt. Here the borders and initials are used as design elements. Pictor (Bernard Mahler) is supposed to be the designer. But ornamentation aside, Ratdolt is still aware that geometry is the main design here. 

your turn #1

nice class! for my first lecture i tried to present "design" as a more comprehensive way of life. we need to revise our preconceptions and start looking at these "samples" from the past not as archaic, worn-out objects, but instead as wonderful examples of how we design our lives. 

by the way, read the last posts, from "decretals" on, which i didn't cover.

remember, your comment (150 word minimum) can deal with any theme covered in my lecture. you can comment using your google id, but remember to "sign" at the bottom of your comment. if you post anonymously (without an id) you should sign your name as well.

advice: it's better to write your comment in a "word" file, save it and then just cut and paste it on the comment box when you're ready to post. in case something could happen while trying to post and you end up loosing your comment after having invested time and effort.

go ahead!

the new power of arthoodication?

Stephen Kornhauser’s glass jar of cotton balls used to clean the museum’s Jean Arp 

sculpture 

the new power of arthoodication at m. bourbaki:

The general purpose of curators and critics is to enthuse the public the into consuming art. Art is culture. Culture is good for you. But culture, as Donna Haraway suggests, can be a logic of "domination of a necessary but dangerous instinctual nature." Unfortunately, artists, the other party in this game, are too concerned mimicking & negotiating with what's already sanctioned out there in their Weltanschauung (incidentally, a systemic organism digesting symbols in the same redundant manner). The jar exhibits a categorical problem: How to explain this uncanny passage from objecthood-to-arthood unless it undergoes a process of arthoodication? Is it really about a magic-friction-factor? Is it proximity of contact or q-entanglement whereby the cotton balls and Jean Arp's museum sculpture become a part of the same phenomenon?). 

P.L.E.A.S.E. don't forget the student evaluations!

Each year you have the opportunity to evaluate our job. The evaluations for ARH 346 are up. Don't forget to leave your opinion. Thank you.

See you next week.  

The child consumer

Are children under excessive commercial pressure to be seen buying and wearing fashionable brands?

YES. The average American child watches an estimate between 25,000 to 40,000 television commercials per year. In the UK, it is about 10,000 $15-17 billion is spent by companies advertising to children in the US. Over $4 billion was spent in 2009 by the fast food industry alone. The marketing seems to be worth it. For example, Teens in the US spend around $160 billion a year Children (up to 11) spend around $18 billion a year “Tweens” (8-12 year olds) “heavily influence” more than $30 billion in other spending by parents, and “80 percent of all global brands now deploy a ‘tween strategy.’” Children (under 12) and teens influence parental purchases totaling over $130-670 billion a year. 

The Journal of the American Medical Association has said that children between the ages of two and seventeen watch an annual average of 15,000 to 18,000 hours of television, compared with 12,000 hours spent per year in school. Children are also major targets for TV advertising, whose impact is greater than usual because there is an apparent lessening of influence by parents and others in the older generation.… According to the [Committee on Communications of the American Academy of Pediatrics], children under the age of two should not watch television at all because at that age, brain development depends heavily on real human interactions.

A nice website here.

End of suburbia

You can watch the whole documentary here.

First World vs. Third World realities

Water predicament

Where does our dumping go?

Try to make buildings imitate ecosystems

Issues in Contemporary Design

Manipulation
Sustainable design
Waste and waste management
Social consciousness
Buddhist Economics (Gross National Happiness)
Poverty
Critical design
Environmental design
Recycling
Propaganda
Business ethics
Occupational safety
Design redundancy
Consumer protection
Social engineering
Obsolescence

Suburban sprawl

Green Design

Overconsumption

Your turn #11

Raoul Ubac, 1910-1985, via Juxtapoz.

What do you have in mind? Think outside the box.

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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?