Designers were quick to embrace the aesthetic of reportage

your turn #6

                                                        kandinsky, composition 5, 1911

Hi class. On my last lecture (before the midterm) I presented the first Twentieth-Century developments in design. We covered important designers, like Hoffman, Dudovich, Behrens, Klimt, the Viennese Secession, Simplicissimus, The Wërkstatte, Deutscher Werkbund, Adolf Loos, Gesamtkunstwerk, Symbolism, Cubism (Analytic and Collage), Der Blaue Reiter (Munich) and Die Brücke  (Dresden).

Go ahead, leave your comments, 

See you on Wednesday, March 30.

photography becomes womens' "hobby"

Early Kodak Camera, recommended for female cyclists (1880's)

your turn #5

Aubrey Beardsley, Illustration for Oscar Wilde's Salomé, 1894

dear class, there is plenty to talk about: Art Nouveau, Aestheticism, Pre-Raphaelites,  Arts and Craft, Gesamtkunstwerk, then the artists: Toorop, Wilde, Beardsley, Mucha, Livemont, Cheret, Gaudí, van de Velde, Charles Mackinstosh and Margaret McDonald, Morris, Thomas Nast, (even my arts & craft manifesto). remember, no echo chamber, research a bit, be original.

go ahead.

your turn #4

Chromolithographs above, by David Ferland, circa 1850

i had fun with your presentations. thanks! guess what, i'll bring your typeface projects to class next wednesday, so you can take pics & send them back to me for a digital exhibit here. 

we are approaching 19th century fin-de-siècle.  there's plenty to talk about yesterday's class: gutenberg, political satire (punch, charivari, puck), newspapers, postcards, children's books, daguerrotype, camera oscura, pictorialism, dana gibson, talbot's pencil of nature, 19th century fashion, the dandy, etc. 

pick a theme and develop it, no echo chamber, no derivative comments (be meaningful).

this is a history class. my focus is epochal & anthropological. the trend today is to revise history without proper focus. they miss the epoch's weltanschauung! our 2022 glasses don't work in 1822.  

click here for my discussion on the anthropology of myths (this is the deep level i referred to that we all share. cultural differences are very important, but they represent surface level. karl jung called this deep level collective unconscious.  

is punk the other "romantic"?

 
there are punk & romantic connections. like romantic, punk is an urban working class manifestation of informal anti-establishment sensibility. 

in the early 1970's british punks expressed their nihilistic views with the slogan drawn from the title of the sex pistols' song No Future. 

a bit anti-modern punk is nihilistic in that is not concerned for the present with a deep disaffection from "both middle and working class standards". punk nihilism was expressed in the use of more self-destructive, consciousness-obliterating substances like heroin.

trends include:

anarchism,
anti-authoritarianism,
environmentalism,
vegetarianism,
psycho-billy death-rock, horror punk, goth, etc.

the examiner (circa the spanish/american war)

Editorial cartoon by Leon Barritt for June 1898 issue of 'Vim' magazine, showing Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst both attired as the Yellow Kid comics character and competitively claiming ownership of the war.

The Yellow Press, an illustration from 1910 depicting William Randolph Hearst as a jester tossing newspapers with headlines such as “Appeals to Passion, Venom, Sensationalism, Attacks on Honest Officials, Strife, Distorted News, Personal Grievance, and Misrepresentation” to a crowd of eager readers.

Detail from Honor to McKinley! (1898), showing Pulitzer and Hearst, caricatured as a parrot and monkey respectively, battling it out amid a flurry of pages from the Yellow Press. The rest of the picture shows President McKinley below them ignoring their cries for war. 

Instead, he reads a paper entitled “The People of the United States have full confidence in your Patriotism, Integrity, & Bravery. They know you will act justly and wisely: decent press”. 

Atlas Joe, or, The Fearful Responsibilities of a Self-Appointed Manager of the Universe (1896), note the message hanging on the wall: “Our Motto – Sensation! Sensation! Sensation!!”

Uncle Sam’s Dream of Conquest and Carnage – Caused by Reading the Jingo Newspapers (1895)

do you know camera obscura?

principle of camera obscura and camera obscura box

light from an external scene passes through the hole and strikes a surface inside, where it is reproduced, inverted (thus upside-down), but with color and perspective preserved. the image can be projected onto paper, and can then be traced to produce a highly accurate representation.

vermeer amazing view of delft (above) was done using camera obscura.

or these drawings by canaletto:

printers learned their trade through an apprentice system, whereas training in the design of printed material was informal

1- newspapers are aimed at a broad spectrum of readers, 2- usually geographically defined, 3- some focus on groups of readers defined more by their interests than their location

there are daily and weekly business newspapers and sports newspapers.

more specialist still are some weekly newspapers, usually free and distributed within limited areas. these may serve communities as specific as certain immigrant populations, even the local gay community.

romanticism took flight, partly as a negative response to industrialization

 romantic landscape with ruined tower, thomas cole, 1832

lloyd's (the wall street journal of 18th century)

This is a 'Lloyd's List' of exchange rates, 1740. 

See that the exchange rates are given for individual ports rather than for countries. 

The prices of Bank (Bank of England), East India and South Sea stock are listed. The high tide is also noted. A bit rudimentary, but this is an early example of design for commerce!

the public sphere is this virtual arena where opinion is created and legitimized

the solid gray stream of news was soon broken into columns and then departments, separating local and foreign reports

the first newspaper according to modern definitions was the Strasbourg Relation, in the early 17th century. 

the term newspaper became common in the 17th century, but germans had newspapers since the 16th century: 

1- they were printed & dated, 

2- appeared at regular and frequent publication intervals, 

3- and included a variety of news items (unlike single item news mentioned above).

steps in the process of modern paper

paper remained expensive through the centuries, until the advent of steam-driven paper making machines in the 19th century, which could make paper with fibres from wood pulp. 

although older machines pre-dated it, the Fourdrinier papermaking machine became the basis for most modern papermaking. Nicholas Louis Robert of Essonnes, France, was granted a patent for a continuous paper making machine in 1799. At the time he was working for Leger Didot with whom he quarrelled over the ownership of the invention. Didot sent his brother-in-law, John Gamble, to meet Sealy and Henry Fourdrinier, stationers of London, who agreed to finance the project. 

here are the steps:

1. PULPING-forming section, commonly called the wet end, is a continuous rotating wire mesh which removes water from the paper by sucking it out of suspension via vacuum.

2. press section, where the wet fibre web passes between large rolls loaded under high pressure to squeeze out as much water as possible.

3. drying section, where the pressed sheet passes partly around, in a serpentine manner, a series of steam heated drying cylinders. 

4. size-press section, where the semi-dried paper is applied with a thin layer of starch and/ or other chemicals to improve several paper properties reduce dusting and air permeability, increase stiffness, bursting strength and short span compression.

5. calender section: where the dried paper is smoothened under high loading and pressure. only one nip (where the sheet is pressed between two rolls) is necessary in order to hold the sheet, which shrinks through the drying section and is held in tension between the press section (or breaker stack if used) and the calender. extra nips give more smoothing, but at some expense to paper strength.

6. reel section, where paper coming out of the machine is wound onto individual spools for further processing.

Voila!

your turn #3 (typeface is to design what the atom is to physics)

gazetta di mantova, 1664 the oldest surviving newspaper

it was good to meet and get a feel of the class. nothing like the real thing. 

we left the low middle ages, moved to high middle ages, right now bordering pre-renaissance. we're at the point of Gutenberg's pivotal invention. the epoch is pregnant for a paradigm shift. 

again: pick a theme and develop it. look for something that strikes your fancy (the more particular the better). research. no echo chamber. 

this is a history class. we look at the past to learn about the present.   

1. exhibit utmost curiosity (you absorb everything) 

2. don't judge (your 2022 glasses don't work)

3. immerse yourself with the common folk doing what they do on a daily basis (start from the bottom to understand the top) 

design is about marks. graphic design's mark is, well, typeface. thus,

typeface is to design what the atom is to physics.

italics are cheaper! (and sort of look greek)

compare roman capitals with manutius' italics

the main advantage of Manutius's italics is that the new character is economical. 

why? italics are a little tighter than the traditional roman. italics allow the printer to save space and money on the cost of a book.

however, in the spirit of Manutius, italics should imitate the Greek writing of the time, which was decorated with many ligatures and other frills. WHY? 

they were very appreciated in Venice. WHY?

Venetian is a romance language with familiar proximity to Greek and Albanian! roman italics was the character used in "Virgil," published in 1501 by Manutius.

 

GPS as mapping territory

we're still fascinated with maps, though they've gotten way smaller. our world is also smaller and faster. we use GPS technology.

don't forget, GPS is design. 

 

the diagram above is quite abstract, this is not what you see on your application. which is more like a MAP-TERRITORY RELATION.

 

the map–territory relation describes the relationship between an object (the actual site) and a representation of that object (on your GPS), 

your present GPS receiver shows:

*maps (including street maps, displayed in human readable format via text or in a graphical format),
*turn-by-turn navigation directions to a human in charge of a vehicle or vessel via text or speech, *directions fed directly to an autonomous vehicle such as a robotic probe,
*traffic congestion maps (depicting either historical or real time data) and
*suggested alternative directions,
*information on nearby amenities such as restaurants, fueling stations, and tourist attractions.

would you go back to traditional maps if need be?

I gave them up. 

your turn #2

codex gigas, the devil, 12th century bohemia (the codex gigas is known as the devil's bible) 

hi class. pick a post, theme, idea, from yesterday's class and develop it.  remember: be original. do your own search, no idle talk, no echo chamber. avoid repeating what someone else posted, unless you take it someplace else. 

some general points:

1- history is about epochs, epochs are self-contained (@ weltanschauung level). say, you want to understand gothic style, circa 1222. why do you see a pointed arch in churches along with pointed rib vaults and flying buttresses and stained glass windows? first thing, leave your 2022 glasses behind. what works in 2022 is a hindrance in 1222. learn the language, eat the food, smell the air, make friends, learn the rituals & make no judgment. becoming a 1222 folk yourself is the only way to learn. surprise! as you make your way back you learn 2022 doesn't feel the same anymore. 

2- no epochal process is planned by human agency. we're inside the process ourselves and cannot cherrypick. whatever happens comes in an avalanche already above us. there's so much we carry from ancestors that we can't even begin to fathom. 

3- in art and design, it's THE MARK that changes --all by itself-- as it's repeated over and over. 

4- it's time to think of typeface! (all objets have --at least two-- faces, you just have to find them). 

go ahead.

unexpected family ties: new roman --> uncial --> carolingian --> old english --> bastarda

New Roman

we know that uncial (a majuscule) develops from Old Roman cursive. 

actually what happens above is that the stroke of the letter is facilitated by vellum (i.e., an example where technology creates style) a new material (papyrus made characters more angular). 

the rest is a matter of following convention that is taken to be in good taste (just like 19th century calligraphy vs. our "to each its own" handwriting).

see how the font gets more slender and taller from the visigothic on to the textura quadrata to change again to humanist and times.  

which letters drive the elongation? 

clearly "b" "d" "h""l" masts! & "q" "p" descenders, the "o" becomes eliptical, as well as the loops, as if the typeface is squeezed from both sides.   

the pair visigothic-luxeuil gets taller to get flat again with beneventan-caroline-insular to change again with protogothic-textura quadrata-fraktur.

"a" is a simple loop open at the top, "b" appears to be back to front as the bow is on the left. "u" and "v" are identical and consist of a particularly insignificant little bent line. 

Certain letters show the particular forms that would become features of the early medieval book scripts, such as the raised "e," long s and open "g" with no closed loops. There are two forms of "n," this particular hand retaining a majuscule N in most cases.

Greek Uncial? circa. 800 aD

Perhaps developing in second half of the third century, the uncial script gains popularity during the fourth century. Significantly a large number of the extant uncial texts were Christian manuscripts. Uncial would supplant the rustic capitals as the most popular script from the fifth century.

Carolingian minuscules 10th century aD.

Old English, insular miniscule, 12th century. This document is a charter or writ of Henry I confirming lands and privileges to the monks of Christ Church, Canterbury

Derived from both Gothic Textura and cursive hands, this particular example of Bastarda is quite formal and precise, and although the letters sometimes touch within the words, it is not cursive as each is written separately. It looks like a book hand, although in this instance it is used on a very formal and elaborate document.

forgot to address this... uppercase vs. lowercase (my preference)

 half uncials or lower case

we know the aesthetics of hanlf-uncials (minuscules) hark back to stroke & surface: quick reed pen ink trace over parchment.

parchment are pieces of papyrus "cut"  in oblogn pieces and put together. this act of cutting and piecing together are the proto-books of today (people actually carried a bunch of pieces, since sheets may slip from the bunch the next step was to saw them together in a loose bind).
 
lower case is a mark of brevity & legibility. 

here is the family:

french lower case (merovingian)

 

iberic lower case (visigothic)

italian lower case (the beneventan in southern italy)

late roman cursive

irish "insular" lowercase 

brevity means vernacular, merchant, petit-burgeois (not a bad word yet), secular, science, young. 

see how grammar is influenced by aesthetics. capital letters are places in a syntactic paragraph. later, they become codified "marks" for proper noun, proper adjective, first person pronouns and interjections. usage determines differentiation.

it was a pleasure to have you in my class!

photo: kiripi katembo

trends of graphic design for 2021

 click here for more information, 

DESIGN MANIFESTO

alFredoTriFf

Within the last ten years the phenomenon of design has exploded¹. First, there is “the Bilbao effect” and its conspicuous byproduct, the “starchitect” (with brand names, such as Gehry, Koolhaas, de Meuron, Hadid, Libeskind et. al.). They are a galvanizing force behind de$$ign’s vicious cycle of manufacture, distribution and consumption. Articles like Newsweek’s “The Design Dozen” and Time Magazine’s “Design 100” with a list of “virtuosos,” have further legitimized de$$ign’s new stars.

De$ign is presented as business news in Design Week, or as avant-garde cultural activity in Wallpaper. Magazines like Casabella, Dwell, Interior Design and Experimenta, display hundreds of color-saturated photos of the most-up-to-date artifacts and gadgets positioned in sumptuous settings. There is a plethora of TV home-improvement shows representing design as a process of decision-making and implementation. To boot, there are design fairs and car and boat shows, advertising the technological miracles of global post-capitalism.

Few professions in the post-industrialized world have grown in terms of economic presence and cultural import as de$$ign has in the past decade. 

De$$ign has moved into academia, with scholastic journals and conference circuits, and has shaped interdisciplinary areas where art, anthropology, ethnography and technology converge.²

For a moment, let’s put aside de$$ign’s undeniable clout and global mystique. Let’s forget the extraordinary seduction of its cultural rituals and its libidinal enchantment. Is it possible that this explosion of de$$ign represents, as Barry Bergdoll, Chief Curator of Design at MoMA puts it, “a sophisticated technique of marketing more than the horizons of new knowledge? 

Why not see de$$ign as a corporate strategy to plan and execute urban environments, profitable use of technologies and the proliferation of communication information?

CONTRA DE$$IGN

* De$$ign has become surface, its products immaterial, informational and entertaining; a spectacle, which is key to post-capitalist consumption.³

* You thought de$$ign was unbiased? De$$ign expresses more desire than real needs.⁴

* We’re living through a de$$ign impasse.⁵

* Though de$$ign keeps morphing from “metaphysical” to “symbolic” to “artistic” to “functional” to “spectacle,” it cannot keep up with the ideology of capitalism.⁶

* De$$ign’s policy of “planned obsolescence” is obsolete.⁷ 

* De$$ign's shortermism pollutes the mind.⁸

* De$$ign discourse -and practice- is viciously circular. That is, we de$$ign not for living, but for entertainment. ⁹

* De$$ign dwells in a state of aesthetic fetishism.¹⁰

* De$$ign keeps promising what cannot deliver.¹¹

* Can de$$ign confront its self-deception and fix itself? ¹²

FOR DESIGN

* De$$ign can transform itself, not by a revolution from within, but by piecemeal increments.¹³

* De$$ign becomes design when it manufactures cleaner, energy-efficient, quieter, smart, safe, lasting, and aesthetically-appealing products.¹⁴

* Design should apply more lessons from natural systems to the design of environments for the people.¹⁵

* The design profession needs more women designers.¹⁶

* Designers should be proactive and urbanenvironmentally committed.¹⁷

* Design needs to become emotional, diverse and enhancing.¹⁸

* Designers can, and should, explore traditional materials intelligently.¹⁹

___________________________________
¹ “De$$ign,” as opposed to “design,” the former a loaded term, which betrays the very principles on which it was founded by the pioneers of the Arts and Crafts Movement.
² Only in Europe by the end of the 1990’s there were around 62,000 design students specializing in universities where over 900 courses were available. Netherland Design Institute, Design Across Europe (1998). China has seen a 23% increase in enrollment in art and design between 2001-2003.
³To consume: To make and render obsolescence; to waste or squander; to use up. 
⁴Advertising (i.e. graphic de$$ign) plays a crucial role in consumerism by mediating between manufacturers, retailers and the public. Advertisements provide goods with a context (usually mythical). Richard Bolton explains: “We’re inundated with a parade of spectacles (…) these do not merely distract us from crisis and conflict: they absorb the conflict.” Richard Bolton, “Architecture and Cognac” in Design After Modernism, 1989.
⁵In this sense (post) post-modernism differs from its predecessor only in that our present stage is (according to critic Jean Baudrillard) “more obscene.” Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci has a similar point: “The crisis consists in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” Perry Anderson’s “Modernity and Revolution,” New Left Review, 144, London, 1984.
⁶According to Marshall Berman in All That is Solid Melts into Air, the problem with futuristic modernism is that brilliant machines and mechanical systems play all the leading roles so, there is little left to human agency.
⁷Designer George Nelson pronounced the principle in 1956: “What we need is more obsolescence.” Industrial Design, No. 6 (1956). Harley Earl, father of the “dream car” agreed. His motto: “Our job is to hasten obsolescence.”
⁸Professor Alisdair Fuad-Luke proposes that de$$ign should temporarily put economic factors to one side while reconsidering the contemporary role of design in meeting the real needs of people and the environment. Fuad-Luke defends “slow design” as a means to refocus on anthropocentric (individual + socio-cultural community) and environmental welfare. Alastair Fuad-Luke, ecoDesign: The Sourcebook (Chronicle Books, 2006).
⁹De$$ign has gotten so entangled with advertising that it advertises itself. What can be expected of the design practice when after a De$$ign show at MoMA, one can buy the same relic being exhibited at the museum’s de$$ign store? In addition, much of the history of modern design has been written and disseminated to support De$$ign. The heroes (mostly men) create products for a largely uninformed public. Nikolaus Pevsner’s Pioneers of the Modern Movement (1936) established the canon of the discipline. The superstar designers’ profiles we read about in magazines follow this sort of pevsnerist heroic rhetoric.
¹⁰ In his Critique of Commodity Aesthetics (University of Minnesota, 1986), Wolfgang Fritz Haug argues that artifacts in the market “promise a use-value once they are sold,” i.e., they have to appear useful before they actually are. There is a deeper aesthetic anesthetization when use-value becomes beautiful. Take Philippe Stark’s Juicy Salif, a lemon squeezer, which sells for almost $80, which according to its designer, “is not such a good lemon squeezer, but that’s not its only function.” Juicy Salif’s other -and most important function- is aesthetic fetishism.
¹¹“At present, most Asians see First World technology and consumerism as handmaidens of design and harbingers of modernity: They hope to implement this combination of their soils and achieve comparable results.” This is the impending problem of China’s development and the danger it poses (given its size) for the rest of the world. “Design, Development and Cultural Legacies,” Rajeshwari Ghose, in The Idea of Design, by Victor Margolin and Richard Buchanan, MIT, 1995.
¹² The major deception of de$$ign lies in the constant deferral of a serious social, ecological investigation of its practice.
¹³ This manifesto sets a midway course between self-indulgence and radicalism. It follows professor Hilary Putnam’s idea of “social engineering,” i.e., the gradual changing our socio-political landscape by trial-and-error. It seems a better method than Modernism’s grandiose sweeping measures.
¹⁴ This is the general premise behind books such as E.F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful, Victor Papanek’s Design for the Real World and Citizen Designer: Perspectives on Design Responsibility by Steven Heller and Veronique Vienne.
¹⁵ Design (which can be applied to any structure) should bring building design, energy efficiency, indoor environmental quality, material selection; site planning, resource efficiency, and water use to boost energy savings. See Chapter 2 of Nigel Whiteley’s Design For Society (Reaktion Books, 1993).
¹⁶ When women design products, they are sometimes radically different from those made by men. For instance, research done on women’s criteria for car design reveals emphasis on function, ergonomics and safety (this is at odds with the advertised status of the male ego). “The Forgotten Dimension: Women, Design and Manufacture,” Margaret Bruce, Feminist Art News, (December, 1985).
¹⁷ We face the crime in urban neighborhoods and communities, the loss of biological diversity, the damage to fragile landscapes, urban sprawl, polluted air, acid rain, noise pollution, global warming, the destruction of an extensive national railway system.
¹⁸ Design is seen here an opportunity to enhance the human spirit. Team ZOO/ Atelier ZÖ: Theories and Manifestos of Contemporary Architecture, edited by Carl Jencks and Karl Kropf (Academy Editions, 1999).
¹⁹ Here are some examples: The LifeStraw, designed to turn any surface water into drinking water, used in Ghana, Nigeria, Pakistan and Uganda. 2- The Pot-in-Pot Cooler, a small earthenware pot nestling inside a larger one with wet sand filling the space in between, used in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Eritrea and Ethiopia. 3- One Laptop Per Child, a not-profit initiative led by Nicholas Negroponte of MIT Media Lab. Now being tested in Nigeria and Brazil, costing $150. 4- The Global Village Shelter, prefabricated in biodegradable material, shipped flat and requiring no tools to assemble. It has already provided emergency shelter for disaster victims in Afghanistan, Grenada, Pakistan, and for those of Hurricane Katrina in the US.

dear arh 346 class, i've been informed that student evaluations will be open soon,

this is important for the school, for you and for me. 

don't forget to rate my performance. 

List of images for final exam, spring 2024

 click here for list of images,

032c, magazine design for a contemporary culture

032c is a contemporary culture magazine that fiercely believes in the intelligence of its readers, and rises to the challenge of surprising them. Published twice a year, it is both timely and timeless—a celebration of and for the most cutting-edge in art, culture, and fashion.

 The quote, above, taken from the wonderful 032c Website.

032c is a bi-annual contemporary culture magazine at the intersections of fashion, art and politics. The magazine has been considered to be "dedicated to the celebration of ideas" by i-D, "revue ultra-pointue" by French Vogue, or simply as "the Berlin magazine that propogates an aesthetic of brutal elegance" by Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. "The magazine fuses art and architecture, literature, urban studies and fashion in ways", states New York Times, "that can make one forget how depressing a visit to a newsstand has become."