Saul Bass- Style is Substance

your turn #8

more stuff to talk about: you have it all there, on our blog's right hand side (of published posts, from your turn #7, up to "what's in a logo" post).  

go ahead. & please, make your comment meaningful.  

Bob Noorda & Vignelli's signage for New York Transit (1960s)

Though they have been modified over the years, the signs New York subway riders see today are essentially the work of Mr. Noorda and Mr. Vignelli, from the bold, clean type to the color coding used to identify the system’s many train lines.

What do we see?  

1- identifiable codes,
2- few words,
3- friendly, consistent colors,
4- functionality,
5- familiarity

Lester Beall (1950s)

geometric, simple, direct, photo, primary colors.

even in the 1950s Beall didn't change much.

graphic designers took on the "intangible" and lent it visual form

Will Burtin, cooper corporation, 1950s

Here technology and human figures are compared. Bodies compared with machines, brains with computers. Technological intervention at a microscope placed test-tube babies and miracle cures in the same world as polymers. All had properties unheard of before synthetic processing. Visualizing scientific processes was critical in the context of research where the ability to conceptualize a problem was often directly related to the model according to which it could be represented. Burtin's capacity to design scientific findings for broad public consumption accounted for the wide circulation of his imagery.

your turn #7

 

Dorothea Tanning, Family Portrait, 1954

we had a nice class this wednesday. we're moving on, covering a veritable explosion of movements in the first half-century (almost at the point of world-war two): 

we discussed the expressionist graphic contribution, Futurism (with Depero & Marinetti's work), Constructivism (Rodchenko, Moholy Nagy), Paul Klee, DADA and its two graphic developments (political and metaphysical --though I didn't address Max Ernst, will do next week), BAUHAUS (and try to cover some of its many facets), Neue Typographie, German New Objectivity, Plakatstil, 

go ahead. please, no echo chamber & research your point.      

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.