tx for the company

urs fischer, in dubio pro reo, 2007

see you around. long live design!

Naohiro Ukawa

A jack of all trades and master at none, however, Naohiro Ukawa is an exception. His art combines sensuality of deep house, the experimentation of techno, the chaos of noise and the stylish cool of punk. Check some of Ukawa's videos here (Ukawa's Second from top marked with * for FinalExam).

your turn

strange world, jonathan calugi

your turn

your turn!

taken from AIGA's article on Criterion Collection

it's your turn

Roman Cieslewicz, Katastrofa, 1961

it's your turn

Rodchenko's photomontage of Mayakovsky (1923)

Gertrude Stein reading!

Digital advertising is 20!

Re-imagining advertising:

Jan van Krimpen

Above, Jan van Krimpen's pages from Deirdre and the Sons of Usnach, by Roland Holst, Paladiun Series, 1920. Van Krimpen received an art education at the academy of art at The Hague. An early interest in poetry led him in 1917 to publish the poetic works of his friends in a series for which he designed the format. He received a commission from the Dutch post office to draw the lettering for a special commemorative stamp to be printed by the prominent firm of Enschedé in 1923. The success of the design led Enschedé to invite him to design a new typeface for the firm.

The typeface he produced, Lutetia (the Roman name for Paris), was the official lettering for an exhibition of Dutch art in Paris in 1927, and its reception led to his lifelong association with the firm. In addition to Lutetia, van Krimpen's well-known faces include Antigone Greek (1927), Romanée (1928), Romulus (1931), Cancelleresca Bastarda (1935), and Spectrum (1943).

His types became well known in the United States through the Limited Editions Club and in England through the Nonesuch Press.

have a nice spring break!

if you have any questions about the midterm

Aida, 1915 by Marcelo Dudovich

post them here.

at the suggestion of a diligent student as to whether you should know the full name of an artist, my answer was: "of course." writing "morris" instead of "william morris" doesn't make any sense (there are thousands of morrises in england). sure, there are household names like gutenberg or picasso, but that isn't generally the norm.

Designing decadence

Egan Beresford, Flowers of Evil, 

It's difficult to grasp decadence without this provisional list of books and characters.

The Master:
Charles Baudelaire, Fleurs du Mal, (bilingual translation)

Pleasure & deviations:
Oscar Wilde, Portrait of Dorian Gray,
Andre Gide, The Immoralist,
Leopold Sacher Masoch, Venus in Furs,

Preciousness, snobism:
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice,
J. K. Huysmans, Against the Grain, 
Théophile Gautier, Mademoiselle Maupin,

Evil:
Henry James, The Turn of the Screw,
George de Maurier, Trilby,

Hysteria, phobia, ennui, pain:
Leo Tolstoi, Anna Karenina,
Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground,
Franz Kafka, The Trial,

Monsters:
Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis,

Dreams:
Sygmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams,

Artists:
Aubrey Beardsley, (illustrator)
Egan Beresford, (illustration)
Gustave Moreau, (painter)
Fernand Khnopff, (painter)
Gustav Klimt, (painter)
Rodolphe Bresdin, (engraver, illustrator)
Alfred Kubin, (illustrator)

your turn #5

to keep in mind

in my syllabus (on course contents and grades):  

Post comments amount to 25% of the final grade. 

your turn #4

honoré de balzac, photo by nadar

in-between epochs

another one by the talenccentric Mark Addison Smith

your turn #3

illustration adam lilfuchs fuchs

what is the dynamic between typeface and layout (grid)?

reinassance, dante's inferno

carl linnaeus, systema naturae, 1758

since the aesthetic effect of letterforms depends, in part of layout?

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!