Designers presentations

Kyle Cooper

Cooper studied at Yale School of Art under Paul Rand, who influenced his studies and design. His style is artistic and abstract but very versatile, staying true to each individual film. Some of the films he did title sequences on include Se7en, Spider-Man, Dawn of the Dead, and Curious George. He experiments with playful typography in the sequences a lot. He also does animation for TV spots on top of the many movie projects that he does.

 

Shepard Fairey

Fairey started designing as a teenager, even designing skateboards, and then went to RISD after high school. His style is similar to art deco and incorporates sunbursts, dark colors, hidden messages (political, etc.), bold colors and sans serif fonts. He designed many posters, like his “Andre the Giant”, Obey, Obama, and Black Sabbath posters. He wants people to question his work, especially his Obey posters, to question things in life like authority that we subscribe to. 

5/13 designers

Clement Mok
Mok began in the 1980s working for Apple, and was able to help create some of the applications that we use today. Clement Mok Design was his own company that he opened after his career with Mac. He was a designer, publisher, web developer, and software developer who knew how to design both with and without a computer. Geometric lines, bold colors, and symbolic/abstract components are a big part of his style. He has been focusing on web design over the past decade or so. He is the co-creator of AIGA, his artwork has been featured all over the world, and he has worked for many Fortune 500 companies.

Leo Burnett
Burnett is a famous copywriter and advertising executive who is famous for creating many company mascots like the Marlboro Man and more. He began his own company in 1935 in Chicago and ran it successfully until he retired in the 1960s. Some of his more famous icons are Tony the Tiger, the Pillsbury Dough Boy and the Starkist Tuna.

Designers - Monday 5/11

Tibor Kalman

Kalman had a hard childhood and was isolated because he was originally from Hungary, but this only helped his work. He was a social activist and liked to design things to help social issues. He once designed a flyer about Esprit and their shady practices in clothing manufacturing. In 1979, he opened the M&Co. design firm with his wife in New York City, which worked on magazines, film titles and books mainly. Kalman became famous for his Talking Heads CD cover, which pushed the conventions of design and typography, elements of his style that were pretty consistently pushed in his other work. He worked on Colors Magazine also to help promote his social views to the public on women’s rights, race, and other issues.

 

David Carson

Carson is widely known for his innovative designs, experimenting with typography, and his cluttered, unstructured style. He didn’t learn about the rules of design, but instead focused on an emotional impact, not caring about breaking the rules. He was mostly self-taught, and his designs focused on one big idea, used asymmetrical layouts, had intentional mistakes, no grid and varying typefaces and sizes. As a pro surfer, it is easy to see the influence the laid back lifestyle has on his work.

 

Matthew Carter

Carter is seen as the “father of typography.” His own father was a typographer, and working with him greatly influenced him. By the time he was 30, he was doing freelance typography work. With technology rapidly changing, his work went digital. In 1991 he started Carter & Cone Inc., a typography foundry. He is famous for creating Bell Centennial, the phonebook typeface, and Verdana for Microsoft. He also is famous for creating ink traps in letterforms, which allows low-quality printing without bleeding letterforms that would stay legible.

Designers - Friday

Neville Brody

Early in his life, professors didn’t approve of Brody’s style because it reflected the rebellion of the punk movement too much. Upon graduation, he found his niche in the music industry working for several labels designing CD covers, posters, etc. He quickly moved up in the world and became the art director of Face magazine after just two years. His work there made him finally be recognized as an influential designer. He also started Fuse magazine with several other designers, and in 1988 the world’s best selling graphic design book was published, a book all about Brody as a designer. His work uses a lot of contrasting colors that pop off each other, as well as playful, inventive use of typography.

  

Art Chantry

Chantry was influenced by his grungy childhood in southern Washington, growing up poor with his mother after they left his abusive father. He was also influenced growing up in the 1960s by rock and roll, psychedelic spirit and punk. He avoided technology and instead he uses a lot of found imagery, altering it and incorporating it into his designs. He liked to manipulate materials by hand, and used many various typefaces and even their woodblock forms.

  

Storm Thorgerson

Storm uses a lot of layered imagery and creative photography, and his most well-known projects are CD covers from the 60s and on. He worked a lot for Pink Floyd and his Dark Side of the Moon cover is a famous piece. Many of his designs featured a large, central object with a smaller object next to it to create tension and questioning. 

Designer Presentations

April Greenman

Growing up, April was supported by her parents and great aunt and inspired by their teachings. Her mother taught her about dancing, which in turn taught her lessons about not “faking” anything, which led her to prove herself in design later. Likewise, her aunt taught her to work hard for her dreams, and this hard work made her a success in the design world. She went to school at RISD, then the Kansas City Art Institute, and finally the Basel School of Design in Switzerland. She learned about New Wave design, which greatly influenced her work by playing with the weight, space, size and angle of typography, which gave dimension to her designs. She later taught at Cal Arts and now owns her own design business.

 

Milton Glaser

Glaser when to an art high school and college and then studied in Italy on a Fulbright scholarship afterwards. He created Push Pin Studios with three other designer friends in 1954 and was President for 20 years. In 1968 he founded New York Magazine, which became a model for many magazines. In 1974 he founded his own business, Milton Glaser Inc., and then in 1983 he also founded WBMG studio. In the 50s, his work was direct, simple and original; in the 60s it was characterized by contour lines and flat shapes; in the 80s and 90s he explored illusion and dimension.

 

Seymour Chwast

Chwast enjoyed using illustration, woodcuts, design and speedball pen and ink. He was a part of the Push Pin Studio and helped create the Push Pin Almanac. He was responsible for many poster designs, which were his favorite thing to design because he liked the explore the interaction between type and image. He also wrote and illustrated a number of children’s books.

Thesis statement

Stefan Sagmeister is a world-renowned innovative and influential designer who allows his soul to shine through his work, reflecting his personality while still communicating effectively.

Psychedelic Posters

“Poster mania” took place in the 1960s as an American poster craze that embraced the social activist spirit of the young nation. Its grassroots beginnings came from self-trained designers and artists who gathered inspiration from art nouveau, comic book, and pop art, among other art movements. These posters used flowing curves, recycled images from popular culture, intense colors, swirling imagery and warped letterforms. The posters related “anti-establishment values” and commented on social movements like civil rights, the Vietnam War, the women’s liberation and the search for alternate lifestyles. Artist Peter Max (with his “Love” poster), and David Lane (with his symmetrical, contour, simple lined posters) were two of the influential poster designers of the psychedelic poster mania.

I really liked the flowing nature of these posters and how well they represent the era that they were created in. The colors and visual vibration resonate with the “psychedelic mentality” of the public that were viewing the posters. The imagery and color really helped to convey the mentality.

I just wish that there were more recognizable poster examples given in the book; or from sources that we would recognize, like propaganda for the Rolling Stones, etc.

Ch. 21 Conceptual Image

Chapter 21, "The Conceptual Image" is about an approach that came from Poland, United States, Germany and Cuba. In Poland, after WWII began, the design community basically came to an end until Communism was established. However, only state-controlled institutions and industries requested design work. Trepowski was a famous Polish poster designer because he was able to reduce imagery and words into a succinct statement. Tomaszewski was famous because after all of the somber and darker posters, he re-embraced a brighter, positive, colorful world of poster design. Jerzy Janiszewski was also an important figure because of his Solidarity logo design, which was a symbol worldwide for struggle versus oppression.
In America, photography began to replace illustration beginning in the 1950s. A more conceptual approach was then born for illustration; the “Push Pin” designs expressed an openness and reinterpretation of visual imagery, as well as an integration of words and image into a total design. Chwast and Glaser were two of the influential artists of this time with their experimental magazine, poster designs, and Glaser’s contoured, flat shapes of color with black outlines. These two also invented some novelty display faces. In 1980, design finally became a truly national profession for Americans.

I was really impressed with the Poland school of design and the community that outlasted the Communist reign and restrictions. I think it shows that design is an important part of this world if it could outlast the evil of those days, as well as keep a bond between professionals and create a community for them, even when illegal (Solidarity).

The question I have is about the advancement of illustration in the US after the 1950s. I can see the uniqueness of Glaser’s illustration, using black contour lines and flat colors; is this what the evolution was, or were there other major advances in illustration?

(I presented Chapter 20.)

Ch. 18 & 19

Chapter 18, The International Typographic Style, is about the 1950s movement that came out of Switzerland and Germany, also known less formally as Swiss design. These designs were asymmetrical yet very organized on a mathematically-structured grid. Objective design and copywriting did not put exaggerated claims on the design either. These designs also typically used sans-serif typography, set in flush left/ragged right paragraphs. It was seen as progressive design that was socially important. Ernst Keller set the "standard of excellence" for Swiss design, and the Basel School of Design was a major influence in its geometrically-based curriculum. Many widely-used fonts came out of this design time, too, such as Univers (by Frutiger), Helvetica (Hoffman & Miedinger) and Palatino, Melior and Optima (Zapf). The design style caught on quickly, becoming widely used in the 1960s corporate and industrial graphics, specifically by MIT. 

Chapter 19 is about The New York School, the influence of modern art/Swiss design on American design from about the 1940s-1970s. Paul Rand was a major influence, putting his knowledge of the modern movement into major graphic design. He designed many magazine covers, reducing the design to the symbolic essence that he wanted to convey--he used universal, ordinary signs and symbols to translate his visual ideas, and often used juxtaposition of  colors, ideas, or imagery to make a statement. Lustig, another important designer, used symbolic imagery to convey an essence of the contents of a book on its book cover. Yale University School of Art also had a major influence at this time, with Josef Albers as the director of the art school, and Eisenman as the director of the graphic design program. George Lois was a master at this time of completely integrating visual and verbal design, which he executed on many Esquire magazine covers, among other things. 

What I found most interesting in this chapter was that figurative typography was just emerging. Gene Federico was one of the first graphic designers at this time to use letterforms as imagery. Type also finally began to have connotative meaning in compositions as well. 

One question I have is, why did it take so long for typography to be used as connotative expression? Couldn't the Dada or futurism compositions be considered exploration of connotative typography? 

Weekly Sketches

Once again, I redesigned the Heinz ketchup label. The first design is inspired by Peter Behrens’ design in the early 1900s. His designs were very structured and geometrical, so I changed the shape of the label itself to be a rectangle with 90 degree angles, and then used linear elements as well as circles. I used the circles, which I would make red (to echo the image of a tomato) to hold each letter of the word ‘Heinz.’ I then made the bottom portion of the label primarily circular, but still intersected with some linear elements. Overall, the design is clean and neat and geometrical, like Behrens’ work. As for typography, Behrens used a bracketed serif font; on this matter, I would depart from his influence and use a simple, bold fat face. I think the thick, bold type would stand out more, as well as keep the clean and simple look of the label.

The second label is inspired by the Plakastil movement. The posters of this era used reductive imagery and flat planes of color. I mirrored these characteristics in my design by making the main imagery a giant red tomato with a simplified green leaf/stem on the top. Plakastil experimented with placement of type somewhat, so I aligned “Heinz” on the curve of the tomato to make the type and imagery work together. I think I would use a fancier font for this design, as Plakastil posters also experimented with sometimes.

3/29

The poster that I found had the most emotional impact on me was this poster:
http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Bravery-Posters_i372196_.htm
It is a poster of a soldier on the ground pointing his gun outwards, towards the viewer. The picture is lifelike and realistic, this is what the soldier must do--and seeing that is emotional enough. But on top of that, the gun is aimed at the viewer, which gives the feeling of being under fire, or at the wrong side of the gun. It makes me very uncomfortable to look at the poster because I feel like I am about to be shot down.

Sketches

This redesign of the Heinz ketchup bottle label is influenced by the Victorian era. I wanted to use typography that was more decorative and thick to make the “Heinz tomato ketchup” words stand out on the label, especially “Heinz.” I also put the word “tomato” on a curved angle, as that is representative of many Victorian era products as well. I carried the thicker, decorative type through to “America’s favorite” but on a smaller scale so that the phrase would not compete with brand name. Finally, I added a lot of embellishment through straight and scalloped lines around the border, as well as scrolls and curves in the white spaces to make sure I filled all of the larger areas of white, as Victorians did not like to leave any white space.

This second redesign of the Heinz ketchup bottle label is influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement. For typography, I was inspired by the woodtype typeface “Neuland” by Rudolf Koch, which was a slightly imperfect carved block letterface with very thick, even, angular strokes. I used smaller, contrasting types for less important words in the label to balance the thick, larger and more important words. Arts & Crafts design used very organic line-made elements, as well as celebrated nature, so I tried to do the same through using a tomato and vines to make linear elements that moved throughout the whole label, making it very busy, just like arts and crafts design. Also, the placement of the type was generally put near the top or bottom, so that is what I did with most of the type on the label; I wanted the Heinz pickle to stand out, though, so I put that more towards the center as one of the main elements as it is a brand identity for the company.

Readings 2/27

The American posters that were designed during WWII had many of the same elements that we have seen during these years when modern art influenced design. The posters are rather simplified and straightforward, with pistorial representations and limited color range (black, red, white, yellow, blue) to get direct points across. The war posters are especially dramatic as they hit on social, political and ethical nerves.
American Kitsch, on a completely different note, is the opposite of the simple designs that we have been seeing lately. Kitsch is often described as tacky, trashy, nostalgic or just plain junk. Some people can appreciate kitsch because they can find humor in how terrible looking a piece of art/collectible/carving/etc is. While I think this is funny to a point, I only think it'd be funny if someone else actually thought it was good art and one could laugh at how bad it really is. But who really knows what's good and bad?

In relation to WWII posters, I especially noticed Ben Shahn's poster about Nazi cruelty, which features a stiff man with a bag over his head and text saying that all the men of a Czech village have been killed. Even the brick wall in the background is striking as it brings about the imagery of the concentration camps and brick ovens to mind. It is an eerie and striking poster.

What are some other examples of kitsch? For some reason, I keep recalling to mind old garage sales I went to and all the old ugly figurines that I'd find at them and wonder who'd ever buy them.

Postcubist Pictorial Modernism

The reading for tomorrow’s class is about the postcubist pictorial modernist movement that occurred approximately around the 1920s-1930s. This movement, known as art deco, created graphic design that was geometrical and influenced by cubism, Bauhaus, the Vienna Secession, De Stijl and suprematism. One key graphic designer who used art deco was Edward McKnight Kauffer, who moved to Europe after seeing the Armory Show in Chicago in 1913 and decided that Americans were not yet attuned enough to the modern art movement. He applied modern art to design, particularly poster design, creating 141 posters for the London Underground. Other influential designers were A.M. Cassandre, who was a master of integrating words and imagery into one total design, and Jean Carlu, Paul Collin, Austin Cooper, and Joseph Binder.

I found it interesting that Cassandre went back to the Roman alphabet and tried to recreate it anew with the Peignot alphabet. Using all capitals as smaller forms for the lower-case letters was definitely different than people were used to reading as normal body text, it is not a comfortable way to read now that we are so used to reading lower-case letters. I think that is why Cassandre’s attempt to revive the Roman alphabet was unsuccessful, though it can be appreciated.

When did modern art/art deco finally come to America and influence the graphic designers here?

Chapter 15 Summary

Chapter 15: A New Language of Form

This chapter discusses how the Russian suprematism and communism influenced graphic design through the use of a “cubo-futurism” style that experimented with typography and design, as well as “suprematism.” This painting style of basic forms and pure color was founded by Kasimir Malevich, providing a new, nonobjective geometric abstraction to graphic design. Art was seen by constructivists as a social/political role, a duty for artists to fulfill. El Lissitzky was a large influence on constructivism; he created the PROUNS painting style of 3D illusions, which showed the “interchange between painting and architecture.” He also was an innovator of montage and photomontage. Rodchenko, Klutsis and Lebedev were three other influences on the constructivism movement. The De Stijl movement was launched in the Netherlands in 1917 by Theo van Doesburg. It was an abstract geometric style that its forerunners wanted to become a prototype for a new social order. Mondrian’s paintings were an influence on Doesburg and his movement, which saw abstraction as the way to an ultimate reality. It sought an expression of mathematical structure of the universe and universal harmony of nature.

What I found interesting about these two movements is again the use of primary colors and bold, flat shapes that has seemed to pervade the artistic influences of the movements before and perhaps after this movement. I wonder why they are so limiting in the use of the primary colors though. It is because printing cannot print many complex colors yet?

After Class 3/11

Victoria presented chapter 14, pictorial modernism, which was a movement during the late 18th century into the early 19th century. It was largely influenced by cultural influences like WWI, as well as other art movements like cubism and futurism. Pictorial modernism featured typographic interplay and layering, yet moved towards simplicity with bold primary colors and flat imagery. Lucian Bernhart was the “father” or pictorial modernism, introducing the German Plakatstil style that was born from a poster he submitted for a contest. The style eventually influenced similar styles in North America and Europe.

I think one of the most interesting things today was seeing the difference between the German patriotic posters during WWI and WWII as compared to the American war posters at the same time. Compared to each other, the German posters seemed a little ruthless and severe, while the American posters seemed quite naïve and childish.

The question I still have is did pictorial modernism stick mostly to posters, or was it used evenly over all areas of graphic design?

Chapter 14 Summary

Chapter 14: Pictorial Modernism
Pictorial modernism was a movement that occurred in the late 18th century-early 19th century. The movement was influenced by cubism, constructivism and futurism, as well as many other cultural influences. Pictorial modernists focused on using a main pictorial reference, particularly on posters, to communicate an effective and bold message to viewers. These posters also used small amounts of to-the-point text, bold and flat imagery, and bold primary colors like red, blue and yellow. Pryde and Nicholson influenced the style with poster collages in the later 1800s, using flat planes of cut-out colors and imagery. In Germany, the Plakatstil “poster style” movement was greatly influenced by young Bernhart, who brought the simplification of pictorial modernism into full force. These poster styles made a large influence during WWI, using stark colors, imagery and text to convey political propaganda to the public to get people to sign up for the war or contribute money and efforts to help.

I really liked and could appreciate the simplicity of the pictorial modernist posters. Things designed today tend to be so complex and say a lot, that these posters are refreshing to look at. I like that even when they are so simplistic, they still effectively communicate—perhaps even better than the more complex posters do.

I am confused about the real beginning artist of pictorial modernism. If Pryde and Nicholson began poster collages with the same characteristics as typical pictorial modernism, aren’t they technically the forerunners of the style?

3/9 After Class

Today in class we talked about Ch. 13, The Influence of Modern Art. Alexis's presentation covered the social, political and communication influences on the 20th century people. Cubism, started by Pablo Picasso, used geometric planes and cubes, spheres and cylinders and had influences of African tribal art. Futurism was concerned with noise, speed and motion, and used new ways of art and expression. Dadaism was a form of imagery and poetry combined through the use of imaginative typography; Duchamp was one of the most prominent artists. Surrealism was founded by Andre Breton and depicted a world of dreamy and imaginative imagery. Dali was one of the most popular surrealism artists, lending deep perspectives to her works of art. Finally, Expressionism was a movement that depicted subjective emotions and personal responses to subjects and events.

I think the most useful thing today was Alexis’s packets which contained various works of art that we identified as belonging to a movement that we went over in class. It was a useful exercise in applying what we learned, because even though you see the pictures in the book it helps more to kind of be “quizzed” on them. I may do this from now on for every chapter!

The question I have is, are cubism works of art not always super geometrical? The self-portrait that Picasso did of himself is angular and the lines are heavy, but it didn’t seem very cube-y to me, so it confused me.

Chapter 13 Summary

Chapter 13, "The Influence of Modern Art" covers Cubism, Futurism, the Dada movement, Surrealism and Expressionism.

Cubism is an approach to painting and design as an exploration of space and a way of expressing human emotions. Picasso was the first innovator of this style with his series of paintings that featured Iberian and African tribal art in relation to the human body, boldly chiseled geometric planes of African sculpture, masks and fabric. Cubism uses figures in abstracted geometric planes, breaks classic norms of the human figure, and a shifting of perspectives on 2D planes. This style pushed design into more geometric abstraction and created new attitudes about pictorial space.
Futurism is a style that is fueled by enthusiasm for war, the machine age, speed and modern life. It spawned new painterly typography, "parole in liberta," that emphasized the noise and speed of the words it was portraying through contrasts in color, size, shape, weight, typefaces, etc.
Dada was a reaction to the WWI carnage, so it was anti-art, anti-tradition and strongly negative and destructive and anarchistic. It focused on chance placement and absurd titles, showing art and life as processes of random choice combined with willful choice. Dadaists aimed to mock and defame a society gone insane. It contributed to the concept of letterforms as concrete visual shapes, not just phonetic symbols.
Surrealism, "super reality," was a way of thinking, knowing, feeling and living that had poetic faith in the human spirit; it searched for the "more real than the real world behind the real."
Expressionism depicted subjective emotions and personal responses to subjects and events, not an objective reality. Color, proportion and lines were exaggerated and distorted; colors were intense and often contrasted. It saw art as an ideal form, a beacon for change in social reform and human condition.

I was inspired by the abstract textures and forms that most of these movements used, although many times I just stare at a piece of art and can't see the correlation between the subject and what it is trying to convey. I think that was the point these artists were trying to make sometimes...?

How exactly did surrealism influence the graphic design world? To me, it seems more of an influence on philosophical thinking and writing more than an influence on painting, etc.

Weekly Image 3/8

I chose to feature Gustav Klimt's painting, "The Tree of Life," which was painted in 1909. You can find many pictures of it and other beautiful paintings of Klimt through a Google search, which is what I did.

What I find interesting about this piece is the mix of geometric and sharp, straight lines against the background of the tree, which is made of multiple geometric swirls of all different sizes. This shows the influence of the Glasgow style of the era: geometric, somewhat of an ethereal sense overall, as well as bold simple lines and flat planes of color in some of the geometric shapes. While it looks like there is a lot going on, the white background behind all the swirls creates a lighter, textured pattern that doesn't interfere with the very detailed human figures or ground from which they arise. The contrast in styles between the geometric ground and figures and the more organic tree also points to the symbolic imagery that was beginning to show in art and design at the beginning of 20th century design.