His GD 4-10

Swiss Design

Semiotics

Swiss Design+ International Typographic Style

“It is more than just grids and sans serif type”

-Visual unity (Gestalt) through asymmetrical composition

            -every aspect is important to communicating

-embraces objective photography

-Sans serif type, flush left, rag right

-mathematical grids

“We create things, therefore everything we is socially useful”

“By thinking of what you do as art, you make the world you live in a better place”

-More important than the appearance is the attitude!-

-“what if?”

Roots in destijl, Bauhaus, new typography

Max Bill (guy I saw in NC)

Possibility to create an art based on math

1950-  Ulm, Germany working on making a new school

-Using one typeface and visual hierarchy

- introduced study semiotics

-Semiotics- the philosophical theory of signs and symbols

            -what things mean in relationship to other things

Syntactics-order

Semantics- meaning or referred to

Pragmatics- how it is used

Ferdinand de Saussure

Dyadic model

-signifier- the form taken

-signified- concept it represents

There is no inherent or independent meaning- Jacques Derrida

Syntactics- red followed by yellow followed by green

Semantics- you should probably slow down

Pragmatics- Fire

“Brains are incredibly lazy”

Armin Hofmen

-still alive!                   look up Steven Heller

-Swiss design

-design the negative space and everything else will follow

Joseph Muller Brockman

-used intensity and clarity

-embrace white space

swiss modernism vs NYC modernism

Paul Rand, Saul Bass, and Ivan Chermayeff

1940s- began to see modernism in advertising

European theoretical—NY, pragmatic

“The big Idea”

Conversations with Paul Rand

Paul Rand

-embraced European modernism

         

Saul Bass

-movie titles

-“man with the golden arm”

“Vertigo”

“Exodus”

-AT&T, United

Ivan Chermayeff

-logos- Chase Bank

-“anything in collection becomes beautiful”, form new totality

Postmodernism

-Very difficult to define

- break with modernist ideas “form follows functions”

- modernist by what we do, live in postmodern condition

-emphasis on surface, texture, and materials

_”postmodernism is a kid with too much candy and vomits” or “ a wild college party and then wake up an wonder what the freak happened”

-self conscious and self referencing

-meta- postmodernism idea

-mix of high and low culture- using an iphone and instagram to recreate cheap film feel

-the mash up

- begins in the 60’s- super graphics- putting colors and letters places

Thoughts

I just recently learned that Paul Rand worked with Bill Bernbach, the first collaboration between the art director and the copywriter in the advertising industry. I’ve been bad with remembering design names up to this point but now I will definitely remember.  Honestly, as I sit here writing this, I’m having a hard time coming up with anything to write. It doesn’t have to do with the information, just that my brain is slowly dying as the year ends. Perhaps falling asleep during the last half hour of class has something to do with it. Right now I’m watching the space shuttle landing in D.C to be taken to the Smithsonian and I had a thought. With Paul Rand, the influence of European modernism became recognized in the U.S. Exciting stuff was created with the genesis of modern art in America. But the end of something, like the shuttle program, always brings that same level of excitement. Interest will spike just before the end and a new beginning is created from that. Postmodernism is about the rejection of Modernisms “form over function.” The 60s and later brought new ideas of op art and David Carson.  The present, however, is in this mixed circumstance. Postmodernism and modernism seem to be coexisting. Im no design scholar but I would like to present the idea of whether this resurgence is a sign of the return of modernism or the end of modernism in exchange for something new. I do not think modernism truly ended as the nature of postmodernism makes it appear to have. Modernism just took a seat on the backburner for a while, just like the middle years of the shuttle program. With this resurgence of modernism, it could be a sign that an underlying movement is surfacing and modernism is resurfacing to combat the new. Therefore, I propose that this mini revival of modernism may just be a nostalgic return before we are introduced to something new.

Questions:

What do you think? Am I crazy, a buffoon, and deprived of too much sleep? Do you agree?  Its my soapbox for the day.

HisGD- 4/03

Herbert Matter, Lester Beall

Herbert Matter

-Swiss-born American photographer and GD

-important for use of imagery, and scale shift

-influenced New Yor school of Designers

Swiss tourism

-exaggerated scale, graphic lines

1936- comes to the U.S

Paul Rand- good guy

                                    Charles and Ray Ems

-uses abstraction of form to speak about the form.

Ad for knoll

 Modernism was very slow to take in U.S.

The Container Corporation of America

-made/invented cardboard boxes

-highers A.M Cassandre, Herbert Matter to design ads and print.

-embraced Modernism and European art

Tischold’s Elements of typography was not embraced, “anarchy!”

Lester Beal – 1903-1969

-graphic designer- self taught, 1920s and 30s

-moves to NY from Chicago-

Corporate Design movement= Madmen

-Like visual contrast

-“Pioneers in Peoria”

  

Rural Electrification Administration 

-using form that’s not there

-communicating the most information with the least means

-like dots and diagonals, graphic

- silk-screening becomes popular

Works Progress Administration- WPA

-effort to employ millions of Americans

-built roads, bridges, and art

-hire European artists to create posters, promoted modernism

-simplicity of form as necessity of medium

-

silkscreen- get most equity of paper

Thoughts: 

Its funny, now that I have seen Herbert Matter's work, I can now see how much of a direct influence his work has had on graphic design. Photo collage was something I appreciate but always considered an easy victim to over use and amateurs. Yet, from Herbert Matter's work, not only did he create the medium, but explored its full potential and kept evolving it to knew levels. By the end of his career, I would consider him more of photographic designer rather than a graphic designer. The emphasis and the effort he put on his photography is what I accredit to Herbert Matter as his most influential contribution. Some of his photographic techniques, such as the ones he used on his vogue covers see similar to a favorite photographer of mine, Jerry Uelsmann. He combined images together during developing to create surreal black and white images. What I got most out of the Herbert Matter movie was an appreciation for "designing" a photograph,whether by collage or straight photography , rather then taking a snap shot.

Questions

I dont have a question so much as a question the consequences of Matter's lifestyle. His work effort and drive to do more made him a great innovative designer, but it seemed to have some negative effects on his family and personal life. I agree that it does vary per person how they balance between work and life, but it called me to question how I want to balance between my work and personal life. I love being a designer and producing good work, but I feel that sacrificing relationships and even health would take away from that enjoyment. I may have periods of my life where my work will, like Matter, take a larger priority than anything else, but it's a lifestyle I could not see myself choosing to maintain.