Psychedelic movement

The word itself psychedelic in mind is to produce vivid visions which affect the mind greatly, the art techniques themselves are immensely powerful it is as if the designer was hallucinating while doing it as if he or she was in a kind of drugged state to produce this kind of work, however it is very fascinating on account of the designer had to be in a different state, exploring abnormalities that make the movement interesting.

There are several movements and techniques, which inspired psychedelic for instance the flowing curves, textures from the movement Art Nouveau, the use intense colour, practically undecipherable letters, complimentary colours, making use of popular culture images. Plenty of the designers in this movement were inspired by Pop art. Other things that inspired the psychedelic movement:  Rock musicians had inspired fashion had inspired youth culture, vibrating effect in graphic lines and texture was made into many wall paper designs, underground comic book styles were also popular.

Social life was absolute chaos during this movement, which have inspired a large number of artists and designers to create interesting, designs, magazines. Even fans created interesting magazines themselves, in spite of not being designers themselves they created interesting magazine concepts titled “Fanzines” it is basically a nonofficial and nonprofessional published work, created by fans of a particular culture, fanzines improved over the years, in the beginning fanzines  were hand-drafted or typed, only a limited number were made at the time, but eventually grew popular, however since technology developed greatly, there is a little difference between a normal fanzine and a professional magazine.

The movement developed in the mid-1960. The Psychedelic movement had affected cultures, lifestyles, music, social activities, literature and various other day to day activities.  

Victor Moscoso was a trained designer in the psychedelic movement, one of his techniques was to reduce a photograph to its most essential shapes, Art Nouveau inspired curvilinear shapes, illegible hand-drawn type and intense optical vibration which was inspired by the Pop art movement.  Moscoso applied what he had learned about the colour theory and  turned it upside thereby creating colour discord by colliding up colours of similar intensity next to one another. Moscoso had designer over 60 concert posters within eight months.

Peter Max was another influential designer of the psychedelic movement; Peter Max used softer colours and more accessible images, simple outlines illustrations which were often gave a comic book feel to his work, however his ideas were very inspiration he also rejected most of the anti-establishment values of youth culture and focused on softer ideas.

 Reference 

Anon, 1960-1975 sixties’ Psychedelia [online] available at: http://gds.parkland.edu/gds/!lectures/history/1960/psychedelia.html [accessed 17^th December 2013]

Renee T. 2011. Psychedelic 60s [Online], available at: http://visualartsdepartment.wordpress.com/psychedelic-60s/ [accessed 17^th December 2013] 

Pop art

Pop art

To describe pop art in a few sentences is very difficult, but this is a small summary of what it represented, Pop art shows us that any image could become an art piece; however the image required the artist’s eye to refine it.

Pop art developed in London in 1952 and later was introduced to America in the 1960s. Pop art was far more popular in America. Pop art had a variety of sources, media, styles and techniques, there were designers who drew comic books designers who did packaging, designers who drew posters and designers that created weird shapes, which either were left astray or created a new sort of furniture design from the shape. (Also other media techniques were used television, advertisements and plenty more other applications)

Production design was a major part back in the 60s this is also known as Pop art furniture,  designers used bright colours , geometrical shapes and unusual designs, here is an example I found relevant to the a design that possesses the requirements: The famous lip painting, the designer  has altered the painting into a lip shaped chair.

Pop art characteristics:
Its overflow of colours, logos and forms is what makes pop art, pop art. It changed how art was recognized, it paved the way for the modern artists and designers. It revolutionized art by removing the pedestal of high culture and fused it with commercial design. Pop art was a cultural revolution, a broad overview with examples drawn from furniture design, typography and fashion.  Pop art portrays a change in cultural knowledge, through mediums like posters, album covers, weird furniture designs and several of other types of work.

Here are some variety of designs of furniture, comic strips and posters each consist of the movements style:

Designs or posters had plenty of colours,work represented  something important or something to do with cultural, some work had a slight abstract design, and overall most of the work in the movement was very eye-catching.

Reference:

V.Ryan 2007, POP ART AND PRODUCTION DESIGN [online], available at: http://www.technologystudent.com/prddes1/popart2a.html , [accessed 16^th December 2013]

Sarah Stewart 2013, Art Goes Pop!; Pop Art Design at the Barbican [blog], available at: http://londonist.com/2013/11/art-goes-pop-pop-art-design-at-the-barbican.php , [accessed 16^th December 2013] 

Conceptual Image

The conceptual Image

Conceptual images expressed messages of ideas and concepts. Designers could freely  do what they want, in their own techniques, and choice of medium to work with.   1950’s photography was very important to the Graphic designer because of all the technological improvements, photography had preoccupied many designers, thus a new way of illustrating things had to be developed for illustration to advance.

Push Pin Studios:

The initial idea started by a group of young designers from New York; Seymour Chwast , Milton Glaser, Reynolds Ruffins and Edward Sorel. Milton Glaser, Edward Sorel Reynolds Ruffins and Seymour Chwast founded the push pin studio.  Push pin studio is a graphic design and illustration studio formed in New York City. Sorel left Push Pin studio in 1956, Glaser and Chwast directed Push Pin, it became a guiding reference in the world of graphic design. Glaser eventually left push pin to continue his own designs. Chwast is the current owner of Pushpin Group, Inc.

Push Pin influenced generations of graphic designers; John Alcon Barry Zaid, and Paul Degen for example, they had also spent some time at Push Pin.

Edward Sorel:

Edward Sorel had left push pin studio to continue on his own work as a freelancer, his work is known for storytelling. He contributed some works to The Nation a new York Magazine and the Atlantic, his work could be frequently seen in Vanity Fair, plenty of his work revolves on New York city; New York city society.  Sorel is well-known for his wavy pen and ink style.

Milton Glaser:

Glaser designer covers with flat images and thin lines, many designers tried to copy his designs; however he always explored new techniques. He opened Milton Glaser inc. in 1974 and still continues to create interesting and astonishing works in many fields of design.

Milton Glaser Inc.

This was established in 1974  its work included a variety of design disciples, the studio develops identity programs for corporate and institutional marketing purposes- which includes logos, brochures, signage and more.

Glaser is responsible for more than 300 posters for clients in the areas of publishing.

Reynold Ruffins:

Reynold Ruffins became famous for designing and illustrating children books,   he also had his own design studio with Simms Taback. Ruffins commissions for a number of clients: IBM, AT&T, Coca-Cola CBS, and many more.  Teamed with Whoopie Goldeberg and Hebie Hancock, Ruffins brilliant illustrations had produced a video for children, he had illustrated over fifteen children’s books.

Seymour Chawst

His posters provided a variety of different styles; Chawst had renewed the perspectives of individual with his designs. He acknowledged many past designers’ techniques and styles which he adapted to his own work, he used elements of German woodcut and primitive art colouring in his illustrations.

Reference: 

Anon, Milton Glaser [online], available at: http://www.miltonglaser.com/milton/#0 [accessed 15th December 2013] 

Mauro 2011, The Conceptual Image [Blog] , available at :http://ahistoryofgraphicdesign.blogspot.com/2011/04/conceptual-image.html [accessed 15th December 2013]

Ali 2013, Poster Art [Blog] , available at: http://modernposterart.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-conceptual-image-in-poster-during.html [accessed 15th December 2013] 

Anon,Reynold Ruffins artwork [online], available at: http://reynoldruffins.com/about.html, [accessed 15th December 2013] 

Corporate Identity

Corporate identity is a trademark of a company, the logo defines the personality of a corporation, the influence of its design, the effectiveness of the design, and it is the corporation’s identity.  Well-known brands are immediately identified by millions of individuals,  because of their logo, for example fast food related restaurants; MacDonald’s is instantly recognized because of its logo, even if the individual has never been in that restaurant, Microsoft is instantly known by many electronic users.

Corporate identity originally initiated in the medieval times, craft guild were using them in order to have their own area of jurisdiction, in order to know the placement of each item, whether it is a trustworthy product or not.

The crafting guilds had evolved to corporations or companies, which use the same technique, as mentioned above, one would know the product is trustworthy, or not by recognizing the company by the logo which the product is normally branded with.  The industrial revolution brought plenty of new companies and numerous of new identities were developed.

Eventually in the 1950’s corporations noticed how important having an identity was to interact with the target audience, maintaining a good reputation with the audience having something that would be visually appealing would boost their company’s notoriety.  

Overall corporate identity aids the company providing it with recognisability, it symbolises the company or organization this helps the image of the company, it helps leave the structure of the company, basically it helps keep the company alive.

Peter Behrens was known to be the father of industrial design; he had created the first logo for the organization (AEG) which later influenced many other designers.  I mentioned Peter Behrens in a previous post which describes the designer more into detail. Peter Behrens is also known as the founder of Corporate Identity, he was the first person to create logos, advertising materials, and company publications. Peter Behrens quote “Design is not about decorating functional forms, it is about creating forms that accord with the character of the object and show new technologies to advantage.” He created the design to be perfect in form and function.

Modern brands:

Apple for instance had a dramatic change in there logo design, the initial logo for apple was perceived to be complex and hard to view so the designers worked on the logo, and added a bite to represent the persuasion to the brand in order to represent people buying the product. The rainbow coloured apple is to refer to the story of Adam and Even in which the apple is signified as the fruit of knowledge, the current logo is a metallic silver sheen that is very visual appealing on any of the products.  

MTV’s was originally an experiment to see how flexible they could make the letters ‘MTV’ into a constructive, innovative and flexible design.

Reference:

Tony Chen 2010, The Evolution of Corporate Identity Design [online] available at:http://www.looks.gd/design/the-evolution-of-corporate-identity-design, [accessed 13^th of December 2013]

De Nora 2009, Corporate Identity [online], available at: http://www.denora.com/News/CorporateIdentity.aspx, [accessed 13^th of December 2013]

AEG 2011, The father of industrial design [online] ,available at: http://www.aeg.com/en/About-AEG/History/, [accessed 13^th December 2013] 

The New York School

Americans had created new forms and concepts to the European designs in the 1940s, the difference between the European design and American design are as follows, American designers sought for: pragmatic, intuitive and less formality in its approach to organizing space, whilst the European design was theoretical and highly structured. New York City served as cultural incubator in the middle of the twentieth century, it nurtured creativity.

Paul Rand was one of the Pioneers who developed the American approach to modern design, when he was just twenty-three years old; he began the phase of his designing career as a promotional and editorial designer for the magazines Apparel arts, Ken, coronet and others.  He broke the traditional American publication of design, his early designs were influenced by Klee, Kandinsky and the cubists, he invented shapes, both symbolic and expressive, as a visual communication tool, he manipulated visual form.

 In addition to his skillful analysis of communications content, reducing it to a symbolic essence without making it look dull, he was a very highly influential designer and was still at a very young age. Rand understood the values of ordinary, universally understood signs and symbols as means of translating ideas into communication, in order to engage the audience and memorably communicate with them he knew that the designers needed to rearrange and juxtapose the signs and symbols. He had a good sense of contrast, red against green, organic shapes against geometric type, photographic tone against flat colour and textural pattern of type against white, he also created new ideas and techniques. 

Paul Rand had influenced many designers another leading artist at the time was Saul Bass, Saul Bass created many title sequences, the new design started moving from New York and made itself to Los Angeles thanks to Saul Bass who in the 1950 opened a studio, Bass usually used a single image to dominate his designs, he was commissioned by Otto Preminger a film director to create graphic design for his films, for examples: logos, posters, advertising and animated film title sequences. He made the title sequence of “The man with the Golden Arm, Anatomy of a Murder and Psycho.

Reference

Art of the title, Saul Bass[online] ,   available :http://www.artofthetitle.com/designer/saul-bass/ [accessed 11^th December 2013]

Moda 2013, Paul Rand: Defining design [online], available at: http://www.museumofdesign.org/2013/02/paul-rand-defining-design/ [accessed 11^th December 2013]

Alex Bigman  2012, 4 principles by Paul Rand that may surprise you [online] available at: http://99designs.com/designer-blog/2012/09/04/4-principles-by-paul-rand-that-may-surprise-you/ [accessed 11^th December 2013]

Meggs P. B. and Purvis A. W. 1998. 5th Edition. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons , Inc. 

The Modern Art Movement in America

The Modern art Movement in America

Modernism was introduced in America in 1913; however it was rejected because of the public protest. In the 1920s America was still using traditional means of illustrations; it was in the 1930s where one could start seeing interest in Modernism in America. The modern approach was slowly gaining influence in design and art forms for example: book design, editorial design, magazines and plenty of other mediums.

A big influence to Modernism in America was Tschichold’s work the “Elementare typographie” which had caused Americans great excitement and “chaos” to society it was a revolution for them, and only a small number of American Typographers and designers had recognized the functionalism of the new ideas.  Futura and Kabel, American’s typefaces which were created in 1928 and 1929 had moved America even closer to the Modernist approach.

These are a few important figures (American Typographers and designs) William Addison Dwiggins, S.A. Jacobs, Merle Armitage and Lester Beall, these were important figures which helped promote Modernism into America; they had recognized the value of the new ideas.

William Addison Dwiggins was a book designer, after two decades in advertising design; he began designing books for Alfred A.Knopf. He experimented with uncommon title-page arrangement and two column formats, stencilled ornaments combined with a sensibility of cubist collage with the grace of traditional ornament. 

  He created eighteen typeface designs, for the following companies: Mergenthaler, Linotype, Caledonia, a graceful text face; Electra (created in 1935) and Metro.

S.A Jacobs and Merle Armitage were typographic expressionists their work ranged from Renaissance inspired designs to books for avant-garde music and dance which aided the modernist design aesthetic in America.

Lester Beall was a self-taught designer, he worked with strong, direct and exciting visual forms, he understood Tschihold’s new typography and the Dada movement random organization, instinctive placement of elements and the use of chance in being creative. He was also influenced and admired American wood types of the nineteenth century. He combined some to his work with these wood works for a certain period of time. Beall wanted visual contrast and high level of informational content. Beal eventually moved back home to Dumbarton Farms in Connecticut bringing along his studio (Which was in New York City) Beall became more involved in the emerging corporate design movement of the 1950s and 60s.

It seems he is highly inspired by the American colours, noting the images of Red,blue and white, he loves the use of contrast in his poster, and informative designs, very simplistic and flat designs, it feels like there is barely any depth, but simplicity was and still is a major thing, considering the time of the design it is impressive and intriguing to see the use of his mixture of techniques. 

Reference:

Anon, Modern Movement in America [online], available at: http://www.csun.edu/~pjd77408/DrD/Art461/LecturesAll/Lectures/Lecture09/ModernMovementAmerica2.html , [accessed 9^th December 2013]

Anon, Lester Beall [online] , available at: http://www.lesterbeall.com/architectonic.shtml, [accessed 9^th December 2013]

Design is history, Lester Beall [online], available at: http://www.designishistory.com/1940/lester-beall/, [accessed 9^th December 2013]

Meggs P. B. and Purvis A. W. 1998. 5th Edition. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons , Inc.

Pictorial Modernism - Beggarstaff

Pictorial modernism

Poster design was highly influenced by cubism and constructivism, poster designers were aware of the need to maintain pictorial reference in their posters were to communicate effectively with the public, poster designers their posters had to be expressive, symbolic and had to be visually organized. The dialogue between imagery and design generated energy and excitement of pictorial graphics which were influenced by modern art. 

According to Meggs’ History of Graphic design, it is “that one of the most remarkable moments in the history of graphic design is the brief career of Beggarstaffs”

James Pryde and William Nicholson who were both British painters and happened to be brothers-in-law had been close friends since art school. They were respected academic painters; they had decided to open an advertising design studio in 1894. They felt it needed to give it a false name to protect their reputations as artists.

How did they come up with the name beggerstaff brothers? Well, according to this one of them found a sack of corn in a stable labelled “the beggarstaff brothers” and they adopted the name dropping the brothers. During their collaborations they developed the technique collage; cut pieces of paper were moved around, altered and pasted into position on board. The style was basically flat planes of colour which had sensitive edges trimmed shaped by scissors. An incomplete image challenged the viewer to participate and try to solve the subject/image. The beggarstaffs ignored the normal trend of working with a floral art nouveau style and forged this new method into posters of powerful coloured shapes and silhouettes.

Their work influenced plenty, but at the time was an financial disaster, they only attracted a few clients and few designs were actually printed. When it became economically advisable for Nicholson and Pryde to terminate the partnership both of them had returned to painting they received some recognition. Nicholson developed likeliness to woodcut style of illustration that maintained in some of the graphic economy of Beggerstaff posters.  Another British painter and illustrator Dudley Hardy also turned to poster and advertising design, he introduces the graphic pictorial qualities of the French poster to London billboards in the 1890s. Hardy had developed an effective technique for theatrical poster: letting and figures appear against simple flat backgrounds.

The posters seem very flat, as mentioned above, the simplistic design is very interesting, and fascinating to look at, very eye-catching, the shapes are flat, barely any depth to it, the beggerstaff posters do not show much depth either, and certain works have the monochrome effect, the posters seem unfinished, also mentioned above, as if they did not want to finish it, although the work is complete. It is very intriguing to find out that these are one of the major influences to modern day poster design. 

Reference:

Alexis Bach 2013, CH 14 Pictorial Modernism, [video online] available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbeuTeQ2MIk, accessed 8^th of December 2013]

V@RNERDESIGN 2009, Pictorial Modernism [online], available at: http://varnerdesign.blogspot.com/2009/03/pictorial-modernism.html, [accessed 8^th of December 2013]

Meggs P. B. and Purvis A. W. 1998. 5th Edition. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons , Inc.