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.

Expressionism

Expressionism

Expressionism is characterized by artists to being biased to subjective emotions and personal responses to subjects rather than reality. This started in Germany before the First World War, colour drawing proportion were exaggerated or distorted, and symbolic content was important. The foundational elements of drawing line and colour were definite and value contrasts were often intensified. Thickly layered paint, loose brushwork and bold outlined drawings were used to achieve the desired properties. Lithographs, woodcuts and posters were valuable for the expressionists.

An uprising against normal aesthetics forms and cultural norms, expressionists had felt a deep sense of social crisis; German expressionists rejected the power of military, government, education rule.  They had intense assertive for the poor or social outcasts.  Expressionist believe that there art could lead towards social order and to improve human condition.

 Expressionists representation in easily understood imagery prints, drawings, sculptures and posters by Kathe Schmmidt Kollwits. Kathe posters convey a great sympathy for the women and children suffering of poverty.

Expressionism influenced graphic illustration and poster design.  The emphasis placed on social and political activism continues in providing a viable model for graphic designers.  The movement was inspired from unschooled artists, African tribal art, eastern and western cultures, served as sources of inspiration to this movement.

Similarities between the two articles/ blogs: A quick summary of the features of expressionism:

·         The primary attribute is one of distortion, perspective and angles, in an attempt to place emotions over a view of the outside world.

·         The use of bold colours as mentioned earlier

·         Backdrops are expressive

·         The subject of art was very often dark and horrific element the world war was an influence on the second wave of expressionist artists

·         Expressionism seeks to transform nature, in hopes of showing a reality in process of transformation.

Reference:

ThatStudent 2012, expressionism [online], available at: http://havingalookathistoryofgraphicdesign.blogspot.com/2012/10/expressionism.html [accessed 6 December 2013]

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

Anon . expressionism,  [online] availbe at:  http://classes.berklee.edu/llanday/fall01/tech/expressionism/ [accessed 6 December 2013]

Surrealism

Surrealism

Surrealism started in Paris in 1924, contradicting to the dada movement, surrealism was the soul opposite of Dada, surrealism was a way of thinking, knowing and living.

Dada was more negative, destructive while surrealism acknowledged poetic faith in man and their spirit, humanity liberated from social moral conventions.

Surrealist writers experimented automatism, to seek an uninhibited truth. Surrealist writers were limitied to French literary and scholarly circles. The movement branched out from the painters; they affected society and visual communications.  Surrealist produced images with emotional content, symbolism or fantasy triggered a collective and universal response in large numbers of people.

Max Ernst who was a Dadaist used techniques that have been adopted in graphic communications. Ernst was interested in wood engravings in the nineteenth-century novels and catalogues, Ernst remade by using collage techniques to create bizarre juxtapositions, these collages had a strong influence ini illustration. His “frottage” technique involved using rubbings to compose directly on paper.

According to Meggs: “Ernts’s imagination invented images in them much as one sees images in cloud formations”

He used this to develop rubbings into fantastic pictures.  “Decalomania,” Ernsts process of transferring images from print to a drawing or a painting this enabled him to combine a variety of images into his work. This technique has been used widely by illustrators painters and for print making.

Salvador Dali’s work influenced graphic design in two ways, his deep perspectives in his prints and paintings has inspired designers to bring vast depth to the flat, printed page and it has been used repeatedly  in editorial images and posters.

A group of surrealist painters called the “emblematics” worked on purely visual vocabulary; visual automatism was used in order to create impulsive expression of  the inner life in the work Of Joan Miro and Jean Arp.  Arp and Miro’s biomorphic forms and open composition were incorporated into product and graphic design.

The surrealist impact on graphic design was diverse, it provided poetic example of liberation, and it pioneered new techniques and demonstrated how fantasy and intuition could be expressed in visuals.

Klinkov Valier Nikolaevich wrote that “To analyse the spheres where the influence of surrealism was the strongest the arts are usually associated more frequently than in other fields”  

The original goal of surrealism is to liberate imagination, which can be traced in a number of creative works and everyday life social conditions.

Reference: 

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

Klinkov Valier Nikolaevich 2009, 1920’s surrealism. Influence of Surrealism [online] available at: http://www.klinkov.com/surrealism-biography, [accessed 5^th December 2013]

Dada

Dada
The Dada movement claimed to be an anti-art movement; it had negative and destructive elements, writers and artists were more concerned with shock of what the First World War had brought with it. Rejection all the traditional tactics, they looked for liberty. 

The dada movement instinctively grown as a literary movementafter Hugo Ball opened the cabarater Voltaire which used to be a gathering place for independent young artists. One of dada’s leading figures was the Tristan Tzara, who edited the periodical DADA in the beginning of July 1917. Tzara had joined Hugo Ball, Jean Arp (known as Hans Arp) and Richard Huelsenbeck in exploring poetry. Dadaists  did not agree on the creation of the name Dada. Marcel Duchamp joined the dada movement and became its most outstanding visual artist, he was influenced by cubism, his style of style, as geometric planes; while futurism had inspired him to convey time and motion.

Dunchamp had painted a mustache on a reproduction of the Mona Lisa; it was brilliant assault on tradition and a public that had lost the classical essence of the Renaissance movement.

Dadaists were not creating art but mocking a society that has gone insane; several dadaistts produced meaningful visual art and influenced graphic design. Dadaists claimed to have created photomontage

Photomontage is a technique that manipulates found photographic images to create clashing juxtapositions and associations, Raoul Hausman and Hannah Hoch created outstanding work in this technique in 1918.

Kurt Schwitters created a nonpoltical offshoot of dada which he named Merz in one of his collages. Merz meaning as the title of a one-man art movment, his Merz pictures were collage compositions using printed clients, rubbish, and found materials to compose colour against colour, form against form and texture against textures. His designs were complex designs combined to Dada’s elements of absurdity. Kurt Schwitters, wrote and designed poetry that played sense to this absurdity, he definedpeotry as the interaction of elements.

In 1920s, one could see that construcvism became an added influence in Schwitters work after he made contact with El Lissitzky and Theo van Doesburg they invited Schwitters to promote dada in Holland, Van Doesburg and Schwitters work together on a book in which typographic forms were interpreted as characters.  Schwitters also managed a successful graphic design studio with Pelikan as a major client. He came employed by Hanover where he was the typography consultant for several years. He spent his last years in the British Isles were he returned to doing traditionalist paintings.

Other Dadaists John Heartfield, Wieland Herzefelde and George Grosz promoted social change.  Heartfield used the crude disjunctions of photomontage as a potent propaganda weapon.  He introduced innovation in the preparation of mechanical art for offset printing, he target the Weimar Repbulic and the growing Nazi party in book, magazine covers and illustration and also a few posters. Heartfield worked with images directly with glossy prints brought from magazines and newspapers, he and on occasion commissioned a needed image from a photographer.

Before his death, he produced photomontages protesting the Vietnam War calling for world peace, the one of his retrospective photomontages of his graphic art; it went by the title “Unfortunately Still Timely”.

George Grosz drawings represented angry intensity of deep political conviction he perceived them to be a corrupt ambiance.

Dada was a liberating movement that continued to influence innovation and rebellion, it was born in protest against war, and its destructive activities became more absurd and extreme after the war ended.  Having pushed its negative activities to the limit, it was lacking the unified leadership, and its members were face with new ideas that eventually had led to surrealism.  

 Reference: 

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

Artlyst , 2009, Dada; a movement of artists against art [online], available at: http://www.artlyst.com/member-articles/dada-a-movement-of-artists-against-art [accessed 3rd of december 2013) 

Futurism

Futurism developed in 1909 with the work of an Italian poet Filippo Marinetti, he published his Manifesto of Futurism in the Paris newspaper, Le Figaro. All the arts were to test their ideas against the new realities of the industrial society. Typographic design was pulled onto the movement when Giovanni Papini began the publication of the journal Lacerba.  Marinetti had urged poets to liberate them from servitude to grammar and open the new worlds of expression. Gutenberg’s invention the movable type had used vigorous horizontal and vertical structure but the futurist poets started experimenting more, freed from the traditional structure they used dynamic, nonlinear works, these were attained by pasting words and letters in place for reproduction from photoengraved printing plates.

The concept for the futurists was that typography could become to be an expressive visual form.  Arno Holz a German peot reinforced intended auditory effects by leaving out devices. A French poet by the name of Guillaume Apollinaire was associated with the cubism, in particularly Picasso and his work he was in rivalry with Marinetti, Apollinaire promoted African sculpture, and defined the principles of cubist painting and literacy. Apollinaire unique contribution to graphic design was in 1918 publication of a book by the name of Calligrammes, poems in which the letter forms are arranged to form either a visual design, a figure or a pictograph.

The futurist painters were influenced by cubism, but they attempted to also express emotion, energy and cinematic sequences in their work.  Fortunato Depero was also a futurist designer who produced a dynamic body of work in poster, typographic and advertising design; she shifted from typographical, advertisements, tapestry designs and other works. He published a book entitled Depero futurista which included all his artistic works. Depero worked in New York and designed covers for magazines as well as printed advertising.

The futurists initiated the publication of manifestos typography and publicity stunts, forcing poets and graphic designers to rethink the very nature of the typography and its meaning.

Reference:

James Joll, The Futurist Manifesto, [online],  available at : http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/T4PM/futurist-manifesto.html  [accessed 1^st of December 2013]

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