After Class 3/31

Today in class, we got to know a little more about my personal favorite movement in design; Art Deco. Art Deco was a movement that was supposed to be fully brought to light in 1925 at Paris' Exposition of Art and Architecture. Fortunately, it was not opened to the public but it slowly evolved as the years went on. Between 1920's through the 1930's, Art Deco thrived as a new, awe-inspiring design that is still used today. Its use of bold color and pastel color along with more geometric designs with little detail. "Less Is More" was the main slogan during the time. When it came to the typography of the movement, the use of bold, fat lines sprinkled with thin lines to accent letters created a new font that can be easily viewed as "Broadway" style. Overall, the design, color, architecture, and typography of Art Deco just speaks to my eye and my feelings about design, thus making it my favorite movement in design history.

Question: What is it about Art Deco that still keeps many, including myself, interested today?? And why did Disney's MGM Studio's create an Art Deco city within the park?? Some great food for thought in my eyes =D

After Class 3/29

In today's class, Joslyn presented to us the Bauhaus movement. The Bauhaus movement started as the Weiner Arts and Crafts School directed by Henri van de Velde. Then after WWI, Walter Groupius took over the helm and attempted to unify artist and craftsman to industry. The Bauhaus School was in Weiner from 1919-1942 where expressionism, De Stijl, and Constructivism were in full effect. Then from 1925-1933, Bauhaus moved to Dessau, where it was renamed Hochschule fur Gestatlung.

Question: If Bauhaus did not move from its original location, do you think it would be what it is today?

Before Class 3/24

For today's reading, we delved into the world of Pictorial Modernism. A new and up and coming style of art that dealt with posters helped revolutionize what we see today. Here are the points that caught my eye from the reading:

Pictorial Modernism

-Beggarstaffs (James Pryde [1866-1941] and William Nicholson [1872-1949]) created the technique of "collaging" by taking letters, words, and images and gluing them to a flat plane to create a one dimensional plane of color.

-Collages were viewed as "drawn with scissors"

-Unfortunately, they brought in very few clients, printed even less, and basically went bankrupt.

Plakastil

-It was a German, flat-color design school

-Lucian Bernhard, the creator of the Priester match advertisement, created the ad after reducing the original image to just two matches and the name Priester

-Bernhard is considered the graphic artist who helped develop poster art as a whole

-Bernhard formula: flat background color; larger, simple image; and product name.

-His work pioneered the simplistic movement

Switzerland and the Sach plakat

- Basel Realism well promoted by Niklaus Stoecklin (1896-1982), Otto Baumberger (1889-1961) and later on Herbert Leupin (1914-1999)

- Their Sachplakate (object posters) were characterized by simple, laconic, and sometimes hyper-realism approach (Meggs Pg 274).

The Poster Goes To War

-Posters hit their importance height in WWI with propaganda posters

-The posters ranged from promoting money drives to smear campaigns against the enemy countries

-There were distinct differences between the poster designs of the Central Powers and the Allied Forces

- The Central Powers' posters still had traces of the Vienna Secession and Plakistil by Bernhard.

- The Allied Forces had more illustrations, using literal rather symbolic imagery to address propaganda objectives (Meggs Pgs 275)

Food For Thought: Was the reason that Allied posters were so different from Central Powers not only the war, but was it also a war of imagery (who made better posters)?

Before Class 3/22

For this beautiful day, we had to open the book, dust it off a bit, and read about the influence of modern art (chapter 13). Here are the main points I got out of the reading:

Cubism:

-Pablo Picasso began the movement with a series of works that "applied elements of ancient Iberian and African tribal art to the human figure"(Meggs Pg. 248).

-Cubism brought new ideas and techniques in using different planes of the space of medium.

-Paul Cezanne was another major influence on Cubism because of his "treat nature in terms of the cylinder and the sphere and the cone" ideals.

-Analytical Cubism evolved from the original cubism by using perceptions to help create their works.

- Synthetic Cubism followed

Futurism:

-Created by Italian poet Filippo Marinetti

After Class 3/19

Yesterday in class, Kevin introduced us to Peter Beherns and the London Underground. I really basically went over what I had learned about him in the previous post. I didnt learn anything really outside of the box or new from his presentation (not in a mean way at all). Thanks for the great Presentation Kevin!!

Before Class 3/19

In the reading, I read about two major aspects of 20th century design:

Peter Berhens:

He was considered the first user of a sans-serif font in a commercialized book

He was considered the first creator of a corporate identity system

He was a pioneer in the use of making identity system for corporate use

London Underground:

1st created by Frank Pick

Still Used Today

1st use of advertisements in the underground stations

After Class 3/5

In the most grueling classes before spring break (just kidding), we went over the wonderful era of Art Nouveau. In French, Art Nouveau means "New Art". The time period called for a change in not only fine arts, but art and society as a whole. The Art Nouveau movement grew from the Arts and Crafts movement in the not too distant past. The style of Art Nouveau is nicely organic and linear. I am mostly repeating myself from before class blog so I will let the before class blog explain itself a little bit more.

Bri did a very nice job on presenting the information and I did learn a lot from it.

Thanks again Laura for letting us go early!! Hope you enjoy your spring break and see you in a week!!

Before Class 3/3

Hmmmm...here is a thought. When the term "arts and crafts" is said, what is the first thing that pops in your head??

"ohhh like making cool little things with paint, fabric, ink, and so on?"

I bet you that is the response many would get when asked about arts and crafts. But the term was used way before our time here in USA. Rather, it was a term to describe a time period of much revival that occurred in England, in the late 19th century. The revival of such was the renaissance

of book design that began with William Morris (1834-96) when he called for a fitness of purpose, truth to the nature of materials and methods of production, and the individual expression by both designer and worker (Meggs, 166).

As I continued on, Morris gained a sidekick who thought his path was also to seminary school. His sidekick went by the name of Edward Burne-Jones. Oddly enough, on a trip to France, they both decided to ditch the seminary school idea and dive into the world of painting and art. Both were influenced by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-82) and began their lives of design.

Philip Webb created one of the most revolutionary architectural designs named Red House

After Class 3/1

Today in class, instead of having our normal read and go over what we had learned day, we had a total review of what we have learned so far. I personally needed it because I am still kind of out of it from conference. What we did was we divided up into groups of 3 and were given a stack of images, dealing with a certain aspect of what we had learned so far. My group had images dealing with the typography of our knowledge, starting with the very beginning in the Caves of Lascaux and spanning all the way to moveable type and sans-serif font. It was truly a nice refresher because I feel like I have learned a lot, yet when it comes to specifics, I do struggle a bit. Thankfully, with the new installment of graphic notes, I will be able to remember people, events, typefaces, and designs a lot easier. It was nice to remember the order of pictograms, petroglyphs, and ideograms, along with the types of type–Old style, transitional, modern, and script. I am sure by the end of this semester, those 4 different font styles will be burned into the back of my head. Hey, I don't have a problem with it =D

Question of the day: When it came to different typefaces with the invention of moveable type, how were new typefaces conceived? Like why were there so many variations of the same font?