Its More Than Just Grids

Its more than just grids

Visual unity achieved by asymmetrical organization 

objective photography

sans serif type

flush left

rag right

mathematical grids

its socially useful 

distichil asymmetrical grids

Peter Behrens

contructivism making things that are useful

Bauhaus making things that are useful in the home 

Swiss design - The International Typographic  Style

More important than the appearance is the attitude

Design is socially useful

Max Bill died 64

Theo Balmer died 94

students of the Bauhaus

provide link post world war ii swiss design

grid informs or becomes the art

the answer is in the problem - 

Max Bill involved in planning  the ulm

inclusion of semiotics

semiotics - what things mean in relation to other things

Syntactics - order

Semantics - meaning or referred to

Pragmatics - how it is used

Adrian Frutiger

The univers alphabet

Armon hoffman

if you design the negative space the rest will work

Joseph Muller Brockman

European Modernism is theoretical 

Paul Rand

Saul Bass - title sequences

Ivan Chermayeff 

Cut Paper its quick  immediate 

tactile

immediate

Ivan Chermayeff

Paul Rand is cool. I found out today that I don't like artist who begin to stick to one approach for all their work. To me it becomes stale and boring. Its as if they learned how to work one way but then it becomes some sort of dogma. I wonder if a designer should have a personal style like Paul Rand or some of the other people we have seen// or should a designer be invisible and use the style that is appropriate for the project. Again, I like Paul Rand's work but I wish he wasn't so visible when you see one of his ads or something. At this moment I feel like a designer shouldn't draw attention to himself. It reminds me of all these posters that have come out about the Japanese earthquake, its more about the designers than the situation. I don't know I have to think about this...

Bauhaus

Bauhaus

1919-1933

starts in Weimar

first public exhibition 1923

1924 Letter of Resignation / persecuted

1925-1932 Dessau

1928 Groupius replaced by Meyer

1930 Meyer replaced by van der Rohe

1932-1933 Berlin

Area economic depressed put art school

Walter Groupius

Cathedral

(john Ruskin mentioned it)

Groupius uses cathedral as three spires 

painting 

sculpture 

architecture

allegory - a new social unity

Gerhard Marks - Sculpture / Pottery

Lyonel Feringer - Painting

Johannes Itten - Preliminary Courses

Foundation class - study based on contrast

Analysis of old masters

Found object structures

Analyze forms

Something that is hard should CONTRAST something that is soft

Itten leaves 1923 

Bauhas leaves craftsmanship medievalism moves towards design thinking

Bahaus Poster

art and technology

Cubism Deschilt Supremitsm

1923 first exhibition of Bauhaus

Itten replaced by Laszlo Moholy Nagy

scientist, photo montage, resin

type-o-photo

replacing painting

new visual language for new age

(Luscian Benard did something similar - plachenst...)

photo-plastiques

new pictoral expression

1926 building glass curtain windows 

modern building

universal alphabet

doing away with capitols

did away with serifs

experimenting with raging to the right

contrast and hierarchy

bars rules squares and open compositions on implied grids

dominant vertical dominant horizon

"less is more" - Ludwig van der Rohe

Learned about the Bauhaus today...

The designs don't look that dated compared to the other stuff we have seen. Its a shame the Nazis shut them down. Boo Nazis. I prefer the Bauhaus approach to design than Art Nouveau.

It was interesting to see that they not only did graphic design but also dance, sculpture, furniture, pots. I think it continues on the ideas of William Morris, that anything can be designed. Today artists specialize in something so specific that we miss learning about other crafts. It benefits knowing outside our field because we often must collaborate with each other. Walter Groupius's idea of the cathedral also goes back to what we learned earlier about Morris. I guess the main lesson I will take away from History of Graphic Design is that we all build upon what others did before us.

What I know about Bauhaus

The Bauhaus is a cool building in Germany and its a design style...

That is all.

Ooo  and its a cool band from the 80s. Ha

Russia is chill, brrrr

Day 07

Cubism on design

Ludwig  Hohlwein

-german poster designs

Edward McKnight  Kauffer

-ideas of cubism applied to design

-generous use of negative space

Analytical Cubism 

-early phase, new ways of understanding space

Synthetic Cubism

-Picasso making collages

Adolphe Mouron Cassandre

-abstraction

World War I

-people looking for logic systems, universal truths

Dubonnet 

-perfect??  , Dorian suggests godlike

-wordplay

-text and image work cohesively

Prior to World War I

-waves of unrest among workers all over the world

-especially Russia

Russian Revolution

universal truth - what do i believe maybe i can make other people believe

Russian avant-garde

1.Cubo-futorismo

2.Suprematism

3.Constructivsim

Work made of scraps, cut and paste

book made out of wallpaper cut-out

Kasimir Malevich

-Suprematism reflects utilitarian function

-no pictorial representation

-painting be spiritual not pictorial

-1915 red square

Constructivism

-the only meaningful art have function and things that have function are therefore art

Vladimir Tatlin

Rodchenko

El Lissitzky

renounce art for arts sake

art should serve the communist party

Lissitzky

-helps pioneer suprematists  but then works on Constructivism, bauhaus

Different guys:

Kandinsky 

Lissitzky

prun  ??

intersection between painting and architecture

beat the whites with the red wedge

-black bars

-page structure grid

-early expression of modernist

-asymmetrical, balance, san serif

How do you create meaningful art for the proletariat ?

Will good art be understood by proletariat?

I had a class about the philosophy of art. We learned different philosophers' philosophies (heh heh) about what is art, and they all varied widely and yet all made sense.  I think the question, "what is good art" is a hard question to satisfy because its based on opinions; but some philosophers say you can quantify it by the rules of beauty, and harmony. The greeks divided art into Apollonian art and Dionysian art, which were civilization and primitivism, respectfully.  So I don't think there is one answer for something so ambiguous we call "art". I think its more of a compliment given if it transcends what it is. I think good art is good at communicating something relevant so, I believe it should be understood by the proletariat if that's who its aimed at.

To create meaningful art for the proletariat I think familiar elements have to be used to communicate in a way that is familiar enough to come across effectively. For example, it would be infective to use an obscure literary reference to an illiterate population. Yet some people may like the ambiguous nature of unfamiliar subject so it doesn't necessarily make it bad art. I guess in the end you just have to experiment and if it works, it works...  And when you die someone will call it good art.

Corporate Identity

Glasgow school - England
Vienna Succesion - Austria


Joseph Hoffman

Mussieur

-Make things that are useful
-showroom
-marks- sense of proportion and weight
-geometrical yet lyrical


Peter Behrens
-end of career  work is more commercial
-first use of running text san serif
-early advocate of sans serif typography
-credited with first comprehensive identity program
-pioneered non-load bearing walls

-associated  Mies Van Derrohe   and  Walter Gropies
first director of Bauhaus last director of Bauhaus respectfully


-Celebration of Art and Life
-recliner, abstract forms
-experimenting, sans serif becoming more blocky
-1903 becomes director of Kunstgewerberschule school

-1904 guy joins faculty, his thing is geometry
teaches composition based on geometry

-grid system
-1906 exhibition pavilion Peter Behrens uses that system
-1907 Behrens is made artistic director of AEG power company

-metaphor, honey comb, divisions of labor

three lynch pin components:

logo

type face

consistent layout


Underground Railway system


AIGA




Luscian Venard
-competition design for Priester matches
-plaketstiel
-poster style
-flat background, product and name


Julius Krieger
-war bond poster


The axis more graphic
The Allies use of illustration and information

touchy fealy
saccharine tastes


MOVIE
-The 1900s The Seeds of Progress
-Thomas Edison
-Henry Ford introduces mass production
-1901 buffalo exhibition
-electricity, light, engineering,
-Roosevelt considered progressive "square deal"
-muck rakers - the press, large exposes
-Uptain Sinclair - The Jungle
-Hull House in Chicago
-Jane Adams
-Mother Jones Carrie Nation - axe and chop bars into pieces
-Tourism
-Postcards to promote good natured envy
-Books for children became popular
-Wizard of Oz
-Nickelodeons  became popular
-The great train robbery, based on butch cassidy
-scott joplin maple leaf rag
-1901 phonograph records
-the fabians reform


I see connections between Peter Behren's corporate identity system and the rise of manifestos, corporations, and a growing global consciousness. The clean economical systems of mass production steered design into new clean, bold designs to stand out from the crowd. I didn't really like the grid systems that Dorian showed in class. I think that they were taken too literally and I found the designs unappealing and uninspired. Also the ideal of having hand-made objects in the home has changed to having well designed pieces in the home such as Behrens stove pots.

Rudolf Koch
Germany
-interested in ideas of William Morris
-believes alphabet human kinds greatest achievement
-pinnacle of German typography
designed:
-Neuland (used for Caribbean and African things)
and decals and tattoos  used by minorities

Art Nouveau
-younger artists take ideas of beauty and craft but mix with sex, etc

Jules Cheret
- father of modern poster
-early work: uses tromploy effects, theatre, entertainment speaks to middle class
-known for later posters, more related to gibson girls
-central female figure surrounded by elements and typography set around that
-contemporary of Toulouse Lautrec

Rival:
Eugene Grasset
-heavy line and flat panels of color (coloring book style or woodblock style)
-interest in eastern art, particularly block printing

Reductive styles are going to be more important to us


Arthur Mackmurdo
-century guild chair 1882
-whiplash lines, sensual lines
-high contrast
-chair crafted
-did magazine called Hobby Horse
printed 1880s, shows British arts and crafts to a larger audience

manifestos, people begin to band together

-another popular magazine was The Studio

Aubrey Beardsley
-edited by Walter Crane
Aubrey Beardsley  does own illustrations for Morte d'Arthur,
-becomes famous by twenty // infante terible
influenced by Morris, Morris thought he had vulgarized the kelmscott style

Yellow Book
-symbol of outrageous
-victorians shocked by celebration of "evil"

Alphonse Mucha
-starts as illustrator born in Czech
-moves to Paris
-finds work working in a print shop
-1894 christmas eve, coworker wants day off
-Sarah Berghoff needs rush job
-elongated poster, practical choice
-less detail at bottom // ran out of time
-stylized reductive forms, plants, flowers, elements of folk art, byzantine, tiles, magic, occult
-whiplash tendrilsof hair
-pattern in background common device


pattern design very popular

Manuel Orazi

General Electric - art nouveau

Harpers Magazine
-hiring european arts
-cover printed in Paris

>>riffed/ stole<<

Louis Reed
-leading american art nouveau, embraces Eugene Grasset but also bright colors

William Bradley inspired by  first Morris then Aubrey Beardsley
-The Inland Printer
-1895 photo mechanical technique
-1898 Bradley,  his book - big ego


Popular illustration
Poster promoting harpers
Harper's illuminated bible

style evolved 1894
reductive style

Lippincotts competing magazine
asian motif, flat shapes

Pensville illustration


Henry van de Velde
-painter designer, architect
-Japanese and art nouveau

Henri Privat-Livemont
-inspired by Mucha

Jugendstil- Art nouveau in german
-Youth style

Peter Behrens
-member of Jugen
-the kiss
-whiplash lines, sensuous line, androgyny

its fun, young - art nouveau
becomes increasingly reductive
because of influence of asian design


leads us to Glasgow School
-Francis and Margett McDonald
-Herbert McNair
-Charles Renee McIntosh
-students 1890s

-geometric
-curvilinear elements
-rectilinear structure (rectangular)
-symbolism
-stylized forms

Talwin Morris
-book spines
-takes ideas of art students and commercializes

Austria
Vienna Secession
-Secession, austrian  art nouveau
Gustav Klimt
Koloman Moser
Josef Hoffmann

-not concerned with legibility, concerned with the surface the aesthetic
-Magazine Yer Sacrum
-1898

Its  interesting to learn about Art Nouveau, I've always been interested in it at a surface level. I see the connection between this stuff and what William Morris was doing. Its just that Art Nouveau is so much more sexy than William Morris. I also love poster design and this is such an iconic time for posters right now. Of course love the Mucha, who doesn't? From what I understood in class, students took the design ideas of Morris but then massed produced them in magazines, posters, etc. Kids is crazy.

William Morris

William Morris continued,

Jenni Morris invalid, "water treatment"

Morris and company wallpapers - still used today

old style dyes

tapestry , hobby of sorts

Arts and crafts movement

John Ruskin - how can we restructure society

People start having Utopian ideas

rejects mercantile economy

union of art and labor - your works should be in service of society

!!gothic cathedral!! - artisans and craftsman come together

Bauhaus also point to the cathedral

John Ruskin is philosophical leader

machine is bad then logic says the hand is good- return to the medieval

Morris tries to implement the ideas of Ruskin in the factory

how can a worker find joy once again in their work

Flaw - Hand made crafts are more expensive

resurgence in book arts as a reaction to industrialization (Fredeck Gaudie)

John Morris designs:

-Golden used to print The Golden Type

-Troy black letter

-Chaucer (smaller version of Troy)

establishes Kelmscott press

Art Nouveau driven by young people influenced by the arts and crafts movement

Bruce Rodgers type designer, rejected modernism, revered book designer

The Roycrofters – group of people started in 1895 by Elbert Hubbard

Was American expression of arts and crafts - is more pragmatic

this happens time and time again

Although it doesn't make financial sense, I admire the idea of the arts and crafts movement. I think there is a place for both the hand crafted and for assembly line products because people have different values. It would be impractical to have everything be hand made, the other side to that is manufactured goods can be too impersonal. What I also admire William Morris for is the variety of work he produced, that is something I would like to apply to my career. William Morris's story makes me ask hard questions of my life. Things like what do I value? Will being engrossed in my craft make me happy or in the end will it mean nothing, pushing people away. Happy thoughts like that, maybe Bauhaus will be more cheerful  :)