Day 13

Notes:
Semiotics is a philosophical theory of signs and symbols
-what things mean in relationship to each other
Swiss Design and The International Typographic style...
a philosophical way of thinking. More then grids.
Visual unity is achieved through asymmetrical organization.
Swiss thinking- design negative space, everything else works.
Asymmetry makes negative of ground active.
Embrace the objective of photography, sans serif type, flush left-rag right, mathematical grids, design as being socially useful.
Attitude is more important then the appearance.
Because of designers having grandiose ideals, design has been revolutionary.
A spiritual belief in the design... "what if?"
1950 a New school in Ulm, Germany until 1968
Contrast is very ideal
At this school, they introduced a study of semiotics.
syntax is order, semantics is meaning or referred to and pragmatics is how its used.
According to Jacques Derrida- everything is meaningless, we assign meaning.
Swiss Modernism vs New York Modernism
Paul Rand embraced European modernism
Saul Bass and Rand embraced handmade things, not perfect shapes.
Ivan Chermayeff collected items that are beautiful (Dorians favorite)
Advertising starts resembling the modernism movement in the 1940s
European with the Theoretical and New York with Pragmatic.
"The Big Idea"
"Conversations with Paul Rand"
Paul Rands work he is doing- paper ripped/just there/cut and paste/collages/cubist way of approaching art/modern/layers of paper/loose quick fun/organic.
Saul Bass:motion Film title:Man with the golden arm
Chermayeff did branding for everyone
Post Modernism is hard to define because everyone has a different opinion about it and also cause controversy.
Are we modern or post modern?
Form follows function. Seeking universal harmony. Structure order. Reaction to chaos. Social changes. Try to look at the world. Lets organize it. Make it nice and tidy.
Frank Gary is a post modern architect. 
Rose Mary is an influential Swiss designer that screwed with someone else's logo
1958: Wolfgang Weingart created chaos after thinking that international design was to clean and minimal. Companies see Swiss design as easy and when they design the cliche is formed because there is no theory.
Dan Freedman brought to America what he learned from the Swiss Design and the Weingart.
April Greiman copied off of Lissitzky and she's still alive in California doing work.
Memphis Design is an Italian design group that asked for More ! Their form didn't follow the function and is now the reason why design exists today. MIlano,Spain.
Michael Graves:Bauhaus and tea kettles

Day 12

Notes:
Herbert Matter is a Swiss born American photographer/graphic designer.
He is important because of his uses with imagery and scale shifting.
His work influences New York School for Designers.
Swiss Gross is being articulated with what's around it.
Exaggerating scale ship/angled ship. Dynamic Graphic Type.
1936 Paul Rand comes to America and liked because he is seen as a normal guy.
Charles Ems makes the abstract of form to speak about.
Modern tradition that embraces abstractness.
Modernism was slow to take place in America.
He created an Ad for Knoll Furniture Company.
The Container Corporation of America made/invented cardboard boxes.
The corporation then hires A.M Cassandre and Herbert Matter to design ads and prints.
Embraced Modernism and European art
Tischold's elements of typography was not embraced.
Lester Beal works as a designer from in the 20s/30s
He is a self taught graphic designer/smart
When he's 35 he moves from Chicago to New York.
Becomes involved in the Corporate Design Movement
Recognizes Beal's visual contrast and elements.
Bizarre love for wood type which works really well for contrast modern design.
White space in contrast to the element, love arrows and lines do a lot of work for rural electrification administration.
Rural Electrification Administration uses forms that arent there
Communicating the most information with the least means
Like dots and diagonals, graphic silk screening becomes popular.
Works Progress Administration or WPA
They take an effort to employ millions of Americans
Built roads, bridges and art
They hired European artists to create posters that promoted modernism
Simplicity of form as necessity of medium
Silkscreen gets the most equity of paper
Thoughts:
Since I missed the lecture in the beginning of the class and I only got to see the film, I didn't really get the  full information. From what I know, Herbert Matter seems to be an amazing man. He influenced a whole school with his imagery and shifting of scales. From reading the notes, Charles Emes doesn't seem like he had a big affect on the world atleast not as much as Matter. Lester Beal is pretty lucky to have been able to taught himself graphic design and also being able to get involved in a corporation. WPA seemed like they really helped out a lot of people by employing millions of them.
Questions:
Saying that the Container Corporation of America invented/made cardboard boxes sounds kind of random. What purpose does that have to do with Graphic Design? How did Lester Beal get involved in a corporation with no experience in school?

Day 10

NOTES:

Walter Groupius – Director of the BauHaus from 1919 to 1928

Soldier in the First World War went to school for architecture

Bauhaus students thought they were going to affect the world and shape the new century.

Gerhard Marks-Sculpture/Pottery Shop

Lyonel Feringer-Painting

Johannes Itten-Preliminary Courses

Fanatical about releasing each individual’s special talents

Nagy Hungarian constructivist

Interested in materials and wants art to serve a purpose

Experiments with everything

Itten is replaced by Nagy

Has incredible influence on the Bauhaus

Groupius prime minister

Nagy experiments by combining imagery and typography

Unifies photography and typography – typophoto

Interested in legibility

Thought communication should never be impaired by an aesthetic

Trying to create a new graphic language – new literature

Experiments with photo prints

Photo Classtiques – collage, photos that were cut up and replaced

Golden period for the Bauhaus – rebuilt great building

Took students projects and sold them

Made catalogues

Herbert Bayer was a student at Bauhaus then became part of the faculty

Gives us the universal alphabet

Idea is that we don’t really have an alphabet

We have two, Upper case and Lower case

We should omit capitals

1.     Just the idea

2.     Need the visual cues

This is the kind of thinking they are doing just as students

Groupius, Bayer, Nagy leave the Bauhaus for the Bauhaus to be left alone by the Nazis.

Hans Mayer is hired and is a vocalist and is not popular with the Nazis

Vanderoua is from Blood and Soil School (Germany)

Tschichold the son of a designer/painters

Studied calligraphy

21 years old and went to Bauhaus exhibition

Got exposer of the Bauhaus

Writing and publishing a 24 insert explaining a new typeface

1928 writes Typography

Aim of every typographic work to be the delivery of a message in the shortest most efficient manner- form follows function

THOUGHTS:

Bauhaus seems to have had a great affect on Art and seems to have been one of the best Art schools. It must have had an effect great enough that it caused the Nazi's to come in and destroy it. It would be interesting to know more about what the students actually learned at Bauhaus.

QUESTIONS:

If the Bauhaus was an awesome school, why were students like Bayer so worried about the alphabet? Wasn't there more important things to worry about like what we have in art school today? Is that all the Bauhaus taught, is Typography?

day 9

NOTES:

El Lissitzky – a painter originally started off helping pioneers

Influences constructivism and also Bauhaus

Lissitzky explores the intersection between Painting and architecture which is Proun(acronym)

Projects for the establishment of new art.

Taking a scientific approach to take on art

Beat the whites with the red wedge” propaganda piece (Lissitzsky’s known piece)

Page and Book design, For the voice

Also writes the Isms of Art- page system he developed mathematically (grids/bars)

English French and German

Columns divides each language

Sans Serif Type

Grids are completely liberal for designers

Solutions are in the problem

Analyze the geometry it tells you the solution

Alexander Rochanco  - art student 100 years ago

Style is primitive, its raw

Evolved working with modern aesthetics

Becomes a constructivists

Something that serves a social need –valid art

Destijl – functions in a window of time

Based on a Utopian approach to aesthetics

Theo Bandosberg- publisher

1922 format of magazine changes to A symmetrical

eada movement that said the world is chaos

the world has no meaning so why should art reflect on it

Before building a new world everything old had to be torn down

Piett Mondrion

Bauhaus was a school

Utopian ideal to change society

We should return to the old stuff

No machine back to creating by hand

Bringing the crafts and the man together

Bauhaus is about rebuilding

1919-1933

1919-1925- Weimar

First exhibition – 1923

Letter of registration – 1924

1925-1932 – Dessau

Groupius replaced by Meyer – 1928

Meyer replaced by van der Rohe – 1930

1932-1933 – Berlin

THOUGHTS:

Movies were depressing. People back in the day seemed to be confused on what they wanted to do. Like Lissitzsky, he helped pioneers, then started painting, then started architecture and wrote books? I like the movement with bringing man and crafts together. Working by hand is more valuable to me then with machine.

QUESTIONS:

Why would Lissitzsky take on a scientific approach on art? Art is suppose to be fun, imaginative and creative, not scientific.

In the movie, why were the Nazi's destroying the Bauhaus and why did Hitler hate artist so much? Were artists/designers treated as bad as the Jews?

Day 8

NOTES:

Secession

Not crisp letter forms

Peter Barring – interesting because he was the first to give us sans serif type.

German Power Company

First guy to do a Comprehensive identity package

Pioneers the idea of not load bearing walls

New Professor obsessed with Geometric Proportions

Peter falls in love with the idea

Combining circle and the square in intervals

1907 hired by AEG

hiring someone to over see there aesthetics was rare

Logo is seen as a metaphor and it is a honeycomb

The workers are like bees and have there own jobs.

Should have Consistent logos that always be used as a metaphor

Idea of interchangeable parts first used on a tea kettle.

Different parts for different combinations

Bernard Lucia

Goes to an Art exhibition and gets inspired to repaint his house in bright colors

Being only 14 gets kicked out and tries to go out and be a painter

Starving painter whose art starts a school

Imagery is redundant

Ludwig Hohlwein did poster for the Olympics

Hitler’s big show to the supremacy

Edward Mckauhoffer presented ideas of modernism

Flat Abstractions

A.M. Cassander  is a master able poster designer

Sophisticated abstraction to explain his ideas

Futurism is

Supremitism is about art for arts sake. Arts about emotion not about objects and propaganda.

Rejects utilitarian function also rejects pictorial representation

Only good art serves purpose

THOUGHTS: 

I liked the designing of the honey comb that Peter Barring did. How he symbolized the honey comb to represent people as bees and how they each have their own job to do. I like how a lot of the designers used geometric shapes into there designs.

QUESTIONS:

No questions.

Day 7

Notes:

John Ruskin

Philosophical leader for the arts and craft movement

Social Reform

Asked “ how can u consciously structure a society so they can contain a happy and mobile society”

Beginning of Socialism

Base Idea- things are valuable simply because there beautiful.

Cathedral was the perfect union

William Morris

Designed three typefaces- Golden, Troy and Chaucer.

“Don’t put anything in your home unless it’s beautiful.”

He designed over 644 blocks, plus initials, borders, frames and title pages.

People normally remember the vine work, paper and tapestry

William Morris falls into the Arts and Crafts Movement

He is reacting to Industrialization negatively

Aubrey Beardsley

Bad boy in art, he was scandalous

His work is similar to that of William Morris

Became more of a naturalistic painter towards the end of his career

Alphonse Mucha

Job doing Litho at a print shop

Sara Bernhardt hired him to a mutli- year contract for his work

His style was dominant

Adds a lot of sexuality to his designs

Will Bradley played with abstraction, flat backgrounds but the image with dimensionality.

Abstraction to decode the image

The way the lines cut force the visual of dimensionality

Henry Vanderbelt

Art Nouveau is a younger persons art

Margaret and Francis McDonald – they are sisters

Herbert McNair

Charles Renee Macintosh

Key points- Geometric, Curvilinear Elements (curvy/flowy) Rectilinear structure (rising verticals)

Floral Motifs, symbolism (Victorian)

Commonalities between students

They all became married.

They became known for attending the Giazgo School

Designed furniture’s and interiors.

Sessionstil (Austrian) – means style

Gustav and Klimt

Coloman Moser

Go through styles rapidly

Personal Thoughts:

 It's very interesting to know that it was offensive to have sexuality within the designs of ads like that of Alphonse Mucha. Today's society is totally open about sexuality, even alittle to much to the point that nothings a secret anymore. Today should be more like it was back then. I like the idea that John Ruskin believed that a cathedral made a union between people. When i was growing up I attended Church every Sunday and people really do unite together and get along. 

Questions:

Why was sexuality so defensive back then and not now?

Why does Art Nouveau mean young art?

Day 5

NOTES:

Cave Paintings are pictorial elements and abstract.

Roman writing is closely to what we understand.

Xylography- printing with wood

Examples of block printing, Ars Memorandi 1466 and 1470

Textura, gothic, black letter are styles in block books

Gutenburg used gothic style lettering because that was the popular style.

Lots of people are working but Gutenburg puts everything together.

Punch and the Matrix. Matrix gives a negative punch.

Early example of letter-press printing – Letters of Indulgence

Fleuron’s- cast decorative elements, flourishments

Ligature-two or more graphemes make a single glyph

Swevyheym and Pannartz are the evolution to Roman Letters

Steven Daye was an amateur and near illiterate.

Louis Simonneau

Phillippe Grandjean,  specimen of Roman du Roi

Copper plate engraving flourished during 1740-1760,Robert Clee

Bodoni redesigned the roman letterforms with a more geometric and mechanical appearance. Reinvented the serif making them hairlines without brackets.

Not so much designed as composed

Leading is measured from baseline to baseline

Ephemera- transitory written and printed matter not intended to be retained or preserved.

Chromolithology applied to packaging

Product was replacing the shop keeper

Relationships are now with products instead of a “shopkeeper”

Makes products you can relate to like Aunt Jemima and Quaker Oates

PERSONAL THOUGHTS:

People back in the day use to use other materials that weren't paper for advertisements and reading. Like wood and stone. Type has evolved in the world just like everything else. People like Bodoni have taken time to "reinvent" typefaces like roman and serif. I have learned that companies use there products in a certain way to connect with customers by using figures like Quaker Oates and Aunt Jemima. People would rather choose Quaker Oates then a general brand name. 

QUESTIONS:

Why did people use only one kind of typeface when creating, like gothic?

Why did people like Bodoni reinvent typefaces? What was wrong with the original?

Why are products so more convincing to buy because they have branding like Quaker Oates?

Day 4

NOTES:

-Sender-going up

-Descender

-Measure type from the highest point to the lowest point.

-Base line to base line - heading measured

-In 1815 Vincent Figgins showed Two lines Pica, Antique

-1700s rounded out serif embossed for blind people

-Specimen book is a sample book of typefaces.

-1900s san serif is used for running text

-rapid production to be able to print

-costed 3 pennies then dropped to 2 or 1

-sold by subscription – newspaper

-three penny paper

-sold to bankers and people in business

-Now penny papers are geared to common people.

-To support themselves they sold ad space

-Don’t have any illustrations just blocky type on page.

-Three penny papers had names like the merchant.

-One penny names had a more general appeal like the sun

-1841 john hooper becomes the first “ad man”

-worked for newspaper placing ads

-in charge of media bides-

-“brokers of space”

-ottmar mergenthaller created the linotype machine in 1886

-very close to graphic design history

-25000 impressions in one hour on a press

-employ lots of people to get this work done

-files a patton in 1825

-hes a german immigrant

-idea about casting type in words at a time

-1886 demonstrates to editor of ny for his machine

-7 of 8 compositors the work from the linotype can compose

-American type founders company

-1889 kodak releases the average camera that anybody can use

-when photography first started out it wasn’t a good use to printing

-1861 to 1865 civil war going on and first war that’s able to be photographed

-war was an idea

-photographs are the after math of the war and criticized that the scenes were set up

-1883 photographs multiple stances of a horse

-does a horses feet ever leave the ground?

-Muybridge began motion pictures

-Born in England

-In 1872 bet was solved that horses feet do leave the ground.

-1819-1901 is victorian era

-victorian era graphics noted at aesthetic confusion

-marked as a period of having really strong religious beliefs

-Fox Talbot, title page from Pencil of Nature

-Lithography is to print from stone

-1800s invented chromolithography, with color

-ephemera

THOUGHTS:

I have learned today that back in the day three pennies was expensive to buy a newspaper. and One penny is what the common person could afford to buy one. There were two different types of newspapers. The fancier more expensive one was for the high class business people and the cheaper general one was for the average. Kind of reflects how today is. Its fascinating to know that motion pictures began because of a bet about a horse 

QUESTIONS:

How did Ottmar Mergenthaller come about creating the linotype machine? What made him want to create it? Why was the Victorian Era such a period for strong religious beliefs and why not now? Why was the graphics in such confusion only during the Victorian Era?