thesis statement regarding Neville Brody

two options:

1. Neville Brody was never inhibited by the edges of a page.

2. Neville Brody has positively changed the world of Graphic Design.

Chapter 21: Psychedelic Posters

This part of chapter 21 dealt with psychedelic posters and their affect on the United States. It first began in the 60's in reaction to the Vietnam War. There was also a huge civil rights movement as well as a civil rights movement that influenced this recognizable posters. Their purpose was to show viewpoints instead of your basic commercial messages and advertising. Most of the artists who created these posters were generally self-taught. They were part of the hippie subculture, and can be distinguished by their love of rock music, drugs and ideas of reestablishment. One of the main contributors to psychedelic posters was Wes Wilson, who created the infamous Grateful Dead posters.

I think this movement could be considered one of the most recognizable movements in our history. When you look at designs on a timeline, this one stands out the most because it's so different from surrounded styles that occurred at the same time. It's very bold, daring, unique and set apart from the norm. It shows that being the strange one gets you remembered in the design world. Never to follow another person's steps but make your own. Now I just have to find my own direction,...

I know this movement began in the 60's, but how long did it last?

Chapter 20: Corporate Identity and Visual Systems

This chapter focused  on the idea that businesses needed to create stellar logos for themselves in order to be recognized in a rapidly growing design world. They needed to unify their businesses through a solid identity system, and this began in the 50's. CBS (Colombia's Broadcasting System) was one of the first businesses to realize the importance of an identity system. William Golden was the designer who created the CBS Television trademark. Most people even today  can recognize the logo as the 'eye'. It hasn't changed much since it's creation, which is awesome. George Olden was one of the first designers to work with imagery for on-air graphics. Another notable person from this style is Paul Rand, who is known for his creation of IMB, ABC and Westinghouse logos. His creations are considered elementary, timeless, unique and simple. A few terms that I can relate to are- open and closed identity systems. An open system is where the logo changes with time due to the changes in design styles and important e events. A closed system is just the opposite; the identity systems generally don't change but remain constant throughout it's life. A good example for a closed system is the Chase Bank logo, which is also one of the first recognizable abstract logos.

I think it's crazy that some businesses keep the same, overall concept of their trademark after years and years in the business. Most of them tweek it slightly to fit within the modern day era, but it's generally nothing drastic.  I find this interesting because graphic design has changed tremendously within just a few years, let along 50+ years. I would have expected companies to change their logos to go parallel with a changing society, but that really isn't the case. It goes to show that new isn't always better.

The 1968 Olympics in Mexico was explained in this chapter because the designers wanted a universal system that can be recognized by people worldwide. This seems quite obvious, but I'm curious to know if previous Olympics didn't consider the fact that the entire viewing population wouldn't be able to understand the signs and labels.

Chpater 18: International Typographic Style, & Chapter 19: The New York School

Chapter 18 covers a 1950's design movement that originated from Germany and Switzerland.  This design was very mathematical and had a scientific approach to all aspects of design.  Even though it was mathematical, generally the designs were asymmetrical and constructed through a grid.  One very important aspect of this design movement was that it helped combine the world internationally with world-wide known pictographs and glyphs.  There was an increasing need for communicative clarity, especially when it came to signs and travel information.  This Swiss design helped push these needs further. During this time, sans serif because even more popular, and all forms of propaganda were disposed of.  It was time for corporate and product advertising.  One man who helped push the Swiss movement was Ernst Keller.  He was versatile and took interest in simple forms, symbolic imagery, contrasting color and expressive lettering.  Another man of interest is Max Huber, who used very bright hues in his photographs alongside complex organized compositions.  They are borderline chaotic, but his placement of images has purpose and a comfort value to it.  Design took on a new look during this style as Anton Stankowski created visual forms that possessed some sort of physical force to it. He played with illusions and made abstract images that played with eyesight.  During the International Typographic Style, many new fonts were created.  This included Univers, Helvetica, and Palatino.  Univers was a great font, and Emil Ruder realized its potential.  Due to the consistent baseline and and x-height, all 21 different typefaces could be used together in an appealing way.  

Chapter 19 focuses mainly on the American movement during the mid-1900's. A new form of advertising arose containing a comedic effect.  Most of the designs were influenced by European design because America wasn't at the top when it came to design during this era.  However, American designers added some of their own style, forms and concepts which certainly helped it out. Paul Rand can be attributed with the credit of pushing America towards modern design.  He created influential magazine covers which stepped past usual American design traditions. The playful, dynamic and the unexpected often came into Rand's work. Bradbury Thompson emerged as one of the most influential designers in America after WWII. His adventurous personality and knowledge of printing allowed him to bring symbolics to power. Saul Bass was mentioned in this chapter as well because he was the first person to unify both print and media graphics with his work in The Man With the Golden Arm.  He is considered to be the most influential film/graphic designer due to his success and amazing approach to it.  Something I didn't know what that Yale has a highly respected Graphic Design program, and many of the leading designers taught there at some point.  A woman, Cipe Pineles, became the first woman to be admitted into the New York Art Director's Club, which broke typical stereotypes.  Design is usually male-dominated, so it's great to have a monumental mark such as this. It's also important to note that the magazines, Print and Communication Arts, became widely known during this period and inspired artists everywhere.  They are a great art magazine today so it's great to know a bit about their history.   

I was surprised to read that it took Adrian Frutiger three years to create the font Univers.  The family was huge and containing 21 different sans serif fonts.  This would explain the huge length of time Frutiger put in to create it, but it's amazing that someone worked for three years looking at the same font!

In chapter 18, it mentions a design Zapf who is responsible for creating several fonts.  Did he create Zapf Chancery, or was this font simply named after him?

For my first image which was inspired by Modern Art, I decided to mimic a piece made by Kathe Schmidt Kollwitz.  This artist designed in expressionism, and one item of focus during this time was on the poor and unfortunate.  Suffering women and children were depicted in their struggles because of the artist's experience and insight of the poor.  I decided to create my own basic poster where a young boy was shown with Save Darfur was at the bottom to give it some sort of title.  I really like the pencil strokes that Kollwitz used, so I did the same sort of thing in my sketch.  One thing I was really inspired was how you could make out the face, but there's no way you could ever give the face a name because it's unrecognizable.  It pushes the meaning further because we don't need a specific name to know that poverty is out there and people are suffering.  

My next piece was also with help from the Modern Arts.  I was inspired from the futurist period through their use of text to convey a meaning... and text alone.  I took a quote from a great song and tried to quickly tell a story based on the location of the text.  It isn't much, but I played with the terms 'far away', 'mistakes', 'contained' and 'away'.  It was fun to do this because it's a little more challenging and you really have to think about how to write something.  
And now for this image, which was inspired by Peter Behrens in the Genesis of Twentieth Century Design.  I noticed in a lot of his work that he used many borders with geometric patterns.  I made up my own poster for snow cones (?).  Don't ask my why I chose snow cones, I think it's because I saw an ad on TV for a snow cone maker,...and I want it.  I used this particular design because of his work on page 239, where he created the magazine cover for Mitteliungen Der Berliner Elekricitaets Werke.  It's a very simple and flat design, basic colors and yet has a bit of an illusion to it.  I tried to mimic the uppercase letters that were all centered in the middle.

Chapter 17- The War Years and After

Chapter 17 discusses how the United States' design concepts were changed during World War II and post-war.  They were very diverse and made posters that were informative and comical.  This was because there were so many different types of artists that were hired from the U.S. Office of War Information.  Once the U.S. entered the war in 1941, the main goal was creating posters for propaganda and production.  We needed to have spirits soaring high with confidence in the Allies, as well as an increase in production so we could support our troops oversees.  One very famous poster relating to production is Jean Carlu's "America's Answer! Production."  Artists began to create more graphic and emotional posters due to the intense hate of Nazi's, Hitler and the attack on Pearl Harbor.  The achieved the greatest impact by using contrasts in color and scale.  Once the war ended -Go Allies!- the posters turned toward consumer markets, which would help the U.S. recover from such a brutal war.  It was at this time that copy lines first began to appear on all full-color paintings, followed by a logo.  To boost moral, once company began to design posters that showed liberty, justice, investors, prospective employees and human rights.  

I was quite surprised to read about Seventeen Magazine at this time.  For some reason I thought it was created much after World War II.  It makes me wonder about other magazines and when they were first published.  

I don't fully understand the concept behind image 17-42; Herbert Matters brochure covering chair.  Can you explain it?

Ad recreation, week 1

Above are the original advertisements that I have chosen to recreate in a different art period.   Both of them were found online.

* Sorry about the images scattered everywhere.  I'm not entirely sure on how to arrange photos on Blogger so they are all just smashed above.  Clearly, you can see which images are the real advertisement, and which ones are my sketches.

The advertisement with the cards is interesting, but I felt it could be pushed more.  The girls needed a little bit more sex appeal and the overall composition of the ad was bland.  I thought this would be a good one to recreate under art nouveau because I was immediately thinking about Mucha's concentration on women and how seductive he created them.   I also think that the art design on the Ace card has as little bit of art nouveau style to it, so it started from there.  Above, you will find my quick sketch of how I feel this advertisement would look with an art nouveau feel to it.  I first began with a border around the entire image because I saw that decorative, tile-like borders encompassed much of the art created during this period.  In the background, I added organic poles with vines wrapping around them because art nouveau pieces often had nature incorporated within their work.  I would also like to add a little bit more work to the background, such as more organic and leaf-like images into it.  This would add more depth and layering; more like the intended style I was going for.  On the women, I made them a little bit more sexy by adding the 'spaghetti hair' that Mucha made famous.  I also added a halo-like border around them because this too was also seen often in art nouveau.  As for the typography, it was a little bit more difficult because I didn't see much use of typography during art nouveau.  I did, however, see some in Mucha's "Job" and he had the tile border around each letter.  I gave an attempt at this, but decided to only do the first letter of each phrase due to the limited space I had.  If I were to recreate this, I would do each letter the same way. 

The next image with the car was effective, but a little to simple.  In order to get that rugged, urban feel, I thought it could be pushed farther and be designed similar to the style achieved during the Industrial Revolution.  It already has a lot of the qualities, such as the colors and the central image.  I added some harsh brush strokes at the bottom because that was often seen during the Industrial Revolution.  I would probably keep it all within grey/silver tones to match the car.  Maybe some black?  In order to make the punch line a little bit more effective, I decided to mimic the Industrial Revolution's style and add buildings.  Now it shows how much the car will have to go through in 'a few minutes', so it seems more unrealistic that the car will make it in time.  But!  Since this is an Audi, who are known for the speed and agility, it might be possible that the car will make it in time.  To add the final touch, I thought I should add a more industrial-like feel and add smoke and lightning rods/antennae's to the buildings.  Now it's a bit more realistic and harder looking.  Unfortunately, I can't read the small print underneath the car, so I redesigned according to what I could see.  After sketching this particular advertisement, I have realized that I should probably never work in a car-building/designing business because my sketches look awful...