This assignment was to develop a timeline of the information from the bottom of our worksheet. My partner for this project was Isabelle.
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The timeline was regarding the key events towards printing, paper, and moveable type. We decided to create a timeline to separate what was going on in Europe and in Asia. I created the idea of using a feather which symbolized another version of writing that was being replaced by what was happening in the timeline.
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Europe was on the left with blue blocks for the text and the right I used orange blocks to show the text. Overall we tried to make sure that the timeline had an overall theme to include background images and the main letterforms of uncial font.
Early modern Europe timeline.
INFOGRAPHIC
The infographic above is a summary of the transformations in printing technology up through the nineteenth century described in chapters six through eight in, "The Story of Graphic Design," by Patrick Cramsie. All of the information contained in the infographic as well as most of the images are derived from this book.
Album Design
Victorian Broadsides
This is an example of Victorian Broadsides, Large block text for the heading and they used a simple color palette of black white and or adding red. This was covered in our book for class found in chapter 8. Fonts used primarily for such posters or handbills were Rockwell style fonts or fonts similar to MS Elephant.
I used my Jenny Holzer Truism "Learn to trust your own eyes"
The link to the image was added in the black border that goes around the 12x12 album cover design, based on the design on page 124.
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Post Modern Pastiche
Newspaper ad designed by Lou Dorfsman from 1962
Josef Müller-Blockmann's "Beethoven" Poster
This essay is a reflect of the Post-Modern era in graphic design from the 1960’s, my project was to create a pastiche design from two illustrations within our book by Patrick Cramsie “The History of Graphic Design. Pastiche is mixing the two styles from both designers and recreating a new design relating to that era. The style of Post-Modern was focused rejecting Swiss style and was known as “New Wave.” The two designs that I am combining are “Rockets Red Glare” CBS advertisement on page 237 of our book created by Lou Dorfsman, 1962 (Cramsie, 2010) and “Beethovan” on page 246 by Josef Muller-Brockmann, 1955. (Cramsie, 2010)
The first design I will review in detail in “Rockets Red Glare” This advertisement was a response to Lt. Col. John Glenn’s triple orbit in five hours. The design was in black and white with a U.S. Flag hanging vertically from stars going downward, with only seven stripes showing, starting with black and ending with black. There are 27 full stars showing on top and 5 partial stars along the top edge. An older version of the CBS logo sat within the bottom of the left stripe In the middle white stripe a quarter down sits a title that says “THE ROCKET’S RED GLARE… this type is a sans-serif typeface that is in bold. There is a total of four paragraphs that continue to the next white stripe. Each paragraph has a subtitle that is also in bold. In the 3rd black stripe is a rocket in white that extends past the stripe into the stars which finishes the designs composition.
The second design by Josef Muller which shows segments of circled rings that had a thin grey stroke that were creating rings of outer ring layers. This resemble a simplistic look like rings to a tree. These segments of rings were staggered, moving forward and backwards. The composition has a large circular opening that was in the lower left third of the design. The text that was written in a sans-serif typeface with thin strokes and the bulk of its text starting with the letter g, was at its center of the circle opening. Imagine that open circle as a pie cut in quarters and the lower right is where that text is located and the title “beethovan” is in the upper left section. The upper right is clear, and the lower left had the titles for the performers. The design was done in grey and black.
In referencing these two designs, I pastiche together a similar look of the US Flag, the lines which represented the stripes of the flag going vertically, but I used all thirteen stripes, starting with black and ending in black. I made my theme around the presidential debate that John F. Kennedy was in against Nixon. I made this posted based on the televisions first broadcast on ABC of presidential debate. In the lower left I had an image of JFK and I had two stripes in red, one white, and three blue stripes. The red stripes were on the left of the 11”x17” design. I had two red circle curved stripes that extended the red stripes to look like the letter J. In the first red stripe I had vertical text that read 44th Quadrennial Election. The one middle white stripe I created a F using to small horizontal strokes to that extended and over the first blue stripe, which connected the white vertical stripe. The last three blue stripes I created the letter K, by keeping those curved lines going to JFK’s head to the right, then mirroring those curves 180 degrees to the right to finish the bottom leg to the letter K. My overall composition was also to create a similar composition except my leading lines moved you to JFK’s vectored image. Next to the letter F stripe at its base I had the date of September 26th, 1960 and in block text I had DEBATE in bold sanserif text, under that I had my block of text that was the topics of JFK’s debate points he brought up. The typeface family I used was Arial and I used Arial regular and narrow to keep the design readable and minimalistic.
THE FUTURE OF GRAPHIC DESIGN
Steve Gonzalez
Peter Barr
ARH 246
12/1/2018
The next decade of Graphic Design
Looking forward to what I would expect to see in graphic design, I first must consider my view of what graphic design used to be. In order to be able to think about the look of what we will do in the future. I also will review five sources; Patrick Cramsie’s last chapter in his book. “The Story of Graphic Design from the Invention of Writing to the Birth of Digital Design”, Graphic Designer Nick Law’s comment in video from a conference Make/Think 2009, Curator Ellen Lupton’s tour of graphic design, Andrew Blauvelt’s comment on Graphic Design in the 80’s to now, and Cennydd Bowles who is a designer and book author that made a comment in a video for Adobe Creative Cloud. All these sources have helped me conceive where I believe Graphic Design is headed.
My interpretation of Graphic Design 20 years ago as a single highway that got you to a destination. Now I look at it as several highways that interact with each other, that take you to the same destination but with many stops or views to get there. What I am referring to are the ways apps work with websites and how every website page flow and mesh well with each other. If you look at what our focus was on twenty years ago, we looked at banners, a way to click on an advertisement that took us somewhere on the internet. The limited selection of fonts, then the creation of logos to what felt like the big bang! I graphic design going into many different areas, that expands into whatever new market that will be created. I see it changing and molding as the world changes too. This is because from what I have learned is that society influences design and in turn graphic design creates the image of what is going on around us.
Thinking about the last chapter in our book for this assignment. “The Story of Graphic Design from the Invention of Writing to the Birth of Digital Design” by Patrick Cramsie. He said “Any attempt to predict the future of graphic design will suffer from the same sort of limitations” (Cramsie, 2010) This being the first source it really made me think of graphic design as a child. To think that your child is limited to certain parameters will stunt its growth and not blossom into what it could, it is a serious view to consider, especially if you love graphic design. During this course I learned how graphic design has evolved and as each century has passed how fast it is going and I would say that the growth is exponential.
My second source Nick Law expressed the ideas that graphic design must be a collaborative effort in an organization. I truly believe this in doing some work for Adrian Public School Bond’s effort. While I was doing this, I would get feedback to what I was creating or asked to make design based on our message to get the votes needed for our bond to pass. I only echo what Nick Cave said in his video “The future in not in silos. The future is the people collaborating. (Cave, n.d.) at 16 minutes 35 seconds into the video. He used a PowerPoint to describe to design a system that involved everyone involved from coming up with the story, which thinks up the story, those that edit it, and those that create it. He mentions one person can not do it well or see every angle to come up with a complete story which creates a medium that when done well it involves all of those people that creates the advertisement that is beyond a message.
My third source Ellen Lupton a Curator. She gave a tour about graphic design and showed how design looks now and showed several interesting pieces that incorporate the internets feeds like twitter to create artistic posters that regenerate what ever is being posted on the internet. What I took away from this was how artists take ideas and expand on them and redevelop an idea and how it influences new designs to be create. Ellen Lupton said, “your niche will define you” and “Graphic Design is a physical activity.” (Lupton, 2012) When I think about Nick Law’s video, I do think its your niche that will define you, just like what Patrick Cramsie implied that there is so many graphic design branches and it can explore many forms of design. These two concepts are like a design team working together all doing different parts to get the finished design. I did enjoy seeing all the artists in the video by Ellen Lupton and think about how I see Anthony Burrill work and Barbara Kruger’s work. It’s the next evolution of design which also looks like the future of graphic design.
Andrew Blauvelt is my fourth source and I decided to watch each of my sources videos to get a personal understanding. He was interesting presenter, I felt he was nervous but not scared, just concerned. He described “graphic design as bloated, soft” (Blauvelt, 2011) He was referring to the 80’s. It called it a blob not formed yet is what I think he was implying. This was due to the personal computer coming out and many people had access to the tools to create and design. I can see that, I think if I was an artist without a niche, I would feel overwhelmed in what direction to go or what to make, even though I feel that the 80’s were an interesting time for graphic design. The other thing that Andrew Blauvelt said was “Graphic Design finds itself as dispersed as a decade ago, however the critical space running room is open to adjacent and not so adjacent practices. We might save it after all.” I felt that even though a decade ago it was a blob and he said the same for 2011, I think he was indicating now there are branches of graphic design and practices that we can use to creating and designing. This all wraps around the other source’s comments too. To think that we are now seeing collaboration, finding the niche as artists, evolving as artists, which helps us see how graphic design is shaping towards the future.
My last source I added is important to me because of another class that I am taking and deals with just about everything I have learned in all my classes. When it come to the practices of UX/UI, designers and can create an app or a website that must be free of flaws to get you to what you want to see, in the same way as a highway would. I feel that it will be how well it gets all put together that will be the core to making graphic design feel smooth and simple between its future of how things are designed. This is what Cennydd Bowles said in an Interview with Creative Cloud on YouTube. “We need to design beautiful seams versus seamlessness.” (Cloud, 2017) Which looking at the future of design I think it will be larger companies and the people that work together that will collaborate that will set a trend on the styles we see and use. If you look at what we do now you see a new flat design look its those seams that are beautiful that join pages to create a theme that turns graphic design and fine art together. What looks more minimalistic but has more meaning with little to no words, with lots of color. This design is cleaner that get the message to the viewer to make a quicker overall look to decide of what to click to follow along easily. I do believe that collaboration is the way to go. In researching this assignment, I searched for designer jobs at Microsoft. I came across well over 50 jobs just within the United States and India. It is this type of collaboration that moves like an army in the Graphic Design world. It will be these companies like Microsoft and Apple that set the foundation to society of how we should view graphics along with those celebrities that we follow in social media.
So many avenues have made graphic design a solid part of how we do things globally, to think what used to be looked at it as a glob, has now branched off into new territories of design specializing on product, destinations, prints, magazines, web graphics, and the list goes on. I would be negligent to assume I would know where graphic design is headed 10 years down the road. I can see trends of design, but I can't see the what our future holds that could shape where graphic design is heading. What I am referring to is social issues of the worlds like war, disasters, and political change. What I do realize is that as a designer we see what is happening around us and use those ideas to create. Others see that work and improve on it and recreate it. Those iterations are happening so fast and we must be flexible because of technology allowing us to share around the world. It will be a collaboration of big corporations and individual designers that become the glue that forms what we will create, to reaffirm what Ellen Lupton had said, “Your niche will define you” (Lupton, 2012) and I believe it will be that, that shapes graphic design in the future.
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Contemporary Graphic Designer infographic
My contemporary artist was Anthony Burrill. For this assignment I had to find an artist that I liked create an infographic about him and answer The Who, what, when, where, why, and how, about him.
I found Anthony Burrill's work and his phrases work well for me as an artist. Learning about him and where he started and the work he has done, very refreshing and I think I know where I want to be and how to channel my energy in and around my home.
Anthony Burrill Annotated Bibliography
Anthony Burrill, www.anthonyburrill.com/
Anthony Burrill biography page that is on his website you can see that he is a Graphic artist, Designer, and print maker. Anthony Burrill’s style for communication is considered upbeat and uses colors in creating his prints. He has permanent collections of his work being show in London and New York. To me his style resembles Jenny Holzer’s truisms. What is obviously different is how he got his start creating his work and develop his ideas and the fact that he is a man, which I believe his gender reflects in his work.
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Glug Events — Design Talks and Notworking. “Glug x Ravensbourne: Anthony Burrill.” YouTube, YouTube, 26 Apr. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-K0fqFJiPM.
In this video where Anthony Burrill spoke, he described how he started and how his work developed over time. What he said at the end of his video was that “Persistence is fruitful” I found this to be very rewarding because of trying to find a niche with creating art and find a way to make it work. I found a connection with what he said, to being able to create work, find a style and to get at it and not to quit. It reminds me that my story is no different than anyone else but what sets him apart is his persistence.
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Cloud, Adobe Creative. “Discover the Work of Anthony Burrill | OFFF 2017 | Adobe Creative Cloud.” YouTube, YouTube, 8 Apr. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuftM0C_9NQ.
This video was helpful in learning how his typesets were made and learning his process. I would recommend watching this if you are in love with type design. The other main piece I took away from this video that he talked about creating typefaces on a computer versus by hand and explained that one has a story and the other is soulless. Being able to work with something that has history is more worthwhile to create publication or art with it. He used an example from some text he found while in Portugal and learned about how it was created and what it was used for.
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Centerfold.” Creative Review, vol. 21, no. 9, Sept. 2001, pp. 53–63. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aft&AN=504966480&site=ehost-live.
In reading this short article about him, he mentions something that I have always wondered about when creating art. He explains that he does not want to obsess about something that he creates. He would rather move on to another project than get stuck looking over his work too much. In this article he mentions that his work is free of ego, which if you see his work you see the message and not him. This shares a similarity with the crystal goblet mentality, it should be the message and not the artists ego. The other thing I found helpful in understanding him is learning about his mail art, he answered certain questions of himself, he values truthfulness and his mantra, it’s not what you do, it’s how you do it. This I feel reflects him as an artist.
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Burrill, Anthony. “Graphics Against Graft.” Creative Review, vol. 24, no. 6, June 2004, pp. 47–48. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aft&AN=505085048&site=ehost-live.
This article covered a description of Burrill’s work and travel to Nairobi Africa. This article helped me see his collaboration to creating a campaign against corruption. How he developed his ideas and what he eventually created. He gave description of the imagery that surrounded him, from schools to an Acadia tree, and giraffes walking along. When he describes it all I can see why he mentions it. These could be future works that he can create. Ideas for art are all around us, we just need to take a mental snapshot. I feel that this fits many if not all forms of art. I found this article helpful from a process and a visual perspective.
