ARH Notes and Reaction 4-10-12

Notes:

Swiss Design and International Typographic style

Swiss Design is more than just grids.

It is visual unity though asymmetrical composition.

Embraces objective photography,

Sanserif type,

Flush left and rag right,

Mathematical grids. A grid is just a game that you set up rules for.

Design is socially useful.

More important is the appearance than the attitude.

Has it’s roots in distil, Bauhaus, the new typography.

1950 Max Bill is involved in creating a new school in Germany called Ulm.

At the school they introduced a study of semiotics (the philosophical theory of signs and symbols – what things mean in relationship to other things).

Semiotics

/Syntactics–order

/Semantics–meaning or referred to

/Pragmatics–how it is used

*There is no inherent or independent meaning

Armin Hofman b.1920

Swiss design

“Design the negative space, the rest will work.”

Josef Müller Brockmann - looking for an absolute and total graphic expression

Used intensity and clarity

Swiss Moderism vs. NYC Modernism

Paul Rand, Saul Bass & Ivan Chermayeff

1940 begin to see effects of Modernism in advertising

European - theoretical / NY- pragmatic

“The Big Idea”

Paul Rand

From New York

Studied Swiss design

Making powerful imagery and putting it in the American landscape

Gave us the UPS logo among many other well known logos

Sal Bass (1920-1996)

Known for his movie posters and credit sequences

Also did logo design. AT&T, Minolta, United Airlines

Ivan Chermayeff

Did branding and logos for many, many companies. Educated at Yale

Used construction paper, punched wholes, and teared edges to make his designs.

Post Modernism

The break with Modernist ideas (structure, order, harmony)

Emphasis on feeling rather than rationale

Emphasis on surface texture and materials

Self-consciousness or self-referencing

Mixes high and low culture

Historical references

Vernacular

IE. Meta, players interacting with audience, movies referencing itself.

“It is the hangover of modernism”

Wolfgang Weingard – Swiss Designer

Teaches in the Basil School of Design

Put things together in a seemingly random arrangement.

Uses a letterpress in a very difficult way

Easily imitated

Dan Freedman 1945-95

Student of Weingard. Coined “Radical Modernism”

Brought a the new style of typographic design to the U.S.

April Graiman

Starts the wheel going in 80’s design

Riffs off of Lissitzky

Memphis Group

Texture, color, pattern, more, more, more.  Essential 80’s design. Orgy of color and texture.

Personal Thoughts:

I thought that this was one of the most interesting eras of design that has been discussed thus far. I always found that Post-Moderistic design was fun but over the top. I remember having a white button-up short sleeve shirt that had lots of colorful paint splatters. It is the most Post-Modernistic piece of clothing I remember having. Whenever I see the “orgy of color and texture” I think of Will Smith’s The Fresh Prince of Belair and movies like White Men Can’t Jump.

I completely agree with Dorian when he said that the big logo designers would be spinning in their graves if they saw their logos being redesigned into the 3 Dimensional ones we see today.