Critical introduction

Inspired by modernism is a press and promotions pack for an exhibition that takes place at the design museum. It is a four-page minimalist design spread promoting themes derived from the modernist era of design, Swiss movement and modernist aesthetic.

The inspiration for this project comes from the modernist aesthetic of brands such as Braun and Apple and the overall works of the Bauhaus modernist era. It employs the idea that less is more and strips back traditional Bauhaus posters and focuses on minimalism and block colours. All of the posters also use the Helvetica font that is typically used in Swiss or modernist design. The fonts sleek lines and modern sensibilities helps solidify the modernist identity. Its refined and ubiquitous design helps aid the simple, clean and effective look of all the designs. The drop shadow helps bridge the gap between classic and modern, supporting the idea of the modernist era being carried into the 21^st century.

The posters also use minimal, vibrant block colours in the construction of the entirety of the press promotions pack. For that, it resembles Bauhaus era designers such as Herbert Bayer. It also goes off the somewhat simplicity and clarity of Swiss design to create an overall minimalist final look. The bright colours of the products help highlight the main theme of the exhibition and draw the focus of the viewer’s eye to that.

The press pack also incorporates multiple design principles such as basic layering but not overlapping, to keep within the theme of minimalism. It also uses figure and ground as well as positive space, particularly in the composition of the posters. The designer is very self-aware of balance and positioning on the page. It is evident that there is some use of borders to frame the posters and to help with the positioning. The consistent use of lines and edges again help guide the viewer’s eye around the image and then to the focal point, which are the designs used on all the posters. 

The Inspired by modernism exhibition looks at modernist design and aesthetic over including modernist advertising design for the overall look. Products like bikes and lightbulbs to brands like Braun and early 2000s Apple have curated a design aesthetic channelling old Bauhaus modernist design of fluidity and flexibility, as well as bringing that into the 21^st century. The design of the posters incorporate Swiss minimalist design, whilst still using modernist design principles, particularly in terms of colour and contrast. The minimalism of the products ties together the look of the press pack. Both design eras value the idea that form follows function and this press and promotions pack follows through with that principle.

Overall the press and promotions pack adopts a minimalist design aesthetic through its choice in composition, font and colour, resembling the modernist Bauhaus design era.

Word count: 471

The Press promotions pack - Inspired by modernism

This is all of the finished products contained within the press promotions pack for the exhibition at the design museum, Inspired by Modernism.

The Wallpaper design

For the ipad click through, I wanted to create a background wallpaper to bring all of the four poster designs together cohesively. Because they are four separate designs, it was important for me to create a link between all of them and I felt like this design did just that

Experimenting with Bauhaus

I wanted to try some more traditional Bauhaus designs because I was feeling a little bored of my modernist designs and thought I could see what other inspiration I could draw from traditional Bauhaus poster designs.

I do like the bright colours and the vibrancy of the posters. Although I won’t pursue designs like such, I do feel more confident in my own designs and see more of a link between the traditional designs and mine as well as the modernist aesthetics

Initial badge and T shirt designs

These are the initial t shirt and badge designs incorporating the Bauhaus font design

Again, it is more the font that is annoying me. I think it is too harsh for the overall design and I will switch out the design. I may try and do something a little more with the design because I think it is a little flat. I also need to design the back of the t shirt 

I like the badges and I think the simplicity of them is fine and I think I will just make some more of those

Initial poster idea inspired by modernism

These are the initial poster designs that I have for the inspired by modernism poster for the design museum.

I am not liking the font even though it is Bauhaus font and everything at the moment seems a bit off. But it is still a work in progress and things can be ironed out

Change in idea

from light bulb image, i've decided to focus on modernism because of the clean lines so looked at modernist work e.g. Braun. I would have liked to pursue the timeline design but I felt that spreading that across different platforms, I would have been limited in design and I might have looked quite bland in the end.

Because of the clean lines and structure, I think Bauhaus would be good to look into and how it has inspired design today like the work of Braun, Ikea and Ipods.

I am going to make more designs like so that I have a wider variety of products to place on the posters yet it still links to the same idea

Aram Bartholl and Post Internet Art - presentation and reflection

“post art” internet

o   Post-Internet does not imply a time “after” the Internet but rather a time “about” the Internet.

o   Post-Internet Art is the successor to Internet Art, such as Dada, Fluxus and Conceptual Art.

o   Post-Internet Artists have moved beyond the novelty of the web and they use its tools to tackle other subjects.

o   The Post-Internet generation use digital strategies to create objects and installations that exist in the real world.

o   They have a fascination with the blurring boundaries between what is ‘cyber’ and what is ‘real’.

o   It does not only use Internet as an art, but it comments on the Internet’s influence in society.

Aram Bartholl is renowned for his innovative art. This focuses mainly on:

Analogue/Digital Boundaries, Digital (sub)cultures, Internet Privacy, Digital Technologies & their daily use, Cyber and ‘Real’ worlds

“The digital revolution happened some years ago, but the impact is now.” ~ Aram Bartholl, 2013

Bartholl’s Famous Map Art Installation, mocking Google Maps’ imposing ubiquity. (2006 – 2013)

o   The perception of the city is increasingly influenced by geolocation services.

o   intended to highlight the blurring of boundaries between the digital and physical world.

o   He wishes to draw people's attention towards the dominance of digital powers in our everyday lives.

o   Bartholl argues that, “Transferred to physical space the map marker questions the relation of the digital information space to everyday life public city space.”

Drop dead project

o   In an attempt to make it “an adventure to go back outside” (Bartholl, 2012), Bartholl set up an offline peer-to-peer file sharing network in 5 various locations in New York.

o   Bartholl installed USB memory sticks around the city, fixed into holes inside brick walls using cement.

o   The USB stick required you to physically attach your laptop into the wall to download or share content.

o   Bartholl explores the concept of the digital world infiltrating our physical world in eye-catching and interactive demonstrations.

o   Bartholl emphasises the excitement of the unknown, as people would be downloading information from the USB sticks, which might have a virus on them.

I really liked the idea of post internet art. I think there is an underlying humour to it and playing on what we understand of the internet and the computer generation. I particularly like the map instillation project. What’s good is that it uses something so recognisable to the public and in that way the audience can relate to that more. I think it’s also weird how almost true this layout is. It kind of makes you take a step back and think woah. 

Continued work on poster designs

INSERT LAST LEG OF POSTER DESIGNS

This is the third lot of typography posters that I have been working on. I have enjoyed creating all of the ideas that I had in my head. I now really need to work on my idea and finalising.

I have eliminated the designs that I don’t want to pursue and am now just going to decide between the ones I have left which ones have to most potential to be carried through poster, t shirt designs and badges. I think at the moment it’s between the light bulb one and the timeline one

I like the illustrative work and using different lines and shapes and it would have been my second option to pursue. I like the effect that it gives yet it is quite simple and understated in design.

I much prefer the last saul bass design and although this is unfinished, I am not overly keen on the design. I wanted to do some illustrative sort of thing with it but I’m not good at that

Nicholas Felton

Whilst researching about Edward tufte, I stumbled across a person called Nicholas Felton who is an info graphics designer. He has a website called feltron.com and he makes info graphics that document his life. He creates yearly annual reports and documents things like his sleep, travel etc.

I think he creates works of art and the simplicity of the design, even with the colours doesn’t distract from the data being presented and makes for a really effective piece of work

I dunno I think his work is really interesting and it’s kind of sad that he doesn’t do them anymore but it’s an interesting way to take the purpose of an infographic 

Thoughts on the presentation

I think as a person to research, Tufte isn’t the most interesting and I found that because of that, mine and simona’s presentation because very content heavy. Having said that I think it’s good. I think I now have a better understanding of the purpose of data visualisation/info graphics. I do think they are good, not necessarily for my final piece but in general for displaying information. I think it is particularly becoming more relevant now because society is after quick and easy and infographics are a really concise way of distributing information in an effective way.

I particularly agree with Fernanda Viegas and Martin M. Wattenbergs’ quote that “an ideal visualization should not only communicate clearly, but stimulate viewer engagement and attention”. If it wasn’t that, I don’t think they would be of any use to anyone.

Some are too confusing and don’t work like…….one

I feel like this is unsuccessful because it’s confusing to follow and because of that, the whole infographic loses its meaning. It looks great in its aesthetics but it doesn’t mean anything when you can’t take useful information from it/understand it

My Presentation - Data Visualisation & Edward Tufte

This is our presentation about Data visualisation and the script for it

 presentation script

Overview - me

•       Data visualisation is viewed as the modern equivalent of visual communication. It involves the creation and study of the visual representation of data. This means that , meaning information that has been abstracted in some schematic form

•       The primary goal of data visualisation is to communicate information clearly and efficiently to users with the use of statistical and information graphics, tables, and charts selected. Effective visualisation helps users in analysing and reasoning about data and evidence. It makes complex data more accessible, understandable and usable.

•       Data visualization is both an art and a science. The rate at which data is generated has increased, driven by an increasingly information-based economy.

•       According to Friedman (2008) the "main goal of data visualization is to communicate information clearly and effectively through graphical means. It doesn't mean that it needs to look boring to be functional or aesthetically sophisticated. To convey ideas both aesthetic form and functionality need to go hand in hand. Designers often fail to achieve a balance between form and function, creating gorgeous data visualizations which fail to serve their main purpose — to communicate information".

•       Viegas and Martin M. Wattenberg have suggested that an ideal visualisation should not only communicate clearly, but stimulate viewer engagement and attention

Brief history- simona

•       data visualisation dates back to the beginning in the 2nd century with data arrangement into columns and rows and evolving to the initial quantitative representations in the 17th century. According to the Interaction Design Foundation, philosopher and mathematician René Descartes laid the ground work for William Playfair. Descartes developed a two-dimensional coordinate system for displaying values, which in the late 18th century Playfair saw potential for graphical communication of quantitative data.

•       In the second half of the 20th century, Jacques Bertin used quantitative graphs to represent information "intuitively, clearly, accurately, and efficiently". John Tukey and more notably Edward Tufte pushed the bounds of data visualization. Tukey with his new statistical approach: exploratory data analysis and Tufte with his book "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information”.

•       With the progression of technology came the progression of data visualisation; starting with hand drawn visualisations and evolving into more technical applications – including interactive designs leading to software visualisation. Programs like SAS and Minitab allow for data visualization in the field of statistics. Other data visualization applications, more focused and unique to individuals, programming languages such as D3, Python and JavaScript help to make the visualization of quantitative data possible.

Iso type – me

•       Isotype (International System of TYpographic Picture Education) is a method of showing social, technological, biological and historical connections in pictorial form.

•       It was first known as the Vienna Method of Pictorial Statistics due to it having been developed at the Social and economic museum of Vienna between 1925 and 1934.

•       The term Isotype was applied to the method around 1935, after its key practitioners were forced to leave Vienna by the rise of Austrian fascism.

Examples Slide

Edward tufte - simona

•       He is an American statistician and professor at Yale University. He is noted for his writings on information design and as a pioneer in the field of data visualisation.

•       He is an expert in the presentation of informational graphics such as charts and diagrams

•       He coined the term chartjunk which is a word used to refer to useless non-informative, or information-obscuring elements of quantitative information displays.

•       Although Tufte is said to have invented Sparklines, in actuality he invented only the name and popularized it as technique. Sparklines is a small line chart which is typically drawn without axes or coordinates. It is a condensed way to present trends and variation, associated with a measurement such as average temperature or stock market activity, often embedded directly in the text. Their intention is to be succinct and memorable

criticising powerpoint - me

•       Tufte has criticized the way Microsoft PowerPoint is typically used. In his essay "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint," Tufte criticizes multiple aspects of the software including:

•       Its use to guide and reassure a presenter, rather than to enlighten the audience;

•       Its unhelpfully simplistic tables and charts, resulting from the low resolution of early computer displays;

•       Poor typography and chart layout, from presenters who are poor designers or who use poorly designed templates and default settings  

•       Instead, Tufte argues that the most effective way of presenting information in a technical setting, such as an academic seminar or a meeting of industry experts, is by distributing a brief written report that can be read by all participants in the first 5 to 10 minutes of the meeting. Tufte believes that this is the most efficient method of transferring knowledge from the presenter to the audience and then the rest of the meeting is devoted to discussion and debate.

Initial T shirt design idea

From my first lot of posters, I remembered one I had gotten bored of and decided to see how that would work as a t shirt as I mentioned before. Because of the texture of the font that had created, I decided that it would work best on a t shirt and if you could raise the font and feel the texture of the font.

It is a very simple and basic design on paper but because of the texture, I think the t shirt design works well for it. I may try and use that brush type again on future designs.

web interactivity and Joshua Davis presentation - thoughts

Joshua Davis, has made a career as an image maker using programming, he writes his own code, to produce interactions with users and to generate visual compositions according to rule-based, randomized processes

Creator of praystation.com - would use to exhibit new design work and experiments, was one of the first to offer open source Flash files.

I really like his work. It kind of reminds me of old school windows media player when you got the designs to play with the music. His work is very illustrative as well with a lot of use of shapes and I would like to do something like that but I don’t think my illustration skills are that great

readings notes - modularity, grid, pattern, diagram

Modularity

o   A module is a fixed element used within a larger system or structure e.g. a pixel is a module that builds a digital image

o   Designers create pixel-based typefaces – use a grid of pixels to invent letterforms that are consistent from one to the next while giving each one a distinctive shape

o   Designers are constantly making decisions about size, colour, placement, proportion, relation- ships, and materials as well as about subject matter, style, and imagery.

Pattern

o   Created by dots/stripes/grids

o   Composing a single element in different schemes – designer can create endless variations

o   By understanding how to produce patterns, designers learn how to weave complexity out of elementary structures, participating in the world’s most ancient and prevalent artistic practice.

o   Patterns follow a repetitive principle

Diagram

o   A diagram is a graphic representation of a structure, situation, or process.

o   Diagrams can depict the anatomy of a creature, the hierarchy of a corporation, or the flow of ideas.

o   Diagrams allow viewers to see relationships that would not come forward in a straight list of numbers or a verbal description.

o   Information graphics can be approached in a pure and objective manner.

o   The language of diagrams has yielded a rich and evocative repertoire within contemporary design.

o   In editorial design, diagrams often function to illuminate and explain complex ideas.

o   Diagrams also can be used to depict personal histories, a process that forces the designer to develop systematic ways to represent subjective experience

o   Example - Tube station map

Grid

o   A network of lines

o   Guidelines help the designer align elements in relation to each other.

o   The grid can work quietly in the background, or it can assert itself as an active element.

o   A well-made grid encourages the designer to vary the scale and placement of elements without relying wholly on arbitrary judgements.

o   The grid offers a rationale and a starting point for each composition, converting a blank area into a structured field.

o   Grids help designers create active, asymmetrical compositions in place of static, centered ones.

o   Generates form, arranges images and organises information

Creating a pattern with letters - task

For this task I used letters to create some form of pattern/design

I enjoyed the task. I do think that not all of the letters work so well with it and I struggled with letters like B to find/create a pattern or design with it. I think this may work well if minimised and repeated and used to create a border on a page or something like that 

Initial ideas - typography posters

I can’t decide what to do for my final piece as of yet as none of the presentations or people we have looked at haven’t fully inspired me to commit to one style of poster design. At this moment in time I just know what I like and what I dislike in terms of poster designs

These are the first initial ideas I have done for a typography exhibition at the design museum. Doing this allowed me to explore my different ideas for poster ideas in general and I had more freedom to create what I want because it is typography based

Poster 1 – I like this one because I think it is a little twist on Saul bass with the simple design and the trio of colours used. The text is quite messy which I have drawn from grunge style (messy yet readable). I think as a print out this would look interesting because it is cut off at the edges. This print employs the idea of layering and isn’t too strict with its framing.

Poster 2 – I like this one because it makes sense. As this poster would be about the history of typography, it made sense to use a timeline format. It is still very bland and I think that’s why I got bored of it there are elements of it that I do like, such as the timeline itself and playing around with the texture and style as well as the font of “typography” and using different fonts to create that

Poster 3 – this poster is incomplete because I had no idea with where to go with it. I experimented a little with the brush style and I do like it but I think it is better off on a t shirt or something where you could feel the texture of that find

Poster 4 – it is very much complete but I really don’t like this design. I think it is very generic, bit samey and it’s not the direction I wanted to go in but playing around with the opacity of colours was cool and I may look into doing that a bit more. This employs the idea of layering, figure and ground in the background image.

Poster 5 – this poster is very much inspired by wim crouwels’ calendar designs where the dissection of letters supposedly makes it unreadable, it is actually readable.

I started with a shade variation of the colour purple (again playing with opacity) and resorted to this. This was really difficult to do and I found it quite challenging and used a combination of illustrator and Photoshop to achieve the final outcome. Although I don’t love the final outcome, it’s one of the better ones probably. 

1990s and Post Modernism presentaion - thoughts

Neville Brody

known for his work on The Face magazine (1981–1986)

Brody's experimentation with his self-made sans-serif typography, along with his Pop Art influence, caught the attention of music record companies such as Fetish Records after he left college. His CD covers leads toward a grudgy and a punk scene.

With The face magazine, he changed up the "basic" and "structural" rules that existed in the British culture into a more artsy and vibrant aesthetic. His designs provoked some form of emotion to the extent that people would stick to one page instead of turning pages like they would normally do when reading a novel

David Carson & the grunge aesthetic

He is best known for his innovative magazine design, and use of experimental typography. 

He was the art director for the magazine Ray Gun, in which he employed much of the typographic and layout style for which he is known. In particular, his widely imitated aesthetic defined the so-called "grunge typography" era

In one issue of Ray Gun, he notoriously used Dingbat, a font containing only symbols, as the font for what he considered a rather dull interview with Bryan Ferry

I like both Brody and Carson’s work. I think it’s a step in a good direction and really changes up the modernist and postmodernist aesthetic whilst incorporating aspects of British punk in terms of texture. I think both of their work is very much about layering and aids how and audience reads the text. It also uses the idea of figure and ground to help shape visual perception.

I would very much be interested in creating something in their style of work – probably more Carson’s- and see what I can achieve