Form follows function Issue 1
01 05 07 13 19
MODERN & POSTMODERN
New Visual Language
NEW VISUAL LANGUAGE City in Flux
CITY IN FLUX Earth Artefact
EARTH ARTEFACT
TYPE TRANSCRIPT
Modernism was a cultural movement which lasted from 1860 until 1970. During this time rapid changes in technology, manufacturing and transportation greatly effected the economic, social and cultural aspects of life around the world. Regarding art and design, the term ‘modernism’ doesn’t particularly mean one idea of art, but a set of collective ideas from a number of designers during this period. Modern artists believed in the fundamental scientific laws of reason and rational thought. Designers and artists sought out to bring order to the world, since they were surrounded by war and industrialisation they were driven by social and political issues. Modernism rejected values such as realism and artists began to explore innovative ways and processes in order to communicate through a new form of visual language. Modernism had an interest in new types of paints and other materials used in expressing feelings and ideas. Thinking outside the box and creating abstract work and fantasies, rather than representing what is real. Modernism cannot be characterised by one single feature since there were so many people contributing to the movement. Although typefaces were a big factor in the modernist movement, so were asymmetrical lines, cubism and white space. This led to aesthetic movements such as Dada and De Stijl.
01
02
Post modernism is an art movement that occurred in the late 20th century. It began when designers sought to reject the restrictions imposed by those with modernist ideology and principles like rationality and embrace diversity and contradictions. Post modernisms claim that the modern movement was characterised by a mindset which would render a culturally diverse world impossible to maintain due to the scientific need to find out truths and logic and discover what 'reality' is, especially when one persons sense of reality may not reflect another's. Instead, post modernism embraced differences and other perspectives which means they refuse to place one claim of 'truth' higher than another since the idea of truths are different to each individual. There were many memorable and famous movements within the postmodern era, such as minimalism. Minimalism is a term used to describe paintings and sculpture that thrive on simplicity in both content and form. They seek to remove any sign of personal expression from the artists. Pop Art was a style of art that began in the 1960’s. Pop Art used ‘pop culture’ and youth culture to inspire their work, which was fun, hostile and done in various different media such as painting and sculpture. One of the most famous names in Pop Art is Andy Warhol, especially his Marilyn piece.
03
04
New Visual Language was a brief recieved for our last project. The aim of the brief was for us to create our own magazine influenced by either the modern or postmodern style, depending on our research and our creative choices for the magazine. I chose to create my magazine in a modern style, because I like the use of shapes and block text. I also think the modern style is much more effective at being clean and easily read. The postmodern style is very disorganised and can be hard to decipher. “You are to submit design proposals for a new graphic design publication titled ‘New Visual Language”. The first issue will focus on Form follows Function, an exploration of modernism and postmodernism.” I began research and first looked into Modernism, Postmodernism and its movements. This really helped me decided which style I would be influenced by as I looked at artists such as Andy Warhol, Josef Muller-Brockmann, The Bauhaus, Cubism and Hans Nueburg to name a few. I then looked into masthead designs, sampling ones from different genres of magazines with different styles. I found this very helpful and it helped me decide that I wanted to do a typographic design. Looking at magazine designs, minimal, modern designs stood out to me most. I liked that the cover could be so interesting and not have an overwhelming amount of things going on within it. I also noticed the use of the grid system within the modern magazine design, which is why I utilised this for my own designs and I think I produced them very well with the tools I used. After producing sketches and a multitude of testing my sketches, I finally decided I liked a cover I created inspired by Bauhaus, and that minimal magazine designs would work best for me.
05
“Designing is not a profession but an attitude.� Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
06
City in Flux was the first brief we were presented with at the beginning of the year. I immediately started brainstorming relevant things such as structures, people, texture and many other things. Since there was such a broad range of topics that could be covered it took me a while to pinpoint on one that I actually wanted to take forward and work on it to make a final piece at the end of the project. I looked into different cities near me, such as Leeds, Sheffield and Huddersfield. Since I waas close to these places. I then looked into how I would be able to represent a city, such as using illustrations, photographs etc. I did some artist research of relevant people such as Ben Barry and Mike Hall, who are illustrators. I then moved onto looking at photography and how photographs could be edited. I did some mock-ups of edited photography in Photoshop to show how I could manipulate them. After research and thinking I decided to stick with photography as my main body of work. I was inspired by 2 photographers, Alex Ekins and Adrian Gaut. They specialised in abstract photography to do with architecture, whch really interested me, like the examples placed on the right of the page. When I knew what I was doing, I ventured into Huddersfield town center to capture some images on my phone of interesting building features. I did this partly so I could remember what I’d found and partly to make mock-up images of what I was going for within my final piece. Once I was happy and prepared I rented a proper camera and went out to take my photos. It proved challenging with the weather, people and other factors. But I feel that I did my best with what I got and I was happy with the outcome of my first ever university project.
07
08
My development for City in Flux had a lot to do with the photography and editing part. While I was thinking about my photography project I realised that I wasn’t sure how I was actually going to host the pictures and what format it was going to be in. I started looking at how I could present my work and my first thought was in the form of a book. I looked into different book styles such as traditional and fold out books. I researched more into fold out books since there was so many different styles to pick from, I analysed the inside and covers of the books. Next was my layout sketches, I knew I wanted my photographs to be the main pieces so I planned to make them almost fill the entire page. But first I worked on the front cover of the book. I gathered examples of typography, serif and sans serif since I was unsure. I began sketching out ideas, then I took my images into Photoshop and started developing. I worked on the layouts I had considered and refined them in my further development. I decided that photographs worked best within my cover since that’s what was inside the book. I tested my typography on my various photographic covers until I found the best combintation which I could develop further. I eventually chose the best one and refined it until I was happy with the final cover outcome. I used the same process for the inside of my book, sketching and developing in Photoshop. I added a light decorative background because my pages looked too plain. I was happy with the book size and how my images fit within the inside page layouts. Overall I’m happy with my first ever uni project. There’s room for improvement but I am pleased with my outcome since it was my first of the year.
09
HUDDERSFIELD A visual guide
10
HUDDERSFIELD A visual guide
11
12
Earth Artefact was our second studio brief that we were presented with. This brief focused on The Golden Record and how we could produce our own interpretation of its content. I started by researching the record and it’s history. Including a list of the things that are on it already. Such as pictures of Earth and humans, sounds like music and baby/human sounds and other information. I started this brief rather unwillingly, I assumed we had to create something big and informative which was difficult for me since the Earth Artefact brief wasn’t within my interests. However, I spoke to a tutor and made a mind map of things I could do to represent the record. I finally decided on creating some kind of book for my final piece. After researching books I settled on a childrens book, with the idea that I could educate life forms like humans educate children, with images and words in books. I first researched into what the book could contrain, such as information about religions, humans (lifepsan etc) and many other things that Earth has to offer. I then went on to artist research to look at illustrators, I knew I wanted to illustrate the book rather than fill it with photographs. I found some really relevant artists and animators with a nice style, such as Scott Benson and Patrick Hruby. This helped me decide what style I wanted, which was illustration in a minimalistic style, like the one’s I’d seen. After this I researched my ideas, made mock ups and began developing. I did rough sketches and even rougher digital sketches to give myself an idea of what I wanted to produce in the end. I decided what to base my story on, which was a little alien character. I made sketches and settled on final designs/colours for him. My front covers and layouts were a lot of experimenting with type and colours, and I was happy with what I produced in the end after gathering inspiration by making relevant moodboards to what I was researching. I was very happy with my overall outcome and pleased with my art style and how I have progressed.
13
14
Here is some of my development and work from my Earth Artefact project. I have shown examples of some of my cover sketches and my final cover. I decided that I would feature my character on the front cover to give the reader an idea of what the theme is and what the content looks like. I used Illustrator and Photoshop to create this cover and I was happy with my choice of colours and the final. My inside pages were a little more tedious as I had to think about what subject I was going to talk about and how I was going to demonstrate it in an image. In the end I went for the obvious ones such as weather, seasons, food etc. Since these subjects are the basic things children start to learn about, I decided it would be best to go with these choices. Once I had sketched out my inside pages I started developing them in Illustrator. I added and took away details as I went to make it how I wanted it. I learned a lot of new techniques doing this and also used gradients a lot more than I usually would, I found them effective for light sources and shadows etc. I think my design choise was the best as the flat illustrated design worked very well. Using this style helped me a yse a lot of colours without the page being overwhelmed with detail due to minimalism. I then went through the typography phase for the outsides and inside of my book, I learned how to contrast type and what worked well within the pages I’m very happy with my book overall, I learned a lot of skills and found something I would possibly like to explore more in the future within ilustration. I think the book is suitable for children and adults of every age and my research helped me a lot in the end.
15
WELCOME TO EARTH
16
Suddenly, it began to rain Boop stared up at the dark clouds, wondering what this was.
He ran through the storm, dripping wet
Suddenly, it began to rain Boop stared up at the dark clouds, wondering what this was.
Stopping at a dark, scary cave...
He wandered inside...
17
Boop came to a very hot place, there was water and sand He walked carefully, looking around and listening...
He crept towards the noises on the beach.
Wind blew the leaves blew around Boop
What season was this? Autumn. Trees turned orange and leaves danced in the air.
18
ABCDEFGHIJKL MNOPQRSTUVW XYZABCDEFGHI JLKMNOPQRST UVWXYZABCDE TYPE FGHIJKLMNOPQ TRANSCRIPT RSTUVQXYZAB CDEFGHIJKLMN OPQRSTUVQWX 19
W
For our third brief we were required to look at different artists work and create a typeface from the images we were given. This was my first time ever creating my own typeface. We were given artists to look at and I took my inspiration from El Lissitzky, Wyndham Lewis and references from the Bauhaus.
20
I took inspiration from the Bauhaus especially and used shape references. I started thinking about various shapes and how they could fit together to form letters. I considered circles and triangles but due to the non-flat edges on the sides I rethought and decided to try overlapping semicircles and in another, squares. I created a typeface using squares and another seperate typeface made from semicircle shapes which proved sucessful when drawn up.
When it was time to create them, I first drew out the letters ANESG in every style of typeface that I created which gave me a preview of some of the letter styles. Once I was happy, I drew up 4 seperate typefaces and sketched every letter onto a gridded sheet. This took a while but it really helped me figure out what style works and what doesn’t work/isn’t ledgible. Once that was done I took my final chosen typeface into illustator and began creating it. I made a hollow typeface, an all-black filled in typeface and the coloured one seen above. The colours are slightly referenced from Bauhaus but I gave myself a bit of freedrom. I am happy with the outcome considering this is my first ever original typeface creation.