New Visual Language Research and Production by Abby McKenzie

Abby McKenzie New Visual Language Research and Production

The brief The task is to design the first issue of a magazine titled â&#x20AC;&#x153;New Visual Languageâ&#x20AC;?. This magazine will explore Modernism and Post-modernism. This will also include my own work from my first year of University. I will go through various development stages to document my process as I work on the final outcome. I will begin by doing relevant research by using internet sources and looking over notes from previous lectures and seminars. I will also be researching relevant layout designs such as mastheads and page design and then I will finally gather my work and incorporate it into a design that I choose to take forward.

Modernism Modernism is 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 â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;modernismâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;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. The ideas and principles promoted during this movement shape what we perceive to be the modernist movement in art.

Dadaism Dadaism was an artistic and literary movement during World War 1. It was a negative response to the horrors of the war and the aim of Dadaism was to create shock and offend the traditional sense of art and its viewers. Even though Dadaist ideas were already coming to light on both sides of the Atlantic, the actual name of Dada was labelled in 1916 in Zurich. The meaning of Dada is essentially nothing, it is translated as “Yes-Yes” in Russian and “ThereThere” in German. The features of Dadaist art were commonly compositions of different materials and had “cutand stick” vibe to the art. With techniques such as collage, photo-montage, assemblage and readymades.

De Stijl The De Stijl movement embraced an abstract aesthetic based on visual elements such as geometric forms and the primary colours. De Stijl was partly a reaction against the decorative styles of Art Deco and De Stijl aimed to reduce the excessive detail and recreate a new universal visual language that was appropriate to the modern era. De Stijl was lead by the painters Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian. De Stijl artists applied the style to more than one media in the fine arts and beyond. They used paintings and sculpture but also used almost all other art forms as well, including industrial design, typography, music and literature. The members of this movement envisioned De Stijl to be the ideal merging of form and function which makes De Stijl the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;ultimateâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; artistic style.

Cubism Cubism was lead by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, the movement was started in 1980 and lasted through the 1920â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s. The main aim of cubism was to find a way to depict a three-dimensional style onto a flat canvas. The subject would be broken up into different shapes and then repainted from various different angles. There are two types of Cubism: 1. Analytical Cubism: This was the first stage of the Cubism movement. Artists would analyse the subject and break it up into different blocks. They would then look at the blocks from different angles, from there they would reconstruct the image of the subject, painting what they could see in the blocks from various viewpoints. 2. Synthetic Cubism: The second stage of the Cubism movement introduced the idea of using and incorporating various materials and objects in one collage. Artists used coloured paper, newspapers and the like to represent different parts of the image. This stage also introduced brighter colours into the art.

Bauhaus The Bauhaus was an art school in Germany, founded by Walter Gropius in 1919. The school specialised in art, design and architecture and was open from 1919 until 1933 when it was closed due to pressure from the Nazis. The core objective of Bauhaus was a radical one: to re-imagine the material world to reflect the arts. The Bauhaus combined fine art with design. The students learning there were immersed in the study of materials and colour theory. Following this immersion, the students entered workshops which included things like: metalwork, cabinetmaking, pottery, typography and painting. In 1925 the Bauhaus moved to Dessau where Gropius designed a new building to host the school. This building contained many modernist features which later became the hallmarks of modernism architecture, this included steelframe construction and glass walls among other things which carried on through design history.

Surrealism The Surrealist movement started in Paris. It was founded by a group of artists and writers who sought to channel unconscious thoughts as a means to use the power of imagination. Disagreeing with rationalism and literary realism and influenced by Freud, Surrealists believed that the conscious mind repressed the power of the imagination due to taboos. Surrealism became an international movement, which influenced art, literature and cinema, as well as social attitudes and behaviour. Surrealist groups formed around the globe including, in 1936, the British Surrealist group with artist Paul Nash and critic Herbet Read among its founding members.

Josef Muller-Brockmann Josef MĂźller-Brockmann He was born on the 9th of May 1914 in Rapperswil, Switzerland. He studied architecture, design and history of art at the University of Zurich and at the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Kunstgewerbeschule. Muller-Brockmann was a Swiss graphic designer and a teacher. He was one of the leaders of the Swiss Modernism and was regarded as one of the most talented designers in Switzerland. His use of the grid system in his designs became famous, the grid system allowed him to create simplistic clean artwork using typography. He wrote the book Grid Systems in Graphic Design which is still followed to this day.

Hans Neuburg Hans Neuburg was born in 1904 in Czechoslovakia. In his lifetime he was a: designer, copywriter, advertising manager and the cofounder/editor of the “Neue Graphik” magazine with Richard Paul Lohse, Joseph MüllerBrockmann and Carlo Vivarelli. The Neue Graphik magazine was to define the Swiss modernist style, the magazine had 18 issues published. During the 1960s he wrote a number of books, e.g: Publicity and Graphic Design in the Chemical Industry (1967) which has become the go-to for designers and collectors of the Swiss style.

Post Modernism 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 modernism ideology and principles 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 individual perspectives. Instead, post modernism embraced differences and other perspectives which means they refuse to place one claim of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;truthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; higher than another since the idea of truths are different to each individual.

Minimalism Minimalism started in New York in the early 1960â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, among artists who were renouncing recent art they thought had become stale. A wave of influence and rediscovered style meant younger artists questioned boundaries between various media. 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. The aim of Minimalism is to allow the viewer to experience the work more intensely without the distractions of working out the composition, theme and so on.

Pop Art 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. He originally worked as a commercial artist and his subject matter was taken from the imagery of mass-culture, which included: advertising, comics, newspapers, TV and the movies. His most notable works being his Campbell Soup and his Marilyn Monroe pieces. Roy Lichtenstein was another pop artist who developed a pop art style that was based on the comic strip style. It was a style that had fixed characteristics: black outlines, bold colours and the use of coloured dots (a method of printing tones in comic books from the 1950’s and 60’s). What changed through the development of Lichtenstein’s art was his subject matter, which evolved from comic strips to an exploration of modernist art styles: Cubism, Futurism, Art Deco, De Stijl, Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism.

Jamie Reid Reid is a British artist, he was born and grew up in London in 1947. He attended art school, and whilst there met Malcolm McLaren who would be the future manager of the band “Sex Pistols” After the Sex Pistols were formed, McLaren recruited Reid to work with the band, creating artwork for their album covers and the like. Reid’s artwork in the future would come to define and symbolise the English punk rock scene of the 70’s Reid is a classic example of a post-modern designer, his work structure and the use of bright, bold and contrasting colours along with the style that looks like the composition has been randomised and stuck down. I admire Reid for his particularly effective and memorable work, but I still think the postmodern style isn’t as effective as some modernist styles.

David Carson Carson is a graphic designer from America, who’s art style reflects traditional post modern vibes. Carson didn’t always strive to become a designer. It wasn’t until 1980 that he had his first taste of graphic design, when he took part in a two week graphic design workshop which led him to re-enrol at University to study graphic design. This was just the beginning of what would be an amazing career for him. Carson’s work noticeably features typography, but not ordinary typography. The type is often scattered and illegible to the wider audience. He disregards grids and structures, making the audience study his work closer to figure it out.

The Grid System The grid system is a structure composed of a series of horizontal and vertical lines which intersect and are used to arrange content. A grid system is a way of providing a system that designers can work with to structure and present their content, typography and imagery in a much more legible and manageable manner. The grid system can also be used to manage diagonal designs, such as Muller-Brockmannâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s example. Constructivist Art, which was an art movment that originated in Russia, grids came into action. In this movement grids were redefined and restructured, the movement brought in geometric layouts that were broken down to their most basic forms. Around this time grids were coming into a bigger art space, where it would affect typography and commercial design through giving us a better understanding of the structures of ratios.

Production Here I will start to research into existing designs and analyse them. This will help me produce my own effective masthead, cover and layouts for my final magazine. I will try to find examples of both modern and postmodern designs, as right now I lean more towards the modern side of things due to the clean cut outcomes that the designs tend to have, and I like the clean, organised look that good modern designs have and I would like my research and inspirations to show in my final piece of work.

Existing Mastheads Mastheads are crucial to magazine design, the whole concept of the masthead represents the magazine and the publishers as a company. From my research I gathered different newspaper/magazine masthead examples from the internet, some of the more memorable ones. It is obvious from the few examples I pulled out, between them there are some similarities. The idea of the masthead being bold and/or red is a common aesthetic theme that runs throughout these particular designs. Type is also a big factor within the masthead design. Notable typefaces from the ones on the right to me would be Vogue and NME. I think there are my favourites due to NME being a huge, bulky, bold and “in your face” type to represent the music it covers which the main genre is rock, and has a reputation of being big, loud and aggressive at times. Vogue stood out to me due to it’s simplicity and elegance. The masthead has potential to be very fluid throughout its use which makes the simple typeface very effective. It could be argued that it’s too simple and boring but I feel that it works for it’s purpose and can be manipulated to suit different styles of covers and layout, which is what I ultimately want my masthead design to do as well.

Masthead research Typographic I decided to look into typographic and minimal mastheads to give me an idea of what I wanted to create. I like the use of whole words in typographic mastheads but I also think abbreviations work just as well, such as NVL for New Visual Language in my case.

I definitely prefer a serif font in regards to these mastheads, I think it gives a clean sleek look so I think I will lean more towards a modern design for my final piece rather than postmodern.

Minimal/illustration I like the use of graphics and illustrations as/ within mastheads but I think Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d like to save illustrations for the cover of my magazine rather than incorporating one into the masthead itself.

Production: Masthead

Masthead creation For this masthead I simply went to Photoshop, typed out NVL in Helvetica Bold. With this as a base font I then used the rectangle tool in Photoshop to extend the bottom of the L outwards to the right. I continued using the shape tool to draw all the way around the letters, making sure the gaps along the bottom and the top were the same width apart, by using the rulers.

I took it into Illustrator and used that to vectorize, manipulate the image and test different colour schemes that I could use on my magazine. I think this design does look sleek and modern, but I feel like it could be a little bit boring or hard to incorporate into a cover design.

Final masthead I decided to choose this typographical masthead to take forward, since it would be extremely versatile and easy to change the colour schemes as needed for different pages/issues. Typography is very fluid and I think itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the best option for NVL. I like the way I can edit parts of my creation and not the whole thing which gives me a lot of options regarding colour and placement. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m happy with my decision and I think I made a good choice aesthetically. I much prefer this one to the last one, I used the same creation method but I used the selection tool to slightly raise each part 5px away from each-other to create small but noticeable gaps.

Existing design

Production: Cover

NVL

This cover didn’t work out as well as it did in my sketch, the shapes looked disproportioned and it was hard getting an equal gap between them. I won’t be taking this design forward, although I like the idea of using shapes.

I dislike the gap at the bottom of this cover. If I was to take it forward I would use my own image and maybe make the cover page a full image but for the moment I want to lean more towards illustration being featured on my cover so I’m unsure of this outcome and I don’t think I’ll take it forward.

Production: Cover I decided that I did want to take the idea with the shapes forward, I liked the idea of having a collage of shapes across the page, in reference to Bauhaus since I lean towards Modernism designs. I wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t sure which ones at first, maybe a mix or just a singular repeated shapes. I will be refining and making my choices throughout the next few pages.

Production: Cover

Production: Cover I have chosen to take the following two covers forward as I feel that they worked the best while I was testing them out. I will be testing colours, sizing and layouts to decide which one I like the most and which one also fits with my masthead. The first one I will test is the triangles, it’s hard to find a pattern within the triangles since they’re not really in organised lines, the black gaps in the middle make it harder to distinguish rows. I experimented with changing the colours and composition of the coloures, the opacity, triangle size and logo size. Overall I think the triangles didn’t work as well as I expected them to, I don’t think they fit together very well unless I flipped them upside down, but I like the idea of having small gaps between the shapes like the circles and hexagons so the dark background shows through and creates contrast.

Production: Cover Here I chose my final cover design and used grids with the aid of InDesign rulers to align the elements on the page correctly. I then experimented with the colours and generally edited the cover until I was happy. I still wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t sure on the colours of the logo and graphics on the front cover, so I also took time to experiment with this as well.

Form follows function Issue 1

Production: Cover i decided that I liked the black background with the dots more, I will now test different logo colours that correspond with the dots, and a different sequence for the coloured dots. I really liked the idea of having red/yellow/blue dots on the cover so I stuck with that colour scheme in reference to Bauhaus. However, I wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t sure on the colours of the secondary dots so I stuck with dark grey and white, I feel that the white was a little bit too bright so I decided grey would be a better option because the white dots take the attention away from the colours and the logo. I also flipped the cover but I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t like the way it looked on the opposite side so I decided to keep the original layout.

Form follows function Issue 1

Production: Cover I decided on the final colours of my logo and developed a few of the final circle layouts/colours and the header typography. I think I prefer the 95% opacity more, because it makes the colours stand out from the black and the grey which is what I wanted to happen with both the circles and the logo colours.

Form follows function Issue 1

95% opacity circles

Form follows function Issue 1

90% opacity circles

80% opacity circles

Production: Cover I decided on the final colours of my logo and developed a few of the final circle layouts/colours and the header typography.

Form follows function Issue 1

95% opacity circles

Helvetica light Sticking with the Helvetica theme but just changing the weights of the font to suit their needs seems to be the best idea. Since the fonts won’t have a chance of ‘clashing’ on the page.

Form follows function Issue 1

90% opacity circles

80% opacity circles

Arial was my next choice, similar to Helvetica but the weight is slightly heavier, again sticking to sans serif fonts throughout.

I tried out Biko, a font I downloaded from dafont.com. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think Biko works as well as the simple Helvetica/Arial due to the different stem styles and how wide the letters are.

Layout research

Research - Contents

Contents production I drew up design ideas for my contents pages and will develop my favourite ones digitally.

Contents production Here I took my favourite design sketches and made them in Illustrator.

CONTENTS 01

City in Flux

Earth Artefact

City in Flux

My first idea was to create a contents page by using the circles on my cover so I did a mock-up of that. I feel that the circles may be too close together and the overall page looks boring.

New Visual Language

City in Flux

01 02 03

Earth Artefact

04 05

I then tested another lay out, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not sure if I want to continue using the dots in the layout as they seem very out of place on this particular page. I will experiment more without the dots.

Although I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t write anything on this contents page, I like the minimalistic design of this. My idea is to leave this design on the left side of the page and on the right page (double page spread) write the page contents.

Contents development I decided to take this design forward so I will be experimenting with this layout.

I first put a text box vertically down the page and wrote some placeholder numbers for now. I then wrote an ampersand and made it have no fill with a red outline (matching the dots)

Contents development I added a second page and worked on the colours and layouts, using the grids to line things up.

I started considering design options for the opposite side of the page, I considered taking the same red and making that the opposite page colour with white or black text.

I first put a text box vertically down the page and wrote some placeholder numbers for now. I then wrote an ampersand and made it have no fill with a red outline (matching the dots)

Contents development Further development for my final page.

01 02 03

New Visual Language NEW VISUAL LANGUAGE

CITY IN FLUX City in Flux

EARTH ARTEFACT Earth Artefact

TYPE TRANSCRIPT

05 I started considering design options for the opposite side of the page, I considered taking the same red and making that the opposite page colour with white or black text.

01 02 03

New Visual Language NEW VISUAL LANGUAGE

CITY IN FLUX City in Flux

EARTH ARTEFACT

01 02 03

Earth Artefact

TYPE TRANSCRIPT

New Visual Language NEW VISUAL LANGUAGE

CITY IN FLUX City in Flux

EARTH ARTEFACT Earth Artefact

TYPE TRANSCRIPT

I think the white text stands out more than the black, so I will most likely stick with this choice.

New Visual Language MODERN & POSTMODERN

NEW VISUAL LANGUAGE City in Flux

CITY IN FLUX Earth Artefact

EARTH ARTEFACT

TYPE TRANSCRIPT

I added some red horizontal lines to break up the page and made the black cover a dark grey to make it less harsh. The numbers will be adjusted accordingly when I produce my final magazine.

I tested out an all-black layout and I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t like the way the pages blend together without having any distinctions between the line breaks.

Inside pages Here I sketched some design ideas for my inside pages and will be testing them as I go along and develop my pages for each project we have done throughout the year.

Inside production How I made and laid out my final document pages, using the grids in Illustrator. I was inspired by the modernist layouts and designs that I had researched. I knew from the beginning that I wanted structured design. I found that using the grids was very easy and helped me line up my page properly to make sure everything was equal. It was difficult at first to get the hang of but I am glad I used this tool in my work as it gives my outcomes a neater appearance and shows that I planned and thought about my layout structures more than just putting objects on a page. I particularly found this helpful on the cover when I was lining up my shapes and making sure they were equal distances apart and all lined up correctly.

On my city in flux brief and research page I made sure the top of the paragraph (the line) was in a relevant place on the page. I wanted my text to be in the middle of the page but offcentered so I could fit my titles at the side of them. I found this to be effective and helped break up the page so it wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t just a standard layout with a big block of text. I followed the same structure for most of the pages except type transcript, I felt that because I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have so much to write I should incorporate a different but relevant design to this particular page. I think it worked quite well.