a visual exploration through
what is modern ism?
ism origins lay back to the late 19th century when Art went through its most important crisis in its history. It was then when the question has been set. What is Art? (What was Art, actually). Well since its born deep in prehistory, Art was a way to express the world. It has always been realistic, in terms of designing fields, humans forms, everything. Well at least it tried to be, but all the way from ancient Egypt to the Roman and Byzantium, and the Renaissance it was a process to be as much as realistic. Of course since the Renaissance that was a done task, and the years followed world have seen some of the greatest paintings of Art History, some of the most realistic, the most compelling paintings. But, during the late 19th centry the invention of a new machine called photography brought a grand trouble to the artists of that era. That machine could easily “paint” better that the greatests artists of realism any object, landscape, portrait, etc. in notime compare to the artists of that era. So it was then when the identity of Art collapsed in the most violent way. Of course there were more than one fact that brought to this, for instance chemistry helped to make the materials of painting cheaper so more and more people could have access to them, and as a result artists’ numbers suddenly increased. Many things that used to take time to be done, could now be done in no time. So all of those events set one of the most crucial questions in the history of Art: What is Art? This question will never have ONE answer. This is impossible. And in fact, that’s the answer to that question. Art is many things. And one of those things called modernism. So modernism as a movement started in that era when photography was invented. It was Impressionism one of the first movements of Modernism (in Art). In design, modernism starts in the early 20th century, with the end of the World War 1.
Art No Art Nouveau or Jugendstil is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts— that was most popular during 1890–1910. English uses the French name Art nouveau (“new art”), but the style has many different names in other countries. A reaction to academic art of the 19th century, it was inspired by natural forms and structures, not only in flowers and plants, but also in curved lines. Architects tried to harmonize with the natural environment.
Art Nouveau is considered a “total” art style, embracing architecture, graphic art, interior design, and most of the decorative arts including jewellery, furniture, textiles, household silver and other utensils and lighting, as well as the fine arts. According to the philosophy of the style, art should be a way of life. For many well-off Europeans, it was possible to live in an art nouveau-inspired house with art nouveau furniture, silverware, fabrics, ceramics including tableware, jewellery,
ouveau cigarette cases, etc. Artists desired to combine the fine arts and applied arts, even for utilitarian objects.
Although Art Nouveau was replaced by 20th-century Modernist styles, it is now considered as an important transition between the eclectic historic revival styles of the 19th-century and Modernism. The style was the first major artistic stylistic movement in which mass-produced graphics (as opposed to traditional forms of printmaking, which were not very important for the style) played a key role, often techniques of colour printing developed relatively recently. A key influence was the Paris-based Czech artist Alphonse Mucha, who produced a lithographed poster, which appeared on 1 January 1895 in the streets of Paris as an advertisement for the play Gismonda by Victorien Sardou, featuring Sarah Bernhardt.[21] It popularised the new artistic style and its creator to the citizens of Paris.
Initially named Style Mucha, (Mucha Style), his style soon became known as Art Nouveau. Two-dimensional Art Nouveau pieces were painted, drawn, and printed in popular forms such as advertisements, posters, labels, magazines, and the like. Japanese wood-block prints, with their curved lines, patterned surfaces, contrasting voids, and flatness of visual plane, also inspired Art Nouveau. Some line and curve patterns became graphic clichés that were later found in works of artists from many parts of the world. Magazines like Jugend helped publicise the style in Germany, especially as a graphic artform, while the Vienna Secessionists influenced art and architecture throughout Austria-Hungary. Art Nouveau was also a style of distinct individuals such as Gustav Klimt, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Alphonse Mucha, René Lalique, Antoni Gaudí and Louis Comfort Tiffany, each of whom interpreted it in their own manner.
dad “
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Dada can be descrided as the early postmodernism, as their artists followed no gird and rules, which was the basic element of mdern graphic design.
da Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century. Many claim Dada began in Zurich, Switzerland in 1916, spreading to Berlin shortly thereafter but the height of New York Dada was the year before in 1915. To quote Dona Budd’s The Language of Art Knowledge, Dada was born out of negative reaction to the horrors of World War I. This international movement was begun by a group of artists and poets associated with the Cabaret Vol-taire in Zurich. Dada rejected reason and logic, prizing nonsense, irrationality and intuition. The origin of the name Dada is unclear; some believe that it is a nonsensical word. Others maintain that it originates from the Romanian artists Tristan Tzara’s and Marcel Janco’s frequent use of the words “da, da,” meaning “yes, yes” in the Romanian language. Another theory says that the name “Dada” came during a meeting of the group when a paper knife stuck into a French-German dictionary happened to point to ‘dada’, a French word for ‘hobbyhorse’. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature, poetry, art manifestoes, art theory, theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a rejection of the prevailing standards in art through anti-art cultural works. In addition to being anti-war, Dada was also anti-bourgeois and had political affinities with the radical left. Francis Picabia, Dame! Illustration for the cover of the periodical Dadaphone, n. 7, Paris, March 1920
Dada activities included public gatherings, demonstrations, and publication of art/literary journals; passionate coverage of art, politics, and culture were topics often discussed in a variety of media. Key figures in the movement included Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings, Hans Arp, Raoul Hausmann, Hannah Höch, Johannes Baader, Tristan Tzara, Francis Picabia, Richard Huelsenbeck, George Grosz, John Heartfield, Marcel Duchamp, Beatrice Wood, Kurt Schwitters, and Hans Richter, among others. The movement influenced later styles like the avant-garde and downtown music movements, and groups including surrealism, Nouveau réalisme, pop art and Fluxus. Dada can be descrided as the early postmodernism, as their artists followed no gird and
rules, which was the basic element of mdern graphic design. And the reason of that was the protest against the war, because in a way they believed that modernism with this straight forwrard girds, the asoluteclear design, the completeley technological new visual of its identity it was a prpaganda of the war machine at that time. Their protest is reasonable, because by breaking the rules in every aspect of art, they were set themselves apart of that massive industrial machine of modernism[s].
“house of
construction Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term. About this sound Bauhaus, literally means “house of construction”, stood for “School of Building”. The Bauhaus school was founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar. In spite of its name, and the fact that its founderwas an architect, the Bauhaus did not have an architecture department during the first years of its existence. Nonetheless it was founded with the idea of creating a “total” work of art in which all arts, including architecture, would eventually be brought together. The Bauhaus style became one of the most influential currents in Modernist architecture and modern design. The Bauhaus had a profound influence upon subsequent developments in art, architecture, graphic design, interior design, industrial design, and typography. The school existed in three German cities: Weimar from 1919 to 1925, Dessau from 1925 to 1932 and Berlin from 1932 to 1933, under three different architect-directors: Walter Gropius from 1919 to 1928, Hannes Meyer from 1928 to 1930 and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe from 1930 until 1933, when the school was closed by its own leadership under pressure from the Nazi regime. The Nazi government claimed that it was a centre of communist intellectualism. Though the school was closed, the staff continued to spread its idealistic precepts as they left Germany and emigrated all over the world. The changes of venue and leadership resulted in a constant shifting of focus, technique, instructors, and politics. For instance: the pottery shop was discontinued when the school moved from Weimar to Dessau, even though it had been an important revenue source; when Mies van der Rohe took over the school in 1930, he transformed it into a private school, and would not allow any supporters of Hannes Meyer to attend it.
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sw iss des ign
“less iis more” Swiss, or International Typographic Style was a major force in graphic design and remains so today, especially in the area of corporate identity. This style of design, as the name implies originated in Switzerland in the 1940’s and 1950’s and was the basis of much of the graphic design development of the 20th century. The term International Typographic Style came about due to the strong reliance on typographic elements. The characteristics of the Swiss International Style included: Asymmetrically organizing the design elements on a mathematically-constructed grid to create visual unity in a composition. Presenting visual and textual information clearly and with clarity, using photography and illustration. Using sans-serif typography set flush left, ragged right — people believed sans-serif typography expressed the spirit of a progressive age and that mathematical grids
were the most legible and harmonious means for structuring information.
The combination of typography and photography was also used as a method of visual communication. The style was cultivated at two Swiss design schools, one in Basel led by Armin Hofmann and Emil Ruder, and the other in Zurich under the leadership of Joseph Muller-Brockmann. All had studied with Ernst Keller at the Zurich School of Design before the second World War, where the principles of the Bauhaus and Jan Tschichold’s New Typography were taught. This new style became the “look” for many Swiss cultural institutions that used posters as advertising vehicles. It was considered that this style was ideal for the increasingly global postwar marketplace. The use of the International Typographic Style spread rapidly throughout the world and had a major influence on postwar American graphic design where it remained a prominent aspect of graphic design for over 2 decades. Written by Liam (flintriver.co.uk)
Piet Mondrian
Piet Mondrian was a Dutch painter and important contributor to the De Stijl art movement and group, which was founded by Theo van Doesburg. He evolved a nonrepresentational form which he termed neoplasticism. This consisted of white ground, upon which was painted a grid of vertical and horizontal black lines and the three primary colors. Between his 1905 painting, The River Amstel, and his 1907 Amaryllis, Mondrian changed the spelling of his signature from Mondriaan to Mondrian.
Wim Cro Willem Hendrik Crouwel is a Dutch graphic designer, type designer, and typographer. Between 1947 and 1949, he studied Fine Arts at Academie Minerva in Groningen, The Netherlands. In addition, he studied typography at what is now the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. In 1963, he was one of the founders of the design studio Total Design (currently named Total Identity). From 1964 onwards, Crouwel was responsible for the design of the posters, catalogues and exhibitions of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. In 1967 he designed the typeface New Alphabet, a design that embraces the limitations of the cathode ray tube technology used by early data display screens and phototypesetting equipment, thus only containing horizontal and vertical strokes. Other typefaces from his hand are Fodor and Gridnik. In 1970 he designed the Dutch pavilion for Expo ‘70 (Osaka, Japan). Later, Crouwel designed the Number Postage Stamps for the Dutch PTT, well known in the Netherlands during its circulation from 1976-2002. In the years Crouwel worked for Total Design, he designed many geometric wordmarks, one of which is the wordmark for the Dutch Rabobank, designed in 1973. The lettershapes have been influenced by the fact that the wordmark had to be used as a 3D light box. After the 3D application was finalized, the 2D design for print was adapted. According to Wim Crouwel, New Alphabet was ‘over-the-top and never meant to be really used’. However, as unreadable as it was, it made a comeback in 1988 when designer Brett Wickens used a version of the font on the sleeve of Substance by Joy Division. In addition to his work as a graphic designer, he was also active in the educational field. In the 1950s he worked as a teacher at the Royal Academy for Art and Design in ‘s-Hertogenbosch (currently called Akademie Voor Kunst en Vormgeving St. Joost or AKV|St. Joost) and at the predecessor of what is now the Gerrit Rietveld Academie. Between 1965 and 1985 he was connected to the department of industrial design of the Delft University of Technology. From 1987 to 1993 he was extraordinary professor in the fields of History, Arts and Culture Studies at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. In the years 1985–1993 he was the director of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. Crouwel’s graphic work is especially well known for the use of grid-based layouts and typography that is rooted in the International Typographic Style.
ouwel a “always long the
lines of the grid, so that there is a certain order on it, that is why I use grids
max
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Max Miedinger was a Swiss typeface designer. He was famous for creating the Neue Haas Grotesk typeface in 1957 which was renamed Helvetica in 1960. Marketed as a symbol of cutting-edge Swiss technology, Helvetica went global at once.
Typography is a magnificent blend of art, craft and passion. A great typeface is a lasting testament to the power and beauty of the human mind.
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Between 1926 and 1930 Miedinger trained as a typesetter in Zürich, after which he attended evening classes at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zürich. At the age of sixteen Max became an apprentice typesetter at a book printing office for Jacques Bollmann (in Zürich). After four years as an apprentice, Miedinger enrolled in the School of Arts and Crafts. When he was 26 years old, he went to work for an advertising studio called Globe. Here he worked as a typographer and improved his skills. After ten years of working at Globe, Miedinger then gained employment with Haas Type Foundry as a representative. This is where he made his mark on history and designed the most used typeface of the 20th century, Helvetica. In 1956 Miedinger became a freelance graphic designer and about a year later he collaborated with Edouard Hoffman on the typeface which would later be called Helvetica.
MIEDINGER
arm in hof man
Armin Hofmann is a Swiss graphic designer. He began his career in 1947 as a teacher at the Allgemeine Gewerbeschule Basel School of Art and Crafts at the age of twenty-six. Hofmann followed Emil Ruder as head of the graphic design department at the Schule für Gestaltung Basel (Basel School of Design) and was instrumental in developing the graphic design style known as the Swiss Style. His teaching methods were unorthodox and broad based, setting new standards that became widely known in design education institutions throughout the world. His independent insights as an educator, married with his rich and innovative powers of visual expression, created a body of work enormously varied - books, exhibitions, stage sets, logotypes, symbols, typography, posters, sign systems, and
environmental graphics. His work is recognized for its reliance on the fundamental elements of graphic form - point, line, and shape - while subtly conveying simplicity, complexity, representation, and abstraction. Originating in Russia, Germany and The Netherlands in the 1920’s, stimulated by the artistic avant-garde and alongside the International Style in architecture. He is well known for his posters, which emphasized economical use of colour and fonts, in reaction to what Hofmann regarded as the “trivialization of colour.” His posters have been widely exhibited as works of art in major galleries, such as the New York Museum of Modern Art. He was also an influential educator, retiring in 1987. In 1965 he wrote the Graphic Design Manual, a popular textbook in the field.
masthead d For the masthead the initial idea was to do something with the first letters (nvl). So I started to experiment with the letters visually in order to come up with something creative. Below is the development of the first good idea, a quite simple and very straight forward masthead. Though it’s quite good I didn’t like it enough to stop my experimentations there. So next I started to experiment with the shapes of the letters to see how they work in order to find something special for the occasion. The result satisfied me so I expand it in a wide variety of slightly different mastheads, which are situated on the next page. I used two different fonts, my favotite sans sefir ones, Helvetica Neue and Century Gothic. I applied those in all of my examples in order to have a visual com-
parison with the shapes of the initials and the name of the magazine with two different fonts. The decision of the final will depends on the font that I will choose for the layouts of my magazine. The two options I am willing for are those two I used for the masthead. You see I want to create an identity for my magazine. I want it to has consistency. Both of the fonts I have concluded to, are quite simple and good for a magazine, and they are very modern. But I think I will choose Helvetica only for personal reasons, because I haven’t worked enough with it as I have with Century Gothic. So I want to explore it more practically, because I believe there is not a designer who is not familiar with Helvetica. And with that I mean that all the proper designers know how to use it, and how to work with it.
design
cover de For the cover design I started to
experiment with some of the artworks that I improved for the
magazine.After choosing the final masthead, I continued with
the production of some draft cover designs in which I experiment with the sub heading. I found out that the second poster, the one with Lord Kitchener, even that’s the best of its series, it can’t stand for a modern frontpage because it’s too busy with all of those fonts and the quote it self that draws the
attention
fromthe
sub
header. So I prefered something more simple. That’s why my final proposals are without text and more “simple”. For example the organic pattern on the wall from the poster of the Street raphic project, it might look busy, but it’s simple because it comes in harmony with the tsub heading. This is because it does not have text so it can stand quite good as a background. The same applies for the guitar, and the manifesto cover as well. Personally I like all the three of them but something on the manifesto cover draws my attention. It might be that one or the one with the guitar.
esign
Alexandros Papantoniou BA (Hons) Graphic Design