contents Modernism & Postmodernism Street Graphics Cabinet of Curiousity Earth Artifact Type Manifesto
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Modernism Modernism is a philosophical movement that arose from wide-scale and farreaching transformations in Western society, through the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among the factors that shaped Modernism, was the development of modern industrial societies and the rapid growth of cities. Modernism also rejected the certainty of Enlightenment thinking, and many modernists rejected religious belief.In general, Modernism includes the activities and creations of those who felt the traditional forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, philosophy, social organization, and activities of daily life were becoming outdated in the new economic, social, and political environment of an emerging fully industrialized world. Looking at Modernism in Graphic design , you find out about the fine detail , that this genre relates too. The ‘Grid Structure’, ‘Less is more’, ‘White Space’ are often seen in when looking at design in modernism, these factors being a key in their design process. Using the ‘White Space and Grid Structure’ gives the designer a large amont of space to use, aswell as focousing you eyes on whatever he wants you too, keeping your thought on specific sections of the work, helping simplify the piece. You can still see all these influences in todays desin work from posters, flyers, and websites to magazines and logos.
“It is experimental, formally complex, elliptical, contains elements of decreation as well as creation, and tends to associate notions of the artist’s freedom from realism, materialism, traditional genre and form, with notions of cultural apocalypse and disaster.” This quote by Peter Childs from the book Modernism: The New Critical Idiom, helps show the size and broadness of this genre, making it a interesting topic and a joy to research, helping represent Modernism to the fullest.
“The modern artist is working with space and time and expressing his feelings rather than illustrating.” -Jackson Pollock
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postmodernism The opposite genre is Postmodernism, which completley shattered the walls of the modernist movement, allowing designers and artists free rain to express themselves as freely as possible. The two genres are very different, if you were to take the staight lines and white space of a modernist design and hand it to a postmodernist they would transform it , replacing it with strong abstact brush strokes, layers upon layers of texture, including rough shapes and bold colours, not forgetting carzy typography sometime unreadable.
“In our postmodern culture which is TV dominated, image sensitive, and morally vacuous, personality is everything and character is increasingly irrelevant.” Although alot of postmoderism work is criticized as being random, bland creations, I would say it has alot more to do with the artist and their way of expressing what the hear, see and feel without sticking to guidlines and rules that modernist designs doo. As the philospher Richard Tarnas states, postmodernism “cannot on its own principles ultimately justify itself any more than can the various metaphysical overviews against which the postmodern mind has defined itself.” This is an interesting satement helping to show the depth of Postmodernism and the unusual tendencies and attributes this grenre breahes out.
“what exactly is postmodernism, except modernism without the anxiety?” -Jonathan Lethem “Conclusion: better to be a thinking monk than a postmodern thinker.” - Muriel Barbery
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street graphics The term ‘street graphics/street art’ automatically makes you think of graffiti and spray art on our streets. But this term be applied to a variety of aspects of the streets, they can offer a lot more that a canvas for graffiti artists, they generate inspiration, provoke emotions and help build on ideas. This is the route I wanted to take, drawing myself away from the normal and creating a unique piece with the graphics of the streets. I started to look into various artist that use the streets in their work to help me generate some ideas on where to take this project. Through out my research I came across various artists, one in-particular that caught my eye was a man called Ed Fairburn, he produces portraiture over a variety of surfaces, including a large amount on maps, using the streets and contour lines to help shape the face and give it detail. I started too look into the graphics of the streets and what makes this up. I began looking at everything on the streets, from street lines and road markings too shop and road signs. The more you look into the graphics on the street the more you find and as a designer I found this brief very
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challenging as I wanted to represent ‘the streets’ as creatively as possible, using all he dots, shapes, lines and typography the streets have to offer. I began looking at the work of Alain Biltereyst, in particular his plywood abstract pieces. I believe that looking at his work helped me understand what pathway I wanted to choose for this project. I like how visual and unusual his pieces are, which inspired me to create something embracing the visual styles of his work. I wanted to make something that enhanced ‘Abstract Graphics’ and excited the viewer. His work definitely played a part in the development of this project for me. I started to take photographs and seeing what abstract effects I could do with them, using the graphic elements in the photos as the main features. Also, I tried removing the graphic elements, seeing what effect it had on the images. The more I played around with the images, the better effects and looks I created. Experimenting with various colours and styles, making some very unique pieces with intriguing patterns.
image from Final Piece: street graphics
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how I made it? Final Piece
Above is the final piece for ‘Street Graphics’. I created a viewing box, which you slide in pieces of different coloured acetate. On these pieces of acetate are the graphic elements from different photographs I have taken for this project. I decided to try and use a variety of different coloured pens and
acetate so their was a lot of blending going on inside the viewing box. Each piece of acetate has a small piece of foam board to keep them in place and fix them too the box. I left the back board with a hinge on, so the viewer could move it and add more light or take away light as they please,
making the piece a lot more hands on and experimental. The image on previous page is one from the view port with some effects added, some of the images have really interesting effects and I feel helps represent ‘Street Graphics’ to a high standard.
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Final Piece: Cabinet of Curiousity
Cabinet of curiousity To start this brief off we were shown images of Josef Cornell’s Boxes. As the name suggested we were to create a Cabinet of Curiosity from memories and experiences we have had. To start the project off I began to look into dreams, nightmares and surrealism. I wanted to try and experiment with the subconscious experiences in design. After a variety of ideas I decided to create the cabinet around a ‘trip’ I had on hallucinogenic mushrooms. Once I had decided I was creating the cabinet around that it was how to display it as effectively and intriguingly as possible. I wanted to move away from creating a cabinet as that’s what all the other students were going down. After a bunch of research, various different ideas and techniques I decided to create a design on Adobe Illustrator to represent the evening and once created, get the design laser etched upon various different materials. I wanted
to get it engraved upon metal, glass, plastic and wood. Then I began creating the image to represent the evening. I needed to represent every part of the evening, so after a lot of thought I decided to create a A3 illustration built up with different icons, representing different sections to the evening. It was quite difficult trying to decided what should be what as it was all based around a mushroom trip, and that needed to be represented. Once the illustration had been finalized I took the design to the laser etching machine and engraved it. The image to the left are the engraved pieces of wood. I found out that they wouldn’t cut the plastic of glass or metal. If I were to take this brief forward I think I’d want to play with the ‘trip’ side of the image and play with the perception of the piece. Possible add mirrors to the opposite side, reflecting the image in various different directions making the piece a lot more ‘trippy’.
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Manifesto: Live-work-create
Earth artifact For this brief we we told to revisit and recreate a new version of the ‘Golden Records’, that was sent into space via the voyager in 1977. If you look through the information in the otiginal, its contained with various sounds and images which helps portray the diversity of life and culture n Earth. They sent the voyager on its mission in a search for an intelligent extreterrestrial life form that may be out their and if they are life forms they could find it and decrypt it. As soon I as read the brief I was really intruiged and ready to go. After doing some brain storming I decided to play around with the title, still recreating the ‘Golden Records’ but from another planet and it has landed here upon our Earth. This was an interesting pathway to chooses as it meant creating a whole new world, civilization, life and culture. The more I divied in to this project the more I kept creating, making a world that is completly different to ours. The research for this brief was very interesting too, I came across an item called ‘The Voynich Manuscript’, this artifact baffeld me, its a small book dated back towards the 1400’s, its content is filled with various images throughout it and a text which to this day can not be decripted. Some people believe it to be a hoax
but thats yet to be proven a true or false accusation. This inspired me greatly and lead me down the route I finally went down. I wanted to create my own planets text and font, like the manuscript has, making their language their own. Over the next four pages you can see me final pieces for tis project. I decided to draw them upon brown treated paper as it helped to add age to the pieces. I painted the piece with water colours mixed with alittle bit of guash and wrote up the text with a calligraphy pen, which was my first time experimenting with a calligraphy pen which was a new experience. Creating these I found very enjoyable as it was very out of the norm and different from what I usually create. If I had more time I would have set out to create a whole book explaining the whole planet in depth, but the creatio of these pages took longer than expected. But I feel from looking at these pages you can get a feel to the planet and its enhabitants and what they have to offer. I want too continue on this brief in the future as I feel having a complete book of these pages would be an effective, eye-catching piece which I feel would appeal to a lot of people throughout the design and art genres, generating a lot of interest and intruige.
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Earth artifact: solar system
Earth artifact: the planet
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Earth artifact: spiritual ball of life
Earth artifact: men & women
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Typeface design
Here is my typeface design from a to z. I based this typeface on a piece of work named ‘ Four Segmented Circles’ created by Herbert Bayer in 1970’s, I found this photo whist researching Herbert Bayers portfolio, so I decided to experiment and put some ideas onto a page too see what ideas I had generating. After looking at the image I knew I wanted to create a typeface with overlapping parts, either with colour or colourless, I believe this helps the typeface fit with the image and express the edgyness of the piece. I was really pleased when I came across this image as I had so many effective attributes I could take it any way I wanted to. I wanted to uses onlly a selection of shapes to create the font as the image only has a number of shapes throughout it, so I crew a collection of shapes and started pieceing them together. I started to put my ideas to a page and this typeface started to take shape. I tried to move away from any sharp solid edges but I ended up applying a couple as the typeface looks alot more effective with it on. Once I had my rough alaphbet sketched out on paper it was time too add it to Adobe Illustrator and start to create it on a computer. I scanned in my drawings and starte dto create it on the computer. I found it quite easy to create this typeface as it only used a collection of shapes. I had to realign and straighten alot of the letters, so they didnt look crooked and unusual when the typeface was all together like here. Finally I decided to only do the typeface in lower because when I tested the letters in capitals they didnt look as effective and had a strange look to then, so this lead me to create the lower case alaphbet and stick to it. Overall I pleased with the final outcome of this typeface and am looking forward to creating more in the future.
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Manifesto When I started developing manifesto ideas I had many ideas floating around and didnt really know the best way of putting them to a page. After researching at a variety of manifesto designs from short to long, from posters to written manifestos. I decided I wanted to write a short manifesto, in which I could make an effective typographic poster. I wanted to write something that represent how I go about my life and my graphic work in a whole. In the end I came up with three different short manifestos.
‘Live work create’ ‘Look left, Look right. triangles, squares and circles. inspiration is their. inspiration is everywere. keep watching & take what you need’ ‘Intrigue is the goal design is the process.’
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Manifesto Design
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