EIXICIUIRISIE WALKING NEW MEMORY LANES
L O N D O N Saul bas was born in New
AT&T’s Globe logo, which was developed by Saul Bass York on May 8th 1920 and in 1983. He also previously lived until 1996. His work developed their original ‘bell’ was revolutionary in the film advertising industry. He logo in 1963. Personally, as a lover of bright colour and entered the film industry in bold designs, I am a big fan 1954 when developing the of Saul Bass’ work. I fid him advertising campaign for ‘Carmen Jones’, which was an t have an incredibly god use Otto Preminger production. of colour contrast and enjoy the strong and bold designs As well as Preminger, Saul Bass worked with many other he creates on top of usually very bright and eye catching iconic film producers such coloured backgrounds. A as the likes of Alfred Hitchgood example of this is his cock, Stanley Kubrick, Billy ‘Such good friends piece’ Wilder and Martin Scorscreated in 1971. ese. Although being famous Ed Fella is an American predominantly for his film graphic designer who was titles and advertisements, born in 1938. He was preSaul Bass is also particulardominantly a typographer ly well known for creating and as well known for breakvarious well-known logos for huge corporate business- ing every rule in typography es. A good example is this is and design and essentially
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just doing as he pleased. His style was loosely based on the theory of deconstruction but he took that even further and began creating a sans serif style made up of various thicknesses, curves, colours and tails. Each letter was different to the one before. I enjoy Ed Fellas eccentric approach to typography and like that he is confident enough to express his own artistic freedom within such a strict world as typography. His almost rebellious persona as a typographer makes his work truly alluring. Ne mo habereviri publi sum istam ac tabunum perfect uistideri ius, unimposum hica L. Si factus licaelin tem prit, num hi, quam ublin hacris a di, tem,Bus vivide novero crumW
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GREEN MISTS MORNING MIST PASSING OVER FORRESTS OF SIBERIA
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NEW YORK Neville Brody was born in Southgate, London on the 23rd of April 1957. He was a lover of fine art and painting as a child and had an obsession with art in the 60s and 70s. Dadaism and pop art influenced his work in graphics. This along with his experimentation with his self made sans-serif typography attracted companies including Fetish Records and Stiff Records after he left college. He became particularly popular when working as an art director for ‘The Face’ magazine where he changed the basic and structural rules that existed in British culture into a more arty and vibrant aesthetic. I particularly like Neville Brody’s bright aesthetic and use of bold lines and graphics. This coupled with a good use of colour makes his work extremely eye-catching and visually interesting to look at. Egit fectum atus cati, sa que ete egit coniu senterus constri pere menium nos oc, nonfir perum nes M. Quam, viribun terfervid pulicast poremnontiem moveri idicipiostre essen tam cussestilius accientem estiu quitilina, det Catus esign Alexander Rodchenko was a Russian artist, sculptor, photographer and graphic designer who was born in 1981. He was a constructivist artist and one of the most versatile ones at that. Rodchenko was a huge influence to many of the later 20th century graphic designers; one named artist that was highly influenced by his work was Barbara Kruger. Some of Alexander Rodchenkos most influential artworks includes a portrait he made of Lilya Brik. Rodchenko had a very distinctive style of work and a lot of his work I can see strongly inspiring such graphic designers as Shepard Fairey in the 21st century. I like his use of the colour red and see it reoccurring through any of his designs. This coupled with the slickness and boldness of his designs makes them extremely engaging. All of this contributes to what an influential graphic designer he was and overall a truly brilliant artist.
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F|O|R|E|S|T FIR FOREST ON Mt. Orjen Montenegro Monday: Today we began our Vis Com project by watching a full film about the typeface called ‘Helvetica’. Although I found this to be an exceptionally long film just for a typeface, I did enjoy learning about how much actually goes in to creating a typeface and putting it together. I was getting bored towards the end but all in all found the film to be rather interesting and I found out some things about typefaces that never really knew before. It turns out the really are more than just letters. In the afternoon we began our first graphic design task and this was a manual hand exercise. Martin showed us all the different aspects of graphic design that make a piece really work, including contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity. We then went on to create a graphic piece for each of these aspects using coloured card cut into various shapes. I did learn a lot from this exercise but I cant say I particular enjoyed it, I prefer doing this type of thing on a computer. Tuesday: Today we were introduced to Rob who is an illustrator and knows a lot about design. After teaching us things about negative space and use of various tools such as black boxes and columns, we were given the task to produce two A3 spreads for a magazine design. This was to be done manually and therefore there was a lot of cutting and sticking and unfortunately, photocopying images from other magazines. This is the part that I disliked the most due to having to wait in long cues and photocopy image after image. Other than that I thoroughly enjoyed
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SKYLINE PANORAMIC VIEW OF SEATTLES SKYLINE
Helvetica was a rather peculiar documentary film. It managed to bridge the gap between what one might believe is a boring subkect and what one might view as an engaging film. The film was all based on typefaces, particuarly the swiss typeface known as ‘Helvetica’. The film contained a large quantity of information about who created the typeface, when it was created, why it was created and the many purposes for which it could be and still is used. Helvetica was in fact developed in 1957 by Max Miedinger
with Eduard Hoffmann at the Haas’sche Schriftgiesserei (Haas type foundry) of Münchenstein, Switzerland. Haas hadset out to design a new sans-serif typeface that could compete with Akzidenz-Grotesk in the Swiss market. The film takes you through various interviews with different typeface designers who express their opinions on the famous font. A common view expressed by the interviewees was how universal Helvetica was. The way it could be used so effectively in so many different contexts and situations was
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truly enlightening. One quote by a designer being interviewed spoke about Helvetica was like off-white in its nature. No one really notices or cares about it, and yet it is always there doing its job in the most civilized of ways, doing exactly what it was designed for. The film showed various examples of places where Helvetica is used and it is really quite fascinating to see the contrast of situations in which it is used and yet how the typefaces somehow manages to fit perfectly into every situation, creating a different context
or feeling according to how it is used.Some of the examples mentioned in the film include ‘American apparel’, ‘Coca-Cola’ and even road and street signs. You can evidently see therefore that it has so many uses and such universality that it some how has just become a part of our nature rather than a creation of it. One of my favourite quotes from the film came from Mike Parker, a typographer and type-designer, who spoke about the solidity of Helvetica and how it is designed with negative space in mind.
“When you talk about the design of Haas Neue Grotesk or Helvetic, what it’s all about is the interrelationship of the negative shape, the figure-ground relationship, the shapes between characters and within characters, with the black, if you like, with the inked surface. And the Swiss pay more attention to the background, so that the counters and the space between characters just hold the letters. I mean you can’t imagine anything moving; it is so firm. It not a letter that bent to shape; it’s a letter that lives in
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a powerful matrix of surrounding space. It’s… oh, it’s brilliant when it’s done well.” I feel this quote is extremely effective in summing Helvetica up. It is not so much the black letters that are designed, but rather the blank space around the letters that have been shaped to form a beautifully clean typeface that seems so solid and set in its roots that it will never budge from its place on the paper, just as it will never budge from its place in our
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MONOCHROME | MASSACRE WASHED UP SEA LIFE ON THE BLACK BEACHES OF ICELAND Thursday: Today we were shown by martin a short documentary about flag design and then given the task to design a flag for Canterbury. Although I have to admit that I found this task boring, I will say that I was really surprised to find out what an art flag design is. The process of repeatedly colouring small boxes was very tedious to me but I did learn that simplicity is best when it comes to flag design. You should keep colours o a minimum and focus on simple shapes rather than intricate designs. Ut aceptae et enisqua ecepre voluptas ellestiorest maiorep tatius, a eniscid quos inctaqu iditas eossit aligent praesequi invelicatat acit quam dolorepratem que sumquat ent. Emporib earibus. Parciatum apicae nem labo. Nequi reius. Officia ecessunt la doluptatur? Quid qui que volupta tiatempore dolorerio et qui to quunt isquo in planditi acit voluptio ipidem necat. Friday: I was very excited about today as it was the first day in which we were to start working on the computers. Simon gave us an introduction to InDesign and taught us the basics that we needed to know to start designing our magazines. I did find this initially complicated as id do with most computer programs, specifically the setting up of the document. But once I got the hang of things I found it relatively easy and enjoyable. It got me excited to continue my work and make my magazine. Consequiae sita sequaes quae. Pudaessitat quam dem id et veligenda dollict ionsequidunt utecture suntio te voloresed quae officiis alitibusdam quam assequae molor sita volest, odipitempore con posam, sae volessiti con re officiunt. Ceptur aborati arum qui restruptat am, niatio min rehenti reculpa volorentur, abo. Perro coris et miligen dignit venet doluptatia sunt, te simpelisim et ent quibus et aut aut andam
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BEACHED
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Monday: Today was my
I do? I scrapped the whole thing and went back to basics, trying first day working on my final to be as minimalistic as possible. piece. I started off with the task No unnecessary words, no unof finding a magazine that I necessary designs or overly busy liked to base mine on. I found pictures. Just one clean title and an this particularly hard as my image, and after doing that I was subject was travel and there extremely happy with the result. didn’t seem to be many travel Thursday: Today I focused on magazines that in my opinion completing the other pages of my had good design. But after magazine. I heavily focused on researching further I found a negative space and good alignvery clean, minimalist travel ment and I feel that this was very magazine called ‘Cereal’. Once beneficial to the result. Although finding this I knew immedilooking simple, it is surprisingly ately it was the one I wanted to hard to create a clean, aestheticalbase my magazine on because ly pleasing minimalist designed of its minimalist approach and magazine. I focused on sticking brilliant use of negative space. to colour schemes on double page This got me extremely excited spreads, aligning everything with to start my own magazine. equal negative space and where Tuesday: Today, after decidpossible making sure that my text ing on the name ‘EXCURSE’ was symmetrical to my images. for my magazine, I set about Although hard, I found that when designing my front cover. I de- successful this was visually delisigned a whole front cover and cious. upon getting to the end some- Friday: Today was the final day thing just did not feel right. It we had to work on out magajust didn’t feel clean enough zines. Therefore it involved a lot for some reason. So what did of touching up and making sure
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everything was aligned properly. Upon reaching the back cover I opted for a blank white page with a title identical to my front cover placed directly in the centre. I feel this worked very well due to the use of negative space. I had my class crit in the afternoon and was extremely happy with the feedback given to be my Simon. He really liked my minimalist approach and completed my use of negative space. Overall I really enjoyed this project and am thoroughly pleased with the result. Um, eos sed qui cum inis des duntion pratur? Ipid quatis veribus aceperibus sunt planihi lignit, omnimi, es nobisitia sed ut fuga. Ut volorup tatecupta provitet quis eveliquo duci disimpo rrumquidit facestibus consedis vel ipis doluptatium comniendebis aut a alignimpossi corita prerecest, coria nimincta asperum, cus, sum, senderumquo ommoles coris et etur magnihil
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EIXICIUIRISIE WALKING NEW MEMORY LANES