CONTEN 3 4
MODERNISM
7 8
POST-MODERNISM
NTS 10 18
CITY IN FLUX
20 28
EARTH ARTEFACT
36 43
NEW VISUAL LANGUAGE
MOD ERN ISM
Modernism is a movement that started around 1860 and lasted til the 1970’s. Through this time we saw all aspects of living change around us vastly such as technologies, fashion and food. Art also took this on in their work and we started to see more contemporary pieces and even surrealist pieces, which was the start of a lot of the famous artists that we know of today such as Robert Rauchenberg and Picasso. A lot of artists weren’t just artists but ideologists that wanted to express themselves through media. Not all of modern art is a positive and can often be quite controversial. The movement doesn’t have a certain style, as so many artists arises in this movement with their own interpretations, unlike the pop art movement you could identify it straight away. But saying this, Type and bold colours were present a lot of the time, a lot more simplistic ideas compared to what we had seen in the Art Nouveau and crafts movement.
Through to modernism movement, we also saw smaller movements, Dada and Cubism were just two. With these movements, they stood for what the modernist movement, but fitted in a lot better than just a general. Artists such as Juan Gris and Marcel Duchamp were key to these smaller but by no means less important movements which made up the bigger picture. Through the art we saw other elements change such as architecture and furniture change to fit the movements. It gave the artists a chance to move away from traditional ideas to what had been seen before. While this moment was in its prime, we were seeing the industrial revolution come to the pinnacle of living which is why a lot of art we see from this period isn’t very ‘pretty’ as such which was such a contrast to the portraits and landscapes we had seen. And without this movement we definably wouldn’t see art and design in the way we do, the movement was a big part of art and design history, and probably the biggest and more influential movement.
POST MODERNI
ISM
Once the Modernism Movement was over, we saw the Post-modernism movement come in, the difference with this movement was artists and designers felt restricted with peoples ideas and mindsets, and wanted to break out of that, they wanted to be able to express themselves in any way they wanted, using different forms of media. We saw a lot more colour come from this movement and it was a lot more fun as we got later into the 20th century, everything was new and exciting. As we saw with Modernism, we also saw sub movements appear, Pop Art is still incredibly popular and can be admired in a lot of quirky pieces of art but also in advertising and even in motion graphics, its an iconic movement.
Minimalism was also another sub movement that we saw, and again is still around now in a lot of new designs, we see this one showing more and more of an appearance because of the sharpness if brings to any design/art compared to older movements. This moment carried on whilst we saw political movements, which caused outrage to the public, such as the minors strike with Margaret Thatcher, so it wasn’t too long til we saw artists almost mocking the situations we were in, Jamie Reid was a famous artist for this, he mocked the hierarchy, we saw rebellion through people and art, music and media was going to be the way that it was going to be portrayed.
CITY
Y IN FLUX
If the people of Sheff could only receive a tenth part of what their knives sell for by retail in America, Sheffield might pave its streets with silver. William Cobbett
‘City in Flux’ was the first brief I was given in starting Graphic Design at University. After reading it through I had no idea where to go with it, because it was such an open brief. I started in thinking of doing it based around Huddersfield, as it makes sense with me living here, but I didn’t really know much about it, in fact I didn’t really think there was anything exciting enough to be able to create an entire project about. So I went back to my roots in Barnsley, again I tried brain storming and not one thing, even though I had lived there all my life, made me want to create a piece of work based around it. I was quite stumped then, and then I realised that my favourite city to date was my favourite for a reason. I’ve spent many hours in Sheffield, I knew it like the back of my hand and I knew that I loved it for its music scene, its landmarks and just general grungy scene.
I went back for a weekend and had time to take photos and sketch a few things before deciding what I was going to do and how to approach this project. Sheffield reminds me of the Dada movement, with the steel industry and felt like id be a failure if I didn’t in corporate this into my project. I decided on creating four posters, some including edited photography and some illustration. I decided to keep the posters looking the same, and not for infomatic purposes,but just for aesthetic reasons. Once I had finished I was really happy with my outcome, I feel like they really do show why I love and so many more love Sheffield as the city that is so modern yet you can see the history through every street.
KURT SWITCHERS Kurt Switchers was a German painter, sculptor and typographer. His work was heavily influenced from cubism and expressionism, but while these were his influences, he was creating his work throughout the Dada movement and was one of the more famous artists at the time. His career took place throughout both of the World Wars which indicates that subconsciously his work was influenced by it. He used a range of media, and created collages, his work is quite abstract but he has experimented with so many different pieces of media on his flat collages, they have been built up to create fascinating pieces. When I look at Switcher’s work, I feel he captured the state of the world at the time in his work, by using scraps and tickets and anything he could find, he worked in colour and type to create his own unique take on it all.
I decided to look at Switcher’s work because the idea of layering work and having a collage feeling whilst working on this project will really benefit my inspirations while deigning my own final outcome, especially creating work based around Sheffield which was the heart of the industrial revolution and was part of the war with the Sheffield Brits. By having Switcher’s work as an influence into my own work I know that I have the chance to experiment and not to be afraid to do so throughout my designing and creating my final piece. I want to be able to use different media but have a modern twist on it at the same time. I want to look into the Dada movement in a bit more detail, as I feel it will give me a wider take.
ROBERT RAUCHENBERG Robert Rauchenberg, born in Port Author, Texas is a sculptor, printer maker, photographer and performance artist. Rauchenberg was one of the most influential artists throughout the Abstract expressionism and Pop art, and he crossed over both of them in most pieces of work, ‘Pledge’ was one of the pieces that caught my eye the most with Rauchenberg, I love the way he has used his photography and created a sketch book feel with it, he’s used minimal colours and spacial awareness which works great against the movements.
I wanted to look at Rauchenberg’s work because of this reason, because he has a different style considering in the movement we was working in. I want to use this as an influence in my work, like Swchitters, he really fits into my idea of looking at the industrial side of Sheffield, I want to stick to a maximum of three colours, and work with different types of media, like both have done.
I also feel more confident in using photography in my work after seeing how successful it has worked in Rauchenberg’s work, I was worried He was an influence on the next generation of it wouldn’t fit together which I can take with me into the design process. artists but liked to be very individual in his work to anything else that was being created at the time. I look at Rauchenberg’s work and get a feeling of the individuality he wanted to keep for himself, when I think of Pop Art, I think of Andy Warhol, which had quite a fun take on his work, bright colours, and many others like Leichensten, had the same idea for Pop Art, where Rauchenberg keeps his to the drab colours we saw in Dada movement.
EARTH ARTE FACT
What everyone in the astronaut corps shares in common is not gender, or ethnic background but motivation, perseverance and the desire to participate in a voyage of discovery. -Ellen Ochoa
Earth Artefact was our second Project of the year. The brief was to create something that could go on the Golden Voyage. Again I really did struggle to get this brief started, as I had no idea how to condense earth down to one piece of graphic design. I decided for this project early on I was going to look at illustrators in more details as I never usually. I found that there was a lot more diversity in illustrators than I thought which made it easier for me to start planning what I wanted to create. I decided after sketching I wanted to make a banner, which I knew was going to be a big task but it would be a challenge that if I completed it would have been something to be proud of. I decided to completely by bass hand sketches for the final piece and create it all on Adobe Suite, I confident in Photoshop but not Illustrator.
I stayed with creating very simple shapes because it was the first time I had used illustrator to this extent, and I knew that the biggest challenge would be to be able to put it all together. Some parts of my work aren’t the best and I am fully aware of this, but I am happy that I have learned vital skills to be able to use when I try on my next projects in the upcoming years.
DAVID SOSSELLA I came across David Sossella on Behance to find out that he was the most visited illustrator on Behance with other 30,000 followers, this is the base of where he has gained his profile up. Since graduating at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice, he then went onto working with a company called Gusto Robusto, but he is already ran a campaign for Ray-Ban called ‘Never Hide’ which he created 120 rare prints for the company. 2D prints are his main way of working but he has been involved in creating motion graphics with illustration animations which has collaborated with others for.
One thing that really stands out to me with David’s work is how interact his pieces are, every single inch of the paper is covered in small details that makes you appreciate just how much has gone into his work. I am a big fan of illustration with as little colour used as possible, and these work beautifully, the colours that he has used are all working together and layered up to create a 3 dimensional look on the page without it actually having it implied its for a 3D use. The fact that he can make his own style work just as well on paper as he can on software is a really admirable talent to have too for myself, he finishes both off perfectly and with textures on both.
NINA GEOMETRIEVA Nina is a quite new freelance designer from Singapore. She works with simple vectors to create beautiful logos, posters and motion graphics. She has created work for companied such as glassware industry, Trivilant, and OUEN. Although she isn’t as well known as others, she has had her work seen over 850,000 times on Behance. Nina’s work stood out to me because of how simple it was, yet it feels like she fills the whole page with this design.
In each piece of work she manages to sick to a really small colour pallet which pulls off really striking aesthetics on the eye. She doesn’t venture from much more than really basic vectors and layers them up to create objects or landscapes. Her work looks so easy and effortless but you can tell that a lot of consideration goes into creating these pieces of work.
NEW V LANG
VISUAL GUAGE
Design is a way of life, a point of view. It involves the whole complex of visual communications: talent, creative ability, manual skill, and technical knowledge. Aesthetics and economics, technology and psychology are intrinsically related to the process. -Paul Rand
Our final project for this year was to incorporate all our work together and create a magazine, which also had elements of modernism and post-modernism. On the surface this seemed like quite an easy task, but there are a lot of things to consider, such as the layouts and where the world will be placed and the research on modernism and post modernism. I made this project easier for myself without me knowing earlier in the year by looking at modernism and post modernism for my City In Flux brief. I found it quite hard to develop the front page as I didn’t really know where to start but I am really happy I decided to keep it minimal and simple throughout.
In this magazine I could also showcase my type that I had created in the final year which tied in nicely with the modernism and post modernism part of the magazine. I also got to look at other artists that I hadn’t had the chance to see yet.
TRANSCRIPT We started off by looking at different styles and what we thought we would be able to pick at and take part from it and create anything that resembles it. I decided to go with these five images as they all have different styles so that I will be able to start with a really broad range and then condense it down later on. I started off by looking at the images and seeing what I could use to create similar letterings from it and this is what I came up for, we used the letters ‘AEGNS’ because these letters are the base to be able to create any other letter in the alphabet. These are my rough sketches that I’ve taken from each photo.
Once I was happy with how it looked on paper, I then went onto creating it in illustrator. I used the same 3pt line for every line so that they would all be the same thickness. I didn’t want it to look pristine, as the work I looked at to get me to here wasn’t and I think it makes it look a little more quirky. I am really happy with my final outcome, and I really enjoyed this task, by using the research methods that we did, we were able to single out better what we wanted to create for our final outcome which I think helped me get a better outcome rather than just winging it with one idea.
I decided to work from these two ideas, I created them digitally and then decided to see what colour schemes I liked, the first header didn’t really feel like a header for a magazine, so I then went onto working with the colour scheme of my second idea and decided on the top left one, it will work well with the rest of the front cover with the pastel colours.
This is my final design for the new visual language magazine, I am really happy with it, I feel like it fits well with the modern/post-modern feel and is also very simple which is what I wanted to do throughout the whole magazine so that I could showcase my work clearly.
Throughout my magazine I decided to have title pages, and since I have used simple shapes on the front cover I thought I should keep the theme up throughout. BY using circles I was able to add text into them and it would be able to be read, each one is a different colour to tie in with the contents page to link in with that section of the magazine.