Josh Gardner New Graphic Design

FORM FOLLOW FUNCTION

an exploration of modernism and post modernism

Module TFD1064.

Design for Communication Design Graphic Design Group New Graphic Design Josh Gardner U1262228 Email : josh.gardner1@hotmail.co.uk Blog : joshgardner1.wordpress.com

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PART I RESEARCH INTO

• Colour • Shape • Movements • Theories • Artists

Color in design is very subjective. What evokes one reaction in one person may evoke a very different reaction in somone else.

Sometimes this is due to personal preference, and other times due to cultural background. Color theory is a science in itself.

Studying how colors affect different people, either individually or as a group, is something some people build their careers on. And there’s a lot to it. Something as simple as changing the exact hue or saturation of a color can evoke a completely different feeling.

Cultural differences mean that something that’s happy and uplifting in one country can be depressing in another.

Warm Colors

Warm colors include red, orange, and yellow, and variations of those three colors. These are the colors of fire, of fall leaves, and of sunsets and sunrises, and are generally energizing, passionate, and positive. Red and yellow are both primary colors, with orange falling in the middle, which means warm colors are all truly warm and aren’t created by combining a warm color with a cool color. Use warm colors in your designs to reflect passion, happiness, enthusiasm, and energy.

RED (PRIMARY COLOR)

Red is a very hot color. It’s associated with fire, violence, and warfare. It’s also associated with love and passion. In history, it’s been associated with both the Devil and Cupid. Red can actually have a physical effect on people, raising blood pressure and respiration rates. It’s been shown to enhance human metabolism, too.

Red can be associated with anger, but is also associated with importance (think of the red carpet at awards shows and celebrity events). Red also indicates danger (the reason stop lights and signs are red, and that most warning labels are red).

Outside the western world, red has different associations. For example, in China, red is the color of prosperity and happiness. It can also be used to attract good luck. In other eastern cultures, red is worn by brides on their wedding days. In South Africa, however, red is the color of mourning. Red is also associated with communism. Red has become the color associated with AIDS awareness in Africa due to the popularity of the [RED] campaign.

In design, red can be a powerful accent color. It can have an overwhelming effect if it’s used too much in designs, especially in its purest form. It’s a great color to use when power or passion want to be portrayed in the design. Red can be very versatile, though, with brighter versions being more energetic and darker shades being more powerful and elegant.

ORANGE (SECONDARY COLOR)

Orange is a very vibrant and energetic color. In its muted forms, it can be associated with the earth and with autumn. Because of its association with the changing seasons, orange can represent change and movement in general.

Because orange is associated with the fruit of the same name, it can be associated with health and vitality. In designs, orange commands attention without being as overpowering as red. It’s often considered more friendly and inviting, and less in-your-face.

YELLOW (PRIMARY COLOR)

Yellow is often considered the brightest and most energizing of the warm colors. It’s associated with happiness and sunshine. Yellow can also be associated with deceit and cowardice, though (calling someone yellow is calling them a coward).

Yellow is also associated with hope, as can be seen in some countries when yellow ribbons are displayed by families who have loved ones at war. Yellow is also associated with danger, though not as strongly as red.

In some countries, yellow has very different connotations. In Egypt, for example, yellow is for mourning. In Japan, it represents courage, and in India it’s a color for merchants.

In your designs, bright yellow can lend a sense of happiness and cheerfulness. Softer yellows are commonly used as a gender-neutral color for babies (rather than blue or pink) and young children. Light yellows also give a more calm feeling of happiness than bright yellows. Dark yellows and gold-hued yellows can sometimes look antique and be used in designs where a sense of perma-

Cool Colors

Cool colors include green, blue, and purple, are often more subdued than warm colors. They are the colors of night, of water, of nature, and are usually calming, relaxing, and somewhat reserved.

Blue is the only primary color within the cool spectrum, which means the other colors are created by combining blue with a warm color (yellow for green and red for purple). Greens take on some of the attributes of yellow, and purple takes on some of the attributes of red. Use cool colors in your designs to give a sense of calm or professionalism.

GREEN (SECONDARY COLOR)

Green is a very down-to-earth color. It can represent new beginnings and growth. It also signifies renewal and abundance. Alternatively, green can also represent envy or jealousy, and a lack of experience.

Green has many of the same calming attributes that blue has, but it also incorporates some of the energy of yellow. In design, green can have a balancing and harmonizing effect, and is very stable. It’s appropriate for designs related to wealth, stability, renewal, and nature. Brighter greens are more energizing and vibrant, while olive greens are more representative of the natural world. Dark greens are the most stable and representative of affluence.

BLUE (PRIMARY COLOR)

Blue is often associated with sadness in the English language. Blue is also used extensively to represent calmness and responsibility. Light blues can be refreshing and friendly. Dark blues are more strong and reliable. Blue is also associated with peace, and has spiritual and religious connotations in many cultures and traditions (for example, the Virgin Mary is generally depicted wearing blue robes).

The meaning of blue is widely affected depending on the exact shade and hue. In design, the exact shade of blue you select will have a huge impact on how your designs are perceived. Light blues are often relaxed and calming. Bright blues can be energizing PURPLE (SECONDARY COLOR)

Purple was long associated with royalty. It’s a combination of red and blue, and takes on some attributes of both. It’s associated with creativity and imagination, too. In Thailand, purple is the color of mourning for widows. Dark purples are traditionally associated with wealth and royalty, while lighter purples (like lavendar) are considered more romantic.

In design, dark purples can give a sense wealth and luxury. Light purples are softer and are associated with spring and romance.

Neutrals

Neutral colors often serve as the backdrop in design. They’re commonly combined with brighter accent colors. But they can also be used on their own in designs, and can create very sophisticated layouts. The meanings and impressions of neutral colors are much more affected by the colors that surround them than are warm and cool colors.

BLACK

Black is the strongest of the neutral colors. On the positive side, it’s commonly associated with power, elegance, and formality.

On the negative side, it can be associated with evil, death, and mystery. Black is the traditional color of mourning in many Western countries. It’s also associated with rebellion in some cultures, and is associated with Halloween and the occult.

Black is commonly used in edgier designs, as well as in very elegant designs. It can be either conservative or modern, traditional or unconventional, depending on the colors it’s combined with. In design, black is commonly used for typography and other functional parts, because of it’s neutrality. Black can make it easier to convey a sense of sophistication and mystery in a design.

WHITE

White is at the opposite end of the spectrum from black, but like black, it can work well with just about any other color. White is often associated with purity, cleanliness, and virtue. In the West, white is commonly worn by brides on their wedding day. It’s also associated with the health care industry, especially with doctors, nurses and dentists. White is associated with goodness, and angels are often depicted in white.

In design, white is generally considered a neutral backdrop that lets other colors in a design have a larger voice. It can help to convey cleanliness and simplicity, though, and is popular in minimalist designs. White in designs can also portray either winter or GRAY

Gray is a neutral color, generally considered on the cool end of the color spectrum. It can sometimes be considered moody or depressing. Light grays can be used in place of white in some designs, and dark grays can be used in place of black.

Gray is generally conservative and formal, but can also be modern. It is sometimes considered a color of mourning. It’s commonly used in corporate designs, where formality and professionalism are key. It can be a very sophisticated color. Pure grays are shades of black, though other grays may have blue or brown hues mixed in. In design, gray backgrounds are very common, as is gray typography.

BROWN

Brown is associated with the earth, wood, and stone. It’s a completely natural color and a warm neutral. Brown can be associated with dependability and reliability, with steadfastness, and with earthiness. It can also be considered dull.

In design, brown is commonly used as a background color. It’s also seen in wood textures and sometimes in stone textures. It helps bring a feeling of warmth and wholesomeness to designs. It’s sometimes used in its darkest forms as a replacement for black, either in backgrounds or typography.

BEIGE AND TAN

Beige is somewhat unique in the color spectrum, as it can take on cool or warm tones depending on the colors surrounding it. It has the warmth of brown and the coolness of white, and, like brown, is sometimes seen as dull. It’s a conservative color in most instances, and is usually reserved for backgrounds. It can also symbolize piety.

Beige in design is generally used in backgrounds, and is commonly seen in backgrounds with a paper texture. It will take on the characteristics of colors around it, meaning it has little effect in itself on the final impression a design gives when used with other colors.

CREAM AND IVORY

Ivory and cream are sophisticated colors, with some of the warmth of brown and a lot of the coolness of white. They’re generally quiet, and can often evoke a sense of history. Ivory is a calm color, with some of the pureness associated with white, though it’s a bit warmer.

In design, ivory can lend a sense of elegance and calm to a site. When combined with earthy colors like peach or brown, it can take on an earthy quality. It can also be used to lighten darker colors, without the stark contrast of using white.

In Brief…

While the information contained here might seem just a bit overwhelming, color theory is as much about the feeling a particular shade evokes than anything else. But here’s a quick reference guide for the common meanings of the colors discussed above: Red: Passion, Love, Anger Orange: Energy, Happiness, Vitality Yellow: Happiness, Hope, Deceit Green: New Beginnings, Abundance, Nature Blue: Calm, Responsible, Sadness Purple: Creativity, Royalty, Wealth Black: Mystery, Elegance, Evil Gray: Moody, Conservative, Formality White: Purity, Cleanliness, Virtue Brown: Nature, Wholesomeness, Dependability Tan or Beige: Conservative, Piety, Dull Cream or Ivory: Calm, Elegant, Purity

MONOCHROMATIC Colour Scheme Monochromatic color schemes are made up of different tones, shades and tints within a specific hue. These are the simplest color schemes to create, as they’re all taken from the same hue, making it harder to create a jarring or ugly scheme (though both are still possible).

Examples: Here are three examples of monochrome color schemes. For the most part with these schemes, the first color (if we look at this from left to right) would likely be used for headlines. The second color would be used for body text or possibly the background.

The third color would likely be used for the background (or body text if color #2 was used as the background). And the last two colors would be used as accents or within graphics.

ANALOGOUS Colour Scheme Analogous color schemes are the next easiest to create. Analogous schemes are created by using three colors that are next to each other on the 12-spoke color wheel. Generally, analogous color schemes all have the same chroma level, but by using tones, shades and tints we can add interest to these schemes and adapt them to our needs for designing websites.

This is a traditional analogous color scheme, and while it’s visually appealing, there isn’t enough contrast between the colors for an effective design.

Here’s a color scheme with the same hues as the one above, but with the chroma adjusted to give more variety. It’s now much more suitable for use in design.

Another example of a traditional analogous scheme.

And the above theme modified for use in a website design.

COMPLEMENTARY Colour Scheme Complementary schemes are created by combining colors from opposite sides of the color wheel. In their most basic form, these schemes consist of only two colors, but can easily be expanded using tones, tints, and shades. A word of warning, though: using colors that are exact opposites with the same chroma and/or value right next to each other can be very jarring visually (they’ll appear to actually vibrate along their border in the most severe uses). This is best avoided (either by leaving white space between them or by adding another, transitional color between them).

A wide range of tints, shades, and tones makes this a very versatile color.

Another complementary color scheme with a wide range of chromas.

Don’t forget that beige and brown are really tints and shades of orange.

SPILT COMPLEMENTARY Colour Scheme Split complementary schemes are almost as easy as the complementary scheme. In this scheme, instead of using colors that are opposites, you use colors on either side of the hue opposite your base hue.

A scheme where yellow-green is the base hue. It’s important to have enough difference in chroma and value between the colors you select for this type of scheme.

Another palette with a wide range of chromas.

TRIADIC Colour Scheme Triadic schemes are made up of hues equally spaced around the 12-spoke color wheel. This is one of the more diverse color schemes.

Using a very pale or dark version of one color in the triad, along with two shades/ tones/tints of the other two colors makes the single color almost work as a neutral within the scheme.

Alternately, using one very bright hue with paired muted hues makes the single bright hue stand out more.

TRIADIC Colour Scheme Triadic schemes are made up of hues equally spaced around the 12-spoke color wheel. This is one of the more diverse color schemes.

Using a very pale or dark version of one color in the triad, along with two shades/ tones/tints of the other two colors makes the single color almost work as a neutral within the scheme.

Alternately, using one very bright hue with paired muted hues makes the single bright hue stand out more.

Hue Hue is the most basic of color terms and basically denotes an object’s color. When we say “blue,” “green” or “red,” we’re talkChroma Chroma refers to the purity of a color. A hue with high chroma has no black, white or gray in it. Adding white, black or gray reduces its chroma. It’s similar to saturation but not quite the same. Chroma can be thought of as the brightness of a color in comparison to white.

In design, avoid using hues that have a very similar chroma. Opt instead for hues with chromas that are the same or a few steps Saturation Saturation refers to how a hue appears under particular lighting conditions. Think of saturation in terms of weak vs. strong or pale vs. pure hues.

In design, colors with similar saturation levels make for more cohesive-looking designs. As with chroma, colors with similar but not identical saturations can have a jarring effect on visitors.

Value Value could also be called “lightness.” It refers to how light or dark a color is. Ligher colors have higher values. For example, orange has a higher value than navy blue or dark purple. Black has the lowest value of any hue, and white the highest.

When applying color values to your designs, favor colors with different values, especially ones with high chroma. High contrast values generally result in more aesthetically pleasing designs.

Tones Tones are created when gray is added to a hue. Tones are generally duller or softer-looking than pure hues.

Tones are sometimes easier to use in designs. Tones with more gray can lend a certain vintage feel to websites. Depending on the hues, they can also add a sophisticated or elegant look.

Shades A shade is created when black is added to a hue, making it darker. The word is often incorrectly used to describe tint or tone, but shade only applies to hues made darker by the addition of black.

In design, very dark shades are sometimes used instead of black and can serve as neutrals. Combining shades with tints is best to avoid too dark and heavy a look.

Tints A tint is formed when white is added to a hue, lightening it. Very light tints are sometimes called pastels, but any pure hue with white added to it is a tint.

Tints are often used to create feminine or lighter designs. Pastel tints are especially used to make designs more feminine. They also work well in vintage designs and are popular on websites targeted at parents of babies and toddlers.

Conclusion ❶Chroma is the purity of a color (a high chroma has no added black, white or gray). ❷Saturation refers to how strong or weak a color is (high saturation being strong). ❸Value refers to how light or dark a color is (light having a high value). ❹Tones are created by adding gray to a color, making it duller than the original. ❺Shades are created by adding black to a color, making it darker than the original. ❻Tints are created by adding white to a color, making it lighter than the original.

Diffrent Magazine Cover Design Styles Covers are essential and there are different types to consider. Whatever choice is made, i ask my self Why would this work with this magazine? What makes this unique or appealing? How does it set itself apart from other magazine in terms of color and style? ❶No-word covers. This was popular in the 20th century where covers were seen more as art. ❷One image cover with one main line—perhaps a holiday or seasonal theme such as “Thanksgiving Issue” or “Summer Issue.” ❸One image with several feature cover lines. ❹Busy cover with many images and words as depicted by US Weekly and All You magazines. ❺Covers with all graphics as seen in Wired and New Yorker.

The Meaning Of Shapes: “I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way, things I had no words for.

- Georgia O’Keeffe” What do you feel when you see a circle? A square? A triangle? Are you affected the same when seeing an object with soft gentle curves as you are when seeing another object with sharp jagged edges? Much the same way that lines have meaning, shapes have meaning and are an important building block in the visual grammar and visual thinking we have at our disposal as designers.

Shapes have an endless variety of characteristics, each communicating different messages to your audience. You’d be hard pressed to design any web page without creating shapes. Even if your page is nothing more than paragraphs of text you’re laying down shapes on the page.

What kind of shapes do we have at our disposal? What do all those shapes say to our visitors? How do they enhance or detract from the concept you want to convey?

Shapes are two-dimensional areas with a recognizable boundary. They can be open or closed, angular or round, big or small. Shapes can be organic or inorganic. They can be freeform or geometric and ordered.

Shapes can be defined by their color or by the combination of lines that make up their edges. Simple shapes can be combined to form complex shapes. Complex shapes can be abstracted to make simple shapes.

Designers use shapes to: • • • • • •

Organize information through connection and separation Symbolize different ideas Create movement, texture, and depth Convey mood and emotion Emphasize and create entry points and areas of interest Lead the eye from one design element to the next

• Types of Shapes • Geometric shapes are what most people think of as shapes. Circles, squares, triangles, diamonds are made up of regular patterns that are easily recognizable. This regularity suggests organization and efficiency. It suggests structure. Geometric shapes tend to be symmetrical further suggesting order.

• Natural/Organic shapes are irregular. They have more curves and are uneven. They tend to be pleasing and comforting. While they can be man-made (ink blobs), they are more typically representative of shapes found in nature such as a leaves, rocks, and clouds. On a web page organic shapes are generally created through the use of illustration and photography.

They are free form and asymmetrical and convey feelings of spontaneity. Organic shapes add interest and reinforce themes.

• Abstract shapes have a recognizable form, but are not real. They are stylized or simplified versions of organic shapes. A stick figure is an abstract shape depicting a person. Typographic glyphs are abstract shapes to represent letters. Icons are abstract shapes to represent ideas and concepts. Some abstract shapes have near universal recognition. Think of some of the icons you see in the software you use daily.

• Shapes can be either positive or negative. They can be figure or they can be ground. Be conscious of the shapes you form with negative space as these are just as, if not more, important than the shapes you form with positive space.

The Meaning Of Shapes: There are truly an endless variety of shapes and combination of shapes, each communicating its own meaning and message. Often the meaning behind shapes is cultural (a red octagon as a stop sign), particularly as shapes are combined. We’ll confine ourselves to a discussion of some basic geometric shapes here and I’ll provide some links to more detailed sources of shape meaning beyond the basics.

Circles have no beginning or end. They represent the eternal whole and in every culture are an archetypical form representing the sun, the earth, the moon, the universe, and other celestial objects between. Circles are used to suggest familiar objects such as wheels, balls, many kinds of fruit. They suggested well-roundedness and completeness.

Circles have free movement. They can roll. Shading and lines can enhance this sense of movement in circles. Circles are graceful and their curves are seen as feminine. They are warm, comforting and give a sense of sensuality and love. Their movement suggests energy and power. Their completeness suggests the infinite, unity, and harmony.

Circles protect, they endure, they restrict. They confine what’s within and keep things out. They offer safety and connection. Circles suggests community, integrity, and perfection.

Because they are less common in design they work well to attract attention, provide emphasis, and set things apart.

Squares and rectangles are stable. They’re familiar and trusted shapes and suggest honesty. They have right angles and represent order, mathematics, rationality, and formality.

They are seen as earthbound. Rectangles are the most common geometric shape encountered. The majority of text we read is set in rectangles or squares.

Squares and rectangles suggest conformity, peacefulness, solidity, security, and equality. Their familiarity and stability, along with their commonness can seem boring. They are generally not attention getters, but can be tilted to add an unexpected twist. Think of web pages that tilts framed images to help them stand out.

Every element on a web page is defined by a rectangle according to the css box model. Web pages are rectangles made up of smaller rectangles and squares.

In Buddhist symbolism a square (earthbound) inside a circle (eternal whole) represents the relationship between the human and the divine.

The Meaning Of Shapes:

Triangles can be stable when sitting on their base or unstable when not. They represent dynamic tension, action, and aggression. Triangles have energy and power and their stable/unstable dynamic can suggest either conflict or steady strength. They are balanced and can be a symbol for law, science, and religion.

Triangles can direct movement based which way they point. They can be used to suggest familiar themes like pyramids, arrows and, pennants. Spiritually they represent the religious trinity. They can suggest self-discovery and revelation.

The strength of triangles suggests masculinity. Their dynamic nature make them better suited to a growing high tech company than a stable financial institution when designing a logo. Triangles can be used to convey progression, direction, and purpose.

Spirals are expressions of creativity. They are often found in the natural growth pattern of many organisms and suggest the process of growth and evolution. Spirals convey ideas of fertility, birth, death, expansion, and transformation. They are cycles of time, life, and the seasons and are a common shape in religious and mystical symbolism.

Spirals move in either direction and represent returning to the same point on life’s journey with new levels of understanding. They represent trust during change, the release of energy and maintaining flexibility through transformation.

Clockwise spirals represent projection of an intention and counterclockwise spirals the fulfillment of an intention. Double spirals can be used to symbolize opposing forces.

Crosses symbolize spirituality and healing. They are seen as the meeting place of divine energies. The 4 points of a cross represent self, nature, wisdom, and higher power or being. Crosses suggest transition, balance, faith, unity, temperance, hope, and life.

They represent relationships and synthesis and a need for connection to something, whether that something is group, individual, self, or project related..

As with lines vertical shapes are seen as strong and horizontal shapes are seen as peaceful. Most everything said about vertical and horizontal lines can be said about vertical and horizontal shapes.

Curved shapes offer rhythm and movement, happiness, pleasure and generosity. They are seen as more feminine than sharp shapes which offer energy, violence and, anger. Sharp shapes are lively and youthful and are seen as more masculine.

Modernism Modernism was a cultural movement which was put into use and influenced many artists before the decade of 1914. The artists and designers created this movement as a sign of rebellion against the late nineteenth century academic and historicist.

Despite this, the 20th century is normally split into two parts: Modernism and Post-modernism.

A book which I rented out from the library that I thought would help me understand more about Modernism is “ModernA Graphic Guide To - Ism” written by Chris Rodrigues and Chris Garratt.

The book immediately quotes a modernist writer named D.H Lawrence who said “…to read a really new novel will always hurt, to some extent. There will always be resistance. The same with new pictures, new music. You may judge of their reality by the fact that they do arouse a certain resistance, and compel, at length, a certain acquiscence.”

The book immediately quotes a modernist writer named D.H Lawrence who said “…to read a really new novel will always hurt, to some extent. There will always be resistance. The same with new pictures, new music. You may judge of their reality by the fact that they do arouse a certain resistance, and compel, at length, a certain acquiscence.”

What effect did Modernism have on Graphic Design?

The term “graphic design” was not around when the modernist movement began and has only really been around since 1922 when a book designer, William Dwiggings, coined the phrase. It is said that graphic design itself is a product of modernism.

Looking at visual communication before and after the 1900’s there is a notable change. In a sense, Modernism was a reductive movement. Form was simplified as a way to break from pictorial representation.

The reason for this break at the beginning of the 20th centure was because it was a revolutionary time. It was filled with political, social, cultural and economic changes. The technological advances of our age was ever-expanding, the invention of flight, phones and radio. There was also a rise of radical political revolutions that spawned the rise of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Communist Russia. Many artists felt that the traditions of the past did not represent the time they were living in correctly therefore came to the conclusion they needed something new which led to the birth of modernism, expressionism, cubism, futurism, surrealism and constructivism are just a few.

Postmodernism As you can tell by the name of this movement, Postmodernism is the time after in which Modernism died out of fashion and evolved. This movement was created in the late 20th century and similarly to modernism effected: architecture, paintings, sculptors, writers and many others.

I looked at the book “Postmodernism Style and Subversion, 1970-1990” edited by Glenn Adamson and Jane Pavitt in order to help me with this research.

In understanding Post-Modernism, the book starts with a quote by Hal Foster in 1985, “Postmodernism does it exist at all, and if so, what does it mean? Is it a concept or a practice, a matter of local style or a whole new period or economic phase? What are its forms, effects, place?”

As soon as this statement/question was made, there was no shortage of responses to understanding postmodernism. Postmodernism had many subcultures that derived from it, for example: radical design, transavantgardism and radical electicism are just a few examples. Even at its peak in the mid 1980’s it was hard to locate. In contrast to the modernist movement, postmodernism was a collection of wry looks and ironic gestures. Modernists offered a new outlooks onto the world whereas the postmodernists offered something broken and shattered. Instead of authenticity, postmodernism celebrated hybridity.

What effect did Postmodernism have on Graphic Design?

Unfortunately for this era, postmodernism didn’t really have an impact until the 1980’s. Many artists remained anonymous in the work they produced as they felt it was too “risky” and too offensive for other citizens to see. The first most prominent feature of postmodernist graphic design is the reaction artists make to modernist designs and their response to it. The second most predominant feature is the erasing of the boundaries between high culture and pop culture. Graphic designers love and are drawn to new things, they were caught in this postmodernism world when they realised it wasn’t just a form of self-expression but a new technique which can again, be revolutionised into something new and a new form of truthful visual communication.

“The practice of graphic design has from the beginning been intertwined with pop commercialism, but that does not mean that our values and ideals, or the lack of them, have to be dictated by the commercial marketplace. Just because thinking about design isn’t a popular activity doesn’t mean it isn’t an important one.” - Mr. Keedy

Layout Design Page layout is the process of composing text, image and negative space on the page to produce a balanced, and harmonious visual impact that would allow for a collaboration of the author of the text, the artist of the design and the reader to construct collectively a meaning and a message for the text. No text has a single meaning or a unique message, and different designs create different meanings and different messages for the same text. A layout designer usually uses a grid system to subdivides a page into geometrical spaces that would constitute the grammar of layout design made up of vertical, horizontal, oblique and curved borders, margins, columns, inter-column spaces, lines of type, and negative spaces between blocks of type and images.

The visual grammar pf layout design forms its visual message Layout design is more than just design it is visual communication. Newspaper, magazine, book and other paper media layout designers not only must make the layout visually appealing to the eye, but also tell and show the importance of the story, the text, and the message through their designs. Stories and photographs are not the only elements that convey a context to a reader; a good design suggests a context too. The layout design of a book, on history; science or art has also a significant effect on how a reader would be informed about a subject. The designs can have different looks about them. They can occupy just one narrow vertical column, many columns, or they can spread over an entire page, Similar to the grammatical impacts of various tenses of a verb in a sentence, these visual grammatical variations change the dynamics of the visual meaning in the space and time.

Gutenberg, Ludovico degli Arrighi,Johannes Itten, László Moholy-Nagy, Theo Van Doesburg, Kurt Schwitters, Johannes Molzahn, Max Burchartz and the other authentic layout artists are the ones whose works establish the new standards and criteria for the future. They can abandon all the aesthetically established conventions, except one; their new designs must balance the overall compositions of the page taking into considerations all elements of design namely; the composition of image, text, white space the effects of color and texture of its paper.

Of course. the amount of space available will dictate a designer’s ability to layout the text. Creating a bold design, judiciously allotting areas of contrast and selecting appropriate typeface the composition should lead the reader’s eyes towards various parts of the page in a harmonious and unintrusive journey. In any layout, the negative space, that is the space without any content, plays a key role in this journey. The designer style should include an appropriate amount of negative space that would support the text arrangement in the composition. Whether the design is simple or complex, the way the story, photos, typeface and negative space are composed is a part of the visual communication package as a whole. If a page is designed poorly, the reader may miss the whole or the major part of content. A bad design may create fatigue, stress, and even provoke hostility towards the text or the author.

At its most basic, the composition of a layout is determined by the two dimensional geometry of its typography, image, color scheme and the nature of its textual content; namely whether it is technical, mathematical, poetical, philosophical, scientific or anything else . Various design choices; starting from geometric dimensions of pages, sizes of type, texture of the paper, column

CUBISM

Cubism is an art movement in the 20th century that completely changed European painting. Instead of viewing and displaying subjects from one fixed angle, Cubism breaks the subject up into a multiplicity of facets. This way several different aspects/ faces of the subject can be displayed simultaneously. Cubism presented a new reality in painting.

Inspired by Paul C?zanne and Georges Seurat, Cubism found its roots in the collaboration between Pablo Picasso (Spain) and Georges Braque (France) between 1907 and 1914. The Cubist movement itself was not very long-lived or widespread, but it did have a massive influence on latter 20th century art movements such as precisionism, futurism and to some degree also expressionism.

The period from 1910 to 1912 often is referred to as that of Analytical Cubism. In an analytical cubist painting, the object was “taken apart” and reshaped with the use of flat intersecting planes. Paintings frequently combine representational motifs with letters, the latter emphasizing the painter’s concern with abstraction.

During World War I (1914-1918), Picasso and Braque’s collaboration ended. Despite this a core group of Cubist artists remained active till the 1920’s.

Orphic Cubism

A special type of Cubism is orphic cubism or orphism. Orphism aimed to gradually dispense with recognisable subject matter and to rely on form and colour alone to communicate meaning.

The movement also aimed to express the ideals of Simultanismthe existence of an infinitude of interrelated states of being. Its main representative is Robert Delaunay

Juan Gris

At first he painted in the analytic style of cubism but after 1915, he began his conversion to synthetic cubism of which he became a steadfast interpreter, with recognizable use of papier collé. Unlike Braque and Picasso whose works were monochromatic, Gris concentrated on painting with bright colors.

Futurism Futurism was a 20th century art movement. The Futurists loved speed, noise, machines, pollution, and cities; they embraced the exciting new world that was then upon them rather than hypocritically enjoying the modern world’s comforts while loudly denouncing the forces that made them possible. Fearing and attacking technology has become almost second nature to many people today; the Futurist manifestos show us an alternative philosophy.

Although a nascent Futurism can be seen surfacing throughout the very early years of that century, the 1907 essay Entwurf einer neuen ?sthetik der Tonkunst (Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music) by the Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni is sometimes claimed as its true jumping-off point. Futurism was a largely Italian and Russian movement although it also had adherents in other countries.

The Futurists explored every medium of art, including painting, sculpture, poetry, theatre, music, architecture and even gastronomy. The Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti was the first among them to produce a manifesto of their artistic philosophy in his Manifesto of Futurism (1909), first released in Milan and published in the French paper Le Figaro (February 20). Marinetti summed up the major principles of the Futurists, including a passionate loathing of ideas from the past, especially political and artistic traditions. He and others also espoused a love of speed, technology and violence. The car, the plane, the industrial town were all legendary for the Futurists, because they represented the technological triumph of man over nature.

Marinetti’s impassioned polemic immediately attracted the support of the young Milanese painters ? Boccioni, Carr?, and Russolo ? who wanted to extend Marinetti’s ideas to the visual arts (Russolo was also a composer, and introduced Futurist ideas into his compositions). The painters Balla and Severini met Marinetti in 1910 and together these artists represented Futurism’s first phase.

The painter and sculptor Umberto Boccioni (1882 - 1916) wrote the Manifesto of Futurist Painters in 1910 in which he vowed: “We will fight with all our might the fanatical, senseless and snobbish religion of the past, a religion encouraged by the vicious existence of museums. We rebel against that spineless worshipping of old canvases, old statues and old bric-a-brac, against everything which is filthy and worm-ridden and corroded by time. We consider the habitual contempt for everything which is young, new and burning with life to be unjust and even criminal.”

Constructivism

Constructivism was an artistic and architectural movement in Russia from 1914 onward (especially present after the October Revolution), and a term often used in modern art today, which dismissed "pure" art in favour of art used as an instrument for social purposes, namely, the construction of the socialist system. The term Construction Art was first used as a derisive term by Kazimir Malevich to describe the work of Alexander Rodchenko in 1917. Constructivism first appears as a positive term in Naum Gabo's Realistic Manifesto of 1920.

The movement was formed by Vladimir Tatlin, and later prominent constructivists included Manuel Rend?n, Joaqu?n Torres Garc?a, Antoine Pevsner and Naum Gabo. The basis for the new movement was laid by People's Commissar of Education Anatoliy Vasilievich Lunacharsky with the suppression of the old Petrograd Academy of Fine Arts and the Moscow College of Painting in 1918. The focus for Constructivism in Moscow was 'VKhUTEMAS', the school for art and design established in 1919. Gabo later stated that teaching at the school was focused more on political and ideological discussion than artmaking.The artists of the movement were influenced by, and used materials from, industrial design such as sheet metal and glass. Often these materials were used to create geometric objects.

Liubov Popova worked towards the culminating painterly arcitectonics. Exploring firstly an impressionist style, by 1913, in Composition with Figures, she is experimenting with the particularly Russian development of Cubo-Futurism; a fusion of two equal influences from France and Italy. In the painting The Violin of 1914 the development from cubism towards the painterly architectonics of 1917-18 is clearly visible. Before joining the Supremus group her paintings , the architectonic series have defined their own artistic trajectory, quite different to that of Malevich, Rozanova, Tatlin and Mondrian in abstract form. The canvas surface is an energy field of overlapping and intersecting angular planes in a constant state of potential release. At the same time the elements are held in a balanced and proportioned whole as if linking the compositions of the classical past to the future. By 1918 colour is used as an iconic focus; the bright colour at the centre drawing the outer shapes together.

DADAISM

Dadaism or Dada is a post-World War I cultural movement in visual art as well as literature (mainly poetry), theatre and graphic design. The movement was, among other things, a protest against the barbarism of the War and what Dadaists believed was an oppressive intellectual rigidity in both art and everyday society; its works were characterized by a deliberate irrationality and the rejection of the prevailing standards of art. It influenced later movements including Surrealism.

Dada probably began in the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich in 1916 (by some accounts on October 6), and there were active dadaists in New York such as Marcel Duchamp and the Liberian art student, Beatrice Wood, who had left France at the onset of World War I. At around the same time there had been a dadaist movement in Berlin. Slightly later there were also dadaist uncommunities in Hanover (Kurt Schwitters), Cologne, and Paris. In 1920, Max Ernst, Hans Arp and social activist Alfred Gr?nwald set up the Cologne Dada group.

Interestingly, at the same time that the Z?rich dadaists were busy making noise and spectacle at the Cabaret Voltaire, Vladimir Lenin was writing his revolutionary plans for Russia in a nearby apartment. It is known that he was unappreciative of the artistic revolutionary activity occurring next to him. Tom Stoppard used this coincidence as a premise for his play Travesties, which includes Tzara, Lenin, and James Joyce as characters.

The French avant-garde kept abreast of Dada activities in Z?rich due to the regular communications from Tristan Tzara, who exchanged letters, poems, and magazines with Guillaume Apollinaire, Andr? Breton, Max Jacob, and other French writers, critics and artists. The first introduction of Dada artwork to the Parisian public was at the Salon des Ind?pendants in 1921. Jean Crotti exhibited works associated with Dada including a work entitled, "Explicatif" bearing the word Tabu.

Dada's influence reached out in to sound and music: Kurt Schwitters developed what he called "sound poems" and composers such as Erwin Schulhoff, Hans Heusser and Albert Savinio began writing "dada music", while members of Les Six collaborated with dada movement members and had pieces played at dada gatherings.

Layout Design in 20th century At the beginning of the 20th Century, modern art movements such as Futurism, Dadaism and Constructivism revolutionized the European layout and typography. Germany was at the epicenter of this revolution, where young layout designers distanced themselves from the traditional approach of the publishing houses and printing companies, whose layout design and typographic culture was rooted in Art and Crafts movement or Art Nouveau style of the eighteenth century. At the same time Cubism departed from Realism and opened the vista for abstract art. Cubists analysed the representational art in three-dimensional view points and added a fourth dimension, time, which rendered the composition complex and rather unwieldy. But upon a more careful study they revealed a deconstruction of the geometry of space into rectangles, triangles and ellipses in a dynamic trajectory that redefined the aesthetics of perspective.

In the aftermath of World War I, the German Die Neue Sachlichkeit, The New Objectivity, movement that was founded by Otto Dix and George Grosz may be characterized as an anti-war realistic style that was informed by their cynical stance towards the existing European socio-political power structure. The spirit of a “New Objectivity” and its ideological stance influenced layout designers like Karel Teige, El Lissitzky, Herbert Bayer, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Marcel Breuer, Jan Tschichold, Paul Renner, Kurt Schwitters and others. They fell in love with the “new” Grotesk typography, or what in the English speaking world is known as Sans-Serifs, and was supposed to represent the proletarian spirit of socially-oriented internationalism and fraternization of the new industrial society.

These young artists recognized the power of layout and broke with all previous design traditions, using type in the spirit of cubism, at unexpected angles or on misplaced curves; introducing extreme variation in type sizes; using drawn, abstracted letterforms; and generally ignoring the vertical and horizontal nature of type. For the first time, space was used as a dynamic component in typographic layout.

The Italian Futurist layout designers who were literary enthusiast, called into question the typographical philosophy of simplicity, clarity and transparency which dominated print culture since the advent of the printing press. Led by F. T. Marinetti’s 1909 manifesto, they used the metaphor of “second-hand clothes,” to describe the traditional layout designs of visual communication, particularly the layout of the book itself, which Marinetti called “stale” and “oppressive,” a symbol of the old guard that the Futurists were working against. He began experimenting with unusual layout and degenerated typography, creating poems that were simultaneously textual and visual, such as the 1919 work “SCRABrrRrraaNNG.

Fibonacci’s Golden proportions When artists think of shapes with golden ratios they typically think of a golden rectangle where one side divided by the other.

The Golden Rectangle’s status as an eye-pleasing divider of space is well established. The Golden Spiral is made from quarter-circles tangent to the interior of each square.

The Golden Section is an aesthetically pleasing division of space that is often used by artists as the basis for measurements within their compositions. The mathematics behind the golden ratio is heavily connected to the Fibonacci Sequence, which by definition begins with the numbers 0, 1 and then each successive number in the sequence is the sum of the previous two numbers.

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55‌ Taking any number in this sequence and divide it by the previous number the result approximates Phi or the golden ratio. Of course, the first few numbers in the sequence give a rough approximation , but as we continue along the sequence the division approaches 1.618 rather quickly.

As the following chart shows, designers can partition their layout space in a much simpler way than calculating the length of the sides which satisfy the golden proportion.

The construction of a golden rectangle is very easy and straightforward. First, construct a simple square. Then draw a line from the midpoint of one side (point A) to an opposite corner (point B) and use that line as the radius to draw an arc that defines the width of the rectangle. Finally, complete the golden rectangle.

There are many geometrical constructions that can produce a beautiful page, but the golden section is usually cited as the most successful. By adding a square, with sides equal the long side, to the long side it is possible to arrive at the next measurement in the sequence to give a bigger rectangle of the same proportions. This also works in reverse in order to make a smaller rectangle, that is subtracting a square with sides equal to the short side of the rectangle, and extending it to become a rectangle one can produce a smaller golden triangle.

Paul Rand.

concentric circles in vibrant colours becomes both an illustrative image and a dynamic composition.

“I haven’t changed my mind about modernism from the first day I ever did it…. It means integrity; it means honesty; it means the absence of sentimentality and the absence of nostalgia; it means simplicity; it means clarity. That’s what modernism means to me…”

Undoubtedly, the core ideology that drove Rand’s career, and hence his lasting influence, was the modernist philosophy he so revered.

He celebrated the works of artists from Paul Cezanne to Jan Tschichold, and constantly attempted to draw the connections between their creative output and significant applications in graphic design.

“Don't try to be original. Just try to be good.” was an American graphic designer, best known for his corporate logo designs, including the logos for IBM, UPS. He was one of the originators of the Swiss Style of graphic design.

Paul Rand was born on August 15, 1914 in Brooklyn, New York. He embraced design at a very young age. He almost singlehandedly convinced business that design was an effective tool. Anyone designing in the 1950s and 1960s owed much to Rand, who largely made it possible for us to work. He more than anyone else made the profession reputable. We went from being commercial artists to being graphic designers largely on his merits.

As his work developed, Rand assimilated the philosophy and visual vocabulary of European art and design, in particular that of the Bauhaus, Constructivism, Cubism, De Stijl, and Futurism. Rand believed that lines, shapes, and colours could become message-conveying signs and symbols in visual communications while simultaneously functioning as elements in an artistic composition. For example, in a 1947 poster promoting the New York Subways Advertising Company, Rand’s arrangement of dots and

Walter Dexel Walter Dexel, a German painter, typographer, designer and writer was born in 1890 and studied painting in Munich under the direction of Heinrich Wölfflin and Fritz Burger. He later received his doctorate under the tutelage of Botho Gräf. He was an active participant in the 1920s Constructive movement and organized shows for Jena’s Art Union, which included exhibitions with Campendonk and Bauhaus artist Moholy-Nagy.

Dexel not only painted but also worked as a typographer and an advertising designer and designed interiors as well as stage settings

Bauhaus Bauhaus was founded by Walther Gropius in Weimar in the year 1919 as an art, design and architecture school. The goal of Bauhaus was to bring together art, handcrafts and architecture into one single synthesis of the arts. This guideline is rather strongly oriented on the arts and crafts movement – however, Bauhaus opened itself for new technological possibilities, so that the way to industrial design was smoothed. The Bauhaus had a major impact on art and architecture trends in Western Europe, the United States, Canada and Israel in the decades following its demise.

The Bauhaus was a school whose approach to design and the combination of fine art and arts and crafts proved to be a major influence on the development of graphic design as well as much of 20th century modern art. Founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar, Germany in 1919, the school moved to Dessau in 1924 and then was forced to close its doors, under pressure from the Nazi political party, in 1933. The school favored simplified forms, rationality, functionality and the idea that mass production could live in harmony with the artistic spirit of individuality.

Along with Gropius, and many other artists and teachers, both Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Herbert Bayer made significant contributions to the development of graphic design. Among its many contributions to the development of design, the Bauhaus taught typography as part of its curriculum and was instrumental in the development of sans-serif typography, which they favored for its simplified geometric forms and as an alternative to the heavily ornate German standard of blackletter typography.

El Lissitzky

El Lissitzky was a Russian born artist, designer, typographer, photographer and architect who designed many exhibitions and propaganda for the Soviet Union in the early 20th century. His development of the ideas behind the Suprematist art movement were very influential in the development of the Bauhaus and the Constructivist art movements. His stylistic characteristics and experimentation with production techniques developed in the 1920s and 30s have been an influence on graphic designers since.

Perhaps his most famous work was the 1919 propaganda poster “Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge”.

In his early years he developed a style of painting in which he used abstract geometric shapes, which he referred to as “prouns”, to define the spatial relationships of his compositions. The shapes were developed in a 3-dimensional space, that often contained varying perspectives, which was a direct contrast to the ideas of suprematist theories which stressed the simplification of shapes and the use of 2D space only.

He moved around in the 1920s and spent time in both Germany as a cultural representative of Russia and, after he was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis, Switzerland in a Swiss sanatorium. But this never stopped him from working as he continued to produce propaganda posters, books, buildings and exhibitions for the Soviet Union. in 1932 Stalin demanded that artists conform to much stricter guidelines or be blacklisted, Lissitzky managed to retain his position as head of exhibitions. In 1941 his tuberculosis overcame him and caused his death.

THE STYLE

The Style (Dutch: De Stijl), also known as neoplasticism, was an art movement of the 1920’s which sought to express a new Utopian ideal of spiritual harmony and order. This pure abstraction and universality was reached by reducing art to the bare essentials: form and colour and even more precise the vertical and the horizontal directions and the primary colors of red, blue and yellow along with black and white.

Piet Mondriaan (Dutch, 1872-1944), the group’s most renowned artist, published a manifesto titled Neo-Plasticism in 1920. Painter Theo van Doesburg (Dutch, 1883-1931) published a journal named De Stijl from 1917 to 1928, spreading the theories of the group, which also included the painter George Vantongerloo (Belgian, 1886-1965) and the architects J.J.P. Oud (Dutch, 1890-1963) and Gerrit Rietveld (Dutch, 1888-1965).

In many of the works under this movement, the vertical and the horizontal lines tend to slide past each other and do not intersect- for example some of Mondriaan’s paintings, Rietveld’s Schr?der house and the Red and blue chair.

The work of De Stijl exerted tremendous influence on the Bauhaus and the Inter-

Wim Crouwel The concept of the total grid has been the brainchild of Wim Crouwel, a dutch graphic designer, born in 1928. He is one of the five founders of Total Design, a multi-disciplinary design studio in the Netherlands. Crouwel studied fine art in Groningen before moving to Amsterdam in the early 1950s where he initially worked for an exhibition design company.

Because of his interest in architecture, and his spatial sensitivities he applied for commissions for cultural institutions, such as the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven in 1956, and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam shortly afterwards for which Crouwel was solely responsible to develop an identity by posters and catalogues. It was at the Stedelijk that Crouwel created his Neu Alphabet, an unconventional typeface based on grid system.

In 1963 Crouwel founded Total Design, a multi-disciplinary design agency, that its hallmark was modular structuring and grids. With a systematic approach to design projects, it created the identity for a large number of Dutch companies including some multinationals like IBM and Olivetti. Total Design altered the visual landscape of the Netherlands throughout the 1960-70 period. In the 1970s Crouwel designed the Dutch Pavilion for the Osaka World Fair, as well as numerous postal stamps for the Dutch post office and a controversial redesign of the telephone book using only lowercase letters.

Crouwel’s typeface was constructed using only horizontal and vertical lines creating an alphabet of all lowercases. Although only half of the letters were recognizable, with the emergence of personal computers, his modern typeface was

particularly aimed at digital systems in 1967. However, for many Crouwel’s typeface appeared illegible. It challenged the design establishment, but Crouwel was happily engaged in the ensued controversy and readily confessed that he attaches a higher priority to visual aesthetics relative to functionality. Crouwel has stated; “I simply wanted to make a consistent alphabet on the basis of that grid of squares. I did not want any cluttering of vertical stems and did not find a solution within the conventional structure of the characters. So I began researching the past, looking for alternative signs with which I could replace the conventional forms. One could have made them up, but I wanted them to have some kind of footing in the history of type” His new typeface was redrawn by Brett Wickens and Peter Saville for the Joy Division album, ‘Substance’ in the late 80s and then digitized and made available for use in 1997 by The Foundry. Crouwel designed a number of other fonts including Gridnick, an appropriate reference to his use of grid systems and Mr. Gridnick became Crouwel’s endearing nickname.

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Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters

Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters (20 June 1887 – 8 January 1948) was a German painter who was born in Hanover, Germany.

Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including Dada, Constructivism, Surrealism, poetry, sound, painting, sculpture, graphic design, typography and what came to be known as installation art. He is most famous for his collages, called Merz Pictures.

Whereas the raw material of most of the Dada montage of the times was photographic and relevant, Schwitters took his from the streets. The montages, collages and assemblages that he constructed from all this gathered refuse have an extraordinary integrity of vision, but they are certainly not in any way political, and it is easy to understand how Schwitters’ comfortable artistic sensibility may have alienated the likes of Heartfield and Grosz.

Max Miedinger was a Swiss typeface designer. He was famous for creating 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.[1] Between 1926 and 1930, Max was trained as a typesetter in Zürich, after which he attended evening classes at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zürich.

Later, he became a typographer for Globus department store’s advertising studio in Zürich, and became a customer counselor and typeface sales representative for the Haas’sche Schriftgießerei in Münchenstein near Basel, until 1956, where he became a freelance graphic

Jan Tschichold was an important 20th-century German graphic designer who also gave a major impetus to the Swiss school. Jan Tschichold began to use serifless typefaces and designed simplified layouts.

In a special 1925 issue of “typographische mitteilungen” entitled “elementare typographie”, Jan Tschichold introduced in the form of theses the most important approaches to the new typography design.

Tschichold had converted to Modernist design principles in 1923 after visiting the first Weimar Bauhaus exhibition. He became a leading advocate of Modernist design: first with an influential 1925 magazine supplement; then a 1927 personal exhibition; then with his most noted work Die neue Typographie. This book was a manifesto of modern design, in which he condemned all typefaces but sans-serif (called Grotesk in Germany).

Paul Renner

The Swiss Style

Paul Friedrich August Renner was born in Wernigerode, Germany on August 9th, 1878. Growing up into his teenage years he studied Greek and Latin for 9 years, and then moved on to study art at a higher level, finishing his formal education in 1900. Following this Renner became involved with design and became concerned with typeface and book design.

The Swiss Style was founded in Switzerland by skilled designers in the 1920’s, despite this, the style didn’t become international until the 1950’s but the movement spread like wildfire. Key elements of this movement was the use of the grid, sans-serif fonts and also asymmetric layouts.The style also uses objective photography and illustration in order to create a visual language.

During the summer of 1924, Renner started to work on what would become a typeface called Futura, his most wellknown work. Futura was a very important type of the time, especially in Germany, as it was a movement towards the modern roman letter and a departure from the Blackletter. Renner’s Futura has also become the inspiration and foundation for many geometric types to date, and for that alone he deserves mention. During his career he designed two other typefaces, Plak and Tasse, which like Futura are also commercially available.

The main fact about this movement is that much of this was not published digitally, it was more on print-based things such as: posters, stamps and street signs etc. This meant that the Swiss designers cleverly were creating user-friendly interfaces and used things that they know people would use everyday.

The use of whitespace is equally important in this movement as it counts for both, visual compact and legibility. The styles main aim is to be able to communicate effective and efficiently by only using text that needs to be there, in this case, less is certainly more.

During the 1920s and ’30s, skills traditionally associated with Swiss industry, particularly pharmaceuticals and mechanical engineering, were matched by those of the country’s graphic designers, who produced their advertising and technical literature. These pioneering graphic artists saw design as part of industrial production and searched for anonymous, objective visual communication. They chose photographic images rather than illustration, and typefaces that were industrial-looking rather than those designed for books. - Richard Hollis (Yale University Press)

My favorite Desingers are: Josef Muller-Brockmann Famous for his Swiss style posters, Josef MüllerBrockmann has also written an influential graphic design book (Grid Systems in Graphic Design) which is still being read by web designers today. His design features elements of simplicity with minimal text, lots of white space and expressive images.

“The grid system is an aid, not a guarantee. It permits a number of possible uses and each designer can look for a solution appropriate to his personal style. But one must learn how to use the grid; it is an art that requires practice.”

Saul Bass (1920-1996) was a Bronx- born graphic designer who took his New York style to California and became famous for his work in film and classic logo design. He studied in New York at the Art Students’ League as a teenager and developed a unique style that is both recognizable and memorable.

Saul Bass’s Style.

Bass is famous for his use of simple, geometric shapes and their symbolism.

Often, a single dominant image stands alone to deliver a powerful message.

These shapes, as well as type, were often hand drawn by Bass to create a casual appearance, always packed with a sophisticated message. His ability to create such a powerful message with basic shapes makes the work even more impressive.

Ray gun (David Carson) While the contents of its pages were not related to graphic design, Ray Gun magazine proved to be an exploration of typography, layout and visual storytelling that would shift the approach of many graphic designers. The magazine was founded in 1992 and led by the work of David Carson, who served as its art director for the first three years of its career, which lasted 7 years and over 70 issues.

Carson’s style of typographic experimentation influenced the development of the deconstruction style of design and a whole new generation of designers. The experiments by Carson and other Ray Gun designers were chaotic, abstract and distinctive, but sometimes illegible.

The magazine’s radical subject matter often related to music and pop culture icons and the magazine became a reliable source for the prediction of up-andcoming stars.

Currently calling New York his base of operations, Carson was born in Corpus Christi, Texas and spent much of his early life in southern California where he was a high school teacher before becoming a designer. Ingrained within the surfing sub-culture of southern California, Carson started experimenting with graphic design during the mid 1980s. Not only a designer, in 1989 he has qualified as the 9th best surfer in the world. His interest in the world of surfing gave him the opportunities to experiment with design, working on several different publications related to the profession.Transworld Skateboarding, Beach Culture, How Magazine and RayGun were among the primary publications on which he worked.

However, it was RayGun where he gained

perhaps the most recognition and was able to share his design style, characterized by “dirty” type which adheres to none of the standard practices of typography and is often illegible, with the widest audience. After the success of RayGun, and press from the New York Times and Newsweek, he formed his own studio.

David Carson Design was founded in 1995 and is still home to Carson and his work

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Herbert Bayer was both a student and a teacher at the Bauhaus and worked in a wide range of fields including painting, sculpture, typography, advertising and architecture. In his early years as a student he studied painting with Kandinsky, but in just a short while he was teaching one of the Bauhaus’ first classes on typography. The amount of work that he created before he was 28 was more notable than most designers entire careers of work.

He spent time teaching at the Bauhaus, working as an Art Director for the Container Corporation and as an architect in both Germany and America.

In between his time at the Bauhaus and his career in America he spent time as the Art Director of Vogue magazine’s Berlin office. His contributions to the fields of graphic design, typography and advertising were many. One that should be noted was his design for a typeface that consisted of entirely lowercase letters. The German blackletter types were overly ornate for his taste and their use of capital letter for every proper noun was annoying. Logically, Bayer developed a sans-serif alphabet of lowercase letters titled “Universal”.

In 1946 Bayer moved to Aspen, Colorado where he spent much of his time designing local architecture and posters for the local community. In 1959 he designed another sans-serif typeface. Again it was all in lower case, but he called it “fonetik alfabet” and it contained special characters for the endings -ed, -ion, -ory and -ing. He is one of the most recognized designers to come from the Bauhaus institution and his theories of design are still taught in many schools today.

Joseph Albers was a student of the Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany and was a practicing artist in the fields of design, typography, photographer, painter, printmaker and poet. His most influential work was created in the field of abstract painting and it showed an influence of both the Bauhaus and the Constructivists with its simplified geometric shapes. However, he also proved to be very influential to many other graphic designers and artists as a teacher at the Black Mountain College in North Carolina from 1933-49 and at Yale University in Connecticut from 1950-58.

His series Homage to the Square is an example of his disciplined approach to composition and color theory. Towards the end of his career he and his wife established the Joseph and Anni Albers foundation in an effort to continue sharing and promoting the theory that he had established during his career. His style and work represent a bridge between the European art of the Bauhaus and Constructivists and the new American Art that emerged in the 1950s and 60s. He was a teacher and an artist his entire career, until his death in 1976 at the age of 88.

Herb Lubalin The Most people recognize the name Herb Lubalin in association with the typeface Avant Garde. And he was the typographer and designer behind its creation, after the success of Avant Garde Magazine and its typographic logo. But, his career spanned a much wider scope than that. One of the people behind the culture-shocking magazines Avant-Garde, Eros and Fact, he was a constant boundary breaker on both a visual and social level. Part of the founding team of the International Typeface Corporation (ITC) and the principal of Herb Lubalin, Inc it was hard to escape the reach of Herb during the 1960s and 70s.

His constant search for something new and a passion for inventiveness made him one of the most successful art directors of the 20th century.

He had offices internationally in Paris and London and partnered with many talented individuals over the years including Aaron Burns, Tom Carnase, Ernie Smith and Ralph Ginzburg. A graduate of the Cooper Union in New York he spent time as a visiting professor there as well as designed a logo for them. Constantly working and achieving much success throughout his career, at the age of 59 he proclaimed “I have just completed my internship.”

collaboration of Ralph Ginzburg and Herb Lubalin, Fact, Eros and Avant Garde were culturally relevant publications that pushed many of the ideas of 1960s society. Fact and Eros both suffered relatively short careers while still managing to have significant cultural impacts. Avant Garde, on the other hand was quite successful and tenured a career that lasted a slightly longer period of 3 years and 16 issues between 1968 and 1971. All three publications provided Lubalin with a development ground to practice his emerging style of typography and design which influenced much of the design community during the 1960s and 70s.

Eros The first of Ginzburg and Lubalin’s three productions, Eros was a quarterly hardbound publication filled with articles and photo-essays relating to the topics of love and sex. During the radical 1960s the publication was received with both positive and negative reviews and Ginzburg was indicted under federal obscenity laws for the publication of the fourth issue. The combination of the high cost of the hardbound publication and the legal fees incurred during Ginzburg’s court case cause the magazine to close down.

Fact Fact magazine was a similar venture by the two that was equally controversial, although it shifted the subject matter from sex to culture and politics. The magazine was sued by presidential candidate Barry Goldwater for their publication of an article that said Goldwater was psychologically unfit to be president of the United States. The punitive damages of the case caused the magazine to cease publication.

Avant Garde

The most notable of the three, Avant Garde was reminiscent of Eros in its hardbound format and controversial content. The magazine combined aspects of both Fact and Eros and published articles and imagery that were often sexual, critical of the American government and radically different than traditional publications. While there was no direct legal actions brought against Avant Garde it was forced to shut down when Ginzburg went to prison for the Eros scandal.

Neville Brody

Neville Brody studied graphic design from 1977 to 1980 at the London College of Printing. In the early 1980s Brody belonged to the alternative music scene.

As art director of Fetish Records, Neville Brody experimented with a new graphic language informed by ideas from the subculture. Brody mixed typefaces or interspersed typeface with decorative details such as geometric elements, symbols, and pictures.

From 1981 to 1986 Neville Brody was art director of the magazine "The Face", for which he designed a distinctive typographical appearance that inspired magazine designers and other designers worldwide. From 1983 to 1987 Neville Brody designed the London program magazine "City Limits" and worked as a designer for "New Socialist", "Touch", and "Arena" magazines.

In 1988 the Victoria & Albert Museum in London mounted a retrospective of Neville Brody's work. In 1994 Neville Brody and F. Richards co-founded Research Studios for Visual Communications and Design in London. In 1992 Neville Brody designed the image and branding of the House of Culture in Berlin. Neville Brody also designed the ORF (Austrian Television, 1992-93) image and Premiere (199194).

Neville has designed several new fonts, includingBlur, Gothic, Pop and Six.

Emil Ruder Emil Ruder was a typographer and graphic designer who, born in Switzerland in 1914, helped Armin Hofmann form the Basel School of Design and establish the style of design known as Swiss Design. He taught that, above all, typography’s purpose was to communicate ideas through writing. He placed a heavy importance on sans-serif typefaces and his work is both clear and concise, especially his typography.

Like most designers classified as part of the Swiss Design movement he favored asymmetrical compositions, placing a high importance on the counters of characters and the negative space of compositions. A friend and associate of Hofmann, Frutiger and MĂźller Brockmann, Ruder played a key role in the development of graphic design in the 1940s and 50s. His style has been emulated by many designers, and his use of grids in design has influenced the development of web design on many levels.

Armin Hofmann By the age of 27 Armin Hofmann had already completed an apprenticeship in lithography and had begun teaching typography at the Basel School of Design. His colleagues and students were integral in adding to work and theories that surrounded the Swiss International Style, which stressed a belief in an absolute and universal style of graphic design. The style of design they created had a goal of communication above all else, practiced new techniques of phototypesetting, photo-montage and experimental composition and heavily favored sans-serif typography.

He taught for several years at the Basel School of Design and he was not there long before he replaced Emil Ruder as the head of the school. The Swiss International Style, and Hofmann, thought that one of the most efficient forms of communications was the poster and Hofmann spent much of his career designing posters, in particularly for the Basel Stadt Theater. Just as Emil Ruder and Joseph MĂźller-Brockmann did, Hofmann wrote a book outlining his philosophies and practices. His Graphic Design Manual was, and still is, a reference book for all graphic designers.

Walter Herdeg Walter Herdeg was very much a graphic designer. He studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule in ZĂźrich, created many different corporate identities(just as the practice was beginning to become a standard), and even formed his own design company with Walter Amstutz.

What he is best known for, however, is the creation and publication of Graphis.

An international journal of visual communication, Graphis was first published

by Herdeg towards the end of the second World War. The magazine showcases work and interviews from designers and illustrators from all over the world in an effort to share their work with other audiences.

In the beginning it served as one of what were, at the time, only a few vessels which exposed the western world to the design work being done in Europe.

Herdeg served as the editor of the magazine for 246 issues (the magazine is still in publication) as well as the Graphis Design Annuals which showed the best and brightest work from the year prior to their publication. Graphis was a seminal force in the shaping of design culture and it continues to educate, expand and foster the world of graphic design today.

Herbert Matter

worked with a number of famous designers and artists during his career including Fernand LÊger, Le Courbusier, Charles and Ray Eames, Derberny & Peignot, A.M. Cassandre and Alexey Brodovitch. Matter was a master of using photomontage, color and typography in an expressive manner, transcending the boundaries between art and design. His design work often favored a heavy use of photography. His most recognizable works are the posters he created for the Swiss Tourist Office, but his photography work for Harper’s Bazaar, under the direction of Brodovitch, is equally impressive. A master in his profession, he began teaching photography and design at Yale in 1952.

He continued to teach and work, notable work from his later career includes the identity design for the New Haven Railroad, until he died in 1984.

Aleksander Rodchenko Born in Russia in 1891 Rodchenko became an artist and designer of many mediums including painting, photography, sculpture, advertising and packaging. Heavily influenced by the upheaval surrounding the Russian revolution of 1917, he was one of the most prolific constructivist artists of the period. He was also a member of the Productivists, which pushed for the introduction of art into every day life, a concept which in many ways describes modern day graphic design.

His early focus was on painting before starting his career as a graphic designer, later he would experiment with photography and photo-montage. Most of his design work was for the Russian airline company Dobrolet, producing many packages, advertisements, logos and posters. His design work for other clients ranged from book covers to bookmarks, photo-montage and illustration, and even set and costume design for various Russian theaters.

In 1921 he declared “The End of Painting� when he exhibited three solid monochromatic canvases, one each, in hues of red, yellow and blue. He deemed that he had reduced painting to its logical conclusion and that there was no reason to continue exploring the medium. This opened the doors for the beginning of a new Utopian way of life, and way of approaching art. Rodchenko’s work influenced so many of the designers of the early 20th century that it is impossible to catalog the vast reaches of the idealogy that he helped define during his career.

Max Bill (1908–1994), Max Bill was born in Winterthur, Switzerland. An architect, painter, typographer, industrial designer, engineer, sculptor, educator, and graphic designer, Bill was initially a student at the Kunstgewerbeschule and apprenticed as a silversmith before beginning his studies in 1927 at the Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany, with teachers such as Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Oskar Schlemmer. Bill permanently settled in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1929, and in 1937 became involved with a group of Swiss artists and designers named the Allianz.

In 1950, Max Bill and Otl Aicher founded the Ulm School of Design (Hochschule fur Gestaltung-HfG Ulm) in Ulm, Germany, a design school initially created in the tradition of the Bauhaus and that is notable for its inclusion of semiotics, the philosophical theory of signs and symbols, as a field of study.

Bill was of the view that “It is possible to develop an art largely on the basis of mathematical thinking.” Over, the 1967-71 period, Bill taught at the Staatliche Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste in Hamburg where he was the chair of environmental design. As a graphic designer, he enthusiastically embraced the tenets and philosophical views of this modernist movement.

The majority of his graphic work is based solely on cohesive visual principles of organization and composed of purist forms—modular grids, san serif typography, asymmetric compositions, linear spatial divisions, mathematical progressions, and dynamic figure– ground relationships.

Richard P Lohse Richard Paul Lohse (1902-1988) was born in Zürich (Switzerland) in 1902. In 1918 he joined the advertising agency Max Dalang where he trained to be an advertising artist, but in his artistic career he started with figurative works and gradually moved to post-cubism style. Lohse worked for the Max Dalang agency until 1927, where he became interested in the international avant-garde movements in both its artistic and political aspects.

In 1937 Lohse, a key figure in the “Swiss School”, and Leo Leuppi joined forces to establish Allianz, an association of Swiss modern artists, promoting publications, exhibitions and the dissemination of avant-garde art. He collaborated with Max Bill and Verena Loevesberg in the Zurcher Konkrete group, which was affiliated with Allianz. In 1938, Lohse and Irmgard Burchard, his first wife, organise the “Twentieth Century German Art” exhibition in London. Soon after Lohse joined the resistance movement where he met his second wife Ida Alis Dürner.

In 1942 Lohse formulated his conception of constructive painting, a style that was highly structural. In the words of Fr. W. Heckmanns; His horizontal and vertical structures follow each other in serial and modular orders within the rectangular limits of the canvas. The essential content of his work is a rational interpretation of the relationship between artistic practice and the problem of the form of social organization, in short a human attitude towards the balance of law and freedom.

In the years 1947-1956, Lohse was an editor and designer for the swiss architectural magazine bauen+wohnen or construction+habitation. A special edition

of the magazine was launched for Germany in 1952. Lohse’s style was characterized by his devotion to precision and clarity in his theoretical framework. He saw structure not as a preliminary founda-

Eye ( Rick Poyner) Founded by the British design writer Rick Poyner, Eye magazine began production in 1990. Poyner stayed on as editor for the first 24 issues before turning over the position to Max Bruinsma. The list of contributors over the past 20 years has included many important figures in the design community including Erik Spiekermann, Ellen Lupton, and Stefan Sagmeister. The quarterly publication is an international review of graphic design and, as of June 2010, it is on its 75th issue. Its contents influence the style and perspectives of graphic designers, photographers, advertisers and artists internationally.

Armin Hofmann

Armin Hofmann was born in 1920 in Winterthur, Switzerland. During the 1937-39 period, Hofmann studied at Kunstgewerbeschule in Zürich and apprenticed as a lithographer until 1943. From 1943 until 1948 He worked as lithographer in Basel and Berne and in his own graphic atelier. In 1946, Hofmann joined the Allgemeine Gewerbeschule (AGS) in Basel, where he and Ruder established a world renowned advanced course in graphic design.

Kenneth Hiebert, a former student of Hofmann; recalls that in the early sixties, Hofmann would occasionally bring in a Cassandre or Stoecklin poster and perfunctorily tack it to the wall. When the students cringed at this apparent maltreatment, Hofmann would say, “A good poster can take it.” What he really meant was that the posters were not intended as museum pieces but as things that should weather the harsh treatment of the streets. In the words of Paul Rand His goals, though pragmatic, are never pecuniary. His influence has been as strong beyond the classroom as within it. Even those who are his critics are eager about his ideas as those who sit at his feet . He had a visiting professorship at the Philadelphia College of Art in 1955. Then came an appointment at Yale University, where he regularly conducted working seminars in graphic art and became director of the advanced graphic course in 1967. He carried on teaching abroad in Ahmedabad, India. Hofmann’s book Graphic Design Manual: Principles and Practiceis is a seminal work in graphic design. He has created many posters, logos, color concepts, signage systems and art-in-building projects, as well as participating in many exhibitions. According to him “ primary in black and white posters is to counteract the trivialization of color as it exists today on billboards and in advertising.

Hans Neuberg

Carlo Vivarelli

Hans Neuburg (1904 – 1983) was born in Grulich, Austria-Hungary (today Czechoslovakia). at the age fifteen he enrolled at Orell Füssli AG in Zurich and graduated in 1922. After graduation he worked at various positions in advertising, freelance graphic design, and magazine editor.

Over the 1958-65 he and is fellow artists Richard Paul Lohse, joseph MüllerBrockmann and carlo vivarelli established “Neue Grafik” magazine. After a brief two years period assuming the directorship of the Gewerbemuseum in Winterhur in 1962-64 during which he also taught at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm, and writing a number of books including Graphic Design in Swiss Industry (1965), Publicity and Graphic Design in the Chemical Industry (1967) and Conceptions of International Exhibition (1969), he moved to Ottawa, Canada, to teach at Carlton University, School of Industrial Design in 1971.

Carlo Vivarelli (1919-1986) was a graphic designer, painter and sculptor who was born in Zurich and studied at the renowned Kunstgewerbeschule from 193439 and in 1946 became Art Director at the progressive avant garde Studio Boggeri in Milan. During this time and when he returned to his native Switzerland he became one of the leaders of the Swiss Modernists and in 1958 became a cofounder of Neue Grafik magazine. In his later years he concentrated more on his concrete art and sculptures.

Helvetica Helvetica was developed in 1957 by Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann at the Haas foundry in Switzerland.

Haas set out to design a new sans-serif typeface that could compete with Akzidenz-Grotesk in the Swiss market.

Originally called Neue Haas Grotesk, it was created based on SchelterGrotesk. The aim of the new design was to create a neutral typeface that had great clarity, had no intrinsic meaning in its form, and could be used on a wide variety of signage.

In 1960, the typeface's name was changed by Haas' German parent company Stempel to Helvetica — derived from Confoederatio Helvetica, the Latin name for Switzerland — in order to make it more marketable internationally

Neue Grafik Die Neue Grafik In 1959 four zürich-based graphic designers launched the first issue of Neue Grafik magazine. A Magazine devoted to the Swiss style of design and typography. The team of editors constisted of Richard Paul Lohse, Josef Müller-Brockmann, Hans Neuburg and Carlo Vivarelli. The team signed some of their jointly written articles with the acronym "lmnv", formed from their initials."Neue Grafik" epitomizes Swiss typography of the 1950s. It was the new age manifesto for the design world and it was seminal in its influence on international graphic design after WWII. The publication of the magazine proved an international success making the Swiss Style the International Typographic Style.

Emirge Emigre magazine was published a total of 69 times, usually irregularly, over the years between 1984 and 2005. One of the first publications to use Macintosh computers, Emigre influenced the move towards desktop publishing within the graphic design community. But that was not the end of its influence. Art directors Rudy Vanderlands and Zuzana Licko entranced designers, photographers and typographers alike with their use of use of experimental layouts and opinionated articles.

The focus of the magazine moved from culture to designers to design itself, with an increasing focus on the publication and promotion of varied articles on design by many different authors. The magazine also changed formats several times during its career switching from an oversized publication to a text-friendly reader and then to a multimedia format, from issue 60 to 65, which came with a CD or DVD.

Joseph Müller-Brockmann Josef Müller Brockmann was born in Rapperswil, Switzerland in 1914 and studied architecture, design and history of art at the University of Zurich and at the city’s Kunstgewerbeschule. He began his career as an apprentice to the designer and advertising consultant Walter Diggelman before, in 1936, establishing his own Zurich studio specialising in graphics, exhibition design and photography. According to his own account; “ I became a graphic designer by accident”. At school I was loth to write much for compositions so I put in illustrations instead. My teacher enjoyed them and thought I had talent. He suggested that I should pursue an artistic career: gravure etching or retouching, for instance. So I was apprenticed as a retoucher in a printing works. I lasted one day because I said that this wasn’t artistic work. After that I was apprenticed to two elderly architects. With them I lasted four weeks. Then I went to see all the graphic designers I found listed in the telephone directory because I wanted to find out what they did. Afterwards I enrolled to study graphic design at the Zurich Gewerbeschule.”

As a graphic designer, Müller Brockmann’s skills included letterpress, silkscreen, and lithography. His geometric style was demonstrated in “Musica viva”, a series of concert posters for the Zurich Tonhalle in 1951. It is arguably claimed that his work was an adaptation of concrete art; which had been described by Theo van Doesburg around 1930, as works of art that are created by means of art’s most genuine means of composition and principles, entirely doing without allusions to phenomenon of nature and their abstraction. New realities were supposed to be created by forming colors, space, light and movement.

The style had to incorporate mathematical methods of spatial organization into graphic work, which drew on the language of Constructivism to create a visual correlative to the structural harmonies of the music. Müller Brockmann’s 1955 poster, Beethoven, was supposed to portray Beethoven’s music through a series of concentric curves, and has been offered as an example such an adaptation, and this assertion had been accepted at its face value by many pundits, who were impressed by the novelty, elegance and the simplicity of design. As Müller Brockmann has stated: In my designs for posters, advertisements, brochures and exhibitions, subjectivity is suppressed in favour of a geometric grid that determines the arrangement of the type and images. The grid is an organisational system that makes it easier to read the message...The grid is an organisational system that enables you to achieve an orderly result at a minimum cost. The task is solved more easily, faster and better. It brings the arbitrary organisation of text into a logical system in keeping with the conflict. It can demonstrate uniformity that reaches beyond national boundaries, a boon to advertising from which IBM, for instance, has profited. Objective-rational design means legible design, objective information that is communicated without superlatives or emotional subjectivity.

Saul Bass Saul Bass was born in the Bronx district of New York in 1920. His strong passion for drawing was evident from his early childhood. Bass studied at the Art Students League in New York and Brooklyn College under Gyorgy Kepes, a Hungarian graphic designer who had worked with László Moholy-Nagy in 1930s Berlin and fled with him to the US. Kepes introduced Bass to Moholy’s Bauhaus style and to Russian Constructivism.

After spending several years as a freelance designer, Bass moved to Los Angeles in 1946 and founded his graphic design firm Saul Bass and Associates in 1950. His artistic talent was noticed by Otto Preminger who invited him to design the poster for his 1954 movie Carmen Jones. Until then, film posters were mostly made of a crude juxtaposition of photographic scenes from the movie and some collaged colored portraits of the stars of the film, but Bass instead used a dramatic composition of Dorothy Dandridge posing at the center of poster in black and white with her red accented skirt. Preminger liked the poster and asked Bass to create the film’s title sequence too. Bass work for Carmen Jones illicit two other film title commissions in 1955, one for Robert Aldrich’s The Big Knife, and the other for Billy Wilder’s The Seven Year Itch.

Preminger also commissioned him to do his next two films; Man with the Golden Arm (1955) and Anatomy of a Murder (1959). Encouraged by the reception of his work, Bass demonstrated his bold and stunning creativity for these projects. Using, photographs of the actors in primary grayish colors of blue, red

and yellow in a tense and fragmented composition of irregular black rectangular surfaces, surrounding an ominous crooked black paper-cut-out of a heroin addict’s arm Bass created a masterpiece of agony and tension for The Man With Golden Arm. It is said that; when Preminger’s movie arrived at US movie theatres in 1955, a note was stuck on the cans - “Projectionists – pull curtain before titles” -- Until then, the lists of cast and crew members which passed for movie titles were so dull that projectionists only pulled back the curtains to reveal the screen once they’d finished. But Preminger wanted his audience to see The Man with the Golden Arm’s titles as an integral part of the film.

I-D Magazine I-D, the British youth culture magazine, quickly became an iconic representation of the new-wave and postmodern graphic design gaphic design aesthetics upon its publication in 1980. The magazine was designed by Terry Jones who utilized aggressive collages, heightened use of color, and experimental typography to achieve a striking, dramatic design aesthetic. As postmodernism favors expressive designs and a rebellion against for strict constraints, and many of the designers who pioneered this movement were young, the design aesthetics of a magazine centered around a postmodern youth culture proved to be a perfect catalyst for such experimentations in typography and image manipulation. An important facet of postmodern design theory is the idea of anti-humanism, which explains that a universal principle cannot possibly be shared by all human beings, and insists that any principles must be determined historically and culturally

PART III VISUAL RESEARCH • Magazine Mastheads • Magazine Front Covers • Magazine Logo’s

• Women’s Fashion Magazines

• Men’s Fashion Magazines

• Graphic Design Magazines

• Photograpghy Magazines

PART VI Development and finished magazine • Logo • Front Covers • Inside spread

Logo Development Here are my first draft ideas for my logo design. I played around with the name and then decided that the name was long and would be a squeze to fit onto the page. I decided then to play around with the main letter ‘NGD’

Computer Logo Development Here are my drafts made up on the computer using illustrator.

I eventually went with the ‘NGD’ logo idea. i combined all the letters to make one shape/logo.

I then experimented with the lettering of NEW GRAPHIC DESIGN and how i would show that it was issue 1 in a way which i could incorporate it in with the design.

Final Logo Development here is all my logo development, below is my final logo idea. I decided to place the name of the magaine next to the logo, to explain the letters in the logo.

The typeface i used is Microsoft Yi Baiti

Front Cover Development while i was developing my logo i started drafting a few front cover ideas and played around usng the logo as a main feature of the cover and difffrent positions and styles.

Final Cover Design Here is my final cover design for my magazine.

I choose to go for a fairly minamilitic look for m cover design. i wanted to incorporte the issue nuber as part of the design as it would be a new magaine launch and could be used as a limited edition cover.

FORM FOLLOW FUNCTION

an exploration of modernism and post modernism

I tried many shapes as my main focues point of the design but choose a circle in the end as it shows free movement. The completeness suggests the infinite Perfection and

attarct attention. as it has no sharp edges i felt it settled well on the page and didnt take away much from the image behind.

I grayscaled the image behind and then choose red and its a powerfull striking tone and felt it summed up the Bauhaus movement.

I then set about decideding where i would place all the following information and decided to place my mast head at the top of the page as it where the eyes usually start on the page the underneath i placed the subheading. I placed the issue number in the middle of the page and then alligned the date to the bottom left hand corner. unforunately i had problems with my perious laptop and lost all my work so i cant show the rest of my experiments or the original file. but i am happy with my design and feel its sits right on the page.

24/4/1 3

Magazine inside spread Development After looking at many diffrent style of magazines i started to draft down some idea of diffrent layout styles and with diffrent amount of images.

I decided that i wanted to go for a minamilistic look to my magazine and focus more on the photograpghy inside the magazine.

After i had done this and looked at diffrent aspects of each design i had decided on a few diffrent layouts i wanted to try out, i then decided on my content and wanted to do the opening page to each topic.

Type face/size experiments. after i had designed the inside spread of my magzine i then had to decided which typeface i would use. i wanted one that was a sans serif typeface which was easy to use.

I experimented with: • Calbri • Garamond • Trebuchet MS • Verdana I printed each one of in two diffrent sizes. 9pt and 12pt and then look at each one and the flo and readability of the text. I used these diffrent sizes and i would use 12pt for titles and 9pt for the main body of the text.

I decided to go with Trebuchet MS as i found it was the best looking and easiest to read.

Final Inside Spead Design Here are my final inside spread designs.

1st design in for an opening spread for the bauhuas the 2nd is a interview/factfile about Walter Gropius. I choose the colours to portray power elegance and cleanliness and i feel work well together and keep with the style i wanted my magazine to be.

Final Magazine

Final Magazine

Conclusion.

Overall i am pleased with my final outcome and fel that i have created a simple/minamilitic magazine which look expensive and professional.

Unfortuenatly I had a problem over easter where my laptop hard drive collapsed which resulted me in loosing all my work untill i got back to university. Ideally i would of like to off created a few more inside spread and even of made an actaull maganie and got it printed.

However i feel that i hae sucsessfully met the breif and fell i have improved a lot more with the way i have appoached this project and the way i went around developing my work.

Josh Gardner U1262228

Module TFD1064.

Design for Communication Design Graphic Design Group New Graphic Design Email : josh.gardner1@hotmail.co.uk