Sunderland Constructivism: Typeface by Marcelo Rubens Raulino
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Contents 07 Constructivism in History 17 Experiments 35 Typeface Design 45 Using the alphabet
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Chapter 1
Constructivism in History
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Constructivism in History
Untitled Advertising Poster - Rodchenko 1924.
Constructivism wan an artistic and architectural movement that has begun in 1919 in Russia, after the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the World War I. It has its focus on replacing the art’s traditional concern with construction based compositions, exploring the fundamentals of the different behaviors and kinds of materials, as wood, metal and glass. With ideas from Cubism, Futurism and Suprematism, the Constructivist art influenced other big movements, like Bauhaus and De Stijl, with impacts upon graphic and industrial design, architecture, film, dance, theatre, fashion and music.
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The term Construction Art was first used to describe the work of Alexander Rodchenko, one of the most influential artists of this movement. There were some very influential names in Constructivism, including Liubov Popova, Vladimir Tatlin, Alexander Vesnin, and Varvara Stepanova as well. Tatlin’s Tower on Parade, 1920.
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This movement used graphic design as a main tool of work for everything from cinema to political propaganda. The colours are mostly brightly coloured and the shapes geometric. There were several compositions that used photomontage too.
PROUN Composition. El Lissitzky.
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About That - Rodchenko
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Tatlin The key work of Constructivism was the Monument to the Third International or Tatlin’s Tower, it mixed machine aesthetic and dynamic components with emphasis in technology. It used resources as projection screens and searchlights. The Tower, however, has never built because of practical and financial reasons. It was intended to the Tower to be taller than Eiffel Tower and be made of iron, steel and glass, with moving blocks inside that would rotate in different speeds, according to the day, month and year.
Portrait of Tatlin
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Alexander Rodchenko Rodchenko was a Russian artist and one of the most influent names in the Constructivism movement. He was a painter and graphic designer before turning to photography and photomontage. His photographs usually used odd angles (high above and down below), with the intention to shock the viewer and to postpone recognition.
Pure Blue Colour, Pure Red Colour and Pure White Colour
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Chapter 2
Experiments
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Sketches The font and compositons concepts were made through sketches based on the movement’s aesthetics.
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Photography Following the references and photography styles of the movement’s artists, there were made several Sunderland images to be used in the typographic experiments. All photographies were taken using the camera model Nikon D5100 with 18-55mm lenses kit, which provides the necessary features for the architecture and landscapes photos with a good illumination.
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These images needed to have some kinds of visual elements that Constructivism photos had, as the following:
Perspective Architecture Geometry
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Building at The Bridges Shopping Centre
Wearmouth Bridge
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Sunderland The photographs were taken all around the City of Sunderland, showing some of the most important places in it. The Wearmouth Bridge, in its 3rd version, is the most simbolic architectural construction in Sunderland and was built in 1929, same period as the russian momement. The City Campus at the University of Sunderland was one of the chosen places for its modern and clean construtions. There are some older constructions as the Empire Theatre and the Londonderry Pub. These ones represent the classic and aged part of the city. The National Glass Centre is a younger construction, made in 1998 despite the decline of the glass industry. It was built using glass and steel, which were widely used in 20’s decade and inspired Constructivism architecture.
City Campus University of Sunderland
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National Glass Centre
Chapter 3
Typeface Design
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Font Structure For the start of the font design, it was established a main grid including: Font height for the main size; Regular width for the letters; M widht for the M letter; Details size for the ascender, descender and general details.
Regular Width
Details Size
Font Height
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M Width
With the combination of the right elements and oftenly repeated parts of a typeface, it was possible to create a full family of characters with identity and their own style.
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First Version
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Before
After
There were made some adjustments to reach the final version of the alphabet: shape changes in the “O”, “C” and “Q” letters and the reflection of the “R” letter to remember one of the cyrillic alphabet’s characters.
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Final Version
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Chapter 4
Using the alphabet
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Composition One of the most used resources in the movement was the photomontage.
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Propaganda Constructivism was important after the end of the Russian Revolution.
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Technology With inspiration in geometric shapes, the movement oftenly referred to technologic and modern life style.
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Sunderland Constructivism: Typeface was designed, printed and bound in november of 2014 by Marcelo Rubens Raulino as a part of the “Personal Typeface Journal” project to the “Beyond Desktop Publishng” module, which is instructed by Mr. Manny Ling at the University of Sunderland. This unique copy was produced using “Futura” and “Georgia” typefaces.
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