New Visual Language

Form Follows Function An Exploration of Modernism and Postmodernism

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Noma Bar

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Contents Modernism VS Postmodernism ................................................. 4 Street Graphics ......................................................................... 6 Swiss Style .................................................................................8 Helvetica: The font that changed the world ............................. 10 Cabinet of Curiosity ................................................................. 12 Target Billboard ........................................................................14 Earth Artifact ............................................................................ 15 Manifesto: As a Designer ........................................................ 20

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Modernism // Postmodernism The modernist movement first began between the late 19th and early 20th Centuries as Western society transformed around the same time as World War II. When in the context of graphic design and art in general, the term relates to the approach of ‘less is more’, artists exploring the possibilities of finite detail and precise design. Terms such as ‘white space’ and ‘grid structure’ are often thrown around when talking about modernism, these two factors being key in almost all of modernist design. White space is the use of emptiness to focus your attention on a specific area of work or to simplify what could otherwise have been a messy, cluttered piece of work. A grid structure is often employed to create order within the work, and generally results in an aesthetically pleasing layout. The combination of these two aspects make for a typically modernist design, which can still be found today in popular media such as magazines, books, posters and product packaging (especially modern technology; think Apple, the Google Nexus range, and Google Chromebooks.)

The opposite of this genre is undoubtedly postmodernism, which broke down the restrictive walls of the modernist movement and allowed artists and designers to express themselves in a much less ‘refined’ way in the late 20th Century. Whilst there are still constraints and considerations within postmodern

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design (such as some forms of grid structure) the difference between the two is clear when you are faced with two comparative pieces of design from each genre. Where you expect to see clean lines and sharp edges in modernism, they are replaced with abstract brush strokes, rough edges, irregular shapes and many layers of texture & colour in postmodern design. While the works of postmodernist designers such as Jamie Reid (the mind behind the majority of the Sex Pistols album art) are often criticized as random, tasteless creations, some may say it is the artists’ way of expressing what they see, hear and feel without restraint and conformity to the ‘rules’ of modernism.

“I am after the maximum communication with minimum elements.”

This quote is by Israeli Graphic Designer Noma Bar, an example of whose work can be seen to the right. Bar’s work has appeared in many media outlets and he has created over sixty magazine covers, 550 illustrations and released two books of his work.

Throughout his career Noma has received a multitude of prestigious awards for his ground-breaking modernist designs, most recently the Yellow Pencil award at the D&AD Professional Awards 2012 for his series of Don DeLilo covers.

STREETGRAPHICS When people hear the term ‘street art’, their immediate thought is usually graffiti.

However the city can offer much more than a canvas for spray artists; it can provide inspiration, evoke emotion and help generate innovative ideas. This is what I was thinking when I began my street graphics project, with the intention of creating a meaningful piece about the city.

I started by looking into the futuristic yet controversial Masdar City in Abu Dhabi. Within the high-security walls of Masdar, everything is controlled and everyone is constantly under surveillance. This may result in less crime and a more peaceful city on the surface, but it would also curtail the freedom and expression of its citizens, leading to a dystopian state. Without these fundamental traits, a city loses its very soul. Around the world there are a number of different interpretations as to what the ‘soul’ of a city is. In New Orleans and Chicago it is undoubtedly jazz and blues music, born around 1910 and still hugely popular today. In Hong Kong and New York, it’s the bright lights and the frantic everyday bustle that makes each sprawling metropolis so captivating. No matter

which city you take as your case study, the life and soul of its inner workings always comes back to its people and their right to expression in whichever way they choose. Being a graphic designer, I focused on artistic expression with colour, creativity and vibrancy in my piece.

the objects within the scene. I produced two separate images to A1 scale; one grey, dull & lifeless and one bursting with colour & vibrancy.

Apart from these differences, the two scenes had same building shapes, the same objects in the scene, and the same camera angle.

My first challenge was to find a relevant medium to exhibit my work. After much research I settled on lenticular art. This unique type of artwork is produced on a corrugated canvas, resulting in an illusion where you see two different images depending on which angle you view the piece from. This would allow me to compare two different versions of the same cityscape; one of a bland, lifeless city and one of a vibrant, soulful setting. I could apply the images I’d create to a specially designed canvas and set up an exhibition which shows both perspectives on one physical installation.

The final two images were merged to create a pattern of alternating stripes, then printed onto a huge roll of thick paper. This was then folded into a zigzag arrangement and mounted on foam board. The final piece works well as you walk around the exhibit and the image transforms from one style to the other and back again. I think it really does show the difference between a lifeless city and one which has a true creative soul.

I set about creating my contrasting images in MAXON Cinema 4D. By generating the scenes virtually rather than photographically, I had control over the entire mise-en-scene; every parameter of the virtual world from lighting and atmosphere, to the scale of the city and

In Masdar there will be no tolerance of ‘street art’, no matter how beautiful. I personally would much rather live in a place where people have the freedom to express themselves however they choose, whether it’s wondrous artwork in a motorway underpass, or the illustrious jazz clubs of Chicago and New Orleans. Every city needs a soul, and without one it may become more of a prison than a home.

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Swiss style design (also known as International Typographic Design) is a style of modernist graphic design established in Switzerland in the 1950s. It focuses on creating a clean, clear design, often employing a grid structure with margins and an asymmetric layout.

Typography is a large part of Swiss style design, although the choice of typeface is almost always a sans-serif font such as Akzidenz Grotesk or Helvetica. Flush left, ragged right typesetting is generally applied, although justified spacing is also sometimes used.

Born in Rapperswil in 1914, Switzerland’s own Josef Müller-Brockmann is often credited as the Pioneer of the Swiss style.

He is most well-known for his development of a grid structure in modernist layout, which to this day is a large part of any modernist design. Along with the meaningful use of colour and typography, Müller-Brockman literally wrote the rulebook on Swiss design and what it is to employ a grid structure in your work – his publication “Grid systems in graphic design” is one of the most influential

books in Graphic Design history, and the teachings within are still being upheld to this day all over the world.

Eye magazine published a feature on Müller-Brockmann and Swiss style, in which they described the aim of Swiss design and why it exists:

“[The Swiss style] sought a universal graphic expression through a gridbased design purged of extraneous illustration and subjective feeling.”

Rather than textures and illustrations, Swiss style design focuses more on the typographical and photographic elements of a layout. Reinforcing the fundamental simplicity and minimalism of this approach to modernist design, there’s no masking of mistakes or layers of complex depth – only the most necessary of basic shapes and typography, laid out methodically to create a clean, modernist design where the beauty of the piece is in its perfect simplicity.

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In 1957, Swiss typeface designers Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann set about creating the new standard for modern typography; a sans serif font designed to fit in seamlessly with modern life and adapt as the world around it changed.

2007, and in 2011 one of Google’s April Fool’s Day jokes centred around the use of Helvetica. If a user attempted to search for the term “Helvetica”, the results would be displayed in the often criticized and over-used font Comic Sans.

Their font was intended to compete with the successful Akzidenz-Grotesk typeface in the Swiss market; it had great clarity, no intrinsic meaning in its form, and could be used on a wide variety of signage. It was originally branded ‘Neue Haas Grotesk’ after the Haas Type Foundry where they worked, but in 1960 was re-named ‘Helvetica’ (meaning Swiss in Latin) in order to make it more marketable internationally.

In the documentary film ‘Helvetica’, Lars Müller makes the following statement in relation to our desensitization of Helvetica all around us:

Since then there have been countless imitations and reproductions of the highly successful typeface such as Arial and Bitstream Vera, each with their own very subtle differences.

The font can be found on a wide variety of company logos, publications and media such as the logo for the National Film Board of Canada, and on signage in Vienna and Chicago. Being one of the most widely used typefaces of all time, Helvetica has also attracted it’s fair share of media attention. There is a film dedicated to it’s story and development, the Museum of Modern Art in New York displayed an exhibit titled ’50 Years of Helvetica’ in

“I think I’m right calling Helvetica the perfume of the city ... something we don’t notice usually but we would miss very much if it wasn’t there.”

Helvetica is all around us and we never really take notice of the impact it has on our lives, or the impact it has had on the world for the past 60+ years. Without Helvetica, there would be no standard from which everyday typefaces such as Transport (used on all British road signs) were based on. It is so popular in modern society that it has been adapted into different languages such as Japanese, Korean, and Hebrew, and ranked first place in FontShop Germany’s “Best Fonts of All Time” list.

The majority of body text in this magazine is written in 13pt Helvetica font.

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ABCDEFGHIJK LMNOPQRSTU VWXYZ abcdefghijklmn opqrstuvwxyz 0123456789

etica *the font that changed the world

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Cabinet of Curiosity In the 17th Century, collections of trinkets and interesting items started appearing in the houses and personal collections of the rich and powerful all over the world, most prominently in Germany. These collections became known as Cabinets of Curiosity, as the items within were supposed to provoke the imagination and make you ask questions about the meaning of the collection and how the items arrived there. We were given the task of creating our own modern day cabinets, with some personal meaning or message behind each one of them.

I began my research by searching for contemporary artists who create pieces of a similar genre to the 17th century cabinets. The most relevant example I could find was Damien Hirst. His infamous exhibitions usually involve dead animals such as a shark, a sheep and a cow which he preserves in formaldehyde and displays in clear exhibition tanks called vitrines. This is very similar to the 17th Century cabinets in which collectors would display the

carcasses of animals that they had killed as trophies of their achievements. Although interesting and somewhat controversial, I couldn’t see how this would be personal to me at all, and that was something I needed to ensure in this project.

When looking through images of the 17th Century cabinets, there were generally a lot of shelves and layers. This observation gave me the idea to possibly create a tiered piece, where the layers related to something which changed gradually with each ascending or descending shelf such as a time-line or scale.

I had the idea to relate my project to the everyday essentials that we all use without really thinking about it - things like watches, clocks, pens, and mobile phones are all the same at a most basic level but each are different in their own way, much like their users. That’s where the idea began to grow. I decided to relate the everyday items we use, and their differences, to the users themselves and how they are similar to the

people who own and interact with them.

Much like people often say owners look like their pets, it could be said that owners are like their phones. With the thousands of varieties and models of mobile phone to choose from in today’s world, and the fact that 85% of the worlds population now own a mobile phone gave this idea plenty of possibilities.

I explored this idea until I had found and arranged a selection of dummy and toy phones that were each accompanied by a very calculated, thought-out description. At first glance, this accompanying body of text may appear to be describing the physical and technological features of each device, however if you delve deeper into the precise wording you realise that actually the descriptions could be related to either the devices or the typical users.

Across the page is the name and description of each phone, within which is a subtle description of the people you might find using each device.

Toy phone with rattle & squeaker (infants) Vibrant and colourful, but with no real purpose when compared to functional phones.

Solely based on fun and happiness, designed to evoke emotion and make you smile.

No memory yet, but imagination is a big part of how it works. Capable of making a lot of noise but quite fragile.

Toy phone with lights & sounds (children) Still largely based on fun and very colourful. Just starting to relate to the real functions of a mobile phone but not connected to the outside world. Focused on learning and education, but still fun and games. Relatively small memory but enough to store basic words, songs, functions etc.

Apple iPhone 5S (teenagers) A big leap from the one above, being the fastest out of all the phones with quick reaction times and lots of processing power. Still a large partition for fun but the memory can also be crammed with information and data. Constantly being updated and often hailed as ‘the future’.

HTC Desire S (adults) Not quite as snappy as number three, but still very responsive with lots of processing power. Functions well compared to number five but starting to slow down when compared to the one above. Storage however is often larger than above and can be packed full of information and memories. Slight signs of wear start to appear.

Samsung Tocco (elderly people) Not as flashy and quick as newer phones, and shows signs of wear. Parts become damaged or broken and bits of the memory can become corrupted. However there is still a massive memory compared to every other phone and the mass of data stored can be very interesting. Optics are nowhere near as good as number three but still work to a certain extent – sometimes can be repaired with an additional lens.

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T E G R TA

D R A O B L L I

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Target Billboard is a sans serif typeface I designed which is inspired by Laurie Rosenwald’s ‘Target Billboard’. The original piece utilises stencil work and paper cut-outs in vibrant, bold orange on a plain white background. Laurie’s work relates to landmarks and famous places in New York city, such as Manhattan and Brooklyn.

My Target Billboard typeface takes the stencil-like feel of the original artwork in its lack of centre in letters like R, P, and Q. Only two of the characters (I and O) are lifted directly from the original piece. The rest of the work is designed using Laurie’s piece as inspiration, not as a sample from which to withdraw exact shapes. Whilst designing the typeface, I kept in mind that the majority of the letters in the font were to be similar in style to Laurie’s work, not

constructed by elements taken directly from the original work. Despite this aim, I feel the relation between the original piece and the typeface is still very clear.

The font began its life as a hand rendered idea, sketched in orange pen to closely mimic the feel of Rosenwald’s original design. It was then digitized in Adobe Illustrator using a complex grid structure and many anchor points. After hours of tweaking, the finished letters were exported into Fontographer and saved as a TTF to be used on a wide range of operating systems. The typeface as a whole would probably work best in a postmodern setting, as is the style of the heading on this page. The O from this typeface is featured on the front and back covers of this magazine.

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Earth Artifact In 1977 the Voyager spacecrafts were sent into space on the Titan EIII rocket, each carrying a golden phonograph record which contained sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. The ambitious intention of the program was to communicate with any intelligent extraterrestrial life forms who may find and decipher the disks.

Jump forward to 2014, and one of our projects this year was to create a modern, contemporary version of the golden record to portray our planet and life on earth as it is now.

I began by researching the contents of the original earth artifacts, the sounds and music that was etched into the grooves of the disk as well as the diagrams and images that were engraved on the covers.

My task was to bring this up to date, but not to produce a direct copy of the golden records, just with samples from our planet as it is now. The ideas had to be original and interesting, and had to be able to communicate with a race of extra terrestrial beings that most likely didn’t understand any of the languages we speak here on earth. I had to devise a way of communicating without written words at all, and the most obvious and probably effective way to do this was through symbolism and imagery.

Since the first humans on earth recorded their everyday lives on cave walls, through to Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, we have always communicated with images and

symbolism. I decided this was the way I would attempt to communicate our way of life to the aliens who might find my earth artifact. But where to start? The world is such an incomprehensibly detailed place, so much so that we are still discovering new things about it every day. So the idea was not to look forward at what we know now and all the knowledge we had, but to start by looking back at ancient folk law and how they saw the world. What did our ancestors understand as the foundations of life on earth? Earth, air, fire and water.

The four classical elements gave me the perfect groundwork from which I would build up my project.

I set about creating a whole language made of symbols and icons in a similar way that Ancient Egyptians did with hieroglyphs.

Each symbol represented something from our planet and was related to another in some way. These branches of icons soon grew into complex tree diagrams, each of which stems from one of the four classical elements. I then assembled these icons onto four corresponding posters with colour schemes to match the theme of each.

These four posters aim to represent the basic elements of our beautiful planet and us as a human race. I have included a diverse selection of topics ranging from greed and war to nature and the life cycle, in the hope that it would give any intelligent life form who may find the posters, some idea of what our incredibly complex world is all about.

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This is my personal manifesto, through which I aimed to express my motivation, aspirations and morals as a graphic designer. The inspiration for this piece comes from researching the manifestos of well-known artists and designers such as Bruce Mau and Holstee.

The textual content is similar in structure to the Incomplete Manifesto for Growth by Bruce Mau which I found enthralling when I read through it at the start of this mini-project. The aesthetics of the piece are inspired by the ‘life’ manifesto from Holstee, including the choice of font; ‘Sanchez’. After experimenting with various serif and sans-serif fonts, this particular typeface was chosen to take centre stage as it is very similar to the one used by Holstee themselves.

The manifesto was first published on my Wordpress blog, where I posts all my work from University as well as the 3D animation projects I undertake in my spare time. The animations are uploaded to my YouTube channel, which has been active since January 2012, and have accumulated a total of nearly 8000 views as of May 2014.

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“Form follows function - that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.”

- Frank Lloyd Wright

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