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MODERNISM First established between 19th - 20th century Notable artists: • Paul Rand (modernist logo designer) • George Nelson (influential designer, one of the founders of American modernism) • Max Miedinger (lead designer of the Helvetica font) Key words & phrases: • White space • Minimal • Clean • Grid • Helvetica • Corporate
First established circa 1950s. Term ‘postmodernism’ used around 1980s. Notable artists: • Rick Poynor (founder of Eye magazine, influential designer) • Jamie Reid (Sex Pistols album art designer) • Andy Warhol (world-renowned artist. Painter of the famous ‘Marilyn’ pop art) Key words & phrases: • Anti-establishment • Expression • Collage / Decollage • Passion • Hand-rendered • Controversy
First established early 20th century Notable artists: • Georges Braque • Pablo Picasso Founders of the movement Key words & phrases: • Proto-Cubism • France • Abstract • Section d’Or • Painting, sculpture, archiatecture, furniture • Synthetic Cubism
First established early 20th century Key words & phrases: • Switzerland • Berlin • World War I • Anti-war • Art, literature, poetry, theatre, graphic design • Collage • Nonsensical • Political • Hobbyhorse • Recycling
Logo Design I have decided to create my magazine in a modernist style, after researching both styles and evaluating which one I generally prefer the look of. The next stage in my design process is to create the logo, or ‘masthead’, for my publication. This should somehow represent the words ‘New Visual Language’ in a visual form, and may or may not include a typographical element. This must also fit into the modernist style, giving my audience an idea of what to expect before they’ve even opened the cover. I opened up Illustrator and began working to create my logo. I had the idea to build one continuous line which spelled out the letters ‘NVL’. This was inspired by designs such as the new Arctic Monkeys logo, the Noon logo, and the Fence logo. More designs like these can be found at http://smashinghub.com/creative-minimal-logo-design.htm
My logo started with the design at the top left of the image on the next page; two right-angled triangles placed so they make the letters ‘NVL’ if you look very closely. I then tried numerous variations on the fundamental design, adding colours from other well established brands and trying it with accompanying text. I also experimented with a solid shape version of the logo. I have settled on the design to the top-right of the image, made of basic lines tapering to a point in the centre. The N takes up most of the logo, with the V at the bottom-right and the L to the top-left.
NEW VISUAL LANGUAGE
NEW VISUAL LANGUAGE
NEW VISUAL LANGUAGE
The Cover
Issue 1 - 31/03/14
s i y h W ? e r e h e h S
“My design won’t be like this!”
This quick design I made represents the stereotypical glossy mag cover, popular in todays media. Its style is somewhere between modernist and postmodernist. The clean, sharp edges of the masthead and pixel-perfect image of the model clash with the striking style of title below and choice of bold font and colours.
- No gossipy headlines - Simple, modernist design - Focus more on the aesthetics - Grid structure & organised layout - Complimentary colour scheme
E K A T T I S E O D T WHA GE? A P T N O R F G N I L A E P P A N A E K TO MA
This selection of designs is taken from issuu.com and consists of magazine covers that I see as good examples of modernist design, the kind of thing I would want to take inspiration from when designing my cover page. There is a consistent theme of large imagery (whether photographic or digital design) taking up the majority of the page with the brand logo or identity featured somewhere in either solid black or white. In some instances the logo does feature other colours, but more often than not they are very simple vector designs with no gradients, transparency or rough edges. The colours used are mostly bleached, almost washed out choices with only a couple of the designs above showing a little bright, bold colour. These contrast highly with the design
on the page across, where the pink and yellow text deliberately clashes to draw your eye to the striking design. The typography above is clean and sharp, easy to read and compliments the image on which it has been placed. The spacing and layout is well thoughtout, leaving just the right amount of emptiness between lines of text and imagery. Finally, there aren’t really any huge glossy headlines on these covers, unlike on my mock-up opposite this page. Any detail that is needed to give an overview of the content inside is placed as part of the overall design, merging seamlessly into the rest of the page and not trying to jump out and grab your attention, instead allowing you to view it at your own pace once you’ve taken in the rest of the design.
Cover Development
Issue 1 Form Follows Function
Arguably the most important piece of a magazine is it’s front cover. This is the single design which entices in your audience and makes them pick up your publication over another. I have therefore gone about designing my front page in a very considered process. I have decided to base it around one of my previous projects, in the style of the modernist magazines I looked at on the previous page. My main image will take up the entire page, with my masthead placed accordingly somewhere in the design. From my six initial sketches I believe that the photograph-based designs such as one, two and nine would work well, as well as possibly number four, which would see my typeface take up the entire cover.
Colour When devising a corporate identity, colour is a huge factor to consider. According to the image below from thelogocompany.net the choice of colour for a company logo can reflect their aims and goals, the service they aim to provide and what they want to say about themselves. Using this guide, I have created a number of different possibilities for my magazine cover, based around the
message that each one should portray. In its default colours, my design apparently should seem friendly and somewhat exciting, however I also like the purple and green variations. The ‘creative’ purple choice would be most appropriate however I still prefer the aesthetics of the original orange design best. Besides, it is the colour of Laurie Rosenwald’s original artwork which inspired the typeface.
Page Content Each page in my magazine followed a standard grid structure in order for the thing as a whole to look like one coherent piece rather than a gathering of random articles. The colours and pictures could change, but the typeface and layout should remain largely universal. To achieve this I created a number of paragraph styles as shown in one of the screenshots across the page. These allowed me to format large blocks of text in the same style as those scattered thorughout the publication. Where a unique layout was needed, I ensured the same typeface was used and there was always some element of continuity, for example where the title consists of two words or more, they are often presented in bold typeface follow by a light typeface. I also employed a master page, and a grid structure to further the continuity. The image used on my Modernism VS Postmodernism page is graphic art created by Noma Bar. His work boasts a similar type of modernist, minimal design I aimed to create on my cover page, utilizing the power of white space and the contrast it creates with a bold colour. Noma Bar was born in 1973 in Israel, and is known for his striking vector-based designs which often feature animals or characters, sometimes taking aim at current political issues or world news. My Modernism VS Postmodernism article includes a short write-up on Noma Bar.
I experimented with a number of different colour options when creating my Helvetica page, but set on a bright blue turqouse, as this made what would otherwise be a bland, boring page, stand out a lot more. I added a faint striped overlay to the colour to make it more interesting as well. My Earth Artifact page contains two columns of text that are the same width as the central guides, but shifted across to the left to make room for the dramatic photo on the right and to prevent the layouts from becoming too repetitive.
impression when you open to the first page of the magazine. So to create a more interesting and certainly more striking first impression, I opted for a bold pink instead and overlaid an image of Noma Bar with the blending mode set to multiply so the image fits seamlessly into the layout.
My page for my typeface was originally going to be set out to largely adhere to the grid structure I had created, but I soon realised that it was more of a postmodern typeface, so shifted and transformed some of the text to follow this theme more obviously. I think the second My page for Swiss Style design rendition works much better than was done using typical swiss the first. style colours and a similar grid structure. I used the best quality For my manifesto page, I decided photo I could find of Josef Muller- to let the actual image take up Brockmann (pioneer of Swiss a lot of the space as it is a nice style) and overlayed solid blocks looking piece that I thought would of red colour. The title for the work well in a magazine as I was page has been set to ‘difference’ designing it. The whole right half blending mode to create the black of my double page spread for contrast at the top and bottom of my manifesto is occupied by the the typography. manifesto its self and on the left is a short writeup about me, the My street graphics page went manifesto, and where I got my thorugh a number of different inspiration for creating it. This is layout possibilities before I settled a very minimal, modernist page on the bottom-most design with and is the pale grey one you can the edges of the text touching the see between street graphics and outer of the image. I thought this earth artifact. helped blend the image into the text-heavy article rather than it The earth artifact pages that looking like an afterthought. display my actual final piece for that project are simply the four My original contents page was posters each on their own page going to be white with black text, in the magazine with a slight but I thought this gave a bland white border