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MODERNISM
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odernism emerged in the aftermath of the first world war and the Russian revolution as a way for artists and creative people alike to create artwork for a world they felt was now free of conflict greed and social inequality. In the beginning it wasn’t a style but rather a collection of ides that can be traced back as far as the late1800 when the post impressionist painters such as Van Gough and Paul Cézanne started to exaggerate and distort form to create the loss of structure there work is famed for. Dada-ism began in 1916 in Zurich Switzerland. Its style is often described as nonsense created by disillusioned artists who saw the war of old as a confirmation of the degradation of society. Right up until the 1920s artists in Zurich, New York, Cologne, Hanover, and Paris declared an all-out assault against not only on conventional definitions of art, but on rational thought itself. For Dada artists the aesthetic of there work came second to the ideas behind there work perhaps somewhat explaining the strange nonsense designs they are know for. Bauhaus was a German school of art founded by Walter Gropius and was active between 1919 until 1933. Bauhaus are known for many things however of all the work the school produced it is its influence on architecture that it is most renowned for. What makes the work produced there so unique is that the school was constantly moving venue and leadership resulting in a constant shifting of focus, technique, instructors, and politics that could not be recreated anywhere else. What’s more it is only due to Germany’s defeat in world war one that allowed abolition of an upsurge of radical experimentation previously suppressed by the old regime meaning without witch the work wouldn’t even exist.
The end and decline of modernism began in around 1930 when the ideas and beliefs people once had started to change. People where now questioning what was the e truth and politics and culture where firstly becoming more of an influence on art rather than the abstract surrealist visions of late modernist artists like Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali. Even though it may seem that modernism came to an end in the 1930s this is not strictly true. Even artists today such as Norma Bar and typographers like Aron Jancso still produce work reminiscent of modernist style. Today modern minimalist style can also be seen as more of a modernist way of life compared to the more chaotic postmodern work that followed.
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auhaus was a German art school which operated from 1919 up untill 1933 when it was closed under the
Nazi regime. Bauhaus, literally meaning House of Construstion, was created by Walter Groupes under his idea that all design could be brought together to create something new and inspiring. Shortly after WWI a surge of radical experimentation in all the arts started to form, which had previously been suppressed under the old regime. Bauhaus was not at the forefront of modernism and was about to change the face of architecture forever.
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now, many Germans were still heavily influenced by left-wing politics and styles that developed from the Russian revolution. Bauhaus on the other hand was apolitical; it saw the need for design in which there was no distinction between form and function. Thus the Bauhaus style, also known as the International Style. The design innovations commonly associated with Gropius and the Bauhaus include radically simplified forms, the rationality and functionality, and the idea that mass-production was reconcilable with the individual artistic spirit. Included in the names of some of its great students and lecurers are Anni Albers, Josef Albers and Herbert Bayer. Although Bauhaus’ aim was to join together all the arts, its main influence was on architecture. Western Europe, America, Canada and Israel all have architectural roots that can be traced back to Bauhaus. Although the school wasn’t around for very long its ideas and methods are still used and practiced today, making it a highly relavent feature to consider in my magazine.
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hen talking to tutors about my work an issue became apparent with my mood board that I had created about modernism. What I appeared to have done was made the mistake of using modern artists as examples of modernism. Although this was not an incorrect thing to do it did give me the idea to potentially look into modern day, artists, sculptors, typographers and graphic designers who create work today but in a modernist style. The first person I have chose to look at is Aron Jancso . The Hungarian born designer name is probably not very familiar to people as yet as his work is not world renowned in comparison to other people like Norma bar however his work is exactly what I was looking for. Jancsos work is mainly typography based creating font using clean seek and organised lines similar to classic modernism style. However the way he chooses to present his
work can be far more easily associated with post modernism. Out of all the typographers work his font called Qualto is my favourite its letters and ligatures are composed of very thin hairlines and very thick elements. Creating a high contrast that conveys a stunning visual effect stereotypical of modernist design. What I would like to do with this font is to somehow influence my master head for my magazine front cover however I am a little concerned that it is too specific to the modernist style and would not work as a weekly header to a magazine. When researching this artist I found it hard to discover where the artist influenced had come from but did find the quote “I prefer shapes and structures instead of effects. My style is a blend of modernism, street culture and calligraphy, but it is also very experimental. I’m always searching for new ways of creation� witch explained what the artist is about and what the aim is behind his work.
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nother modern day artist/graphic designer that I have chosen to research into is Norma Bar. Like Aron Jancso this artist uses the modernist style in his work and with it creates simplistic posters used in the advertising industry. Bar is originally from Israel however he moved to London in 2001 to study a career in graphic design . along many things Bar states his inspiration for his work comes from
Charlie Chaplin with his ability to entertain without using a words, Saul Bass, Paul Rand, Milton Glaser, Gary Hume . What I really like about this artist work is the simplicity he uses in his designs and the way he creates images within images. I would hopefully like to recreate this within my magazine and potential front cover to ensure I achieved a modernist look I am aiming for in my work.
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swissted is an ongoing project by graphic designer mike joyce, owner of stereotype design in new york city. drawing from his love of punk rock and swiss modernism, two movements that have (almost) nothing to do with one another, mike has redesigned vintage punk, hardcore, new wave, and indie rock show flyers into international typographic style posters. each design is set in lowercase berthold akzidenz-grotesk medium (not helvetica)�
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avid Carson is an american Graphic designer Typographer and art directior who specialises in inovateiv magazine design and typography. As the Art director for ray gun Crsonis oftern known as the founder of grunge typography a style that cam to light at the hight of post modernity. Over his career carson has wone over 170 awards for design and typography something which he is verry proud of. Perhaps the most influencial designer of the 1990’S carsons work is the perfect epitamy of postmodernit syle. His work has inspired for over 20 years and still continues today making his work a great resorce of refrence material for my magazine especiallly postmodernism.
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ecil Brody is an internationally renowned designer, typographer, art director and brand strategist. Famous most for his work in the 1990s Brodys portfolio is combination of heavily inspired post-modernist designs for some of the biggest names in advertising. Although a post modern designer brody states that his influences came from art movements such as Dada, Futurism and Constructivism. When looking at Brodys work you can clearly see the inspiration from Dada. The art movement itself was anarchic and similarly to Brody the work is an eclectic mix of cut-up newspaper clippings, collage photographs and found objects that when combined together often created chaotic images. Mainly known for his typography Brody spent much of his career as a magazine editor. His opinion was that people don’t read in straight lines from start to finish but instead there eyes dart around the page looking for the best bits. This is something which is reflected in his work and by gaining an understanding of this concept he then practiced what he believed often using a mix of contrasting shapes fonts and images in lots of his work.
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EXISTING BROAD SHEETS
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efore I start creating a magazine cover of my own I feel that it is important that I look at already pr-exsisting examples to understand what should actually be on a magazine cover. Straight away it appears that whatever the magazine is about that is the subject of the cover. For instance it wouldn’t really work the same if a building was on the front of a fashion magazine. Aside from this what all magazines have in common is there titles which are usually
either in the top left corner or across the entire top of the publication. This is something I should bare in mind when designing my own work. What you also tend to find with magazines is information to stories about what’s articles are inside along with the issue date of every publication. I acknowledge that on the cover you do need to have this information somewhere however I feel that I prefer the more simplistic designs in which the text doesn’t overlap the title.
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fter deciding what my best design for a front cover would be I decided to play around with the colour scheme and overall appearance of the cover to find a design that would work best. In the first instances I Played around with the idea of using just three basic colours to create my designs. Inspired by the black white and yellow colours of my practice logos I created the first design you will see on the opposite page. After deciding that this design was too complicated and didn’t work I looked at way of applying different patten overlays Firstly with a Mondrian inspired overlay and then secondly an overlay of my own creation. Just in case a heavily patterned design didn’t work I also created thee different plainer covers that would perhaps come in useful if I failed to make a more complex design work with text and a logo.
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FRONT COVERS
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fter deciding on the main style of front cover I would like to progress with I then decided on three of what I thought where my best covers. The first of witch is a Mondrian inspired design that features the artists work as on overlay to my city back ground. I think this cover works as it shows a good homage to the artist work and it is clear to see how I have included his work in my design. I do worry though that once I add all the additional text and logos I need to make this a front cover my design may get overly complicated. The second choice of front cover although in the same style looks
very different. This time I decided to go with a dark background and use a pattern of my own creation designed for the street graphic project. I really like this design also however again I would need to see how it works and looks once I have created a final finished design including all the right relevant information. My final design is the most simple of the lot and uses a monochrome pallet to create a bold unique design that I feel works very well. Originally I had decided on my letter A being white however I felt that it did not stand out enough and looked far better in a darker tone. This cover may be potentially useful
as it is less complex than the others and hopefully will function correctly once all the text and other information is applied. My next step from here is to play around using some of the logos I have created and create my final finished design to use on my magazine front cover that will eventually inspire the rest of my magazine layout and appearance. At the moment I feel as though the cover is more post modern in style however I had originally wished for the magazine to be more modernist. At present this is not an issue, and I do feel that a mix of the two could potentially work so is potentially something to look into.
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lthough I had initial doubts about how this design would look once I had added a logo and other additional information to the design I think over all it works really well. it is obvious when I look at these designs that certain logos work better than others with the first design on the far left being my favourite of all of the five. What appeals to me about this design is that it is very obvious that the cover is relating to the project of street graphic and
also includes strong influences from postmodernity. Overall I tried many logos on the covers with varying success. My second design (see above) is one of the best I feel as the logo I have created has a strong sense of identity and despite all of the rest of the design being complicated and having the potential to make the logo disappear into the background, it somehow manages to still be the most prominent thing on the page.
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FRONT COVERS CONTINUED
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nlike the cover and logo combination on the previous page I find that these logos really do not work at all, the first of with suffers from a lack of space on the page meaning that all the information appears cramped together in one corner and has alignment issues as a result. The second logo on the other hand just doesn’t stand out enough. I could potentially resolve this issue by changing the colour scheme that I have used however I felt that it was not worth my time
and effort as I had already created a design that I was happy with. I think if I was to play around with both these logos and covers a bit more they have the potential to be great designs with a strong sense of identity. For now though I feel as if I need to concentrate more on the rest of my magazine and the covers I have created prior to this are of the highest standard I can produce and would be very happy to continue forward into the design of my magazine.
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ven though I felt like I was happy with my first cover design on the previous page I wanted to explore the monochrome magazine cover I have created just in case there was an even better design that I could create. I quickly found however that after playing around and comparing the two these
designs where no where near as successful. Although I like the layouts and the overall style of the designs they just appear far too simple and bland. Even when I tried to introduce colour by trying some of my more vibrant logos the designs still seemed to lack some of the vibrancy needed for a magazine cover.
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TEXT AND FORMATING
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n any magazine there need to be some for of continuity between the pages to ensure that the reader can relate one page to another and to make sure that the magazine doesn’t look like just a random jumble of features. To ensure that my magazine doesn’t end up that way before I start to design the inside im going to explore the different ways that I can maintain continuity. The first thing im going to look at is the fonts I will choose for the inside. Using modernism as inspiration I have decided to choose Helvetica as my main choice for all
the large articles of text that will feature in the magazine. This is because I believe that it is a clear easy to read font that would work well with any of the page designs that I create, Along side Helvetica I will use a font I have created myself for the titles on the pages. The font is made up of a cerise of dots and is created from the logo I made for the front cover. Understandably that its font will not work on every page as the articles about fonts I have created I hope to title with the fonts themselves. Below is an example of the two fonts that I will be using as described.
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ Aside from the font i choose to use i will also need to think about how i am going to format my text to ensure my magazine looks as proffeshional as possible. for instance i dont want to have diffrent point sizings on every page. other issues i need to consider are how my text is justified, kerning, tracking and drop capitals. to ensure non of this happens in my
magazine i will set up a paragraph style that i can use on evey page. The rules i set will be as follows. Helvetica in pt 12, a drop capital of three lines and all text to be justified to the left with no hypernation anywhere at all in the magazine. To show how this will work i have created two examples of sample text one witch follows my rules of text and one that doesnt.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec vestibulum lacus sapien, scelerisque ullamcorper mauris volutpat vitae. Curabitur non convallis enim. Vivamus porta massa mauris, sit amet ultricies nibh euismod eget. Aliquam tincidunt ipsum sed ligula posuere fringilla. Aliquam fermentum metus at dolor porttitor hendrerit. Nullam cursus erat turpis, in posuere justo viverra et. Integer mollis justo nibh, facilisis pellentesque est interdum laoreet. Suspendisse pulvinar ornare dolor, a faucibus metus faucibus nec. Aenean elementum facilisis nisi ac pulvinar. Fusce ornare elementum magna non pulvinar. Duis suscipit enim mauris, non tincidunt nunc vehicula vitae. Integer convallis auctor sapien vitae vulputate. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec vestibulum lacus sapien, scelerisque ullamcorper mauris volutpat vitae. Curabitur non convallis enim. Vivamus porta massa mauris, sit amet ultricies nibh euismod eget. Aliquam tincidunt ipsum sed ligula posuere fring
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orem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectr adipiscing elit. Donec vestibulum lacus sapien, scelerique ullamcorper mauris volutpat vitae. Curabitur non convallis enim. Vivamus porta massa mauris, sit amet ultricies nibh euismod eget. Aliquam tincidunt ipsum sed ligula posre fringilla. Aliquam fermentum metus at dolor porttitor hendrerit. Nullam cursus erat turpis, in posuere justo viverra et. Integer mollis justo nibh, facilisis pellentesque est interdum laoreet. Suspendisse pulvinar ornare dolor, a faucibus metus faucibus nec. Aenean elementum facilisis nisi ac pulvinar. Fusce ornare elementum magna non pulvinar. Duis suscipit enim mauris, non tincidunt nunc vehicula vitae. Integer convallis auctor sapien vitae vulputate. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec vestibulum lacus sapien, scelerisque ullamc mauris volutpat vitae. Curabitur non convallis enim. Vivamus porta massa mauris, sit amet ultricies nibh
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GRID STSYTEM
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he Grid Structure in terms of graphic design is a usually two-dimensional grid made up of a series of intersecting straight (vertical, horizontal, and angular) or curved guide lines used to structure content developed by Swiss born designer Joseph Muller-Brockman. The grid helps a designer in the organisation of graphic elements (images, glyphs, paragraphs) in a rational, easy to understand way and helps give work the finished overall look of professional designers. Usually there are two ways to use the grid firstly, the grid can be use to organize graphic elements in relation to a page or secondly
used to organize objects in relation to other graphic elements on the page. Before digital typesetting grids had allays been used as a way of maximising optimal proportions which made sense for a grid system to be invented for digital type too. As technology has improved with the use of the grid system has increased dramatically and now there is even websites available specifically designed for generating grid systems. Using this knowledge I will now use the grid system within my own design work and believe it will be very useful when it comes to designing my inner pages and refinement of my front cover before publication.
GRID SYSTEM
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