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Contents London Underground Jan Tschichold and Avante Garde Typography in 1920’s Charles and Ray Eames Animation Photography History of Computing Visual Perception and Memory No Facebook for 7 days!
Doodle by Miss Rabbit on deviantart.com
London Underground London was the first city, the oldest and one of the busiest underground in the world, this underground railway opened on the 10th January 1863. In the 19th century, digging deep level tunnels, especially under water was a dangerous and tricky business.
the image on the left is the Barlow Shield, this was first used for deep tunnelling under the thames, which used to be called the ‘tower subway’ now formally known as the waterloo and city line. The world’s first subaqueous tunnel, Thames Tunnel, was completed in 1843. This rarely seen photograph reminds us just what an engineering feat the construction process was. Here we see the creation of the Central Line in 1898.
we then looked at the inside of an electric carriage, the design of the seats, rails, colour etc was to be seen of a new era. The fabric on the seating had to consider many things such as it had to be a suitable colour, hardwearing etc, there was alot of practical thinking aswell as design. obviously a lot has changed over the years, we now have more comfortable seats, the pattern of the seats still exists today, the wooden interior has gone, and the colours inside the tube has changed depending on which line your taking for example the DLR is a light blue colour.
Frank Pick was the main man who made the London Underground (1878-1941) he was the one who bought all london transportation into one so there was no competition.
Edward Johnston (1872-1944) was known for writing with a quill and making lettering an art form, he showed passion and dedication in his lettering.
this image above shows Westminster station in 1902 – the font shows the origin of Sans Serif lettering. This style of advertising was poor, the text was in different sizes, there is too much lettering going on which doesn’t look appealing to an audience and theres different styles of fonts. Although again this was their first attempt advertising something, later on this did improve which i will talk about later.
we then moved onto Eric Gill, he was famous for designing the Gill Sans font, he was also known as one of Edward Johnston’s students. around 1913 Frank Pick eventually met Edward and they ended up working together. Edward created the London underground Font, created in February 6th 1916. this font was all one width, constant weight on each letter, and bold.
This underground font is still goin strong today‌
There were also changes in the architecture work of these underground stations such as Knightsbridge Station 1930’s which showed coordinated design of ticket machines for example the inside of the station was mainly cream coloured maybe to show a sense of warmth and light. also the modern architecture put into Arnos grove station in 1933, which showed electric lighting.
Map design the tube map design changed dramitically throughout the years, it went from very complex to simplicity... in 1923 the metro railway designed the tube map, which looked very complicated, messy and non realistic‌
in 1926, the map turned more green! however it was more true to scale but still not user friendly and still hard to read.
however, the underground people didnt accept harry beck’s map as they thought the general public wouldnt be able to understand it.
it changed later on in this year, it was a folder map and they got rid of the background‌
harry beck didnt give up and still kept designing to a final design he was happy with.
Harry Beck later on came into the scene and designed the map properly, he simplified the map so it was easy to read.
in 1933 the card folder came in, it had more colours to separate the stations, little dots to show which stations you can switch over to etc.
this map design is used today, it is more easy to read because of the straight lines, this use of design makes us think that our journey goes in a straight line (which isnt possible) and we could possibly think that our journey looks shorter because of the straight lines, he also used 45degree angle lines instead of curves
Jan Tschichold is one of the most outstanding and influential German typographers of the 20th century. He was a master in his field, worked as a teacher, wrote a number of books, designed typefaces, and worked his entire life as designer and writer. His first interest in typography was in 1914, repeatedly visited ‘Hall of Culture’ museum display in Leipzig during the First World War 191418. He studied Writing and Illuminating and Lettering by Edward Johnston while he was attending teacher training college.
Jan Tschichold
In 1921 he began to teach lettering in Leipzig and working as a freelance designer, he was doing hand lettering because the available type faces were too poor in his opinion.
This is an example of his hand lettering in 1923. This was a Cover drawn by Tschichold for a book, based on Italic handwriting manuals of the 16th century.
Some of his fonts looked almost looked gothic, with the little flicks at the ends of the letters and the use of length on the letters ‘l, f, h, b’ etc. Cover drawn by Tschichold for a book, based on Italic handwriting manuals of the 16th century
Avant Garde The avant-garde, which by design was one of the most controversial art movements. The term avant-garde itself means, “advanced guard,� and military role of the advanced guard, and the role of the avant-garde art movement are much of the same. Artists of this movement challenged traditional art but also society as a whole. read more at: Avant Garde Avante Garde art included Cubism, Futurism, Abstract art, Surrealism, Modern Art etc. Pablo Picasso was known for his cubism art
Futurist poetry covers, Raoul Haussman covers for DADA 1, 2 & 3, 1919-24 are all very interesting images, very surreal and completely challenged traditional art with quirky layouts, different use of fonts and shapes.
Penguin was founded in 1935 with the concept of producing inexpensive paperback editions of high quality books, it adopted an equally progressive approach to typography and cover design. Allen Lane was the first to produce these Penguin books, most books back then were reprints of 19th century novels. Lane later on found a publishing house to produce good quality paperbacks sold at six pence each! Lane’s secretary suggested Penguin as a “dignified, but flippant” name for the company and the office junior Edward Young was sent to sketch the penguins at London Zoo as its logotype. Young was then asked to design the covers of the first set of ten paperbacks to be published in summer 1935 including Ariel and A Farewell to Arms. These were the early books covers by Edward Young, who then became the company’s first Production Manager.
PENGUIN BOOKS
Seventy years later Penguin is still one of the most recognizable brands in the world. They were colour coded (orange for fiction, blue for biography, green for crime) Then Jan Tschichold came into the scene, he redesigned the penguin covers, but they weren’t radical changes. Tschichold designed a template for all Penguin books with designated positions for the title and author’s name with a line between the two. He unified the design of the front, spine and back and redrew Edward Young’s amateurish Penguin symbol in eight variations. Finally he produced a set of Composition Rules which, he insisted, were to be followed by Penguin’s typographers and printers to ensure that the same style was always applied. I guess this would make publishing the books easier and wouldn’t have to worry about compositions as everything fitted onto the front cover perfectly, simple compositions results to easy publishing without any fuss.
In this lecture we spoke about about 2 famous designers Charles and Ray Eames. They were American designers, who worked in and made major contributions to modern architecture and furniture. They also worked in the fields of industrial and graphic design, fine art and film. Charles and Ray Eames are among the most important American designers of this century. They are best known for their groundbreaking contributions to architecture, furniture design e.g. the Eames Chair. Charles Eames was born in 1907 in St. Louis, Missouri. He attended school there and devel-
oped an interest in engineering and architecture. After attending Washington University on scholarship for two years and being thrown out for his advocacy of Frank Lloyd Wright, he began working in an architectural office. Ray Kaiser Eames was born in Sacramento, California in the middle of the century’s second decade. She studied painting with Hans Hofmann in New York before moving on to Cranbrook Academy where she met and assisted Charles and Eero Saarinen in preparing designs for the Museum of Modern Art’s “Organic Furniture Competition.” Charles and Ray married in 1941 and moved to
California where they continued their furniture design work with molding plywood. During the war they were commissioned by the Navy to produce molded plywood splints, stretchers and experimental glider shells. In 1946, Evans Products began producing the Eameses’ molded plywood furniture. Their molded plywood chair was called “the chair of the century” by the influential architectural critic Esther McCoy. Soon production was taken over by Herman Miller, Inc., who continues to produce the furniture in the United States to this day. Another company, Vitra International , manufactures the furniture in Europe.
Charles and Ray Eames
In 1949, Charles and Ray designed and built their own home in Pacific Palisades, California as part of the Case Study House Program sponsored by Arts and Architecture Magazine. Their design and innovative use of materials made this house a mecca for architects and designers from all over the world. It is considered one of the most important postwar residences built anywhere in the world.
Charles and Ray Eames turned their curiosity and boundless enthusiasm into creations that established them as a truly great husband-and-wife design team. Their unique synergy led to a whole new look in furniture. Lean and modern. Playful and functional. Sleek, sophisticated, and beautifully simple. That was and is the “Eames look.� Herman
Miller.com
Who doesn’t recognize the Eames lounge chair and ottoman? It has been the subject of documentary films and books. It even has its own fan website. The first Eames lounge chair and ottoman was made as a gift for Billy Wilder, the director of “Some Like It Hot,” “Irma La Douce,” and “Sunset Blvd.” The heritage of the chair goes back to the molded plywood chairs pioneered by the Eameses in the 1940s. When the Eames chair and ottoman was introduced in 1956, there was nothing else like it. The design was completely fresh and new. It has become one of the significant furniture designs of the 20th century. Instantly recognizable.
The Eames chaise is soft, comfortable, and just 18 inches wide. When you lie on it, you naturally fold your arms over your chest. In 1955 while filming on location, director Billy Wilder discovered he could take quick naps on a plank held up by sawhorses. This prompted Wilder to tell his friends Charles and Ray Eames that he needed a narrow office couch. you can find more information about their furniture on http:// www.hermanmiller. com/Designers/Eames
ANIMATION ‘What is animation?’ to animate is to bring something alive! its something from being dead to somthing coming to life. ‘Animation is a type of optical illusion. It involves the appearance of motion caused by displaying still images one after another. Often, animation is used for entertainment purposes.’ Way before cartoons or any sort of animation people used to entertain themselves by shadow puppetry! So where did the very early stages of animation start and how were they made?
the first strip cartoon was made by J Stuart Blackton, 1906. Blackton (with only his arm showing on film) “draws” a series of funny faces on a blackboad, including a line drawing of two faces, a man with an umbrella, a line drawing of two faces in profile, a clown, faces of “Coon and Cohen,” the profile of a seated man, and a bottle of Medoc. this was then developed by another animation called ‘Fantasmagorie’ in 1908 by Emie Cohl, using the same methods as Blackton using a blackboard. They used very simple techniques, it showed humour. Animation had a sense of fantasy, as nothing shown was realistic, this animation shows a good example of fantasy.
To make this film, Cohl placed each drawing on an illuminated glass plate and then traced the next drawing-with variations-on top of it until he had some 700 drawings. In 1908, chalkboard caricaturists were common vaudeville attractions and the characters in the film look as though they’ve been drawn on a chalkboard, but it’s an illusion. By filming black lines on paper and then printing in negative Cohl makes his animations appear to be chalk drawings.
Winsor McCay then came into the scene with his animation ‘Little Nemo’ made in 1911. He was the first to make long animations by using hand drawn images for each frame…he had pages and pages of drawings for each frame! pretty amazing, that i wouldn’t have the patience to do that… McCay was also famous for ‘Gertie the Dinosaur’in 1914. McCay had an idea that he would have a dinosaur that would do anything that he tells it too…i actually like this cartoon, found it very cute i think any animation with humour makes it more successful and more interesting to watch.
strange animation was by Ladislow Starewics – ‘The Cameraman’s Revenge’ made in 1912, this animation is about infidelity among the insects. its also like 3D animation!
Hungarian animation by Magyar Nepmesek called ‘Hollo Janko’ an animation about a classic fairytale.
there were so many strange animations that were created around this time such as Lotte Reiniger. she made these cartoons out of paper cut silhouettes cartoons. this animation is very abstract, its interesting the way she used shadows, which makes it look more realistic.
this cartoon was narrated in hungarian, I dont talk Hungarian myself but cartoons don’t always need a narration to understand, we still understand by watching the storyline.
from all these animations many more famous animations developed throughout the years, and different techniques of animation became better as the use of technology developed. So many children cartoon animations are made for example on Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon etc. ‘Creature Comforts’ used 3d models which then developed into the famous animation ‘Wallace and Gromit,’ Manga cartoons developed into amazing films and not forgetting the wonder Disney Pixar’s famous, Toy story!
PHOTOGRAPHY
Photography is a new topic to me, I have never done any photography before in school and college. Now that I’ve started a new project on photography, I realised it’s not my cup of tea… As it’s also the first time using an SLR camera, I don’t have a clue on how to use them properly, they’re so heavy and look complicated, why cant they be as simple as digital cameras! Also how do you know how to get a good shot of an image that has to look interesting. I guess practise makes perfect, you cant learn everything within a day.
Nicéphore Niépce March 7, 1765 – July 5, 1833) was a French inventor, who was also the first to invent photography. The word photography derives from the Greek words phos ( g e n i t i v e : photós) light, and gráphein, to write.
View from the Window at Le Gras, this photo was the first successful permanent photograph created by Nicephore Niepce in 1826.
1839: First Photo of a Person In early 1839, French painter and chemist Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre photographs a Paris street scene from his apartment window using a camera obscura. The long exposure time
(several minutes) means moving objects like pedestrians and carriages don’t appear in the photo. But an unidentified man who stops for a shoeshine remains still long enough to unwittingly become the first
1847: First Photo of Lightning In 1847, early photography pioneer Thomas Easterly makes a daguerreotype of a bolt of lightning—the first picture to capture the natural phenomenon. Primarily a portraitist, Easterly also makes pictures of landscapes, unusual for daguerreotypists
1878:
First
Action
Photos
English photographer Eadweard Muybridge, using new emulsions that allow nearly instantaneous photography, begins taking photograph sequences that capture animals and people in motion. His 1878 photo series of a galloping horse, created with 12 cameras each outfitted with a trip wire, helps settle a disagreement over whether all four hooves of a horse leave the ground (they do). It also causes a popular stir about the potential of cameras to study movement. Muybridge goes on to creating hundreds of image sequences with humans and animals. These photo series are linked to the earliest beginnings of cinematography.
although photography is not my thing, i enjoy looking at the different styles of photography and the way they are shot in different angles for example depth of field. my frist experience using an SLR camera in public was embarrassing! i felt like a paprazzi, felt like i was doing something illegal when i was taking pictures of people without their permission.
10 things I learned about photography Martin Gommel is a photographer on Flickr which has produced some amazing photo’s. Martin also has a blog called KWERFELDEIN (German). He wrote an article ‘100 Things I’ve Learned About Photography’ as I was reading through his blog, I found 10 useful tips which has helped me in my photography and maybe these might help you
1. Always take one warm garment more than you actually need with you. 2. Pay attention to your thoughts and emotions while you are shooting. 3. Watch the place you want to shoot first with your heart then with the camera. 4. Always stay calm. 5. Find your own style of photography Don’t copy other photographer’s style 6. It takes time to become a good photographer. 7. Break the rules of photography knowingly, but not your camera. 8. Start a photoblog! 9. Mistakes are allowed! The more mistakes you make, the more you learn. 10. Always turn arround, sometimes the better image is behind you.
History of Computing Computers take us to a whole other level of getting things done. Computers can complete simple tasks in so much less time than it would on pen and paper. Computers are easy to use and eco-friendly. computers and the internet has become part of out life, that we have almost become dependent on it. Who invented the computer? is not a question with a simple answer. The real answer is that many inventors contributed to the history of computers and that a computer is a complex piece of machinery made up of many parts, each of which can be considered a separate invention.
The earliest known tool for use in computation was the abacus. Abaci, of a more modern design, are still used as calculation tools today. This was the first known computer and most advanced system of calculation known to date.
this is the napiers bones is also an abacus created by Jon Napier, it was based on arab mathematics, it was a shift in computing in 16th century. Wikipedia – ‘A rod’s surface comprises 9 squares, and each square, except for the top one, comprises two halves divided by a diagonal line. The first square of each rod holds a single digit, and the other squares hold this number’s double, triple, quadruple, quintuple, and so on until the last square contains nine times the number in the top square. etc... Sounds complicated huh? These olden style of counting looks more complicated when they were meant to make maths for people simple and easy.
The Stepped Reckoner was a digital Mechanical calculator invented by German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz around 1672 and completed in 1694.
throughgout the years computers have developed rapidly and still is now. Now lets move onto the computers that we use now and it all started.
It was the first calculator that could perform all four arithmetic operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (sometimes von Leibniz) (July 1, 1646 – November 14, 1716) was a German philosopher and mathmetician.
Douglas Engelbart changed the way computers worked, from specialized machinery that only a trained scientist could use, to a userfriendly tool that almost anyone can use. He invented or contributed to several interactive, user-friendly devices: the computer mouse, windows, computer video teleconferencing, hypermedia, groupware, email, the Internet and more.
Engelbart received a patent for the wooden shell with two metal wheels in 1970, describing it in the patent application as an X-Y position indicator for a display system. It was nicknamed the mouse because the tail came out the end.
The Macintosh computer was released in January of 1984, with 128K RAM of memory. It quickly became obvious that this was insufficient, so eight months later Apple released an updated version, un-officially referred to as the ‘Fat Mac’. It has 512K RAM, four times as much.
Before the Macintosh, all computers were ‘text-based’ – you operated them by typing words onto the keyboard. The Macintosh is run by activating pictures (icons) on the screen with a small hand-operated device called a “mouse”. Most modern-day computers now operate on this principle, including modern Apple computers and most others which run the Microsoft Windows operating system.
Microsoft promised that the new product would be on the shelf by April 1984. Windows might have been released under the original name of Interface Manager if marketing whiz, Rowland Hanson had not convinced Microsoft’s founder Bill Gates that Windows was the far better name.
So why do we use computers today, we come up with many answers from using it for education, entertainment and it is also used as an information source. Whatever you need to find you can find it by a click of a button via the internet. no matter the computer is used for we have become dependent on it, these machines makes our life simple even if we spend so many hours on it that we wont realise!
Firstly post means come after…so this means after modernism… but what is modernism? Modernism refers to a certain period of the western culture of artistic and sociological history. Modern is contemporary ideas such as modern furniture, modern fashion, modern art. postmodernist Frederic Jameson: Postmodernism as a movement in arts and culture corresponding to a new configuration of politics and economics, “late capitalism”: transnational consumer economies based on global scope of capitalism. Jean-François Lyotard: The postmodern as a historical/cultural “condition” based on a dissolution of master narratives or metanarratives (totalizing narrative paradigms like progress and national histories), a
crisis in ideology when ideology no longer seems transparent (see The Post-Modern Condition: A Report on Knowledge). Professor Ihab Hassan was one of the first to write about postmodernism. Hassan says, ‘What
POSTMODERNISM ‘Postmodernism is “post” because it is denies the existence of any ultimate principles’ was postmodernism, and what is it still? I believe it is a revenant, the return of the irrepressible; every time we are rid of it, its ghost rises back. And like a ghost, it eludes definition. Certainly, I know less about postmodernism today than I did thirty years ago, when I began to write
about it. This may be because postmodernism has changed, I have changed, the world has changed.’ Postmodernism can only be described, not defined. Therefore, postmodernism remains fuzzy, It tends to be separate from mainstream society and doing something completely opposite to what society wouldn’t usually see, usually going against to the principles and practices of found modernism. Post modernism is mostly about art and literature that doesn’t care about previous traditions and conventions. It is art that says “This is Art” no matter what society thinks. It is Post modern, beyond modern, so new and different (sometimes crazy) because it doesn’t care about what made art art in the past before.
VISUAL PERCEPTION AND MEMORY memory plays a huge part in our visual perception. visual perception is like editing, things we want to know, we dont need to know..
ing that it is communicated clearly and understood by the viewers. On the surface this may seem like a simple one way transmission of ideas from your design to the viewer’s eye. The reality is more complex.
as graphic designers we want to communicate our designs the way we see it hop-
What is visual perception? Visual perception is one of the senses of the
body which allows the brain to intercept and interpret visible light, creating the ability to see. Understanding how we all perceive things visually will help designers communicate better. you understand things by looking at it first…like that famous saying ‘dont judge a book
by its a cover’ when designers and most people do. if the design isnt all that or doesnt make sense, then we wont be interested in it. Perception is the process of obtaining awareness and understanding of sensory data. We take in something visually and then need to
process what we see in order to get some meaning from it. we then startd talkin about the gestalt theory, this is a theory of mind and brain positing that the operational principle of the brain is holistic, parallel, and analog, with self-organizing tendencies. sounds complicated…so lets break it down Gestalten is German for “pattern”, “figure”, “shape”, or “form” Perhaps the best known example of a gestalt is the vase/ face profile, is it a vase or 2 faces? It’s easy to see one or the other: almost impossible to see neither. The classic Gestalt phenomenon is that of figure versus ground. Which is the image and which the background? And how does the brain decide?
Do you see an old lady or a young lady, or both?
But how does this theory link to graphic design? The rules of Gestalt make up the basis of good design, and have since the late 1890’s. For designers, this is a visual rule. In order to understand the rules of Gestalt, it is a good idea to know what the rules are. There are several and they are not difficult to understand if you spend a few minutes just looking at them. In any given project or piece, several of these principles may come into play, and typically tend to compliment each other. As
your expertise in graphics continues to grow, you will notice this more. these are the aspects gestalt looks at: proximity, This rule applies to how elements of a piece are grouped based on their proximity or closeness. These individual pieces may be different or the same. Similarity, how the items on the design are similar to each other, closure, Items grouped together to complete an entity, simplicity, This is the use of organizing things into simple designs by way of their symmetry, regularity, and texture and repetition, this rule lets the mind fill in the blanks more or less.
So how do we apply these principles to graphic design and layout? Look around, these principles are everywhere!
as Steven Bradley in his article about ‘What Designers Should Know About Visual Perception and Memory’ We hold information in different kinds of memory. Sensory memory records fleeting impressions that last a few hundred milliseconds. This is long enough to hold the prominent features of what we see long enough to further process them. this is why simple designs like these logos are easily rememorable, because they are not too complicated to understand. Whether you know it or not, you’ve been using these rules and principles all of your life! Let’s simply apply them to graphics.
No Facebook For 7 days! The Weirdest thing i had to get used to was going to my cousins house in Sussex for a week and not having any access to the internet and not being able to log into facebook! i’m so used to just logging in without even realizing, sometimes i just leave it logged in in the background while i carry on doing my uni work. Never the less, it took a while to get use to and trying to find new things to keep me entertained rather than just rely on social networking. Giving up facebook i have realized a lot of things that facebook has done that has changed my life! (in a weird way) 1. It was so hard to keep in contact with friends and family that live abroad, even though i could jus give them a skype call or an email, but it’s good to see their status update jus to know they are alright. 2. you miss out on the funny stuff. i missed browsing on other peoples profiles and laughing at their pictures, or even better, seeing something shocking and phoning up my best mate just to gossip about it!
3. i have been doing a lot of exercise and doing more around the house. you don’t realize how much time you spend on facebook, 1 min is like half an hour then 10 mins ends up being an hour! (if only revision was that quick!) 4. and lastly and most obvious i have been doing a lot more work! instead of having it on in the background i am able to fly through doing all my Graphic Design work. so i admit that i did miss not having facebook, i ended up spending ages on the news feed reading other people’s status updates, latest pictures and sometimes i look on other people’s profiles that i’m not even friends with (you should never put your profile as public!) On the other hand, i got a lot of uni work done in the evening and as it’s a race against all the deadlines for all my portfolio’s, i shall keep this detox up and get lots and lots of work done!
images from Deviantart.com
By Rita Sulaman