Design and Craft

The DESIGNER & The GRIDS

SPECIAL FEATURE / EVELIN KASIKOV

DESIGN & CRAFT

WILLIAM MORRIS PETER BEHRENS ALEXANDER ROCHENKO UNDERSCORE CARLO CARRA KURT SCHWITTERS DANIEL LIBESKIND EVELIN KASIKOV

THE DESIGNER & THE GRID DESIGN & CRAFT Teh Xue Fen Shellen Lim Ruo Shan Roxanne Leow Hou Teng

Stitch by stitch A cherished bond Line over line A divine divide Made by hand Made with love Each delicately crafted Each beautifully designed Design and craft Balance in Harmony

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CONTENTS AN INTRODUCTION TO GRID SYSTEM

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MYSTERY OF THE GOLDEN RATIO

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WILLIAM MORRIS / THE BEAUTIFUL BOOK

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PETER BEHRENS / ART AND LIFE

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ALEXANDER RODCHENKO / A REFINED BEAUTY

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HJGHER / UNDERSCORE

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CARLO CARRA / INTERVENTIONIST DEMONSTRATION

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KURT SCHWITTERS / MERZ DECONSTRUCTION

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DANIEL LIBESKIND / A DECONSTRUCTED VISION

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EVELIN KASIKOV / CMYK GRID

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08

GRID SYSTEM

AN INTRODUCTION TO

GRID SYSTEMS Grids simplify and ease both the creative and decision-making process.

The grid is the basis where a design is built upon. It provides the designer with a framework in organizing its various elements on a page such that it will effectively bring order and structure to the design. While it may seem that grids forms the skeletal structure of the design, one should note that they serve only as guides to visually orientates a viewer to a piece of information and that its distortion has been used to challenge the conventional way of seeing and or to be used as a way to convey certain meaning. As such, its conception can be used as a system of organization for use beyond the layout of a page, to be applied as a useful tool for organization of space in crafts and other applied arts.

The basic function of a grid is to organize the information on a page and this has been achieved through development and refinement throughout history-from simple pages of text, to the incorporation of images and to the diverse possibilities provided by modern design software. Traditionally, the grid structure of a book has been based upon the principles of Greek aesthetics incorporating the series of ‘golden ratios’, principles which were rediscovered during the Renaissance. The ratio (1: 1.618) has helped to determine the margins surrounding the page elements. While margins today are slightly smaller, nevertheless, the relationships of spatial proportions remain the same. Technology has enabled ease of presenting

more complex and varied material in print. Although the grid has developed considerably over time, the basic principles underpinning it have remained intact for centuries.

Grids simplify and ease both the creative and decision making process for the designer and make the delivery of information to its viewers clear. As each design involves making decisions about the placement of its different elements such as type and images, by using the grid, the designer can make decisions in a controlled and coherent manner instead of relying on judgment alone. When items are arranged in similar ways, their similarities are made more apparent and recognizable. The grid renders the elements it controls into a neutral spatial field of regularity that permits accessibility-viewers know where to locate information they seek because the junctures of horizontal and vertical divisions act as signposts for locating that information. The system helps the viewer understand its use. With greater accuracy and consistency in the placement of page elements, it also provides a framework for a high degree of creativity.

While the grid itself is typically constructed with absolute measurements, elements on the page may be placed within it with relative measurements, in such a case, we call it as ‘breaking the grid’. The grid serves only as a reference structure that guides the placement of the elements. Page

elements can be freely determined in size and position and grows organically and spontaneously in relation to the grid.

On one hand, grids are notoriously known for inhibiting a designer’s creativity in placements of elements; on the other hand, effective usage of grids has produced creative pieces of work, irregardless whether the grid has been followed strictly or whether the grid has been ‘broken’. In this publication, we look briefly at how designers and artists from the past and present adapted the usage of grids in their designs and crafts as a system for organization of space and proportion to produce dynamic pieces of work.

GOLDEN RULE

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MYSTERY TO THE

GOLDEN RULE

01 Parthenon

Despite its irrationality, the golden ratio 1:1.1618 is a common occurring ratio that fascinated not just mathematicians but also biologists, artists, historians, architects. Such a fascination with the ratio was largely due to human’s desire to search for an order to the chaotic world in which we live in, believing that it may provide a perfect solution.

The formula for the golden section, a: b=b: (a+b), refers to how the smaller of the elements relates to the larger element in the same way that the larger element relates to the two parts combined. Ancient Greek mathematicians like Pythagoras and Euclid had pondered over the ratio and its properties due to its frequent appearance in geometry, particularly in figures with pentagonal symmetry.

THE FIBONACCI SEQUENCE IN NATURE The Fibonacci numbers are numbers in the following integer sequence: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55...

It starts with the numbers 0 and 1 and each subsequent number is the sum of the previous two. The sequence can be found in nature, as identified by Fibonacci in his book of 1202, Liber Abaci (The Book of Calculating). It appears in biological settings in instances such as branches in trees, arrangement of leaves on a stem, the breeding of rabbits, the spirals of shells and

the curves of waves. Designers thus have a keen interest to look to the natural world for inspiration and believe that truth and beauty can be derived from it. It has been used to derive the margins and proportions of the classical page.

Divine Proportions in Paintings Various bodily proportions were said to exhibit the golden ratio and this was illustrated on Fra Luca Pacioli’s book in 1509, De Divina Proportione which contained drawings by Leonardo Da Vinci and an images of geometric proportions being applied to various human parts, for example the face.

In Da Vinci’s drawing of the Vitruvian Man, a male figure is depicted in two superimposed positions with his arms and legs apart and simultaneously inscribed in a circle and square. It is based on the correlations of the ideal human proportions with geometry described by the ancient Rome architect Vitruvius. In his book, he described the human figure as being the principal source of proportion among the Classical orders of architecture.

Golden Rectangles of Architecture One of the earliest examples, the Parthenon from 432 BC was said to be circumscribed by golden rectangles in its façade and elements of its façade. The length and height of the building,

the spacing between the columns and the pitch of the rood are all controlled by the ratio. The development of the architecture was said to be natural since the Greek builders of the Golden Age did not have any measuring rods like we do today, yet it had achieved a harmonious whole. Thus many believe that such a ratio is more pleasing to the eyes.

Canons of Page Construction Grids are fundamentally about proportions and since Classical times, the golden section has been used to arrive at an ideal relationship between page margins and the type within it.

According to Jan Tschichold, many medieval manuscripts and books from 1550 and 1770 shows the approximated ideal page proportion of 2:3 and margin proportions 1:1:2:3 with the text area proportioned in the Golden section. This is known as the Canon of Page Construction, the set of principles in the field of book design used to describe the ways that page proportions, margins and typesetting areas of a book was to be constructed. It was popularized

by Tschichold in his book, The Form of the Book, in the mid to late twentieth century after a careful study of works by J. A Vande Graff, Raul M. Rosarivo and Hans Kayser.

He wrote that “Though largely forgotten today, methods and rules upon which it is impossible to improve have been developed

for centuries. To produce perfect books these rules have to be brought to life and applied.”

While the proportions of the classical book were produced with great beauty with the layout based on the golden section, its requirements were for one or two columns of type per page. Attempts to construct a more contemporary multiple-column layout using these principles became impossible. S aid by Tschihold, “I abstracted from manuscripts that are older yet, while beautiful, I would hardly be useful today.”

Modern layouts, although still centered like those of medieval manuscripts, have begun to move towards simpler and less cluttered formats. The knowledge of the golden sections has increased an awareness of proportion and space, and greater consideration of the relative sizes of margins, text areas and overall format. With this in mind, the modern designers are committed in designing a book with greater simplicity and clarity and for the readers while still giving aesthetic pleasure in its own right.

WILLIAM MORRIS PETER BEHRENS ALEXANDER RODCHENKO HJGHER

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MAKING the Grid The making of the grid, exposes the reader to the grid’s development as an organizing principle and shows it in action. The basics of grid leads the reader through the essential mechanics of grid building and bringing order and structure to designs, whether they are simple or coomplex .

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WILLIAM MORRIS

ILLIAM MORRIS THE BEAUTIFUL BOOK

“To enjoy good houses and good books in self-respect and decent comfort, seems to me to be the pleasurable end towards which all societies of human being sought now to struggle.”

THE KELMSCOTT PRESS He set up the Kelmscott Press as he sought to recapture the beauty of incunabular books, advocating an aesthetic concern for the design and production of beautiful books.

It sought to adopt the design standards, high-quality materials, and careful workmanship of printing that existed before the Industrial Revolution and was concerned with the difficulties of typographic design, including the problems of proportions and margins, letterspacing, leading between lines and the careful selection of typefaces and materials.

advancements and instead embraced Gutenberg’s movable type along with hand illustrated and woodblock printed illustrations, and ornamented capitals.

Morris’s books were not only finely decorated, but also achieved a harmonious whole, and his typographic pages were conceived and executed with readability in mind. His concept of the wellmade book, his beautiful typefaces designs, Golden, Chaucer and Troy, his sense of design unity, inspired a whole new generation of book and type designers.

Led by William Morris, the Arts and Craft movement flourished in England during the last decades of the nineteenth century as a great reaction against the social, moral and artistic confusion of the Industrial revolution.

According to Socialist John Ruskin, a process of separating art and society had begun after the Renaissance and this had reached a critical stage with Industrial development and technological advancements thus isolating the artist. The results were indiscriminate borrowing from historical models, a decline in creativity and design as craftwork were replaced by engineers’ massproduced goods, made without any aesthetic concerns. This was the philosophy which inspired the Arts and Craft Movement.

Morris sought a reunion of art with craft in everyday objects from architecture to furniture to books.

This was expressed in his words, “To enjoy good houses and good books in self-respect and decent comfort, seems to me to be the pleasurable end towards which all societies of human being sought now to struggle.”

In 1861, Morris, along with six friends, established an artdecorating firm, producing furniture, textiles, stained glasses, wallpapers, tiles and carpets.

Morris created over five hundred pattern designs for wallpapers, textiles, carpets and tapestries which were inspired by medieval arts and botanical forms.

01 Kelmscott Press Trademark (1982)

Since the time of Gutenberg, printing techniques using movable type had restricted typography to an inflexible grid: anything that was to be mass printed in great volume needed to adhere to a system whereby type was set in consecutive rows of parallel lines. Mass production during the Industrial Revolution developed a unique invention called lithography and this technique was to set type free from the bondage of the compositor. Yet, William Morris rejected such technological

Although Morris sought the design aesthetic in the handicraft of the past, he developed design attitudes that charted the future; His call for workmanship, truth to the nature of materials, making the utilitarian beautiful, and fitness of design to function are attitudes that are adopted by the century guild and numerous private presses in his time and also succeeding generations who sought to unify not art and craft but art and industry.

PETER BEHRENS

PETER BEHRENS ART AND LIFE

“Type is one of the most eloquent means of expression in every epoch of style. Next to architecture, it gives the most characteristic portrait of a period and the most severe testimony of a nation’s intellectual status.”

01 AEG advertisment, (1907) (1883)

02 Covers for Berlin Electric Works Magazine (1908)

Such an expression reflected Peter Behrens’ (1868-1940) concern in the relationship of forms in art and design to social, technological, and cultural conditions throughout his artistic career not just in his typography or graphic works, but also in product and architectural design. He sought order and unity in his project and thus adopted a fundamental visual principle and analysis of compositional structure with the use of a simple geometric grid which he applied to deal with issues on the proportions, dimensions, and spatial divisions in all his works. His approach had influenced his apprentices such as Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe who later became directors of the Bauhaus.

APPLICATION OF GRIDS

STYLE AND INFLUENCES Orphaned at the age of fourteen, Peter Behrens inherited a substantial amount of wealth from his father’s estate which provided him with ongoing economic support that allowed him to pursue his artistic studies and career in his native Hamburg. Although he started out as a Socio-Realist painter, he soon gave up painting for applied art and embraced the 1890s German Art Nouveau movement, Jugendstil (Youth Style) in 1897.

Behrens became director of the Düsseldorf School of Arts and Crafts in 1903. During his time at Dü an infinite number of permutations. This geometric pattern that was developed could be used to determine proportions, dimensions, and spatial divisions in the design of everything from furniture to architecture to graphics.

Behren’s application of this theory pushed 20th century architecture and design toward rational geometry for use as an underlying system for visual organization. His work from this period and especially during his appointment as artistic adviser of Allgemeine ElektricitätsGesellschaft (AEG) reflected the beginning of constructivism in graphic design, where realistic or stylized depictions are replaced by an architectural and geometric structure.

In 1907, Behrens was appointed as artistic adviser for AEG, the world’s largest manufacturing company, by the director, Emil Rathenau who felt the need for a unified visual character for AEG products, environments and communications. This allowed Berhens an opportunity to design large buildings, functional products, a unified corporate identity programme and other design needs of the industry by using proportions and linear elements.

At the beginning of the century, Behrens contributed to design curriculum reform through his advocation of fundamentals in introductory visual education.

Later, he advocated functionalism, truth to materials and standards of uniformity in the industrial society, suggesting new directions. With his contribution, he was a catalytic innovator whose work altered the course of design in this century.

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RODCHENKO

ALEXANDER RODCHENKO A REFINED BEAUTY

01/02 Series of cover pages for Miss Mend (1924)

Alexander Mikhailovich Rodchenko (1891 –1956) was a Russian artist, photographer and graphic designer who was one of the founders of constructivism and Russian design.

His work can be described as ‘Modern Art meets radical politics’, having devoted his career in the service of political revolution.

became committed to the cause of the Russian Revolution, believing that art should provide a service to the society rather than being used as a form of personal statement or expression. Nevertheless, his early experimentation with paintings were to influence many of his later works.

CONSTRUCTIVISM

GEOMETRIC CONSTRUCTION

Constructivism in Russia was an artistic and architectural movement influenced by a convergent of ideas and visual treatment from Suprematism, Cubism and Futurism. Geometrical abstraction became the expression of a political revolution through Constructivism where it rejected traditional representations of art in favour of art with a social purpose.

Collaborating closely with the writer Mayakovsky, Rodchenko produced page designs with strong geometric construction, large areas of pure colour and concise, legible lettering which shows a close resemblance to his early paintings and Malevich’s works. He experimented with handlettered, heavy san-serif typefaces that were popular in the Soviet Union then.

SUPREMATIST PAINTINGS He started off his career as a relatively conventional painter whose influence came from Suprematist painter Kasimir Malevich. His analytical precision and definition of forms of his paintings was perhaps a result of an early interest in descriptive geometry. His experimentation into elements of pictorial and sculptural art produced purely abstract artworks, similar to that of Malevich, where the components of each image, line, form, space, colour, surface texture and the work’s physical support were separated.

After exposure to Russian Futurists works, Rodchenko abandoned painting in 1921, and turned to visual communication as he

In 1923 Rodchenko began to design a magazine for all fields of the creative arts, entitled Lef where the design style is based on strong static horizontal and vertical forms.

In another publication, Novyi Lef, he frequently employed the techniques of overprinting, precise registration and photomontage. Rodchenko found interest in contrasting his bold, blocky type and hard-edged shapes against the softer forms and edges of photomontages.

His interest in photomontage was a conscious effort to innovate an illustration technique appropriate to the twentieth century.

Rodchenko applied the concept of serial painting in his graphic design where a series or sequence of independent works was unified by common elements or an underlying

structure in the piece of work. In 1924 his series of ten covers for Jim Dollar’s “Miss Mend” books used a standard geometric format that was printed in black and a second colour. The title, number, second colour and photomontage changes with each edition, conveying the uniqueness of each book while the standardized elements maintain its consistency and cost-practicality to the series.

Rodchenko’s inventive spirit and willingness to experiment with typography, montage and photography was influential to many artists and designers of later movements. His vision and dedication to his work were to set the course of art for the future, “We had visions of a new world, industry, technology and science.

We simultaneously invented and changed the world around us. We authored new notions of beauty and redefined art itself.”

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1

CONNECT THE DOTS!

01 Pages from Underscore Magazine Issue 01 and 02

A design collective with specialized background in design and behavioural science, Hjgher is a Singapore based design studio that was set up by Justin Long and Jerry Goh in 2006. The directors combined their strength on works ranging from publication, to interior design and even fashion design, producing a complete psychological experience that goes beyond visuals; They describe this as design psychology.

HJGHER: UNDERSCORE “A magazine attuned to a simple rhythm; quality of life.� Those were the words that Hjgher used to describe the nature of the magazine. Hjgher launched the Underscore magazine in 2009, a product after two years of hard work and preparation. As the name suggest, underscore is a magazine that highlights a particular theme in each issue. Their dedication to a complete pleasant reading experience prompt them to select music to be played as background music while reading particular articles from the magazineand also a careful selection of paper, paying attention to the colour, the texture and even the smell of the book. Care was also taken to ensure a great amount of readability and many other subtle design considerations. What sets it apart from other commercial magazines was the amount of space it allocates in their pages. None of the pages were covered with any print advertisements. Their passion in publishing a beautiful book can be measurable to that of the old master, William Morris, leader of the Arts and Craft movement back in 1900s.

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HJGHER

Can you start off by telling us about your background?

We are client design studio for Hjgher and we had been around since 2006. When we started, we did print only. We started with print because my background is Psychology and Jerry’s background is Design. So we went about addressing our client was more from a psychology point of view, where we address basically the target audience and what we think goes well. Basically, it is a very user-centric design studio. Because of that, we get to do a lot of work-interpreted projects which are not terribly exciting, that’s why we started Underscore. With regards to Underscore, we really like print that is why how it started. We did not really consider ourselves as magazine company or publisher, we just like print, and so everything else came with it.

How did Underscore magazine come about?

Just a bit more about the magazine, we actually have the idea for it in 2007. We only started in 2009; we took about 2 years to get all our contributors and everything else ready. We call it Underscore because, firstly every issue comes with a theme, we underscore the theme and that is the main reason for every issue. Another definition for Underscore, is the background music, if you were to look at certain articles, they suggest music track. So basically, you could actually go online and download the soundtrack and listen to the soundtrack while you read the magazine. The whole idea for this was to have a complete experience from the paper to the smell, to it being audio as well with the music. So we have to basically source everything ourselves and make sure everything was coherent. Underscore is just to underline. It’s mainly to highlight whatever is above it.

That is why we just use it as a name for the magazine.

We are the platform, the underline, everything else above it is important.

What inspire you on the layout? We realized that the articles use a large image and a body of texts, is that a unified theme throughout your own magazine?

We have a lot of magazines, magazines we like, magazines we don’t like, magazines that we never seen before, we just buy them. Because for us, it was really important that we try to figuring out what we don’t like in magazine and we like about magazine and we just pick them all up and use it for Underscore. We are not saying we are the best, we just did whatever we think is the best for the reader.

The reason why we did it, is because we felt that many magazines out there, didn’t think about the reader. We did this solely from the point of view from the reader, because legibility to us was very important. We felt that many magazines out there, many people wrote for the sake of writing and we wanted to do something different.

So if you got a chance to read it, we wanted every article to be inspirational. We wanted people to feel something that they could do something on it after that, or they can feel better or feel inspired. So to us, legibility is very important. We make sure that the font size was just right. We wanted to give full attention to the content we gathered and we don’t want to compromise on like the quality of image, the typography, the writings of the contributors. We felt like we owe it to them, to everyone reading as well as the contributors. But basically, the idea, we kept it very simple. Underscore exactly is just a platform to showcase everybody’s work. So even it is white or black, the text is white and is on the black background, we thought of how much to increase the size of font and the kerning everything, just to make sure everything still looks legible.

I think grid is something like cooking or driving, you have to learn the basics. I think it is important to learn the rule before you break them.

In regards to Underscore magazine, what kind of grids helps you to achieve the legibility in the magazine?

Here are some examples of how we developed. This is our first draft in many years back. You can see it is very rough and not much flexibility there and so we came out with this thinking of 5 by 3 systems. Then with all the content we gathered, we realized we need more flexible system for the images and texts to go together. For second round, I came out with 12 by 6 system, which I think was the most flexible you can get.

What do you think of grid?

I think grid is something like cooking or driving, you have to learn the basics. I see as the basics skills you learnt like the colour, like the typography, like the composition or layout. I think it is important to learn the rule before you break them. I think a lot people come out and say I want to break free from the convention but they don’t know the basics. I guess people just take the shortcut. I mean if you look at David Carson, you might think he is a crazy chaos, but he is actually a grid master. He could actually command grid so good that decided to just break free.

I think very importantly grid is all about proportions and if you think about it in very simpler sense, our bodies are all proportion and ratio and in the sense that your face, why does something look prettier, why does something looks beautiful, because your eyes are proportion. You have these rules that you can’t break, the eyes are always there. It relates to everything else. You somehow figure out when you were doing it, what is the best grid proportion for it.

How do you decide how much empty space to put in your pages?

It is really up to the content we have, so we don’t try to allocate empty space or even try to squeeze everything together. It is really up to what kind of texts or images we get. When we call for contributions we tell them about 800 to 2000 words. If not we’ll ask them to edit it.

We currently have 7 signatures and one signature is 16 pages so we have to know how much content that we want and then when you get more than that you need, is it necessary for it to be there, we curate it just enough for us. I think people just feel happy when they see empty space in it. However, people overlook the point that everything is balance and proportion.

You seemed to have an opinion about the pleasures of life when you described Underscore as ‘a magazine attuned to a simple rhythm, quality of life”. Do you think that life should be governed by rules or be allowed to express itself freely in order to make life more pleasurable?

Again, back to the quality of life. It was really about values, it wasn’t quality in the sense that you need to live life with nice car, good food. And like I say we attune to certain rhythm, we really like music. For us, everything we do has to do with music. That’s why we thought to invest soundtracks to our articles.

HJGHER

HJGHER: INTERIOR DESIGN

02 Kith Café (2009)

KITH CAFE

INTERVIEW

The concept for Kith Café was inspired by a simple phrase from the Japanese film, Be with you which translates into “would you care to have coffee with me sometime?” a plain sincere question that has the power to turn strangers into kith and kin.

Guided by this concept and philosophy, Kith Café features custom-made furnitures such as a long bench in the common seating area as opposed to individual tables so as to encourage customers to interact. “Truth to the nature of materials” was what advocated by Jungendstijl, Peter Behrens and we could see it being demonstrated in the café where over 10,000 blocks of plywood were trimmed to calculated dimensions then hand layered to make the furnitures.

These furnitures were made to be flexible such that they can be doubled as a table or bench, a solution to fully utilize the limited amount of space in the café.

Their dedication to their work was put in words, “We live on a simple rhythm to create all that is honest, all that is pure and all that is beautiful”, truly, words of wisdom that we ought to look up upon.

Were your interior design influenced by your judgement /intuition/ style in your typographic works?

I think it’s about balance. It’s about the positive negative space, even in interior design. I guess balance is the word.

Are you very particular in terms of the ideal proportions or the unity of the design (Principles of Design)?

Because interior design is more 3D. It’s being 3D, is not like 2D, where its just visuals. When it gets into 3D, all your senses, including smell, everything else is necessary. Like when we did KITH, it’s really a small space, and we played on the heights within the interior. For example, when we walk in, there were people sitting on a higher bench on the left while some sit on a lower bench on the right. We felt that if all is on the same level, it will look very packed. So by doing this, we are trying to make the space look bigger. I guess there are some golden rules, like balancing, and the positive negative space.

What do you think is the most interesting in your design most unique maybe the concept the design?

In most of our stuff, we try not to be something that we are not. I think it’s a lot about honesty. In interior it’s about the rawness the space material whole environment. I think we try to be as unpretentious as possible.

How about Elecklecism? There are a lot of curves within the interior.

We play with the curves so it’s more fun. There is a circus/ carnival theme and more colours are involved. Its women’s clothes, hence we want women to feel happy when they walk in. Ultimately they want to buy clothes. It’s important that they feel happy and comfortable when they pick up something they just wanted to buy it. As for cafe KITH, it was more of them being comfortable in that space.

How do you maintain order in the midst of deconstructions? In general the tabletops you did for KITH were made of individual panels of wood so as to create balance and clarity.

As for KITH (or anything we tried to do), our inspirations came from the trees. I don’t think its balance. I don’t think we are always very organized.

We worked with really good craftsmen, because we didn’t do it ourselves.

We need to look for the right people and the clarity of the idea works well with the right people.

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CARLO CARRA KURT SCHWITTERS DANIEL LIBESKIND EVELIN KASIKOV

BREAKING $

the Grid

A grid is a harmonious instrument.

Its goal is to achieve balance, symmetry, and order. So why would you want to bring imbalance to this order? Why break up this carefully constructed grid?

The answer is to add interest.

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CARLO CARRA

CARLO CARRA INTERVENTIONIST DEMONSTRATION “ The act of reading is challenged and undermined by our sensory responses to the complex visual space within which the words are located.”

Carlo Carrà was born in Quargnento (Alessandria) in 1881 to a family of artisans. At the age of twelve he worked as a mural decorator, in 1906, he was enrolled at the Accademia di Brera in Milan.

His work of this time revealed the influence of Italian Divisionism, combined with the nineteenthcentury Lombard Naturalism. He met Umberto Boccioni and Luigi Russolo, and together they came to know Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.

They wrote the Manifesto of Futurist Painters and the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Paintings.

By 1911, he made personal contacts with Guillaume Apollinaire and Pablo Picasso and began to explore techniques of Cubism. His intense investigation of Cubism encouraged him to reconsider the structure of his paintings, leading him to explore collage. In the Interventionist Demonstration he combined collage with Marinetti’s ‘’Parole in libertà’’ (wordsin-freedom) and Apollinaire’s ideograms, creating one of the most memorable Futurist images.

PAROLE IN LIBERTA ‘’Parole in libertà’’ (words-infreedom) was a literary form devised by Marinetti in which words in different fonts and sizes are freely “let loose” across the printed page.

The repetition of letters suggested shouts (EEEVVVIVAAA for example) and noises.

INTERVENTIONIST DEMONSTRATION Painted a few days after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo (28 June), and published in the magazine Lacerba on the day that Germany declared war on Russia (1 August), this image was inspired by the vortex-like spinning of leaflets dropped from an airplane over the Piazza del Duomo of Milan.

This refers to Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s and Carlo Carrà’s active support of Italian intervention against Austria in the Great War, suggested by the Italian flags and occasional words, such as TRIESTE ITALIANO. The composition moves outward from center in concentric circles and with a number of rays or lines of force moving out from this center giving an impression of an explosion of a loud noise or sound.

Various newspaper clippings, labels, tickets and other typographical fragments have been arranged into a composition that appears virtually to rotate and whose forces seem to stream both towards the centre and the picture edges and beyond. The several dark, blackish zones in the center also give an effective scene of spatial depth - a deep void - from which the ‘sound’ is coming and the space gradually flattening out toward the edges.

01 Interventionist Demonstration (1914)

The work has to be read in order to be understood, but the act of reading is challenged and undermined by our sensory responses to the complex visual space within which the words are located. The shattered syntax demands that we engage actively in patching together the fragments into a comprehensible whole.

Carrà fought a battle to breathe life into modern art, writing criticism and aesthetic doctrines.

Although by 1917 he had begun to explore Metaphysical iconography and compositional techniques, nevertheless the few years that he practised Futurism was meaningful and significant.

KURT SCHWITTERS

KURT SCHWITTERS MERZ DECONSTRUCTION Deconstruction was a means of expression for Kurt Schwitters as a method to suggest the state of the society during his time.

Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters(1887-1948) was born in Hanover, Germany. He worked in several genres and media, including Dada, Constructivism, Surrealism, poetry, sound, painting, sculpture, graphic design, typography and interiors (which he called Merzbau) which came to be known as installation art. He is most famous for his collages, called Merz.

After studying art at the Dresden Academy alongside Otto Dix and George Grosz (Die Brücke artists), he started his artistic career as a post-impressionist. As the First World War progressed, however, his work became darker, gradually developing a distinctive expressionist tone. But In 1918, his art was to change dramatically as a direct consequence of Germany’s economic, political and military collapse at the end of the First World War. “In the war, things were in terrible turmoil. What I had learned at the academy was of no use to me and the useful new ideas were still unready.... Everything had broken down and new things had to be made out of the fragments; and this is Merz. It was like a revolution within me, not as it was, but as it should have been.”

MERZ His first abstract collages in 1918 were influenced by then recent works of Hans Arp. Schwitters dubbed these collages Merz after a fragment of found text from the sentence Commerz Und Privatbank in his picture Das Merzbild, Winter 1918-19.

Merz has been called ‘Psychological Collage’. Most of the works attempt to make coherent aesthetic sense of the world around Schwitters, using fragments of found objects. These fragments often make witty allusions to current events. Autobiographical elements also abound; test prints of graphic designs; bus tickets; ephemera given by friends. Later collages would feature proto-pop mass media images.

THE MERZBAU Alongside his collages, Schwitters also dramatically altered the interiors of a number of spaces throughout his life. The most famous was The Merzbau, the transformation of six (or possibly more) rooms of the family house in Hannover, Waldhausenstrasse 5, which he worked on from 1923 to

1937 when he fled to Norway.

Early photos show the Merzbau with a grotto-like surface and various columns and sculptures, possibly referring to similar pieces

by Dadaists, including the Great Plasto-Dio-Dada-Drama by Johannes Baader, shown at the first International Dada Fair, Berlin, 1920. Works by Hannah Höch, Raoul Hausmann and Sophie Tauber, amongst others, were incorporated into the fabric of the installation. By 1933, it had been transformed into a sculptural environment, and three photos from this year show a series of angled surfaces aggressively protruding into a room painted largely in white, with a series of Tableaux spread across the surfaces.

Thus, it could be seen that deconstruction was a means of expression for Kurt Schwitters as a method to suggest the state of the society during his time. It waa period of reconstruction of the society that has been battled and destroyed by war.

01 Kurt Schwitters & Theo Van Doesburg, Kleine Dada Soiree (1922) 03 Merzbau

02 Merz no. 11 (1924)

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LIBESKIND

DANIEL LIBESKIND DECONSTRUCTED VISION

‘Startling distortions of architectural geometry underpinned by heart-rending symbolism’, these are words which characterizes architect Daniel Libeskind’s buildings.’

Born in 1946 with Polland-Jewish origins, Daniel Libeskind is a practitioner of deconstructive architecture which challenges preconceive conception of form and space. The concept of deconstruction is based philosophically in the literary movement Deconstruction and drew inspirations from the 1920s Russian Constructivism. In an era defined by a desire for rebellion and freedom, deconstruction developed as a contemporary style that challenges the ordered rationality of Modern Architecture with its stimulating unpredictability and seemingly chaotic buildings. Technological advancements in recent times has created computeraided design programs that works out complex calculations, enabling architects to create buildings that could not have been done before. This was written in his book, The Space of Encounter, “The work has developed in unexpected directions through a practice that does not mimic existing procedures, but instead attempts to break through into the excitement, adventure, and mystery of architecture. By dropping the designation ‘form,’ ‘function,’ and ‘program,’ and engaging in the public and political realm, which is synonymous with architecture, the dynamics of building take on a new dimension.”

THE DISAPPEARING GRIDS The construction of a building since the Modern period, has visibly shown the underlying structural grid that forms the foundation of its structure, due to the idea the ‘form’ should follow ‘function’. As a result, buildings began to look like numerous duplicated copies, lacking in creativity and originality.

Increasingly as society progresses, architects such as Daniel Libeskind begin to have a vision to seek a relationship between the form of the building with the emotional aspect it can invoke on a viewer, thus the structural grid begin to be of less significance. However because of its usefulness and practicality, it is impossible for architects to completely abandon the use of it but will merely become a part of the many elements in an increasingly complex and multi-layered design process.

The grid will then slowly recede from prominence.

Thus it can be seen that Deconstructivist architecture aims to break apart and reorganize the preconceive notion of a building and its spatial divisions, forcing different entry and perspective and reconstruct its underlying meaning.

BETWEEN THE LINES Between the Lines, a Jewish Museum (1988-1999) built

by Libeskind in Berlin, may appear to have been made up of unrelated disharmonious abstract forms but in fact is coherent and unified in bringing across the message about the horrors of the holocaust faced by the Jews.

Addresses of important Jewish people were plotted on a map and connected by lines-its intersection resulted in the zigzag plan of the structure. The twisted, tortured lines on the outer façade of the building slashed with openings appears to look like whip marks on a skin, bringing to mind the torture the Jews went through. The museum provides an active interplay between the mental and emotional states of being of the visitors, so much so that its empty hollowness of the interiors of the building is sufficient to invoke its intended message powerfully.

01 Between the Lines (1988)

EVELIN KASIKOV

EVELIN KASIKOV CMYK VISION

In the age where technological improvement is increasing overtaking every aspect of our lives, Estonia-born, designer Evelin Kasikov chose to work with her hands-using cross-stitch embroidery, a grid based craft to create graphic images based on traditional CMYK printing.

Kasikov developed her CMYK embroidery technique as part of her Masters in Arts project at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. And she had since made a name with her method of integrating traditional craft with modern technology. Her works was not only meant as an exploration of print through tactile experience but also an exploration of visual perception.

01 Blateration (2011)

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EVELIN KASIKOV

CMYK EMBROIDERY CMYK embroidery is a hand-made printing process, based on computer generated halftone screens. Images are halftoned according to conventional screen angles: Cyan 105˚, Magenta 75˚, Yellow 90˚, Black 45˚. Dot screens are then transformed into cross-stitch screens, printed on paper and marked for embroidery. Kasikov uses cotton threads in CMYK colours; the intensity of colour depends on the number of strands used.

The final outcome is a printed page created by hand.

Such a technique employs architectonic grid deconstruction where grids are overlapped and run at different angles in relation to each other.

This occurs mostly by her use of moiré patterns, patterns that result by overlaying two grids at slightly different angles or mesh sizes. With an analytical interest in grid systems and design techniques, it helps her to create work that is both adornment and optical illusion.

CMYK ALPHABET Using the techniques of CMYK Embroidery, Kasikov experimented with typography in her work, CMYK Alphabet, creating a set of 26 san-serif uppercase letterforms on a grid of 5x5 inch with the use of Gill Sans Light typeface. Each letter is hand embroidered by using a combination of two overlapping CMYK colours, halftoned at 90 and 45 degrees. The beauty of the work lies in the well-crafted handmade typography, the careful study of colour, form, tactility and perception. Recently, she had begun work with the lowercase letterforms.

BLATERATION Blateration was her most recent work that was made for the exhibition, Art of Lost Words, which runs from 19th March to 30th April 2011. Besides employing deconstruction using her CMYK technique, she had made conceptual or Pictorial Allusion in the work. This was done by deriving a visual idea from the word, Blateration, and applying it on the page format as a kind or arbitrary structure. The structure thus becomes an illusory representation of the word, blateration. The image of the word mimics what it might look visually if we were to come across a person who talks continuously. This marked yet another new milestone for Kasikov.

02 Experiments with CMYK half-toning (2007)

03 CMYK Alphabet (2009)

EVELIN KASIKOV

INTERVIEW WITH EVELIN

04 Letterforms on Cross Stitch: Digital vs Analogue Half-toning

Is the usage of grids possible beyond typography design? Where else do you see grids?

Being a book designer most of my day-to-day work is based on grid. Beyond design, I tend to look for order, system, hierarchy in everything that surrounds us. Grids are everywhere – be it a street plan, architecture or immediate surroundings like a bookshelf. What is a grid?

It is a device for structuring content. There is always some kind of underlying system behind the visible, although not always easy to recognise and understand.

Why did you choose to work with cross-stitch instead of other crafts as a means of exploration of typography? Was the consideration of typography grids the reason behind it?

Not really, I was initially experimenting with handmade colour. I started to use cross-stitch because it was well suited for my idea of visualising the inner structure of printed colour. My stitching is essentially about grids inside the colour. It is a handmade halftoning process, and cross stitch was perfect for that purpose. Crosses are square units based on a fixed grid and resemble halftone dots. From that I moved on to typographic work. I did lots of abstract experiments with single letterforms, in order to understand how different modes of reproduction affect the legibility and meaning.

Since you are working on a grid-based medium, is ‘breaking the grid’ possible?

There are many ways to break the grid: in my work this could be achieved by merging different grid systems to create new hybrids (analogue vs digital halftoning).

Continuing from the previous question, what attempts have you made to ‘break the grid’? Is your CMYK cross-stitch technique an example of it ?

My work is about different ways of seeing and experiencing print. For instance, in a poster based on a quote from Bringhurst’s ‘Elements of Typographic Style’ I attempted to incorporate different viewing distances into one piece of work. I am interested in deconstructing the phenomenon of seeing using my chosen tools: handmade technique, different screen resolutions, overprints, alignment and so on.

05 Simplify (poster)

Your latest piece of work, Blateration is much more dynamic than other previous works, is ‘breaking the grid’ the key to making a piece of work dynamic?

Blateration” is a piece of work created for a specific exhibition project – The Art of Lost Words. Artists, designers and illustrators were invited to create artworks inspired by forgotten words. I chose to work with “Blateration” which by definition means unceasing chatter; babbling. My work shows separate letters, a word that does not make sense. This work does not use grid and quite deliberately so, it is meant to look random!

In ‘Blateration’ you brought in the meaning of the word and the element of sound into the work, is this the direction that you will follow in other future works?

I want to experiment more with grids in language and deconstructing linguistic systems. I have done that in one of my early experiments where I compared the structure of Estonian national patterns with traditional poetry. However this was not a complete project and I definitely plan to further explore language in the context of handmade design.

In your works you choose Gill Sans Light as the main typeface. Why Gill Sans Light instead of other Swiss typefaces?

In my degree work I based my posters on a single lowercase letter ‘a’, set in Gill Sans. I was influenced by Eric Gill’s ‘An Essay on Typography’, his ideas on mass production vs craft in relation to typography. I also used some of his quotations in one of my degree books and the use of Gill Sans was a natural choice. Also, this single letter ‘a’ and ubiquitous, timeless typeface emphasise the idea that in my work process, the technique itself is most important, it is actually the content.

Do you have any advise on typography that you will like to give to young designers?

I think it is important to learn the basic skills of working with type, analyse layouts and grid systems and really spend time doing this. Once you have mastered these skills, it gives you so much freedom to interpret and experiment. I do believe it is not possible to break the rules without knowing them first. Also, I think it is important to work really hard. There is a lot of work around that looks visually attractive and trendy. Anyone can do that, it is easy to put together something nice looking, but is this good design? In my opinion all great design is based on knowledge and research.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHY Ambrose, Gavin Grids AVA Publishing SA Switzerland 2008 Bartram, Alan Futurist Typography and the Liberated Text The British Library London, England 2005 Heller, Steven Graphic Design History Allworth Press New York, USA 2001 Jury, David What is Typography RotoVision SA Switzerland 2006 Meggs, Philip B. Meggs’ History of Graphic Design John Wiley & Sons, Inc United States of America 2006 Roberts, Lucienne The Designer and the Grid RotoVision SA United Kingdom 2005 Spencer, Herbert Pioneers of Modern Typography MIT Press London, England 2004

CREDITS

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CREDITS Our group will like to thank the following people who had graciously contributed to our publication: Associate Professor Chin Wun Yun Joyce For her patient guidance throughout the year in Type I and Type II modules Ms Evelin Kasikov For the assistance she had provided us through countless emails Mr Justin Long, Mr Jerry Goh and Hjgher team For hosting us at their studio for an interview session Dora Godfrey, Edison Chee, Philmon Yip Our wonderful classmates who had been with us for the past two years Fellow Type II classmates For their wonderful feedback and support And all who had made this publication possible.

Mentor Associate Professor Chin Wun Yun Joyce Editor Leow Hou Teng Layout Editor Roxanne Lim Ruo Shan Graphics Editor Teh Xue Fen Shellen

Typefaces Champagne & Limousines Baskerville Helvetica Neue Light Print Clearly Print Dashed Paper Magic Comma Whitew Muse Elstar Muse Kaiser Tracing Paper

Made by Hand Made with Love