05 2015
NEW VISUAL LANGUAGE
The most merciful thing in the world... is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.
1-4 Modernism
5-8 Postodernism
9-10 City In Flux
11-12 Earth Artefacts
13-16 Typography
New Visual Language
MODERNISM “Modernism released us from the constraints of everything that had gone before with a euphoric sense of freedom.�
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Henry Mattise
Van Goth
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New Visual Language
MODERNISM Modernism, a broad movement that dominated much of 20th century art, developed in reaction to stale artistic forms and what the modernists saw as the depersonalization of modern life. modernism is a cultural movement that generally includes the progressive art and architecture, music, literature and detsign which emerged in the decades before 1914. It was an art movement that began in the 1860s and included van gogh, cezanne, gaugin and seurat. art became different and people began to test the boundaries of art.
indistinguishable from non-art such as a solid-coloured canvas,or, in the case of performance art, a mentally ill person. In my opinion of modernism I believe that some types of modern art are supposed to be an explorations of certain ideas or philosophies of color or design. however, some rare art works are just plain weird and difficult to understand. Overall, Modernism isn’t so much about skill in execution, but rather originality and exploration. I believe that the style really has contributed to s lot of my work as this magazine itself is based on the modernsit grids. The grids play a huge role in evrything on this magazine as nothing would be as accurate as they are without them, the grid that is being used is a 15x15. Using such a small grid allowed me to get a more accurrate palcing of all my text and imagery. One main importance of modernist magazines were that they did not have huge clumps of copy, and if they did it was not just written in an essay format but, it was given character and shape to fit the page.
Artists like Henri Matisse noted the importance of children’s art, but did not eagerly embrace it as an influence in his work; Wassily Kandinsky collected children’s work and actively included imagery from some of these drawings in his paintings, particularly in his earlier pre-war landscapes.Modernism was just not within art, but also Modernist literature. The works of the modern age were way more complex and challenging to the reader’s minds, compared to the works of its preceding ages. Modern art was heavily criticised while it was being produced. People complained that modern art was
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post MODERNISM “What is that unforgettable line?”
Postmodernism was a movement in architecture that rejected the modernist, avant garde, passion for the new postmodernists, in various fields, challenge the principles of modernism. The basic idea behind postmodernism is that there is no overarching style or manifesto, and that art, sculpture, film and architecture can borrow elements from other movements. Postmodernism was originally a reaction to modernism. largely influenced by the western european disillusionment induced by world war II, postmodernism tends to refer to a cultural. Postmodernsim to me is “weird for the sake of weird” , as explained by the famous television show, The Simpsons. This statement when heard was the only explenation of postmoderism that really made any sense. The postmodern approach has proved extremely popular with many students of fine art however, since mininalism is a movement within this period I would say that I have tinkered with some postmodernism is the past. There have been so many different movements within postmordernism: Pop Art, Post-Minimalism, Land Art, Photorealism, New Subjectivity, Video, Etc. The philosphy definition of postmodernidm is the “critique of human rationality.” It is any work or art that challenges those sentiments. The beautiful picture to the right of the page is of a group called ‘Mephis’. This group was founded in Milan 1981 by a man called Ettore Sottsass, he designed one of the best pieces of postmodern furniture, ceramics, fabrics, glass and metal objects. Post modernism is the concept that there is nothing new anymore just recombination of already discovered forms it lead to things like highly trained ballet dancers passing rubber balls to each other. Postmodernism as a cultural movement is an aspect of postmodernity, which is broadly defined as the condition of Western society after modernity. Postmodernism is also used in a broader sense to describe attitudes, sometimes part of the general culture, and sometimes specifically aimed at postmodern critical theory. Overall, this style has been said to be a critique of modernsim but really, it really depends on how you interpret the movement and the different styles within the movement.
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Memphis Group, A Collection of Furniture
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Salvador Dali
At the age of 26 Salvador Dali imagined went to entertain his guests with his wife, and executed one of the great masterpieces they filled them selves with wine and of the 20th century and perhaps one of the cheese. That evening his wife and the last truly important paintings in the history others went to the cinema however, Dali of art. The Persistance of Memory depicts had a headache and so went to sleep. a dream like state, the Once he awoke he melting and distorted “There are no hard distinctions noticed that his wife clocks symbolise the between what is real and what is as not back, he had erractic passage of unreal, nor between what is true the feeling that time time that we experience and what is false. A thing is not was moving slow when dreaming. There necessarily either true or false; it can and when he went be both true and false.” to the living room. is quite an interesting he noticed that the story behind the painting itself. It first started off as a calm cheese that was left on the table had desert landscape, and was apprently melted, these two factors then create on supposed to represent the coast of catalan. one the most intersting and outstanding He had left the painting for the night and pieces of art we see today. “Dali’s Story”
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city in flux
“A city in constant change, constantly evloving”
This being the first project of the year had its ups and downs, as when the project wsa briefed to us I was unsure as to what we had to do. However, a few days in I got to grips with the course and balancing everything out. This project ‘A City in Flux’ was a pretty broad project, there were many routes i could take to get to my final piece but, it didnt take me too long to get a few ideas doodled out. My ideas consisted of cultural signage, information graphics and an app for the city. I quickly found that the app idea would not work in the given time frame, the final outcome would not be how I wanted, so it was crossed off the list. Another idea that I had to let go was the cultural signage, I had high expectations for this piece as I Iwas going to laser cut huge metal in the shapes of signs and then print on them using the universities facilities. My final idea was the one that I eventually chose, the information graphic idea. From the start this idea of a new way to travel around the city without the use of smartphones and generally being antisocial was my main goal. This idea had to make people put everything down for atleast a second to look at a beautiful piece of craftsmenship, that has
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a purpose and can be kept forever. This concept was not easy to grasp at the start as it was my first time playing around with 3D models and honestly I found it rather tricky. I had to make over a dozen mock ups for each of the designs as I would always encounter problems with the fold lines, some ended up being too short, and others too long. This was not an easy project by far but, it was one of the most rewarding projects I have had the pleasure of working on. Towards the end of the project I felt that i need to represent the models at a high standard, so I got lights, backgrounds and a professional camera and got to work, showing my ameture photgraphy skills in the process. To get the sort of coloured light over the white models, so that they contrasted more against the bacground, I had to place a veriety of coloured acetate over the light, this gave the light and subtle effct that you in see in the pictires to your right. Overall, this was a very positive project for me, although I started slow on this project, as it was my first. I really made up for it with my two final outcomes.
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earth artefact “Open your eyes! There is more to what the eye can see.”
Earth Artefacts, my second studio assignment for the year. This project was far more understandable than the last. The project in my eyes was an iconographers dream because, that is how I interpreted the project to be. My development process for this project was much the same as the last, however, instead of narrowing mt ideas down to just three, this time I went for five, and explored aech and everyone of them. There was one main idea behind all five ideas and that was that they would all contain some sort of illustrated iconography. the reason I decided to look at iconography was that the project was to help send a message to into space for other life forms to be able to find us and learn some of our ways before they even arrive amd I thought language would not be the best way of portarying earth, so I decided to use a pictoral form od communication. My colour scheme as you can see from the picture to the right is the oerfect shade or red and blue, with a beige colour for the background. The final outcome you see to your right is called “Ticket to Earth”. The idea behind this concept was that it would allow only a certain amount of aliens to access earth on a specific date at a specific location. There are only a few tickets on the whole information graphic so I believed that if anyone was to get the chance to come to earth, it was be someone of high authority. The overall outcome of this project exceeded my expectations. All of the colours worked in perfect harmony, the icons are consistant all throughout the information graphic and the ticket design although made small are still readable. This project was a complete success in terms of a finished project, I believed that the documentations that comes before all of this is up to a high standard anf just overall a good body of work in my eyes. One of my main quarries were that I wasnt sure if I would meet the deadline on time however, with much late night work I managed to push myself right on track a couple of weeks before the deadline. Although this is a long information graphic, the idea was that it would fold at intervals into a constatener shape and fit in a nicelt design and preserved box for the aliens to open. However, I did not have enough time to finish that portion of the design idea but, made a small mock up.
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typography “Typography is the craft of endowing human language with a durable visual form.”
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Typography, anything is possible with taking forward as the final alphabet. I then type. This small production project was resketched the design you saw on the last very interesting in the sense that we were page, both with black fill and not. My final recreating typography from an old piece typeface in the style of Lissitsky’s work of art, in my case Lissitsky. I first started came out in a way that I did not expect. with quick sketches I actually prefer the of shapes and lines, Type well used is invisible as type, sketched look rather this gave me the feel just as the perfect talking voice to the fully vectored of the artists work. I is the unnoticed vehicle for the one. I could initially then drew four initial see this typeface transmission of words, ideas. being used from ideas in four different artist styles, using only a few letters to headers, I believe that since it is a vey bold start. The next stage of the project was to typeface that it would not work as body further develop the initial designs. I chose copy or even subheadings. Overall for my three designs to further edit by adding first typeface design I am really happy with the full alphabet to them. By this stage the outcome, it really does represent his i alerady knew what design I would be work in the way that I wanted it to do.
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“A woman knows the face of the man she loves as a sailor knows the open sea.�
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