Graphic Design Portfolio 2014

Page 1

GR.105 Principles OF GRAPHIC DESIGN Spring 2014 INSTRUCTOR: Scott rankin Xuan-an thai Interior architecture and design


Form and Communication Using three flat black rectangles, these images express and communicate the following words: Bold, Stress, Tranquil, and Kinetic.

xuan-an thai

GR.105 Principles OF GRAPHIC DESIGN spring 2014 INSTRUCTOR: scott rankin

STRESS

TRANQUIL

KINETIC

PRINCIPLES OF GRAPHIC DESIGN

bold


xuan-an thai

A Visual Journey: An exploration of line and grid systems

GR.105 Principles OF GRAPHIC DESIGN spring 2014 INSTRUCTOR: scott rankin

PRINCIPLES OF GRAPHIC DESIGN

This 2nd project examines the transportation of demolition. Demolition is pure destruction. Large commercial style buildings require the assistance of a wrecking ball swung by a crane into the side of the building. The image is an investigation of the relationship in between a wrecking ball and the first strike at a barrier. It illustrates the moment of contact between the two through geometric expression. This is wrecking ball demolition and the trajectory of the fragmented barrier.

Xuan-An Thai

Xuan-An Thai

Xuan-An Thai

Xuan-An Thai


Image Juxtaposition and Connotative Meaning

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GR.105 Principles OF GRAPHIC DESIGN spring 2014 INSTRUCTOR: scott rankin

These three collages illustrate the journey of a tightrope walker crossing the Grand Canyon. The start is focusing on the all consuming task at hand. The walker is torn between a myriad of emotions, but is composed and preparing for that first step. The middle of the journey is named Defy. It is a depiction of the adrenaline of suspension. There is determination and confidence poised on a single line caught in the wind. The walker is suspended between the canyons feeling on top of the world. Our walker has no time to react. They fall to their death. The final card is Fin. The danger and desperation is finite.

FOCUS

FIN.

PRINCIPLES OF GRAPHIC DESIGN

DEFY


Typography and Typesetting This is a typesetting excersize exploring the basic typographic conventions of: alignment, line, spacing, and rags using a quote from a design influence.

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GR.105 Principles OF GRAPHIC DESIGN spring 2014 INSTRUCTOR: scott rankin

“I first experienced the power of type to make the whole intellectual world readable with the same letters in the days of metal. This really awakened in me the urge to develop the best possible legibility. The time soon came when texts were no longer set in metal types but by means of a beam of light. The task of adapting the typefaces of the old masters from relief type to flat film was my best school. When we came to the “Grotesk” style of sanserif, however, I had my own ideas which led to the Univers™ family. Technological progress was rapid. Electronic transfer of images brought the stepping, followed by my feelings for form. But today, with curve programs and laser exposure, it seems to me that the way through the desert has been completed. From all these experiences the most important thing I have learned is that legibility and beauty stand close together and that type design, in its restraint, should be only felt but not perceived by the reader. In the course of my professional life I have aquired knowledge and manual skill. To pass on what I had learned and achieved to the next generation became a necessity.”

“I first experienced the power of type to make the whole intellectual world readable with the same letters in the days of metal. This really awakened in me the urge to develop the best possible legibility. The time soon came when texts were no longer set in metal types but by means of a beam of light. The task of adapting the typefaces of the old masters from relief type to flat film was my best school. When we came to the “Grotesk” style of sanserif, however, I had my own ideas which led to the Univers™ family. Technological progress was rapid. Electronic transfer of images brought the stepping, followed by my feelings for form. But today, with curve programs and laser exposure, it seems to me that the way through the desert has been completed. From all these experiences the most important thing I have learned is that legibility and beauty stand close together and that type design, in its restraint, should be only felt but not perceived by the reader. In the course of my professional life I have aquired knowledge and manual skill. To pass on what I had learned and achieved to the next generation became a necessity.”

- Adrian Frutiger

- Adrian Frutiger

justified

“I first experienced the power of type to make the whole intellectual world readable with the same letters in the days of metal. This really awakened in me the urge to develop the best possible legibility. The time soon came when texts were no longer set in metal types but by means of a beam of light. The task of adapting the typefaces of the old masters from relief type to flat film was my best school. When we came to the “Grotesk” style of sanserif, however, I had my own ideas which led to the Univers™ family. Technological progress was rapid. Electronic transfer of images brought the stepping, followed by my feelings for form. But today, with curve programs and laser exposure, it seems to me that the way through the desert has been completed. From all these experiences the most important thing I have learned is that legibility and beauty stand close together and that type design, in its restraint, should be only felt but not perceived by the reader. In the course of my professional life I have aquired knowledge and manual skill. To pass on what I had learned and achieved to the next generation became a necessity.”

“I first experienced the power of type to make the whole intellectual world readable with the same letters in the days of metal. This really awakened in me the urge to develop the best possible legibility. The time soon came when texts were no longer set in metal types but by means of a beam of light. The task of adapting the typefaces of the old masters from relief type to flat film was my best school. When we came to the “Grotesk” style of sanserif, however, I had my own ideas which led to the Univers™ family. Technological progress was rapid. Electronic transfer of images brought the stepping, followed by my feelings for form. But today, with curve programs and laser exposure, it seems to me that the way through the desert has been completed. From all these experiences the most important thing I have learned is that legibility and beauty stand close together and that type design, in its restraint, should be only felt but not perceived by the reader. In the course of my professional life I have aquired knowledge and manual skill. To pass on what I had learned and achieved to the next generation became a necessity.”

- Adrian Frutiger

- Adrian Frutiger

centered

flush right ragged left

PRINCIPLES OF GRAPHIC DESIGN

Flush left ragged right


Design Influences and Grid Exploration This is a collective culmination of magazine layout research and influence inspiration.

xuan-an thai

GR.105 Principles OF GRAPHIC DESIGN spring 2014 INSTRUCTOR: scott rankin

Adrian Frutiger (born May 24, 1928 in Unterseen, Canton of Bern, Switzerland) is a typeface designer who influenced the direction of digital typography in the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st. He is best known for creating the Univers and Frutigertypefaces. Charles Peignot, of the Paris foundry Deberny Et Peignot, recruited Frutiger based upon the quality of the illustrated essay Schrift / Écriture / Lettering: the development of European letter types carved in wood. Frutiger’s wood-engraved illustrations of the essay demonstrated his skill, meticulousness, and knowledge of letterforms. At Deberny & Peignot foundry, Frutiger designed the typefaces “Président”, “Méridien”, and “Ondine”. In the event, Charles Peignot set Frutiger to work upon converting extant typefaces for the new phototypesetting Linotype equipment. Adrian Frutiger’s first commercial typeface was Président — a set of titling capital letters with small, bracketed serifs, released in 1954. A calligraphic, informal, script face, Ondine

Adrian Frutiger

(“wave” in French), also was released in 1954. In 1955, Méridien, a glyphic, old-style, serif text face was released. The typeface shows inspiration by Nicholas Jenson, and, in the Méridien type, Frutiger’s ideas of letter construction, unity, and organic form, are first expressed together. In 1956, he designed his first-ofthree, slab-serif typefaces — Egyptienne, on the Clarendon model; after Univers, it was the second, new text face to be commissioned for photocomposition. Charles Peignot envisioned a large, unified font family, that might be set in both the metal and the photocomposition systems. Impressed by the success of the Bauer foundry’s Futura typeface, Peignot encouraged a new, geometric sans-serif type in competition. Frutiger disliked the regimentation of Futura, and persuaded Peignot that the new sans-serif should be based on the realist (neo-grotesque) model. The 1896 face, Akzidenz Grotesk, is cited as the primary model. To maintain unity across the 21 variants, each weight and width, in roman and italic, was drawn and approved before any matrices were cut. In the Univers font, Frutiger introduced his two-digit numeration; the first digit (3 though 8) indicates the weight, “3” the lightest, “8” the heaviest. The second digit indicates the face-width and either roman or oblique. The response to Univers was immediate and positive; he claimed it became the model for his future typefaces: Serifa (1967) and Glypha (1977) are based upon it. In the early 1970s, the RATP, the public transport authority of Paris, asked him to examine the Paris Metro signage. He created aUnivers font variation — a set of capitals and numbers specifically for white-on-dark-blue backgrounds in poor light. The success of this modern, yet human, typeface, spurred the French airport authority’s commissioning a “way-finding signage” alphabet for the new Charles de Gaulle International Airport in the Roissy suburb of Paris. The “wayfinding-signage” commission brief required a typeface both legible from afar and from an angle. Frutiger considered adapting Univers, but decided it was dated as too 1960s. The resultant typeface is an amalgamation of Univers tempered with organic influences of the Gill Sans, a Humanist sans-serif typeface by Eric Gill, and Edward Johnston’s type for the London Transport, and Roger Excoffon’s Antique Olive. Originally titled Roissy, the typeface was renamed Frutiger when the Mergenthaler Linotype Company released it for public use in 1976. Frutiger’s 1984 typeface Versailles is an old-style serif text with capitals like those in the earlier Président. In Versailles, the serifs are small and glyphic. In 1988, Frutiger completed Avenir (“future” in French), inspired by Futura, with structural likeness to the neo-grotesques; Avenir has a full series of unified weights. In 1991, he finished Vectora, a design influenced by Morris Fuller Benton’s type faces Franklin Gothic and News Gothic.Univers was reissued with sixty-three variants; Frutiger was reissued as Frutiger Next with true italic and additional weights.

PRINCIPLES OF GRAPHIC DESIGN

ADRIAN FRUTIGER


Design Influences and Grid Exploration This is a collective culmination of magazine layout research and influence inspiration.

xuan-an thai

GR.105 Principles OF GRAPHIC DESIGN spring 2014 INSTRUCTOR: scott rankin

RUDOLPH DE HARAK

Rudolph de Harak enlivened a faceless street, and likewise his inspired exhibition designs for museums and expositions have transformed didactic displays into engaging environments. Dedicated to the efficient communication of information, de Harak uses detail the way a composer scores musical notes, creating melodies of sensation to underscore meaning. His exhibits are indeed symphonies that both enlighten and entertain. His exploded diesel engine, the centerpiece of the Cummins Engine Museum in Columbus, Indiana, in which almost every nut and bolt is deconstructed in midair, is evidence of the designer’s keen ability for extracting accessible information from even the most minute detail. And yet while his exhibition design explores the rational world, his graphic design uncovers the subconscious. Although de Harak deliberately uses neutral typography to anchor his design, the hundreds of book jackets, record covers, and posters he has created since opening a design office in 1952, is evidence that he also expresses emotion through type and image. While not the raw expressionism of today’s most fashionable designers, de Harak employs abstract form ever so subtly to unlock alternative levels of perception. He relates this practice to Abstract Expressionism, which in the early Fifties he wholeheartedly embraced; and while this may be difficult to see amid his orthodox, systematic design, the nearly 350 covers he designed for McGraw-Hill Paperbacks in the early Sixties brings this relationship into sharp focus. De Harak’s rigid grid is, in fact, a tabula rasa on which rational and eccentric imagery together evoke inner feelings. The conceptual themes of these books—philosophy, anthropology, psychology and sociology, among them—offered de Harak a proving ground to test the limits of conceptual art and photography. At the same time, he experimented with a variety of approaches inspired by Dada, Abstract Expressionism, and ultimately Op-Art movements.

PRINCIPLES OF GRAPHIC DESIGN

Ram shree Ram Rudolph de Harak, also Rudy de Harak (April 10, 1924 – April 24, 2002), was an American graphic designer. De Harak was notable as a designer who covered a broad spectrum of applications with a distinctly modernist aesthetic. He was also influential as a professor of design. De Harak was born in Culver City, California. After serving in World War II, de Harak was influenced by two lectures given by Will Burtin and György Kepes which compelled him to pursue graphic design. Along with Saul Bass, Alvin Lustig and others, de Harak helped found the Los Angeles Society for Contemporary Designers before he moved to New York to become art director for Seventeen for just 18 months. At the same time, de Harak drew illustrations for Esquire and soon began his long tenure in teaching. De Harak served “as the Frank Stanton Professor of Design, for a quarter century at the Cooper Union, and visiting professor at Yale, Alfred University, Parsons, Pratt Institute and other schools.” He designed a three-story digital clock installed on the exterior of 200 Water St. (previously 127 John St.) in New York City. The clock consists of “72 square modules with numerals that light according to date, hour, minute and second”. He also designed a neon-illuminated entrance and a scaffold covered with brightly covered canvas outside. De Harak is a member of the 1989 Art Directors Club Hall of Fame. He was the recipient of a 1992 AIGA Medal. If Modernism imposes coldness and sterility, as some critics have argued, then Rudolph de Harak must be doing something wrong. A devout Modernist, his work for public and private institutions is uncompromisingly human. For proof, take 127 John Street, a typically Modern skyscraper in New York City’s financial district. Before de Harak designed its entrance-level façade it exuded all the warmth of glass and steel on a winter’s day. But with the installation of his threestorey-high digital clock (comprised of 72 square modules with numerals that light according to date, hour, minute and second); the mysterious neon-illuminated tunnel leading to the building’s entrance; and the bright, canvas-covered, permanent scaffolds that serve as both protection and sundecks, 127 John Street was transformed form a Modern edifice into a veritable playground. De Harak’s innovative addition to the John Street building


Design Influences and Grid Exploration This is a collective culmination of magazine layout research and influence inspiration.

xuan-an thai

GR.105 Principles OF GRAPHIC DESIGN spring 2014 INSTRUCTOR: scott rankin

Herbert F. (Herb) Lubalin (pron. “loob’-allen”; March 17, 1918 – May 24, 1981) was an American graphic designer. He collaborated with Ralph Ginzburg on three of Ginzburg’s magazines: Eros, Fact, and Avant Garde, and was responsible for the creative visual beauty of these publications. He designed a typeface, ITC Avant Garde, for the last of these; this font could be described as a reproduction of art-deco, and is seen in logos created in the 1990s and 2000s. 1. His name was pronounced Loo-ball-in, with the accent on the loo. 2. He was color-blind and ambidextrous. 3. Although he ultimately rejected advertising in favor of graphic design, as an agency art director at Sudler & Hennessey he was a key figure in advertising in the 1960s, introducing expressive typography into print advertising. 4. He rejected Swiss modernism, which he felt was ill-suited to the popular American imagination, in favor of vernacular, decorative, and humanistic approaches to visual expression. 5. He was a designer with political convictions, a supporter of liberal causes. 6. Anyone given a Lubalin “tissue” (his hand-drawn layout) to see through to production could not claim to be the piece’s designer. 7. By the time the MTV logo was designed in 1981, Lubalin and his signature style were no longer seen as avant-garde. 8. He freely acknowledged his many collaborators. 9. Reflecting on the obscenity conviction of his friend and client Ralph Ginzberg, the publisher of Avant Garde, Fact, and Eros, Herbert F. Lubalin said, “I should have gone to jail too.”

10. Herb often said that when he retired he would devote his life to painting. Despite the fact that he passed away over 30 years ago in May 1981, Herb Lubalin’s shadow still looms large over modern typography and the ITC Avant Garde font he devised has been used widely on many logos throughout the last two decades. His work as a graphic designer focused mainly on typefaces and how they could dramatically impact upon the message while much of his work is considered by many to be years ahead of its time. Herb Lubalin entered Cooper Union at the age of seventeen, and quickly became entranced by the possibilities presented by typography as a communicative implement. Gertrude Snyder notes that during this period Lubalin was particularly struck by the differences in interpretation one could impose by changing from one typeface to another, always “fascinated by the look and sound of words (as he) expanded their message with typographic impact.” After graduating in 1939, Lubalin had a difficult time finding work; he was fired from his job at a display firm after requesting a two dollar raise on his weekly salary, up from a paltry eight (around USD100 in 2006 currency). Lubalin would eventually land at Reiss Advertising, and later worked for Sudler Hennessey, where he practiced his considerable skills and attracted an array of design, typographic and photographic talent that included George Lois, Art Kane and John Pistilli. Herb Lubalin, Inc. was founded in 1964. For such a quiet, gentle person to have accomplished so much is testimony indeed to the power of ideas in the hands of a master. Herbert F. Lubalin was an American graphic designer. He collaborated with Ralph Ginzburg on three of Ginzburg’s magazines: Eros, Fact, and Avant Garde, and was responsible for the creative visual beauty of these publications. New York graphic designer.

PRINCIPLES OF GRAPHIC DESIGN

Herb Lubalin

HERB LUBALIN


Research Concept Map: Analysis, Understanding and Systems

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GR.105 Principles OF GRAPHIC DESIGN spring 2014 INSTRUCTOR: scott rankin

This is an excersize in visually communicating information through graphical representation. Basically, it is an illustrative Infographic about earthquakes in San Francisco compared to earthquakes in Los Angeles over the past 239 years inspired by California city skylines and disrupted fault lines.

LEGEND

BAY AREA

UNDETERMINED FAULT NO FAULT HAYWARD FAULT WEST NAPA FUALT REGER’S CREEK FAULT MT. DIABLO-GREENVILLE FAULT

SAN ANDREAS FAULT CALAVERAS FAULT M = MAGNITUDE

PRINCIPLES OF GRAPHIC DESIGN

LOS ANGELES

SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN BAY AREA AND LOS ANGELES EARTHQUAKES This infographic illustrates a comparison between the history of Bay Area and Los Angeles Earthquakes. The shape of the graph is inspired by images of cracked brick sidewalks falling into the earth after a fault line has collapsed. It is a representation of 239 years of major California Earthquakes registering over a 5.0 Magnitude on the richter scale. The Los Angeles years are staggered to resemble a fault line. The different colors display the different disrupted fault lines as shown in the legend. The

infographic reveals the relationship between different years, frequency of major earthquakes, location, and severity. One can observe that Los Angeles experiences a larger quantity of earthquakes by far. The San Andreas fault line runs through both areas in California, but because it is located only 30 miles outside of Los Angeles, the frequency is logically higher. The steel and coffee colors used represent the grit and steel of the caffeinated California commercial city skyline. A connecting plateau symbolizes the earth between these locations of natu-

ral disaster and the stability between.This is an interpreta tion of a city and it’s relationship between fault lines that can become disrupted and cause immense destruction.

cant-la-area-earthquakes-1769-present/ http://www.earthquakesafety.com/earthquake-history.html


Historical Journey: Communicating an Experience

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GR.105 Principles OF GRAPHIC DESIGN spring 2014 INSTRUCTOR: scott rankin

PRINCIPLES OF GRAPHIC DESIGN

This assignment is connected with the graph information represented in the Infographic. It is a poster advertising a lecture series on how to survive a deadly San Francisco Earthquake. The orange represents caution and the blocks represent the need for education to avoid the future danger.

Attend a lecture series on how to survive a deadly San Francisco Earthquake. Get educated or visit us online.

www.survivalcalifornia.edu/earthquake


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