LECTURES

WRITTEN BY: HOMEIRA HADDADI

ComputersA click of a button and we are connected to the world. This is the extent of the impact that comput-ers have had on our lives. Before the age of comput-ers up until the 1970s letters, telegrams or the occa-sional phone call were the means of communication between people. However, the type writer was in-vented in the 1870s by 3 American inventors named Christopher Sholes, Carlos Gidden

At first the type writer was not the biggest of suc-cesses, some businesses even considered it rude to type a letter to a client rather than hand writing it. However, as time went on, the type writer stared to settle in especially in business life and in offices and it did make every day work a lot easier. Among the first to use the type writer was Mark Twain, he be-came the first person to submit a novel via the type writer.

The usage if typewriters, tel-egrams and letters was much used until around the 1970s when computers where distrib-uted in the market.

The first personal computer was the Altair 8800 and came on the market in 1975. Two years on, the Ap-ple II was unveiled, it was considered “the machine that made the revolution,” and was the offspring of Steven Jobs and Steven Wozniak. The latter was Ap-ple’s star designer and made a profit worth $1.7 bil-lion by 1983 alone.

Apple however, did not remain the single mo-nopoly in the computer production industry and as years went on, the computer produc-tion industry expanded enormously.Today one is spoiled for choice when entering a computer store with different sizes, shapes and col-ours. Each designed for different purposes. For ex-ample for more complex design functions, one may choice Macintosh but Acer, Toshiba, Sony are dif-ferent makes of computers, they are all the same in their essence but differ in the way that they perform the task that we want with their different functions.

Like any other major technological invention in the world, for example the invention of the telephone, computers have a huge amount of affect in the eve-ryday lives of people to the extent where visualising a world without them seem very close to impos-sible. From the work of an air traffic controller to a simple day at University, or even just an afternoon at home, one cannot visualise not having a comput-er

In this essay I will briefly talk about the effects of computers on the world, briefly pointing out the advantages and disadvantages and reaching a con-clusion.

As well as the simple positive effects of efficiency and time saving that computer have had on the dai-ly life of each individual, they have also had specific effects. Simple effects could be seen in everyday life such as typing essays in a world document or going to the back and having all your statements ready in a very short amount of time and at a click of a few buttons.

However the specific effects have also been very vast.

Today computers could be seen as the main source via which one may access the internet. The internet could also be seen a revolutionary tool that has in-terlinked the world which is the essence of the era which we are faced with today that is the era of glo-balisation.

One could argue that computers have had a great effect on globalisation. Globalisation could be de-fined as the world’s movement towards economic, financial, trade and communications integration.

The positive impact of the internet technology on globalization includes the modernization and im-provement in the business sector on a worldwide basis. Businesses improve their global competi-tiveness and productivity with more efficient elec-tronic transaction processing and instant access to information. New information and commu-nication technologies (ICT) as well as radically changing international political and regulatory environments reshaped the nature of manage-ment consulting.

On the international communication level there have also been special cases. For example a case that has been personal specifically in my life and many close people around me was the spread of information from the June 2009 Iranian elections.On the 12 June 2009 approximately 80% of Ira-nian people went to vote, most of which were predicted to vote for the opposition, Mir Hossein Mosavi.

However after the votes had been counted, the out-come was far from the people’s will. Hence the peo-ple of Iran took the streets to protest against what they believed to be a rigged election. News of the situation in Tehran and most major cities spread across the world and fast. At first the BBC and other broadcasting channels had representatives in Iran and were giving regular updates on the crisis. How-ever once the situation became to threatening for the Iranian Authorities to handle, the Western Me-dia Journalists were banned from any kind of broad cast and were even expelled from the country. Therefore it became difficult for Iranians to reach out for help and have their voice heard by the Inter-national Community.This is where the computer revolution came into play. Iranians were making amateur films with their mobile phones and sending them on websites such as Twitter and Facebook, in an attempt to have their voices heard to advertise solidarity between Irani-ans all around the world and to show the Interna-tional community that they would do whatever it takes to fight for freedom and to advocate democ-racy and on the 20th of June 2009 the world watch a young women (Neda Agha-Soltan) being shot dead in one of protest immediately after the shooting

took place. This was via the upload of the video of the shooting by an amateur with their phone. Hence the com-puter and Internet revolutions, helped greatly in the organisation of what became known as the Green Revolution.However, just as any other phenomenon, there are also arguments against computers and their usage to the current extend.

For example the extent to which the youth are now spending their time on the computer could be viewed by some as unhealthy.

More than 92% of children between the age of 4 and 17 play video games on a regular basis. Some of these video games are violent and involve scenes of gun shooting, killing and blood. Families are hence becoming more and more worried about the mental health of their children. They are worried that chil-dren are not having the amount of exercise needed and are in fact addicted to gaming on the computer.n addition, it may be reasonably inferred from the more than 1,000 reports and studies on television violence that video game violence may also contrib-ute to aggressive behaviour and desensitization to

violence.”Another study reports that “Hostility was increased both in subjects playing a highly aggres-sive video game and those playing a mildly aggres-sive video game. Subjects who had played the high-aggression game were significantly more anxious than other subjects”. Moreover, the time per week that children spend on the computer has increased in the past decade from 2.8 to 4.3. Hence, it could be argued that computers are creat-ing a distance between children and their families and even between children and the real world.

In conclusion,

There are as seen above, both advantages and disad-vantages to the wide spread use of computers in eve-ryday life. Computers help save time in everyday ac-tivities such as studying, banking and even the daily shopping. They help speed up processes and even to correct human errors to an extent. However, they do also have negative points.

Overall however, computers have helped us move forward and have helped integrate the world in many different aspects.

Animation involves the appearance of motion caused by displaying still images one after another. Often,animation is used for entertainment purposes.cartoons on television is one example of animation.

in our childhood we have all had a lot of cartoons that we watched and never thought about how they were made.coming to university now i have had a chance to make a 2D animation which is s simply making objects move in a two dimensional space.it sounds like a hard thing to do and it does take a lot of time and concentration but believe or not it was one of the most exiting things i have done all my life and at the end you just enjoy watching the scene you have made with still pictures and then you become to think it was worth the time.

Animation

Being an Iranian one of the most interesting facts in animation for me is that A 5,000 year old earthen bowl found in Iran in Shahr-e-Sookhti has five images of a goat painted along the sides and has been claimed to be an example of early animation.

there are different types of animation with the main types as clay animation, “plain” animation and com-puter animation(2D-3D).the most common anima-tion now days is the computer animation.Here is a picture of the famouse clay animation of Wallace and Gro-mit.

Another example of a very popular and successful ani-mation is south park which is a 2D american anima-tion created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone which fol-lows the adventures of four grade school boys who live in the small town of South Park, Colorado.South park is an animation mostly made for adults and its well known for its strong language and adult scenes, and its known as the third longest running adult animated series in U.S.

Charles and Ray EamsIn this article i will be introducing to you two of the most popular American designers who gave shape to America’s twentieth century. The Eameses em-braced the era’s visionary concept of modern design as an agent of social change, elevating it to a national agenda.Charles Eames, born 1907 in St. Louis, Mis-souri, studied architecture at Washing-ton University in St and Ray Eames, née Bernice Alex-andra Kaiser, was born in Sacramento, California in 1912.

In 1940, Charles and Eero Saarinen won first prize for their joint entry in the competition “Organic De-sign in Home Furnishings” organized by the New YorkMuseum of Modern Art. During the same year, Eames became head of the department of industrial design at Cranbrook .Charles and Ray married in 1941 and moved to Cali-fornia where they continued their furniture design work

with molding plywood. and in 1949, they designed and built their own home in Pacific Palisades, Cali-fornia as part of the Case Study House Program sponsored by Arts and Architecture Magazine.

According to Eamesoffice Charles and Ray Eames are among the most important American designers of this century.

They are best known for their groundbreaking con-tributions to architecture, furniture design, industrial design and manufacturing, and the photographic arts.

click click photographyThe word photography comes from two Greek words: photo for” light” and graph for “drawing”, which describes it as drawing the light. a photo-graph is usually made by a light or X ray to record the picture of an object on a light surface.

in my oponion photographs and paintings are very simillar as they both capture a moment, while still the big difference in them is that a painting can be unreal and can show the painters imagination while a picture shows reality.

Famouse painting by salvador dali

Today photography is known as fine art. photo-graphs are in alot of exhibitions in most of the mu-seums, prized by collectors, discussed by critics, and studied in art history courses.Other than personal uses such as taking a picture of our baby’s first moves, our holiday, our friends and a lot of other momenst that pass on in our lives and a camera helps us take a look back at them, pho-tography takes a very important part in our lives todays, such as newspapers,magazines,advertising, science and research’s and in a way in everyones daily jobs.

I am Glad that this year at university i had a project on photography and it gave me a chance to learn more about it.(The picture above is an example of my work)

Photography is the joy of seeing things in different ways and looking threw each others eyes. if it wasn’t for photography we would have never known what we looked like as a kid, we could have never seen the view in most country’s, or see the changes in our loved ones lifes while they are away from us, we would have never been able to show earth from outer space or see the first man walk on the moon, the cure of many deseases would have never been found and we could have never looked back at the special mo-ments in our lives that brought a smile to our face.

Jan Tschichold and Avant-Garde In This article at first i would like to start by having a look at Avant-Garde Typography which was the subject that the lecture began with.

Avant-garde is originaly a french term meaning in English, vanguard or advance guard (the part of an army that goes forward ahead of the rest)”. The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, par-ticularly with respect to art, culture, and politics. Avant-garde art can be said to begin in the 1850s with the Realism of Gustave Courbet, who was strongly influenced by early socialist ideas. This was followed by the successive movements of modern art, and the term avant-garde is more or less synon-ymous with modern. Some avant-grade movements such as Cubism for example have focused mainly on innovations of form, others such as Futurism, De Stijl or Surrealism have had strong social pro-grammes.

The next matter Alan power discussed in the lecture was Jan Tschi-chold who was born in Leipzig on April 2, 1902 known as one of the most defining voices in 20th century typography Because of his strong ideological stances.

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.He broke off his teaching studies after three years when he realized that he wanted to be a typeface designer and attended the Academy for Graphic Arts in Leip-zig.His work has been described and illustrated in his own publications and those of Ruari Mclean, who was also responsible for the translations into English of his two chief books of instruction, Die NeueTypographie (The New Typography, 1928) and Typographische Gestaltung (Typographic Design, published in English as Asymmetric Typography, 1935).

Jan Tschichold’s seminal piece on graphic design, the New Typography.I feel that his book on graphic design to be a great introduction to the field, particularly for those looking to begin his/her under-standing of the mod-ern era of modern de-sign from a historical perspective.

Although Die neue Typographie remains a clas-sic, Tschichold slowly abandoned his rigid beliefs from around 1932 onwards (e.g. his Saskia type-face of 1932, and his acceptance of classical Roman typefaces for body-type) as he moved back towards Classicisim in print design.He later condemned Die neue Typographie as too extreme. He also went so far as to condemn Modernist design in general as being authoritarian and inherently fantastic.

London undergroundand

corporate identityThe london underground is the name given to the railway system.As the name implies, this involved digging a deep hole to house the underground tracks, and then covering over the tunnel. but despite its name about 55% of the work in above ground.

London underground known as the first railway underground in th world.according to the trans-port of London the fist section of London un-derground was opened in 1863 which contains the circle,hammersmith & city and metropolitan lines used by us today.The London Underground has 276 stations and runs over 243 miles of line making it the longest underground railway in the world, and one of the most served in terms of sta-tions.

The typeface of the underground sys-tem was first de-signed by Edward Johnston Febuary 6th 1916 Johnston until it was rede-signed in 1980s, and the first dia-grammatic map of the Undergrounwas designed by harry beck in 1931.

The first un-derground sign designed.

And today this sign still remains the same

Moving to the discussion about the London un-derground maps ,this picture is the map de-signed in 1906,

1923 metropoli-tan railway and connections map poster

poster maps issued 1926, displaying the expanding net-work.which look’d very confusing and messy.

The first proper map was than introduced by harry beck

the picture below is the first underground design in 1932

They didn’t accept harry’s design at first as they thought its hard to read but harry kept designing till he made a map that they where happy with the final map had more colors to specify the lines and was much easier to read.in 1933 the card folder was de-signed.

The above map is still used today by everyone and the straight lines and little dots for the stations makes it much easier to read.he refused using curves and has used45degree angle lines instead which makes the map look much neater and makes it easier to read.

Perception and IllusionPerception is our sensory experience of the world around us and involves both the recognition of environmental stimuli and actions in response to these stimuli. Perception not only creates our ex-perience of the world around us; it allows us to act within our environment.Perception includes the five senses; touch, sight, taste smell and taste. Perception is not the passive receipt of these signals, but can be shaped by learning, memory and expectation.

The next discussion in the lecture was Illusion.An illusion is an image or representation believed to be real in our mind’s eye, but that is not actually real. In other words, because of the way our eyes and brain work, our eyesare tricked into seeing something that is not really there or into seeing something happenthat did not really happen.

Illusions can be very deceiving, and ma-gicians use illusions totheir advantage to make the audience believe that some-thing happened by magic.The interest-ing thing is that we often seem to enjoy being fooled in this way! Magicians use

illusions all the time. In fact, magicians are some-times referred to as illusionists. Famous magicians, like the great Harry Houdini, admit that what they do is create illusions. They do not do the impossible, they just seem to do it. Optical illusions tell a story about how our eyes and brain work together to al-low us to see.There is a lot of confusion these days about what is and is not illusion. Some say “all is illusion” while others say it’s only perception that is illusory. I must say that iam a little bit confused myself about this and wish to read more and learn more about it in the future as i cant agree or disagree with anything at the moment.

PostmodernismA general explanation is that postmodernism is a contradiction in terms, as post means after and modern means now, it is impossible for anything to be after now. The term itself is supposed to be de-liberately unexplainable. . Modernism refers to a certain period of the western culture of artistic and sociological history. Postmodernism is a movement away from the viewpoint of modernism.Postmod-ernism rejects the modernist ideals of rationality, virility, artistic genius, and individualism, in favor of being anti-capitalist, contemptuous of traditional morality, and committed to radical egalitarian-ism. Many postmodern artists appropriate earlier modernist and classical works and combine or alter them to create a new, ironic piece.

Rene Magritte who was born in less-ines, Hainaut (Belgium) in November 21,1898 a sur-realist artist.

Magritte’s work frequently displays a juxtaposition of ordinary objects in an unusual context, giving new meanings to familiar things. The representational use of objects as other than what they seem is typi-fied in his painting, The Treachery of Images (La trahison des images), which shows a pipe that looks as though it is a model for a tobacco store advertise-ment. Magritte’s use of simple graphic and everyday imagery has been compared to that of the pop artists. His influence in the development of Pop art has been widely recognized.

In postmodernism my favourite style is pop art. Pop-art is images of popular things. is images of ordinary objects, mass produced common everyday items that most people like and recognize. items like re-cord labels, or logos, or packaging, and fashion pictures of people, Road signs, hamburgers, mon-ey, soda bottles, and ma-chinery are also common subjects.

The Growth OfGraphic Design

One of the most interesting lectures for me was the lecture about the growth of graphic design.we mostly discussed about postmodernism and different de-signers of this movement.

The lecture started with watching “Helvetica” di-rected by Gary Hustwit which was a very interesting start. Its content consists of a history of the typeface interspersed with candid interviews with leading graphic and type designers. The film aims to show Helvetica’s beauty and ubiquity, and illuminate the personalities that are behind typefaces. It also ex-plores the rift between modernists and post modern-ists, with the latter expressing and explaining their criticisms of the famous typeface.

PAUL RAND (BORN PERETZ ROSENBAUM, AUGUST 15, 1914 – NOVEMBER 26, 1996) was a well-known American graphic designer, best known for his corporate logo designs. One of his famouse works is creating numerous ribbon pack-aging in 50s and 60s for IBM.

Even after his death in 1996,

Paul Rand remains one of the most famous graphic designers in the world.

Josef Muller Brockmann who was born on may 9 in Rapperswil, Switzerland.As with most graphic de-signers that can be clas-sified as part of the Swiss International Style, Joseph Müller-Brockmann was influenced by the ideas of several different design and art movements in-cluding Constructivism, De Stijl, Suprematism and the Bauhaus.

He is perhaps the most well-known Swiss designer and his name is probably the most easily recognized when talking about the period. The above poster for the Zurich Town Hall is perhaps Müller-Brock-mann’s most recognized, and most ripped off, piece of work.

Alan Fletcher Born on 27 September 1931 was a Brit-ish graphic designer,he was described asg Britain’s most inspiring graphic designers and visual thinkers by the sunday times.

The picture above is Visual identity of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London,1989Desiged by Alan Fletcher., he played an important part in modernising the visual landscape of late 20th-century Britain by de-signing visual identities for the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Institute of Directors and Lloyd’s of London, and books for Penguin and Phaidon.

Ivan Chermayeff, Born in the Caucasus, was edu-cated in England who was a founding partner of Ch-ermayeff & Geismar. His career from 1924 until his emigration to America in 1939 illustrates the gradual hardening of Modernist attitudes in Britain in the 1930s.He joined the Modernist group MARS in the early 1930s, and worked with the German emigre Erich Mendelsohn, with whom he designed the cele-brated De La Warr Pavilion at Bexhill on Sea, Sussex.

Logo of NBC designed by Chermayeff & Geismar’s

Bibliography:

computers:

(http://library.thinkquest.org/04oct/00451/typewriter.htm)(http://home.earthlink.net/~dcrehr/firsttw.html)(http://eightiesclub.tripod.com/id325.htm)

(http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/globalization.html).(http://socyberty.com/issues/the-internet-and-globalization/)(http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/R40653.pdf)(http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jun/22/bbc-iran-corre-spondent-expelled)http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/arti-cle/0,28804,1945379_1944701_1944705,00.html)(http://www.actiontrip.com/features/howdangerousarethey.phtml)http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1742)(http://www.actiontrip.com/features/howdangerousarethey.phtml)Alan powers lecture

Animation:

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/A/animation.htmlhttp://library.thinkquest.org/C0110532/Types.htmhttp://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/south-park-biography/08ec47749861147a48256dd60013ce29http://www.southparkclub.com/about.htmlhttp://utv.wayne.edu/2Danimation.htmAlan Powers lecture

Charles and Ray Eams :http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/eames/bio.htmlhttp://www.vitra.com/en-us/home/designers/charles-and-ray-eames/http://www.eamesoffice.com/charles-and-rayhttp://www.vitra.com/en-us/home/designers/charles-and-ray-eames/Alan Powers lecture

Click Click Photography:

http://www.alexracanelli.com/?p=151Alan Powers lecture

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Alan Powers lecture

London underground and corporate identity:

http://www.timeout.com/london/big-smoke/features/2814/London_Underground-s_history.htmlhttp://www.directrail.com/london_underground.htmlhttp://www.urban75.org/london/leinster.html http://www.directrail.com/london_underground.htmlhttp://hogd.pbworks.com/w/page/18698601/Edward-Johnston-Rail-way-TypeAlan powers lecture

Perception and Illusion:

http://www.salrachele.com/webarticles/illusionsandperception.htmhttp://psychology.about.com/od/sensationandperception/ss/percept-proc.htmhttp://www.sandlotscience.com/EyeonIllusions/whatisanillusion.htmhttp://www.salrachele.com/webarticles/illusionsandperception.htm

Postmodernism:Ra Ha May 9 at 12:45amhttp://www.onpostmodernism.com/art/default.aspxhttp://fordlcmusicvideo.blogspot.com/2011/01/rene-magritte-ceci-nest-pas-une-pipe.htmlhttp://fordlcmusicvideo.blogspot.com/2011/01/postmodernism-an-other-definition.html

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The Growth of Graphic Design:

http://www.filterfine.com/resources/jmb/bio.htmhttp://www.designishistory.com/1940/joseph-mueller-brockmann/

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