DESIGNUNLEASHED

By Tom Hexton

Design Unleashed

Chapter One: Digital Media

Chapter Two: Branded Fashion

Chapter Three: Environment Design

Chapter Four: Communication Design

ANIMATION

WALTZBASHIRWITH

Waltz with Bashir is a dream like autobiographical animated documentary by Ari Folman. It is based on his memories of the time he spent as a soldier in the Israeli war against Lebanon in 1982 including the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps following the war. And the interviews he has with fellow soldiers 20 years later in an attempt to recall what happened. The style of animation allows for us to forget about the medium and become fully immersed within the storyline. This is known as immediacy. Folman achieves immediacy through a number of applied techniques as well as the absence of other animated techniques. The animation style itself is interesting and adds to the immediacy of the film. Although hand drawn, it is vectorised and has no gradient on the fills of the characters specifically and therefore has a very unique feel to it. The drawn and no gradient colour style helps to keep the movie coherent which is otherwise not so apparent in the storyline, what with all the jumping around between past memories and current conversations. Of course the style also draws our focus onto the characters and makes them stand out from the background. Folman’s choice to use this style adds to the immediacy of the film.

Additionally, Folman chose to use his own persona as the focal point of the story. In doing this we can instantly become emotionally attached to the persona as they’re real and we can relate to them. By putting himself as the main persona, Folmans directly adds to the immediacy of the film. Subtle and not always in our conscious thoughts as we watch, perhaps, but the chosen angle of a scene plays a large roll in the immediacy of film. As seen in the picture (inset) this angle allows the viewer to see the characters’ eyes, which forces the viewer into becoming emotionally involved. This forces the viewer to have an emotional connection, as discussed earlier, and relate to the persona. All of this adds to the immediacy of Waltz with Bashir.

The absence of other animation techniques, metamorphosis for example, only adds to the immediacy of the film. Were the film to include some metamorphosis we would quickly be awoken to the nature of the medium and hence why it is important to point out that Folman has triumphed greatly with regards to the immediacy of this film.

Another great aspect of Waltz with Bashir is the music. Folman fuses classical music with 1980s hits into a brilliant narrator of the story. The scene in which Frenkel is doing the ‘waltz’ with posters of Bashir above his head and the classic soundtrack behind it really connects with the viewer and allows them to empathise with the characters and bring a great sense of immediacy to the film.

PREPPYTHE

SUBCULTURE

PREPPYSUBCULTURE

Preppy is a subculture because it doesn’t object to the dominant values

and behaviour of society. The preppy uniform was born out of the New England preparatory schools, conservative protestant principles and a social stratification environment (Hogan, 2008).

The preppy look that we know so well consists of a polo or

oxford shirt and either chinos or khaki pants with a pair of loafers. Each of the pieces is well fitted and clean cut and can be switched out to a number of different pieces but mostly the preppy uniform remains consistent. The colours

and patterns worn also play a prominent role in the prep style. Colours mostly include bright and happy colours as well as navy blues and whites. Some patterns used include plaid, stipes, gingham and argyle.

The polo shirt was originally designed by French tennis

player Rene Lacoste for himself to play in. Also, polo players were quick to adopt it. It is this strong connection with sports, and the fact that many preps themselves are heavily involved with sport, that has made the polo shirt an iconic piece of the preppy outfit. The chinos are a way of further distancing themselves from the rough image that sometimes comes with jeans, such as the punk movement, and also gives preps a cleaner and more refined look.

Uniform

Excusivity

The preppy environment created a culture of exclusivity.

Naturally people were envious and wanted to be a part of the

exclusivity. And with the release of The Official Preppy Handbook by Lisa Birnbach the preppy look exploded onto the fashion scene for the masses all around the world. Brands such as Ralph Lauren and J Crew jumped on board of the prep uniform and quickly popularised it. And like many other attempts to create a bubble of exclusivity, the prep school aesthetic eventually moved beyond its original sphere of influence (Hogan, 2008). This allowed those people yearning to be a part of the tradition to dress and be seen as one of them, a prep. By dressing as a prep you were showing how you were part of the exclusivity. You were able to get the benefits of being a prep such as entrance to the best parties. What is more it also said so much about not only your upbringing but also your social and economic status.

Successful

It is evident that the preppy subculture has a definite

relationship to fashion in the 20th century and still does. In fact there is a preppy fashion revival going on now (Wallace, 2005).

It is still a popular way to dress but is no longer exclusive to the New England preparatory school kids. Preppy has become a part of fashion, a staple for many people regardless of their origin.

The Golden

Ratio

The golden ratio is a way in which we can document the aesthetically pleasing and harmonious proportion that is found over and over again in nature. This reoccurrence in nature gives us reason to believe that it is the perfect ratio and as such anything that nears or resembles the golden ratio is likely to be considered beautiful. And so, when someone designs something they may not always do so with the golden mean in mind but it seems that many a time we inherently come back to using this proportion in some way or another.

It appears that ancient architecture focused on the golden ratio a lot. For example, take the Parthenon on the Acropolis of Athens in Greece. We can assume that it was built from a plan that heavily incorporated the golden ratio because we can overlay the

golden rectangle many times and in many different places on it.

Modern architecture doesn’t seem to focus on the golden ratio so much. I feel that this is not due to the fact that we have proven the ancient method of proportion wrong. Rather, for a number of reasons that have come with modern life. Firstly, technology has affected how architects can design buildings in the 21st century. With the advances in technology architects are able to and seemingly want to design more extravagant buildings and so they do not comply or fall within the golden ratio proportions. And it seems the nature of buildings seems to have changed slightly. Also, buildings are becoming more focused on function rather than form.

Env i ronmen t Des ign &

This is evident when looking back through the centuries we can see that buildings from the 21st century have become ‘simpler’ when compared to the magnificent Notre Dame of Paris. Although this is an extreme example it gets across the point that modern life calls for buildings that are taller and take up less space on the ground like apartment blocks etc and the golden ratio is hard to incorporate into a building of this shape.

Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, or more commonly Le Corbusier, was a Swiss architect who tried to incorporate the golden ratio into his designs as much as possible. It is important to note that Corbusier insisted that he was the architect and not the proportional methods (Herz-FischlerSource, 1984). A great example of how he incorporated the golden ratio into his work is the Villa Stein in Garches, Paris. Seen on aditional page. When looking at the plans of this building one can see that the layout and style is heavily influenced by the golden rectangle.

The golden ratio and its various applications are evident in some architecture but ultimately it does not seem to be the sole factor in determining if a building is considered beautiful or not. In addition it is not always convenient to include the golden ratio when designing a building for function. As such I don’t feel it is appropriate to determine the design of a building completely on the golden ratio.

Villa Stein Floor Plans

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Helvetica is everywhere. A study of the documentary Helvetica leads one to the conclusion

that the typeface of the same title was a turning point in visual communication and is either a continuing irreplaceable iconic typeface or a boring and outdated one depending on your view and whom you listen to.

Whatever way you look at it, Helvetica has had a massive impact on visual communication, especially during the 20th century when it bought out new and bold ways of communicating. Helvetica began to change the way companies were advertising and branding themselves. It took all the old script fonts and bad habits and made it so things were straightforward and bold. As Wim ‘Gridnik’ Crouwel (2007) puts it Helvetica was a real snap out of the 19th century typefaces. It must of felt like you were scraping the crud off of old things and restoring them to

shining beauty (Michael Bierut, 2007). In addition to that it allowed Crouwel to align things to a grid so that things were clear, readable and straightforward. It allowed him to create order. Order is typography. Using logic then, some could perceive Helvetica as the perfect font. Michael Bierut (2007) is quick to point out that he wouldn’t have believed that there could be a right way to terminate the ‘c’ as opposed to someone’s opinion or taste and same goes for the rest of Helvetica’s alphabet. Yet here we are with close to 50 years of history with Helvetica and it is still sitting there, daring someone to fix it. It was never intended to be this cool thing. It is just a beautiful font (Michael Place). Graphic designers of the 20th century knew this and created a seemingly near endless number of corporate identities based on Helvetica because it was so refreshing when juxtaposed with the corporate identities of the 19th century.

Helvetica.

bcaHowever, the fact is Helvetica is ubiquitous. Therefore some feel that it has become the default or the no brainer when it comes to selecting a typeface. Due to its ubiquity it can actually work against the design in some cases. Stefan Sagmeister (2007) was disappointed by Modernism and got bored very quickly. He goes on to slander the typical, white space dominant, way that Helvetica was used to present a corporate identity brochure. Helvetica is heavy around the middle and needs this white space to be readable (Spiekermann, 2007). The Swiss ideology was to make all the letters look the same (Spikermann, 2007) and ironically it meant that a lot of the things coming out of visual communication in 20th century that had used Helvetica could be considered mundane as well. For example the governments choose to use Helvetica because it is a low risk branding solution.

So, although Helvetica was a brilliant typeface when it came out and did give the visual communication industry what it needed at the time. There has been little change within the industry since and because of that some feel it is well past the time for change.

Reference ListAntoun, N 2009, Film Review: “Waltz with Bashir”, 9/10/10, <http://www.arabmediawatch.com/amw/Articles/Analysis/tabid/75/newsid395/5774/Film-review-Waltz-with-Bashir/Default.aspx>.

Birnbach, L 1980, The Preppy Handbook, Workman Publishing, New York.

Boesiger, W 1996, ‘Le Corbusier’, Le Corbusier: Complete Works, vol. 1, no. 1.

Cebah, C 2009, Is Beauty Really in The Eye of The Beholder?, 12/10/10, <http://scienceray.com/biology/human-biology/is-beauty-really-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/2/>.

Donald, T. S 1986, ‘The Geometric Figure Relating the Golden Ratio and Phi’, Mathematics Teacher, vol. 79, pp. 340-341.

Elam, L 2001, Geometry of Design: Studies in Proportion and Composition, Princeton Architectural Press, New York.

Herz-Fischler, Roger 1984, ‘Le Corbusier’s “Regulating Lines” for the Villa at Garches’, Journal of the Society of Architech-tural Historians, vol. 43, no. 1, pp. 53-59.

Hogan, C 2008, The Roots of American Preppy, 10/10/10, < http://www.mensflair.com/style-advice/the-roots-of-american-preppy.php>.Matthews, K 1994, Le Corbusier’, 12/10/10, <http://www.great-buildings.com/architects/Le_Corbusier.html>. McNally, J 2008, Waltz with Bashir, 9/10/10, <http://www.toron-toscreenshots.com/2008/09/07/waltz-with-bashir/>.

Obara, S 2000, Golden Ratio in Art and Architecture, 12/10/10, <http://jwilson.coe.uga.edu/EMT668/EMAT6680.2000/Obara/Emat6690/Golden%20Ratio/golden.html>.

Wallace, C 2005, We’re All Preppies Now, 10/10/10, <http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/24/opinion/24hamlin.html?_r=2>.

Ward, R 2010, The Official Preppy Handbook, 10/10/10, <http://fashionandpower.blogspot.com/2010/04/official-preppy-hand-book.html>.

Zumberg, J 2008, Israeli filmmakers head to Cannes with animated documentary, 9/10/10, <http://www.israel21c.org/culture/israeli-filmmakers-head-to-cannes-with-animated-docu-mentary-video>.

Word CountChapter 1: 472, Chapter 2: 456, Chapter 3: 500, Chapter 4: 506.

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