Research Document

RESEARCHand investigation

MODERNISMModernism was a movement that

effected every creative field among other fields during the end of the 19th century, and the beginning of the 20th century. Modernism was concerned with purity and clarity and was born out of a rejection of commercialism in the broadest sense, and advancements in industry and machinery. It was associated with the concept of ‘new’ and with progress, Modernism was campaigned after the first world war and made a large impact on mainstream design. As people wanted change and certainty after such destruction.

Modernists believed that the world in it’s current state, was flawed, and needed reassessing. This viewpoint is and was shared by modernists in other disciplines. They believed that a better world and society could be designed using art, graphic design, architecture among other disciplines. This idea of re-designing

is what lead to the simple, clean and pure designs.

Favoured in these designs were clean sans-serif fonts and use of white space. This is because of the form follows function philosophy favoured by modernists, that the way something is designed should be based around what it is for. In Graphic Design, designs became simple, as to communicate information.

The belief in technology and mechanics was another large part of modernism contributing to the belief that a utopia could be created using design and technology.

By most modernism is believed to have been responsible for the birth of conventional graphic design. Modernism, and the movements within it, (including Expressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, Dada, Surrealism, De Stijl, Suprematism and Constructivism) had possibly the

biggest impact on graphic design than any other movement.

I find modernism to be a pinnacle of simplicity in communication and appreciate the beauty of such clarity. However I don’t find much interesting about the designs themselves, I do find the movement and the effect it had on graphic design fascinating.

The grid systems in cubism obviously have strong ties with the magazine I will make but I think that simplicity of modernity works well in presenting the hierarchy of information.

Postmodernism was a movement that reacted to modernism in a very disruptive way, around about the 1980’s. Some recognise this as the time modernism failed and the era ended, but others believe the two co-exist, with postmodernism acting as

an extension of modernism. The two can look similar in fact but it is the meaning and ideology of them that differs.

While modernism was interested in universal truths and progress through

science, postmodernism is associated with many truths and experimentation of many different

It broke down the authoritative barriers that modernism put up in it’s efforts to create a better world

POSTMODERNISM

by breaking the ‘rules’ of design. Postmodernism is stylised as random and catastrophic, made up of collage, whimsy and imitation.

Postmodernism made people ask questions about art and design

and did not seek a higher truth. If modernism seeked to answer questions, postmodernism seeked to ask.

I find postmodernism very exciting. How barriers between class, skill and

style become blurred and interesting hybrids are created.

BAUHAUS

Bauhaus was originally an art and design school in Germany, but was so influential it is seen as a movement. Bauhaus artists and designers were famed for their approach to design. Mixing design, craft and technology to create modernism inspired works of art. The school argued there was no difference between artist and craftsman.

The movement had a profound impact on the architecture, art and design of the era as they pioneered the form over function philosophy.

The principles of Bauhaus tied in with this new idea of beauty and good design associated with modernism. They believed in beauty through rational design. It was this philosophy

that lead to their attitude of mass production over craftsmanship, I find it pretty fascinating that Bauhaus managed to achieve such excellence in design whilst keeping things so simple and basic in the need to serve a purpose before look pretty.

Another thing I really appreciate in Bauhaus is the minimalistic colour palette. They often used primary

colours and simple lighting in they’re designs. I think it would be really cool to use a minimal colour palette in my magazine that reflects the Bauhaus style.

Herert Bayer was a professor at the school of Bauhaus. He was a graphic designer and photographer who is perhaps known or being the founder of the quintessentially modern font ‘univeral’.

However he has produced a number of architectural designs and concepts which I really like. I think these are shockingly modern for the time they were produced and still hold up as excpetional design today.

I’d like to take inspiration from these designs and apply it to my magazine if possible. The isometric viewpoint might work really well for a front cover.

HERBERT BAYER

I really enjoy how Herbery Bayer and all of Bauhaus mix typography with designs. The sense of perspective is very interesting.

An example of this can be seen here in one of Bayer’s designs for a cigerette stall. I think the isometric view works really well with the typography and could work well as a front cover for my magazine. It could include

the masthead and text in a similar way.

I still need to explore a number of ideas but I think this could work really well.

El Lissitzky was a Russian born artist typographer and designer who was very inspirational to the constructivist movement and Bauhaus.

He is well known or his ‘proun’ series during supremastism in which he explores space and perspectie with 2D and 3D shapes. Unusual or suprematism. He has

also worked on russian propaganda along with other works, but I find his proun series very inspirational.

His interest in architecture inspired his works and he too believed in the modernist future of a utopian world through progress. He claimed his work had a socially defined purpose. Many of

his designs were used as a model or as inspiration or modern architecture, all striving or a new world.

I really enjoy his mix of perspectives and minimalistic colours. His work is almost blueprint like in its simplicity. What would be really interesting is mixing perspective and text together in a magazine format.

Traditionally text is kept on one plane in magazines along with most of the content. Mixing 3D and 2D could create very interesting effects if done right. I’ll have to explore this later.

EL LISSITZKY

DAVID CARSONDavid Carson is one of

the most prominent and active designers of the postmodernism movement..

His work is an expression of information rather than a presentation, chaotic and rule-breaking with stark contrast between text and image. He is well known for his art directing in the music magazine Raygun, in which he transformed the way layout was perceived.

He revolutionised the way information was presented and spearheaded the postmodernism movement and is still an inspirational designer.

I really like the way he expresses himself and the message through type. I think it’s really cool how he took the idea and philosophies of modernist communication and questioned its effectiveness.

I think he really perfects translating content into design and the relationship between type and word.

NEVILLE BRODY

Neille Bordy is best known or his pioneering in typography, though he is renowned in graphic design, branding and art direction.

He was inspired by the anarchic destruction of Dadaism and like this movement he broke the rules of popular commercial design at the time. Like Carson, his typography was expressive and experimental, with great impact .

Raygun magazine has been described as controlled chaos, the magazine broke all of the rules while cohering to the basic principles of design. The layouts were absurd and dramatically experimental.

Directed by David Carson the magazine became vastly popular during the nineties and popularised the expressive nature and style of postmodernism.

I find it pretty intriguing how Carson managed to establish good design in his magazine whilst going against the grain of every common practise at the time. I also really like how Carson designed and directed the layout, based on the music itself, and not based an a grid layout.

I do think there is a balance between legibility and expression when it comes to design. Raygun inspired a generation of experimental layout which when combined with good design practise gives us some of the best designs we see today in recent design.

RAYGUN MAGAZINE

THE FACEThe Face magazine

was another magazine associated heavily with postmodernism. It’s art director Neville Brody favoured experimental layout and expressive presentation of information and type.

The face and Brody were known for their use of tyograpgy, Brody designing several fonts himself.

Paul Rand is a modernist designer that is famous for his iconic logos. I find the simplistic style really beautiful and have assembled some of my favourites here.

I have to create a masthead for my magazine and on the page opposite I have come up with some draft ideas for a masthead, inspired by Paul Rand. I may use them or I may not, I still want to experiment with other ideas and influences.

MASTHEAD IDEAS

Here are my ideas inspired by Paul Rand. You can see my sketches with a few concepts based around form and simplicity.

I wanted to visualise what these would look like, so I went on to create quick drafts of them on illustrator.

One is a logo like design combining the idea of visuals and language in a speech bubble/eye. I like the concept but I don’t know if this would work as a masthead. One is a 3D like image that I think looks really cool but lacks meaning. And the other makes use of negative

space. Which I think is a little hard to

MASTHEAD IDEAS

I figured it would be a better idea to come up with a number of other ideas inspired by modernism and postmodernism.

I really like the eye and speech idea, so I think I’m going to develop this further. I need to find a aesthetically pleasing way to present the text ‘NVL’ and ensure it works as a masthead. It is a little logo-like so I want to try and avoid this.

MASTHEAD DEVELOPMENT

VN L

N V L

FINISHED MASTHEAD

N l

Here is my finished masthead. I simplified it and also changed the font to Bebas Nue. I thought that simplifying the font would make it more transferable and dynamic, as I have not yet decided what my front cover will look like. I chose the font Bebas Nue after messing around with layouts and headers for the magazine. After choosing Bebas Nue for my headers I decided to keep things consistent and change my logo too. This logo also allows me to change the colour of the iris to match other designs and layouts.

I’ll need to design a front cover for my magazine, probably comprised of completed work from the year.

I think it would be compelling to create a compilation of all my projects if that’s possible so I’ve explored that idea below. Earlier I looked at the architectual drawings of Herbert Bayer, I thought it might be interesting to take inspiration from his isometric concepts and try to apply it to my front cover.

I’d need to incorporate street graphics images, cabinet of curiosity elements and space

artifact images.

Combining all these in a Herbert Bayer inspired illustration would be pretty tricky but I think that isometric illustrations

really work well as magazine covers.

You can see to the left my initial ideas for the front cover. Some are isometric based, some

are illustraion based. The bottoms three are an idea I had to create icons for each catogory of the magazine. This may look a little boring so I may use this idea in a different part of the magazine.

I also plan to experiment with using designs from each project for the cover. If I can find a pience ofg design that works really well as a cover I’ll use it. I could make use of white space to frame it which could look really nice.

I think the trickiest part will be fitting my masthead into it as it is very image orientated and I don’t want it to take away from the design.

FRONT COVER IDEAS

FRONT COVER IDEAS

I wanted to experiment with ideas for front covers using pre exisitng designs from my projects over

the year aswell. I also experimented with simple designs focusing on the masthead. I found it hard

to include the title of the magazine with the simpler designs as it took away from the effectiveness.

I found that using my street graphics poster of Huddersfield looked pretty good.

All of my projects so far have been animations, so I need to find an suitable way to showcase these. I am in danger in not presenting them in a way that actually captures them, and also in drowning the page in images. I think a preserved and simple way to show movement and style would be best.

To find a way to represent movement in images and magazines I looked for inspiration in sports magazines.

Often movement is

presented by displaying the most ‘active’ photo. A photo that represents the movement best and has good composition. Another way is featured in skateboard and snowboard magazines. The design shows severel photos taken miliseconds apart to display the whole movement. Pictured below.

I think that this technique could work realy well in presenting my project. I do think it looks a little cluttered so I’ll have to experiment with layout in acheiving a simple and

preseved effect. Perhaps making use of whitespace.

I couldeven experiment with showing a random number of frames from the animation like a kind of gallery. Using my most visually appealing frames for other layout options.

Other options layering multiple frames on top of each other to give a double exposure effect. Or showing all the frames of one element in the animation in the same picture, both of which are pictured on the right.

LAYOUT IDEAS

LAYOUT IDEASHere’s my initial ideas

for my contents page and general layout. I want to keep the layout really consistent for each project if I can. This won’t be entirely possible because for some of the projects I

have separate illustrations and other work to include. But I really like the idea of keeping the layout simple and making use of white space to frame the images. Examples of this can be seen below.

I also thought about bringing one of my simple logo designs into the contents page to break up the space. I think I’ll use this logo like design.

N V L

FONT CHOICEI have chosen what my layout will look like so I need to choose fonts that work well with them. Below I have looked

at a number of fonts for both the header and the paragraph. At first I thought about slab serif fonts but I felt they didn’t fit in with the clean layout. I have decided on Bebas Nue for the header and Mission Gothic for the body text.

bebas nue

MUNCHIE

TOMASSO

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing

elit. Maecenas iaculis tincidunt nunc, eget faucibus

nisl ultricies vel. Nulla semper erat sed tellus

cursus egestas. Praesent placerat dignissim

tempus. Pellentesque rhoncus justo sed fermentum

ultrices. Nullam a aliquet est, ut vestibulum nunc.

Aenean condimentum fermentum dolor, nec porta

diam varius sed, et magnis dis parturient montes.

nascetur ridiculus mus. Suspendisse lobortis

volutpat urna, eget molestie erat pretium at.

Vivamus laoreet accumsan est non aliquam. Nunc

fringilla pretium risus et rutrum. In aliquet fringilla

massa, sed vehicula ipsum dignissim non. Etiam sit

amet urna in mi congue pellentesque. Vivamus at

consectetur sem.















consectetur sem.















consectetur sem.

FAIRVIEW

duke

ARVO

GOVERNER















consectetur sem.















consectetur sem.















consectetur sem.















consectetur sem.

Research Document

Documents

Transcript of Research Document