March 29th

http://www.miniaturegigantic.com/1.html

After looking through most of those posters, I settled on this one. The reason why I chose this poster was because the message it portrayed. This is a very powerful poster that can cause a lot of uproar from Americans. The idea is suppose to be funny but it hits down deep when you stop and think about it. I can imagine that propaganda pieces like this during world war I caused the same effect if did when I first looked at some of these designs. It is effective in the way that it grabs your attention.

Sketches March 29th

This first design is a remake of the California sun dried Raisin logo that you see on their box. It was originally yellow writing on a red box but I decided to go back to the Victorian Era to recreate a new design that you might see on the box. Some aspects I wanted to include in this style is floral design as well as playing around with typeface and the alignment of the typeface throughout the design. The colors would also be really bright and bold.



This next design was based off of the same idea but created as if it was done in the Art Nouveau movement. I wanted to keep things really simple on it. I created just a rough sketch of the type and where it would be located and I wanted to incorporate a women that had flowing hair throughout the design. This was an important factor throughout art nouveau and if you look at the box that they have today for raisins, it has a woman on the cover of it.

History of GD Chapter 17 and Kitsch

As the world entered WWII America was producing propaganda posters as a reaction to Hitler and the war. The designs of these posters were simplistic, straightforward, and dramatic contrasts in colors. These posters included some imagery that spoke louder than words and focused mainly on getting a message across. These posters grab your attention through their simplistic nature and eat to read text. Even after the war, Bayer was producing posters that continued to grab his audience's attention through simplistic imagery. After exploring what the Kitsch art movement was, I realized it was an art movement that failed and did not make it through the rejection. It might have been intended to be a new art movement, but for some reason, people disliked this movement more than any other one. The styles were called 'tacky and poor quality'. Some work from the Kitsch movement seems to appear experimental as people began exploring different areas of art.

One poster that really stuck out to me was the poster for the U.S. Office of War Information produced by Ben Shahn (located on page 345 in the book). This poster is very powerful with the way the designer uses imagery. The way this poster speaks truth into people lives is quite different from posters today. This poster really tries to bring in your emotions and get you involved in the situation to support something. If imagery and posters were created today that grabbed your attention like this poster does, I bet more people would be supporting the war efforts.

One question that I pose and might be answered through presentation on Friday is why was the Kitsch movement rejected? It seems that every movement was initially rejected and people were outraged by them. This movement in specific caused people to reject it and never give it a chance based on what I discovered. What was so bad about some of the designs?

History of GD Pictorial Modernism

Pictorial Modernism was the period after world war 1 as America and Europe bounced back. The artwork throughout this era was mainly geometric that resembled art nouveau. Although America did not originally warm up to Pictorial Modernism, it eventually came around as two-dimensionality, contour lines, and simple planes of color were sown into it. Text became abstract as words and images became integrated within each other.

One person that I find interesting throughout this reading is Edward McKnight Kauffer. Aiding in the exposure of modern art to America, he traveled throughout America and ended up in Paris trying to find more exposure to design. Looking at his posters, you can really see abstract design. In one of his London Underground posters, he uses plain color to show a river. He does a good job at applying shadows and other geometric shapes in this poster so the viewer is able to understand what it is.

One question that I pose after this reading involves Cassandre's designed typeface. He created a typeface called Bifur that is unique in the fact that not all the strokes in a letter is present. Even though this text was unique, was it used at all in any other poster work? I feel it takes a longer time to read and understand what is being said would not really be used. What kind of design was it used for?

March 13 History of GD Chapter 15

In chapter 15 we learn about the new language of form, being the visual arts and the invention of pure form. Kasimir Malevich from Russia founded a new painting style called suprematism. he created a construction of concrete elements of color and shape. It wasn't until 1922 that the terms Tectonics, which represented the unification of communist ideology with visual form, and construction, which is the process and search for laws of visual organization. One other famous designer was El Lissitzky who developed a painting style called PROUNS, which was a new way of creating three dimensional illusions that receded and projected forward. This was a new way of creating designs and paintings. Some characteristics of this new form of design include asymmetrical balance, silhouette halftones, and white space. They also experimented with bold san-serif fonts. Other designers, such as Rodchenko and Vladimir Lebedev, produced designs with geometric shapes with large areas of pure color. The De Stijl movement of 1917 focused on equilibrium and harmony in artwork. They reduced their visual aid to red, blues, and yellows focusing on a mathematical structure. Curved lines were eliminated in fonts, which were often composed in tight rectangular blocks.

One aspect from this reading that I thought was really interesting was the architecture of Gerrit Rietveld who created the Schroeder House. Neighbors thought that this house was so radical and crazy that they would often throw rocks at the house. Not only that but they taunted the Schroeder children. This is an extreme act for someone who was creating art in architecture. I would have assumed that the people of this time would have been more open to these new ideas since so many other things were changing at the time too.

One thing that I would like to learn more about the reaction to Kasimir Malevich's "Black Square". Did people have a reaction to it? At first when I look at it I see nothing but a normal black square. Did the people react the same way?

March 12 History of GD response

Yesterday in class, we discussed the pictorial modernism movement that spread throughout world war I. The posters at that time period were very interesting to look at. Some of the characteristics of pictorial modernism include simplicity, simple imagery and text, and a lot of propaganda pieces. Playing the game in class helped emphasize how simple imagery could relate a word and a message.

One person that I found quite interesting was Lucian Bernhard. As the father of pictorial modernism, he evolved from designing a poster for a contest that was originally thrown out but brought back to be the winner. His style of design is so simple, yet very intriguing. The placement of his words and imagery on a page interesting. He placed pictures and imagery towards the bottom or the top and never centered it on the page to make it visually stimulating.

One thing that I would like to know more about is did this style emerge again during world war II or was it a completely new style during the war?

March 2 History of GD Chapter 14

Modern art movements affected the poster designs throughout the twentieth century. One major influence was the Beggarstaffs made up of James Pryde and William Nicholson. Opening an advertising studio these two would create poster designs that involved cutting pieces of paper and moving them around to paste onto a board. They ignored the trend that continued from art nouveau and created powerful colored shapes and silhouettes. Plakatstil, which is the reductive, flat color design school, affected Lucian Bernhard who created a poster with words and imagery working hand in hand. He used simplicity and reduction of naturalism to created such a simply design involving one word and two matches. The characteristics of his work include flat background color, large simple imagery, and the product name. During World War I, posters were important to advance communication since electronics were not yet advancing. Posters were created to use as a propaganda device, as well as honoring soldiers and creating a cult around the nation's leaders. One leading Plakatstil designer was Ludwig Hohlwein, who collaborated with the Nazi's during WWI as he created posters coinciding with Hitler. It was not until the 1920s that the term art deco evolved. It is used to identify popular geometric works. One major artist was Cassandre, who used bold, simple designs in two dimension that are composed of simple bold colors. As this time period went on, posters and other works were more simplified and unified. Space was brought back into design and bold type was used to display messages.

I find the Alfred Leete poster for military recruitment very interesting. It states that "Briton wants you" and has a military man pointing his finger at you. This is very interesting because we have the American version of this poster. Created by James Montgomery Flagg, this same poster was created except using Uncle Sam on the poster. This poster is known all over America and is still seen as a powerful tool for recruiting people to fight in war. But, I would never have known that this design was taken from some other country.

I feel that Bernhard made a good effort at simplifying imagery and really emphasized reduction. But as you look at the posters throughout the chapter you will see how they start very simple, but as you get farther along in the years, they simplicity begins to diminish again. This is more of an observation as to a question. I just thought that they were all for simplicity (example is figure 14-52).