ITAP Design Canons - week eight

This week's lecture was about Roland Barthes (12th November 1915 – 25th March 1980). Barthes was a French philosopher and semiotician known for his influences in developing theories. The two theories we looked at were semiotics and analysing photography. What I found interesting was how he de-constructed meaning behind everyday objects such as soap. I was intrigued by the amount of mythology we are confronted with everyday without even realising. manipulations of reality.


'Barthes purpose is to tear away masks and demystify the signs, signals and symbols of the language of mass culture' - Quote: Dennis Potter. The Times. 


I was inspired by the amount of myths that were hidden in everyday objects such as the myth of cleanliness, purity and magical properties. I de-constructed the meaning of an image of shampoo in a similar way that Barthes did with soap to see what hidden myths I could find. 

From this image of five products I can be lead to believe that yoghurt, green tea, avocado, lemongrass and guava all supposedly have amazing properties that can improve my hair. Most of these are foods that we eat so what is it that makes us suddenly want to put them in our hair rather than our mouth. De-constructing myth shows how much subconscious trust we put in people who we don't personally know but know are supposed to know where their doing so we just go along with it as if it all has to be legitimate. The myths in this image would be the myths of magical properties and purity.



I then went on to de-construct some photography. I looked at the work of famous documentary photographer Henn Cartier Bressan.  

This photo caught my eye for a few reasons. Upon first glance it looks like a photo of harmless kids playing in the street. Then I noticed that they are playing with toy guns. This seems legit for the older boy but the boy on the far left looks very young to be playing with guns. My attention then turned to the boy in the background in the middle. It looks as if he is smoking and he is definitely way too young to be smoking. There is also a young boy in the back wearing a suit for some reason, and all the boys seem to be reasonably dressed up and the building they are playing in front of looks like it could be a church or place of importance. I think these kids have been let out to 'play' after an important family event but their choice of toys is slightly disturbing.

This photo caught my eye because of the interesting body language. Both the people appear to be holding back as if they were unsure whether to kiss or not. The guy has his hand on his leg instead of touching her and the woman still has her legs crossed as if she hasn't tried to move any further forwards towards him. This makes me think that it may be their first kiss. I think the must be in their twenties age wise and pretty well off judging by how they are dressed and the fact that she possibly owns a dog. I would say that they are on a lunch date. What I think makes this photo is the fact that the dog is looking at them. The dog appears to have an expression on its face which could be interpreted in different ways, therefore giving this picture different meanings. Overall I would say that the dog is happy that this kiss has happened, which gives the photo a positive look.

ITAP Design Cannons - week seven

This week's lecture was about vernacular typography and about what happens when the fine arts meet commercial design. Vernacular means anything that is hand-drawn or original; everyday type such as signatures and graffiti. The hero this lecture was based around was famous art director So-me.
So-me is the art director for head banger records. I've always been interested in designing for a record label so i found his work very inspiring and decided to research more into what he has designed. I found out that he owns his own clothing company called Cool Cats. These are some examples of his clothing designs that caught my eye. 

This was one of his designs for the Ed Rec 7th birthday celebration in London. I thought the image itself was very well designed, how he has intertwined different things to do with London but what i thought was really clever was how he has reflected the design so it includes the illusion of the River Thames. 

This caught my eye because of the old-school look to it.  I noticed how the logo is in the shape of a head boy/girl badge and the jumper itself is in the shape of a school jumper, especially with the tightened cuffs and bottom. I like how he has made a relatively simple white logo more interesting by putting it on vintage coloured fabric.

I then moved on to looking at some of so-me's work he did for the record label. 

 This is a promotional piece he designed for Ed Banger records. The use of typography in this piece in incredible.  Using more than one font or font group is a difficult task to get right in design but so-me has pulled it off here perfectly. You can see that he has used visual hierarchy to make certain words and phrases stand out more than others as your eye reads around the circle.  

So-me did a collection of portrait designs for Busy P.  He did a collection of 30 designs all in 6 hours before Busy P's show. . 

To the left are a couple of examples of these portraits. 

I particularly like the top one because of the use of texture that makes it look as if the logo has been sown onto the background. It  gives the image a 3D feel and keeps it looking interesting which makes up for the limited colour palette . This has inspired me to try using only black, white and one colour in my work to see  if it could improve my  work.

I like this second portrait because of it has a pop art Andy Warhol feel to it. The use of bright colours is very eye catching, especially as some of them clash, such as the red and pink. Again, so-mes use of fonts and hierarchy in the typography is very clever, especially how when you read around the portrait it explains the reason for it. This image shows that you can take a high contrast. nit very detailed image and make it more interesting by adding typography.

To finish, this is an image of an exhibition by so-me showing perfectly how using less colours can be more, especially when you use other media such as texture and lighting to excel in your work. 

ITAP Design Canons - week six

This lecture was about 'Artists with Issues' and how they use strong images and concepts to get messages across in there work. The three artists that were mentioned were Jenny Holzer, Adrian Piper and Jean Michel Basquiat. 


I found the work of Adrian Piper quite inspirational. I especially liked her style of work shown in the smoking images below. These images stood out to me as the image is very hard edge and cold and instantly portrays smoking in a bad manner. The quotes she has used on some of the images in her series of 6 are very serious and get you thinking deeper into the meaning behind the artwork.

I also researched into Jean Michel Basquiat and found his life story very moving. I looked at his work to see how he may have portrayed some of his personal issues through art.

His work is very childlike and messy. There is a lot of random mark making strange objects scatter about the page. Some of his work contains sketches of figures that are drawn in unusual shapes and sizes, they're is nothing realistic about his work. You can tell it has been created from his mind, not from real life observation. As a heroin addict Basquiats mind must have been all over the place. Some people say that when you taking drugs your mind is sent back into a childlike state. This made me think that maybe this is what happened to Basquiat and he portrayed it through his art.

When i saw this image of a skull it instantly made me think of a self portrait. Basquiat had a very messed up childhood and obviously turned to drugs because of this. In his early years he was extremely bright and was noticed from a young age. I think this may have put a lot of pressure on him causing him to act strangely like when he ran away at 15. I think he may have been trying to get away from the attention, especially as he went into street art which is sort of illegal and usually kept on a lowdown showing he must have been a quite secretive person. 

Having seen Jenny Holzer's work, I looked at the people she worked with and was influenced by and came across the work of Barbara Kruger. Barbara is a conceptual artist with a very individual style. Her work usually consists of black and white photographs with red or white typography, and often the use of pronouns such as we, your, etc. I was moved by some of the quotes that she uses in her work, i think more so than then imagery. The two images shown below i found particularly eye catching. 

The bottom image i instantly found i could relate to. It got me thinking about how we live in this 21st century world where everyone is on social networking sites, creating profiles for themselves how they think they are or want to be but are not necessarily so. I think that this could become a problem in the future and artwork like this is a good way of promoting the issue. Though this was not the issue the image was designed for, it goes to show that use of strong image and typography could cover many different issues.

Barbara Kruger 

ITAP Design Canons - week five

This week's lecture was about typographer Ragunath Krishna Joshi and about how using language in design was so important to him and how he used it in his work. He was described as an energetic man who never stopped working. He always had something new to show and encoded hidden messages in his work that only people who knew him well would understand. I looked at examples of the work of one if my favourite typographers, Luke Lucas, in order to see how the language used in his work changes it's feel. 


His work is mainly illustrative typography. I find some of the ideas behind his work really interesting and clever. He has influenced me in previous brief work. I think this is because his work is quite commercial and i am looking to go into advertising as a career. Below are some examples of his work.

This caught my eye because of how the typography has been designed in what the word says. Lucas has a very literal thinking process, he takes something and designs it exactly as it should be.

In this design, the typography is describing the taste of the image.  He could have just written the word  'wine' or something  in that typeface and put that in the glass, but instead he has written about the taste of the wine. This piece was used in a magazine article. Using illustrative typography in this way would have lured the reader in and made them able to relate to the article.

 This piece is similar to the hair piece in how the type is make out of what the word is. This is slightly different though as 'Crush' is the name of the yoghurt, If the type actually said yoghurt it would be the same principle. The two hands on the side of the type are doing what the word says by trying to 'Crush' the type, but this is a different meaning of the word crush. 

I think it is really clever how Lucas interpreted two meanings of the same word in his design. I would like to be able to design this sort of thing when I leave university. 








Hearing about Ragunath Krishna Joshi's design journey got me thinking about my own design journey and where it is going to take me. From my inspirations and design heroes it is certain that i am aspiring to work in the area of advertising. I find it interesting though how so many designers completed education in an area they thought they would work in and then ended up doing something completely different. 


To finish, a quote from the lecture that stood out to me was that 

'written music is a language'. 

As a piano player i can read sheet music and it had never occurred to me before that others who can also play were reading the same language as me. Although we may not be able to understand each other, we can understand the same sounds and music we hear and can have and share opinions on it. This has showed me the importance of looking at things from a different angle and thinking outside of the box.  

ITAP Design Canons - week four

This week's lecture was about The Creative Revolution, and the massive effect it had on Advertising. The lecture was based around 2 art directors who were pretty much the reason for the creative revolution. One was famous Art director Bill Bernbach, who was the founder of advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB). The other was Helmut Krone, art director and graphic designer who is mainly known for his inspirational Volkswagen Beetle adverts that came about in the 1960's.  Between the two of them, they created one of the most famous advertisements if all time, The Volkswagen Snow Plow advert shown below. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABcckOTVqao&list=PLD20BE6EACC9EDD70&index=12&feature=plpp_video

The creative revolution  (1954-64) was basically when the idea of having a concept came into advertising and when standard advertising rules such as 2:1 picture:copy were thrown out of the window. Another art director who had an impact was George Lois. He is well known for his work on the Esquire magazine covers. American magazine Business Week once quoted 

'Every industry has it's stars, and in the world of advertising George Lois is a supernova, the original Mr Big Idea.' 

Below are a couple of examples of his work that i came across in which the concept stood out to me as being particularly different or revolutionary.

This is one of Georges famous pieces. This stood out to me instantly because of the simple reason that it is unusual to see a women shaving. Immediately, George has captured an audience because they will be wandering what that is all about. Esquire is a styling and grooming magazine so the image suits the magazines purpose. George could have just had the beautiful women on the front and people would still have bought the magazine thinking that it could teach them how to look like that, but instead he has put a twist on it. It is twists like these that have gotten him recognized for influencing the creative resolution. I noticed also how the razor looks like a standard, relatively cheap razor. I think he has deliberately used this to make the audience think they can afford to be that beautiful .

These are a couple of advertisements George designed for vodka.  These attracted my attention because of the revolutionary and clever use of white space and because of the wit in the quotes. The first advert is implying that the vodka is chatting up the tomato but by doing so it's saying that the vodka is better than others. The tomato agreeing makes you think that he has scored and therefore must be the best.

The second advert has the same concept but this time the orange questions him about the tomato who he's already scored with. This makes us laugh and also gives the impression that the vodka is a bit cheeky which we can all tend to be after drinking vodka. There are probably a few people who read this add and think 'I've been in that situation!' which would mean that they can relate to the advert. George has cleverly used emotions and humour here to lure his audience to buying the vodka.

The most important breakthrough elements I think that George has added to the Creative Revolution are :

Revolutionary use of white space

Use of puns and humour

Allowing the audience to relate

Use of little but convincing Imagery

I belive that using one or more of these in your work would make you stand out from the crowd and therefore become a more noticable designer. 

ITAP Design Canons - week three

This week's lecture was about Great Art Direction and the importance of Simplicity in design, especially Advertising. I found this lecture particularly inspiring and learnt about people who i aspire to be like. There were many quotes that stood out to me and got me thinking about the logic behind advertising. I have decided to look into a couple of these in more detail. The first of these is that 'Simplicity is rare'.
So what is simplicity?

One dictionary definition says that it is the property, condition, or quality of being simple or uncombined. This i think is a very literal way of looking at it. A second definition says that it is the lack of sophistication. What i found interesting about this is that Leonardo Da Vinci, who is well known for being a an incredible artist once said that 'Simplicity is the ultimate Sophistication'. This completely contradicts the dictionary definition yet Da Vinci was extremely talented and successful in his work.This says to me that simplicity has different forms and therefore can't really be defined, which establishes to me that it must be very powerful. As for the word rare, we all know that this is something that doesn't occur or isn't seen very often. You can tell from just walking down a street that detail and complexity is everywhere and we are bombarded with it everyday. The idea behind using 'simplicity is rare' in design is that because it is so rare, it would stand out and make us stop and think wow, that's unusual. It would be more noticeable as it would be a change from what we are used to seeing. 

Another quote I found interesting was about John Webster saying: 

'What was he doing that no one else was? Well, precisely that. He was doing what no

one else was. Purposely.'

I love this quote because it's saying that being different is a good thing. People who are different are often portrayed in a bad way and looked down upon, but when it comes to advertising, it seems the crazier and braver you are the better. John Webster has proved that having some self confidence and using it in the correct way, can go a long way. Below is a link to one of his most famous pieces, the original honey monster Advertisement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW_5-DhV1gE&list=PLD20BE6EACC9EDD70&index=2&feature=plpp_video

An art director that has inspired me is Sir John Hegarty. Having being inspired by his Levis advertisement, I decided to research into him in more detail. Below are a couple of screen prints from his website. On the actual website the rabbit appears first and then as you scroll down the page the hat appears and the rabbit jumps in. This looks like moving graphics which i thought was incredible. I have never seen another website that has done this before. 

The second screen shot shows what it looks like as you are half way scrolling down a page. The black sheep is the logo of his agency BBH. The black sheep comes from one of his Levis adverts showing a black sheep in a group of white sheep, standing out from the crowd. This shows Hegarty has worked with a similar notion to John Webster, in the way he knew that different was a good thing. 

http://www.hegartyonadvertising.com/

ITAP Design Canons - week two

This lecture was about Information Design. 
Information design is the practise of using text and image to prepare a visually appealing representation of complex or unstructured information, in order to make it clearer and easier for the viewer to understand. There are 7 main principles to think about in information design. These are Grouping information, Consistency, Typography, Grid structure, Graphic elements, Spacing and Visual Hierarchy.


To begin I am going to look at the work of information designer David McCandless. I was inspired by his quote that 'Information is beautiful. Below is a screen shot of thumbnails of David's visualisations on his blog 'informationisbeautiful.net'. You can see his work is mainly very simple, yet most of it has been designed from complex information. I think it's incredible how he has come up with so many ways of visually interpreting information.

A piece of his that particularly stood out to me is the one shown here on the right. It is a composition of many different countries of the world, all in scale, placed into an outline of Africa in order to show how big the continent is. This is really good example of how he has taken what probably started off as figures and distances etc and turned it into an attractive, appealing piece of design. It has a larger effect on the viewer presenting the information in this way as the viewer finds it easier to relate the the content. By this i mean that figures written down would probably not mean much to someone who didn't know much about distances, but by being able to visualise the distances it has a much higher impact. 




Another part of this lecture i found particularly interesting was the work of Airside.
Airside is a creative agency working across many design disciplines, including anything from graphics through to moving image. Below is a link to an information graphics video they have designed, explaining the importance of communicating information when trying to get aid to people in the world that need it. It explains how when a natural or man-made distaster happens, communication systems can fall apart, leaving people confused and scared. Airside: InfoIsAid: http://vimeo.com/26668253

Having found this inspiring I looked into other information films created by Airside. I came across a series of 2 videos that they had been asked to create by live earth in order to warn people about climate change. The two films were designed from different points of view. The first was from the point of view of a penguin and what could happen to him when climate changes. 
Live Earth: Penguin in a pickle: http://vimeo.com/18994031

The second is aimed at educating humans who don't know much about climate change in order to show them how easy it is to make a difference.
Live Earth: A beginners guide to climate change: http://vimeo.com/18992999

The graphics shown in these two videos are funny and interesting to watch and also manage hold a powerful message behind them. Watching these videos is more likely to make you react to climate change than reading a few bullet points on a sheet. This is really good example of how showing information through design can make a difference.  

ITAP Design Canons - week one

This blog is the first of a new collection of blogs that I will write over the next 8 weeks on our ITAP part 2 - design canon lectures. In this lecture we looked at many different areas of practice within graphic design and the importance of the 4 main principles on which our 4 briefs for this module 'Developing Practice in Graphic Design' are based on.
These 4 principles are:

Target Audience and Context

Creative Strategies

Visual Language 

Design and Composition

I am going to look at the 2 areas of practice that most inspired me in this lecture and that I feel are weaker areas for me and therefore spending time researching them would be beneficial. These were Expressive Graphics and Illustrative Typography.

An illustrative typographer that has caught my eye is Craig Ward. I think his work is incredible and he is an inspiration. Below are a couple of examples of his work.

This piece stood out to me because of how it appears to play tricks on the eye. When you first look at it you see the illustration and then on your second look or longer stance you begin to make out the words hidden within it.

This piece caught my eye because of the detail within it. The typography itself is just plain white text, in a simple font such as arial but then there is an incredible amount of detail in the glass smashing. It almost looks as if the image is moving, you can imagine the shards of glass flying outwards. Seeing his work has inspired me to want to use more illustrative typography in my work.


Another illustrative typographer whom I used for research in the previous module that has inspired me is Luke Lucas. His work is similar to Craig Wards only he uses a lot more 3D modelling to  create the typography. Below is an example of how he uses a 3D model to create a typographic logo design. I found his website very inspiring : http://www.lukelucas.com/

Expressive Graphics is design used to express, debate and opine.It's a way of expressing emotions, values and ethics using graphic language. The example of this we looked at in the lecture is the I♥NY sign. It started off as a rough sketch by Milton Glazer in a taxi on the way to his pitch and is now one of the most copied idea's in the world. This was used as a poster campaign across New York after 911 to make the people of New York stay there and fight for the city. The dark left hand corner is meant to symbolize the twin towers burning. It wasn't until now that I knew there was such a deep meaning behind the design. 

To finish I am going to leave you with this quote that the lecture began with. I found it very interesting and relevant:

'The creative process is not performed by the skilled hand alone, but must be a unified process in which the head, heart, and hand play a simultaneous role'.