5 Images of Modernity

Walter Allner - Fortune

Swiss Modern Design for the chemical industry.

Seminar 4 Semiotics

Semiotics is the science of studying signs

a word
an arrangement of letters
colours
noises

all these can be signs

studying how things mean not what things mean

Ferdinand de Sausse (swiss linguist)

semiotics is about readings cultural codes

systems of signs that link together to create means of communications

fashion reads as a long

all codes rely on a shared knowledge


the word 'Dog' has no relation to an actual dog..people just agreed that dog means dog.

there is no logical between signifier and signified

the signifier - sound image

the signified - mental concept

the relationship is obituary


this is why the more you say or see a word the less meaning it has


typeface is a very important signifier i.e elegant type, aggressive type..BOLD = strong

type needs to signify what its saying.

Seminar 3 Modernism in design

Lecture 3 Modernism in design

Anti-historicism (not looking back)

Truth to materialism – no need to disguise things

Form follows function

technology

internationalism

Bauhaus cultury (form follows function)

Ornament is crime Adolf loos (1908)

Basic Knife fork etc.

Bauhaus main site of moderist design

Brought in san serifs

Bauhaus shut down by nazis

Modernist design, things being mass produced, New materials being used

Internationalism

A language of design understandable by any one

Hary beck London underfround map 1933

Simple not accurate  but easy to follow

Herbert vayers sans serif type

1932 times new roamd

fraktur font 1930’s

modern is not neutral is suggest novelty and improvement

FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION

Lecture 1 Modernity & Modernism: An Introduction

Lecture 1

Modernity & Modernism: An Introduction

Modernity – industrial urbanisation

Modern art response to the city

Modern art & photography

Ikea, mini skirts – modernism

TATE modern

.The New woman/Spanish pavilion (1937).

Modernity is known to have happened between 1750-1960 we are still believed to be in late modernity/post modernism it  lasted roughly 200 years but there was a rapid change in those 200 years.

Urbanisation began which saw people moving towards Town centres and with this came shopping, cinemas, galleries etc.

The standardised world clock also happened in this period as the world became such a smaller place as people could travel

And with the world clock came shifts in jobs created and holidays in the year.

Enlightenment in the late 18^th century saw science making leaps and bounds.

Secularisation – we see city life exploding making a much denser life style/fragmented, the city life is born.

.Caillebottle ‘paris on a rainy day’.1877

Clothes began to stereotype people

Paris Haussmanisation to redesign paris to ‘modernise’ paris

Crime was rife before redesign.

Potraits of alienisation even though you would have been surrounded by millions of people.

Psychology experiments began on modernity on people apparently the dense life of a city makes people a lot more distracted .

Modernism is city life forced upper-class and lower-class together

Degas (1876) L’Absinthe – a painting about having to get pissed due to you not being able to tolerate your job.

‘kaiserpanorama 1883 – a round viewing device for erotic pictures art in photography’

people prefer to view a modern life through technology rather than enjoy it.

The first cinema had a show with a train approaching the screen and any one that went to watch it ran out of the cinema terrified thinking it was real

Modernism emerges out of the subjective responses of artists/designers to modernity.

Modernist paintings of dense modernist city life attempt to create the psychological experience the subject has rather than what it looks like.

When photography was invented  it captured image perfect, so painting had to adapt to this and have reason to be used.

‘Alfred Stieglitz Flatiron building 1903’

sky scrapers gave us new ways of seeing the world

Paul Citreon - Metropolis 1923

George Grosz + John Heartfield

Marcel Duchamp

Lecture 2 A Medium for the Masses (James Beighton)

Lecture 2: A Medium for the Masses

Origins of GD

GD in relation to Fine Art

GD in relation to Advertising

GD as a tool of capitalism

GD as a political tool

GD as post modernism

GD and social conscience

Bison and horses  15,000-10,000  BC cave painting France

Giotto di bondone betretal 1305 ad fresco arena chapel italy

Illustrates a message in comic strip

1922 –William Addison dwiggins first successful graphic designer gave GD its name

quotes about gd Herbert spencer mechandiszed art

max bill an joseph muller brockman visual communication

steven heller quote

henride Toulouse Lautrec aristide bruant 1893 poster

alphonso mucha job 1898 poster

chalres rennie mackintosh Scottish musical review

peter Behrens aeg 1910

Alfred leete britons wants you 1914

Kandinsky – abstract shapes – geometric elements

Harry beck tube map 1933 london underground map

Simon pattison the great bear 1992 lithgraph on paper

Oscer schlemmer bahaus logo 1922

Cassadre (franch) l’intransergant

British Design took a while to catch up with GD in 1930’s stil using fine art with text

Ludwig vierthaler degenerate art 1936 exhibition poster

Hans schleger eat greens for health 1942

Jospeh renau – industries of war 1936

Joseph renau – starlingrad the new star of freedom 1942

Pere catala ipic lets squash facism

Abram Games festival of Britain 1951

Paul rand jaquline cochran 1946

Helmutkrone for doyle dan berbach think small VW 1959

Peter saville new order blue Monday sleeve design 1983

The face mag cover

David garson loosing sight GD for GD sake

Public Image ltd album sleev 1986

Chumba wamba starving children 1986

Pop will eat itself 1994

Prml scrm

Mark farrow floating in space 1997

The coup party music 2001 Twin towers

Seminar 5 Advertising

Contextual and theoretical studies

Essay Questions

1st Q 

.responses to forces of modernity (this q is about modernism key words..modernist graphic design/forces of modernity) forces being industrialisation/ secularisation also.first section would be describing forces of modernity at a particular time. limit examples that we discuss to 2 or 3 also limit the period we look at don't attempt to explain the forces of modern from 1800 to 20th century use a specific time choose a style i.e bauhaus.

2nd Q.

pick any aspect of GD that i'm interested in 200 years to work with. again linked to modern  looking at the way art and designed has changed the world 2 EXAMPLES!! reflecting social or cultural change,,pick your period..a decade and 2 images that reflect the zeitgeist of that period...i.e. russian revolution,(constructivism) however if you wanted to look at some thing more contemporary thats ok i.e. looking at graffiti...grafiti is a response to alienation for the black youths in new york.....

3rd Q

essay will be about defining post modernism and 

4th Q

linked to 31st nov lecture taste and value lecture..fine art ought to be assigned more value than GD? no struggling for this should be able to find ample research.... key word VALUE...social value money value spiritual value. a few examples discussed but not too many

5th Q

on advertising to find quotes from numerous sources to have a balanced arguments. 

Advertising

Negative side of advertising.

Times SQ new york..ways of seeing john burger..in society its impossible to escape society bombarded with imagery promises of better lives..fantasy ideal bodies that promise better lives and make us unhappy with out current lives. its possibly the most influential design media in the western world

in early 90s estimates suggested that there were 11,000 new TV adverts in the UK

in briton every year there are 25 million print adverts every year.

every time we go on the internet we are bombarded with pops ups and adverts we cant escape it

were focusing on adverts theatre promise a better life through spending\

Karl Marx 1818-1883

writer of communist manifesto,  analysed capitalism the system we live in. theorised how it works and how class structures work. critique of consumer/commodity culture..this constructs out identities throughout the consumer products we inhabit

Judith Williamson -Stewert Ewen - 'what we buy is what we are'

clothes, jewellery, technology, housing, cars, accessories, music, children being dressed in expensive clothes …….school uniforms given to schools so every ones equal.

advertising makes up envious 

spending money to make us feel richer but effectively making us poorer .

the people who we believe we need to be are projected towards us.

rather than selling an item there selling a lifestyle and symbolic attachments,,i.e aftershave is selling the fact that your going to be attracted to and it will make you sexy beautiful glamour. <----connotations.

we become addicted to buying things 

commodity fetishism..basically advertising conceals the background of history of products in other words the concept in which a product is produced is kept hidden.

 commodity fetishism is where people connect throughout individual things such as hair styles clothes etc..

reification…..products are given human associations products themselves are perceived as sect cool sophisticated fun etc

also were a person becomes a thing rather than a person i,e a person is a stereotype as such and simplifying them whilst at the same time making things like people. i.e the thing becomes the relationship though families i.e a car advert shows a happy family.

Lecture 5 new media and culture

Lecture 5

New Media and Visual Culture

1. characteristics of new digital media 

2. definition of critical look at the mass media 

3. relationship between art and the mass media 

Late age of print

The term comes from the mid theorist Marchall Mcluhan the age of print began around 1450.

Gutenbergs printing press.

similar to a wine press but with moveable type blocks began the start of mass produced printing

19th century allows for popular print media to become available cheaply to the masses

the ability for people to produce information in print starts here

print allows people to become literate like they weren't before.

prior to the late age of print literacy mean being able to read and write.

computerate - extension of literate 

printing in this age was use for bank statements and other important documents

nowadays we use computers as consumption of info but also and production of info..

The Reader

'the rolled of the reader'- the electronic book

people no longer read print electronic viewing is taking over i.e people use the internet to read articles and are also able to comment  with their opinions

e books allow you to use the news how you choose you can skip back and forward link to individual stories, these allows us to shape and change information we receive 

Computer Media

'Hypertext' and 'hypermedia' allows you to jump straight to a story.  it can give you the feline of being lost in information were you cant get back to were you started

in schools students build their own learning with the internet rather than being thought by a teacher.

its dizzying how much information is taken in, screen size effects this and a sense that struggle or compensation with the internet as in we always have to be on the move an get through the information as fast as we can were as with a book you can get into it and slow down with it.

Definition of mass media 

modern systems of communication and distribution supplied by relatively small group of cultural producers but directed toward large numbers of consumers i.e. a small number of people communicating to a large audience.

pros and cons of the mass media.

1. superficial uncritical trivial

2. viewing figures measure success

3. audience is disempowered 

4. encourages the status quo (its conservative)

5. audience is dispersed 

6. encourages apathy

7. power held by the few motivated by profit or social control (propaganda)

8. Bland, Escapist and Standardised 

9.Encourages escapism, seen as a drug of the nation

Positives of mass media

1. not al mass media is of low quality 

2. social problem and injustices are discussed by the media

3. creativity can be a feature of mass media

4. transmission of high art material reaches a broader audience

5. democratic potential

Nothing radical happens with the internet or TV because due to the fear of loosing audience.

if your part of an audience that watches for instance Emmerdale you seem to be part of a collective, the audience is disempowered, i.e if you phone in a radio station they can cut you off, also Wagner had a campaign on FB and then he got kicked out.

artistes use of mass media art in the age of mass media

he explores what happens to art just for the few in this age of the mass media how does that relationship shift

'LEEDS 13' 

Benneton campaign..Oliviero Toscani……---an ad campaign on the surface to buy products,,but thats not what their doing the outfit is an army one stained with blood,,,this campaign traded on horror and disaster unity social cohesion, electric chair, social issues like aids/hiv --there fore its doing much more than advertising its more about politics 

LEEDS 13 - pretended to go and spend their grants on a piss up and faked photos, when they released this as a scam there was a debate about whats art.

Key Questions

can art be autonomous? (exist on its own vacuum)…i.e. its doesn't have its own politics and doesn't need new media.

Should art be autonomous? (for some yes…)

Jackson Pollock

his work is just about aesthetic appeal no politics or any thin, but theres a theory that the CIA paid him to produce this work in the time of the cold war.

Picasso had a deep relationship with the mass media..

warhol electric chair (1967)  Ambulance Disaster..the negative effects of the mass media a conditions known as compassion fatigue…if images of shock value are repeated they loose their shock value the same way he made maralyn monroe loose her ...

500 word essay on uncle sam range and great war poster

In this brief essay I will be comparing two very patriotic and persuasive pieces of graphic design from significant times in history, I will be looking at the message being delivered, the purpose of the message, the potential audience, fonts used, style of graphic design and socio historical context.
The two images I am comparing are 'The Uncle Same Range' (1876), An advertising image by Schumacher & Ettlinger, selling The Uncle Sam Range Cooker and a Poster by Savile Lumley (1915) about the First World War persuading you to join the army. Two similar pieces of graphic design in terms of purpose, they both aim to persuade and both use the same kind of techniques.
The first image 'The Uncle Sam Range' uses a clever technique of patriotism to grab the viewers attention, all over the image you find american flags and symbols, for instance the curtains and wall paper resemble the american flag and Uncle Sam, the most American symbol of all is sat in the middle of the picture with the american Eagle perched upon his shoulder, this shows the image is intended for Americans, we see Uncle Sam sat at a table to the right of a huge cooking stove with all sorts of working parts on it, the table has a cloth over it saying 'Uncle Sam's little Dinner Party' also sat at this table is the Globe and three women: West, Dixie and New England these are the main parts of America, the first states. With the combination of it being Uncle Sam's Dinner party and Uncle Sam sat down with the Globe we get the idea America is catering to the world. The second image uses a guilt trip approach to persuade the audience, we see a father of two sat in his front room with his daughter on his lap reading a book and his son sat on the floor playing with war toys, at the bottom of the image there is some text that reads 'Daddy, what did YOU do in the great war?' the text is in italics so we know its as if one of the children have said it, also the YOU is underlined to target individuals the same way Uncle Sam's 'your country needs YOU' poster did with Uncle Sam pointing at the audience. The war is also called the great war as to state it would have been an honour to serve in. The text used in the first image is a very well known strong, bold, western font that could have been found in old wild west ranch's this again shows american patriotism and strength, an interesting part of the Uncle Sam's Range is the Globe is holding a list that has countries on them with foods listed below belonging to each country, for instance it says: China - birds nest, boiled grasshoppers etc and: Ireland - Potatoes Raw this is showing that the Uncle Sam Range Cooker in the image to the left of uncle sam can cook almost any thing from any country therefore America is the host to all countries, and the patriotism of the image makes the audience believe that if they buy this cooker they themselves become more American for that.