Week 5: Chapter 11-Chapter 12

Chapter 11: Art Nouveau

Ukiyo-e “pictures of the floating world” was the art movement happening during Japan’s Tokugawa period, which was the ending phase of traditional Japanese history.  During this time, the Shogan declared a national policy of seclusion to try to prevent the influence of European expansion and Christian missionaries on Japanese culture.  Citizens were not allowed to travel or return from abroad and foreign trade was prohibited.

The Ukiyo-e style combined the emaki (traditional picture scrolls) style with decorative arts, and used wood block screen printing.  Book illustration was becoming a popular art form during this time.  There were many artists who influenced the Ukiyo- style, the most well known being Katsushika Hokusai who created thirty-five thousand works during his life including “Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fiji”.  The Ukiyo-e style had a huge influence on what came next, Art Nouveau.

You can spot Art Nouveau by its organic, plantlike lines “vine tendrils, flowers, birds, and the human female form were frequent motifs from which this fluid line was adapted”.  It was used in all of the design arts; graphics, fashion, interior decorating and architecture.  Something that really caught my interest in this section was the line “In earlier three-dimensional design, ornaments often were decorative elements applied to the surface of a building or object, but in art nouveau objects, the basic forms and shapes were formed by, and evolved with the design of the ornament”.  I found it interesting that they would design an entire structure around an ornamental object.  It would be like designing an entire outfit around a pair of earrings, instead of finding earrings that matched your outfit.  “Art nouveau graphic designers and illustrators attempted to make art a part of every day life”.

In 1881, a French law was passed for freedom of the press, which allowed posters to be displayed anywhere and “the streets became an art gallery”.  Jules Cheret established a printing firm and produced a design for the theatrical production “La biche au bois”, which made him the pioneer of the visual poster.  He started using color in his posters, and “his publications transformed the walls of Paris” with his posters for music halls and theatre and his designs used on products including beverages and household products.  He created “Cheretts” in his art, who were “neither prudes nor prostitutes, these self assured happy women enjoyed living life to the fullest, wearing low-cut dresses, dancing, drinking, wine, and even smoking in public”.  I can certainly appreciate that!  It sounds like a lot of other people appreciated his art form too, as he was named to the Legion of Honor for “creating a new brand of art that advanced printing and served the needs of commerce and industry”.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec designed the poster “La Goulue au Moulin Rouge”, which is a very popular and well known poster, and it “broke new ground in poster design”.  The design of this poster really moves your eyes from the left side all the way through to the right side of the poster, something that is very important in graphic design.  It is a very expressive poster.  He also produced 30 other posters, which are still recognized today by most people.

A good friend of Toulouse-Lautrec’s and a fellow poster artist is Theophile-Alexandre Steinlen.  He created one of the most recognizable posters in the world “Tournee du Chat Noir de Rodolphe Salis”.  His fluid reportorial lines and flat colors were very similar to the designs by Toulouse-Lautrec.  Steinlen was a big time cat lover, and his first commissions in Paris were drawings for Le Chat Noir.  

Ethel Reed was the first woman graphic designer and illustrator to receive national prominence.  She was a well known book illustrator and poster designer by age 18.  For four years, from the age of 18-22, she created posters and illustrations for publishers, then mysteriously at age twenty-two she disappears from the historical record.

Edward Penfield, who was an art director for Harper and Brothers publications, was influenced by Japanese prints and made popular what we know today as “white space”.  His style was “contour drawing with flat planes of color”, and “by eliminating the background, he forced the viewer to focus on the figure and lettering”.

Henri van de Velde was a jack of all trades; he was an architect, painter, designer, and educator.  He unified many styles into one and made it his own.  He believed all past art styles should be integrated into the new ones.  “He taught that all branches of art-from painting to graphic design, from industrial design to sculpture-share a common language of form and are of equal importance to the human community”.  This really struck a chord with me.  Often I hear people say that something isn’t art, just because it isn’t interesting to them, or that a piece of art is boring or too simple.  I think every form of art is important, and I think different kinds of art are important in different ways.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  

Chapter 12: The Genesis of Twentieth-Century Design

At the turn of the century, art nouveau was becoming less and less popular, and artists, architects, fashion designers, and product designers were looking for new techniques for artistic expression.  They were transitioning from the organic flowing curves of art nouveau into a more linear, geometric art form.  Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect at the forefront of this movement.  He used repetition of rectangular zones and asymmetrical spatial organization in his designs of architecture, furniture, graphics, fabrics, wallpapers, and stained glass windows.  His approach was very influential to other designers.

The Glasgow School refers to four collaborating artists who “developed a unique style of lyrical originality and symbolic complexity”.  They were: Charles Rennie Mackintosh, J. Herbert McNair, Margaret Macdonald, and Frances Macdonald.  They were innovators of a geometric style of composition using flowing curves with rectangular structure.  Their work was very influential on twentieth century art.  

The Vienna Secession came into existence when artists wanted freedom to exhibit and they were limited by the government.  Secession artists used clean sans serif lettering and linear art techniques.  The art from this time is very geometric and modular in its design.  The Vienna Secession was the bridge between art nouveau and geometric formalism.

Peter Behrens has been credited as “the first industrial designer”.  Some of his designs include teapots, streetlamps, fans, and electric motors.  He had a very influential geometric structure in his design.  He was the artistic advisor for the AEG, and designed their trademark logo along with a new typeface exclusive to them.

Week 4: Chapter 9-Chapter 10

Week 4: Chapter 9-Chapter 10

Chapter 9: Graphic Design and The Industrial Revolution

During the Industrial Revolution, technologies developed which lowered production costs increasing production and allowing mass communication to develop.  Factories opened, cities grew and the need for graphic design increased as the products the factories were producing needed advertisements to attract buyers.    

One theme that keeps catching my eye in this book is the availability of books to the middle class.  Before books were so commonly available, they were only accessible to the upper class.  After all the advancements in technology and printing, books became available to the common middle class citizen.  It’s hard to imagine a world without books or access to the wealth of knowledge they offer us.  In this chapter, they talk about how during the industrial revolution “power shifted away from the aristocracy and toward capitalist manufacturers, merchants, and even the working class.”

Another subject that keeps coming up in this book is the development of different font types.  Ever since I learned how to use a computer when I was 7 years old, I have loved to play around with different fonts.  I saw the names all the time; sans serif, clarendon etc, but never knew why they were called what they were called.  Reading this book has given me a glimpse into many fonts; how they were developed visually and why they have the names they do.

Printing really advanced, starting in 1810 with Friedrich Koenig’s development of a steam powered printing press that printed 400 sheets per hour.  He then build a double-cylandar press which printed 1100 impressions an hour.  Then, in 1815 William Cowper build a press that could print 2400 impressions per hour, or 1200 sheets with both sides printed on per hour.  In 1827 he developed a four-cylander steam engine printer that could print 4000 sheets with both sides printed on per hour.  So, in 1810 400 single sided sheets per hour could be printed per hour, and just 17 years later 4000 sheets with both sides printed on could be achieved per hour.  By the middle of the 19^th century, presses could print 25,000 copies per hour.  

Ottmar Mergenthaler changed printing forever.  Before his invention of the Linotype machine, all printing of books, magazines and newspapers was done by every letter being set by hand.  The Linotype machine “could do the work of seven or eight hand composers”, and put hand type-setters out of business.  On the flip side of that,  his invention created thousands of new jobs as graphic material production took off.  Newspapers had more pages in them and were sold for a lower price.  Books publishing expanded from educational texts and literary classics to fiction, biographies, technical books and histories.  Periodicals and illustrated weeklies were produced and distributed rapidly.

The invention of photography: Joseph Niepce was the first person to produce a photographic image.   He invented heliogravure (sun engraving) and used it to take the first picture of nature.  

It was William Henry Fox Talbot who invented true photography.  He experimented with what was the early version of developing photos, and called these images photogenic drawings.  Talbots motivation for developing photography came from his desire to duplicate images of nature perfectly, realizing that his illustrations were not always adequate.  In 1844 he published “The Pencil of Nature” which included 24 hand mounted photographs of nature.  In my opinion, Talbot made the most significant contributions to early photography.  

In 1888, George Eastman invented the Kodak camera, and gave ordinary citizens the ablility to record history through photographs.  Today, we can take photos with our cell phones anywhere and any time, thanks to the hard work and inventions from this time period.  Along with photography, color printing and photo engraving was invented.  This time period (1820-1890) was known as the Victorian Era.  

Chapter 10: The Arts and Crafts Movement and Its Heritage

The Arts and Crafts Movement was a “reaction against the social, moral, and artistic confusion of the Industrial Revolution.  John Ruskin was a writer and an artist during this movement.  He believed the Industrial Revolution had isolated artists, and he believed that “beautiful things were valuable and useful precisely because they were beautiful”.  William Morris, called the leader of the English Arts and Crafts movement, subscribed to Ruskin’s beliefs.  He wrote poetry, fiction, and philosophical writings.  He briefly joined an architectural firm, then left to pursue painting.  In 1861 he joined with six friends to establish the art-decorating firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company.  He was an amazing two-dimensional pattern designer who made designs for wallpapers, textiles, carpets, and tapestries.  He tried to “implement Ruskin’s ideas: the tastelessness of mass-produced goods and the lack of honest craftsmanship might be addressed by a reunion of art with craft”.  He believed these ideas could improve people’s quality of life. 

Arthur H. Mackmurdo was inspired by Morris’ ideas and designs.  He established the Century Guild, whose goal was “to render all branches of the art the sphere, no longer of the tradesman, but of the artist”.  They printed the first magazine devoted to the visual arts called “Century Guild Hobby Horse”.   He was a forerunner in the private press movement, which was a movement emphasizing the design and beauty that books could contain.  This movement wanted to restore the high quality of books that existed before the Industrial Revolution. 

William Morris went on to typeface design and printing, and his first typeface was named Golden.  He set up a press and called it Kelmscott Press.  After he passed away, production continued, and “eighteen thousand volumes of fifty-three titles were produced.”  The Kelmscott Press wanted to preserve the beauty of hand made books, and did so by hand-printing, using handmade paper, and handcut wood blocks.  “The book became an art form”.  Morris’ hard work and meticulous execution changed the craftsmanship of books from mass production back to hand made art.

Sources: Meggs History of Graphic Design

Week 3: Chapter 5-Chapter 8

Week 3: Chapter 5-Chapter 8

Chapter 5: Printing Comes to Europe

One thing about this chapter that I thought was really interesting was learning that playing cards were the first printed pieces available to the common people, who were mostly illiterate.  This was originally the game of Kings, who would play it with cards made of ivory.  Now peasants and craftsmen would play cards in taverns.  The cards were block printed.  One sentence really stuck with me: "Because these cards introduced the masses to symbol recognition, sequencing, and logical deduction, their intrinsic value transcended idle entertainment."

The earliest known copperplate engravings were created by an unidentified artist known as the Master of the Playing Cards.  His best work was considered, wait for it...a set of playing cards.  His set contained cards with images of birds, animals, and wild men.

A very influential person in this chapter was Johann Gutenberg.  He invented the systems necessary to print typographic books.  He made the design for the printing press, developed inks for relief printing, developed punch cutting and casting metal type.  He almost completed the first printing of the forty-two line bible, but the night of completion he lost his printing business to Johann Fust, to whom he owed money.  Fust officially finished printing that Bible.  

Chapter 6: The German Illustrated Book

This picture is of William Catxton's printers mark.  He was the person who made the first typographic book in English.  It was a translation of Raoul le Feure's 'Recuyell of the Histories of Troy.'  In the epilogue, Caxton writes "my pen is worn, my hand is weary and shaky, my eyes are dimmed from too much looking at white paper" so he learned how to print it instead.  He went on to print the first book in England.

Chapter 7: Renaissance Graphic Design

Early printers often used trademarks to claim their books, similar to the stamps on clay pots from Chapter 1.  These symbols were compared to Egyptian Hieroglyphics.  

 In 1476 Erhard Ratdolt printed what was most likely the first book printed in more than one color.  It was called 'Calendarium', and it contained printed images of solar and lunar cycles and eclipses, as well as a mathematical wheel chart for calculating them.  It was a small beginning to people having access to scientific knowledge and fact, instead of just having access to religious stories.  As a result of this, science was becoming common knowledge and religion was losing some of it's power.

Geoffroy Tory was an interesting person to read about in this chapter.  He is the person who invented the apostrophe and the accent.  He was a professor, scholar, translator, poet, author, printer, publisher, bookseller, calligrapher, designer, illustrator and engraver.  He was a true "renaissance man."  

Tory's book series "Horae (Book of Hours)" was considered a milestone in graphic design and set the style for this era.  This book was visually beautiful, with borders and illustrations surrounding the text.  Tory was honored by King Francis I and was named "printer to the king."

Tory's most influential work  was "Champ Fleury", which consisted of three books.  The first book is pronunciation and speech rules of the french language.  The second book is about the history of roman letters and their proportions to the human figure and face.  The third book contains grids of the Latin alphabet and instructions on the geometric construction of the 23 letters.  It also has designs for thirteen other alphabets, including his "fantastic alphabet" as pictured above.

Chapter 8: An Epoch of Typographic Genius

Typography changed the world.  It gave every day people access to books and knowledge.

For me, some of the most interesting learning from this module has been about developing fonts that we still use today; Garramond, Serif and Baskerville to name a few.  John Baskerville was a printer and bookmaker who developed types and italic fonts.  He did not use the floral borders and decorations in his books that was widely used in other books, his were solely typographic.  His types were smooth and refined.  His types were quite controversial, many people claimed that reading his books gave them a head ache because of the sharpness of his type.  Benjamin Franklin was a huge fan of Baskerville, and stood up for his type style.  

In closing, this Module was information packed, but very educational.  It really made me appreciate the printed books we have today.  Growing up in this generation, it is easy to take books for granted and move on to the digital universe.  Before this Module, I was a pretty firm believer in the efficiency and ease of having information at my fingertips on the Internet. I now realize this is all possible because of the hard work of the people who developed the alphabet, printing presses and types.  Without books, we would never have the knowledge we have today.  From now on, I will appreciate books in a different way.

Week 2: Chapter 1-Chapter 4

Chapter 1: The Invention of Writing

This book literally starts from the beginning of time.  It’s really interesting to think about a world where communication through words does not exist.  Early humans started drawing images on the wall of a cave as a form of communication.  In time, these drawings evolved into symbols, which became the basis of the alphabet we all know now.  The invention of writing changed everything.  Before writing, spoken words were lost and history was not recorded.  When writing was invented, humans were able to communicate with each other and preserve their knowledge.

Being a scribe never seemed interesting to me until this assignment, yet scribes are basically responsible for all of the historical knowledge and information we have today since they were the ones who recorded all of it.  Their job was taken very seriously.  They would study every day from sun up to sun down learning to read and write.  They wrote books, kept track of city records, kept track of historical records and even kept track of the business of royalty.  Scribes would carry with them a wooden palette which identified them as a person who could read and write.  They developed tools to use for writing.   They were held in a very high regard, and often got opportunities that others did not. 

In ancient Egypt, as a scribe you had to be educated in writing and arithmetic.  They supervised building construction, documented historical events and recorded many stories from that time period that still exist today.  Ancient Egyptians considered scribes royalty and they were exempt from paying taxes.  Egyptian scribes used pictures and symbols to represent the sounds you would use in spoken words.  They were writing about life, recording history through symbols.   Here’s an interesting fact; the ankh was originally a symbol created for a sandal strap, but phonetically it was similar to other sounds and became known as a symbol for life and immortality, and is considered sacred.  Talk about the journey of a lifetime for a symbol!

   

Early libraries started to be organized together with tablets full of knowledge in them.  Literature started to form.  Laws of society were recorded.  Measurements and weights were standardized.  The foundation of all our knowledge about life as we know it was being built.  Visual identification became necessary, and people started to develop their marks or signatures.  They would stamp them on the clay pots they made, on their cattle or other objects to show ownership or craftsmanship.  Cutters started developing cylindrical stamps for people to use as their mark.  This is thought of as the early beginnings of printing and design.

Chapter 2: Alphabets

Reading about the evolution of our alphabet has been quite a journey.  I never imagined that in a class about Graphic Design that I would be learning about the alphabet, yet it now is apparent how important this piece of history is to our profession.  Again, something I have never given much thought to before this class.  So, I did some research and found out even more about why the alphabet is so important.  One huge reason is collation and organization. Alphabetical order is something we use every day; for example libraries, medical records and phone contacts.   The alphabet evolved and eventually became the 26 letters we use today from pictures to symbols, and sounds to letters .  The Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans all played a big part in its development.   

Chapter 3: The Asian Contribution

The part of this chapter that I found most interesting was the part about calligraphy.  There were many phases in the development of Chinese calligraphy.  It is considered the highest art form in China, and in fact is a medium for conveying feelings and emotional/spiritual states.  The thickness and heaviness of the strokes tells you what the writer was feeling, and what they want you to feel when you read it.  Calligraphy is written about in this book like it's a living and breathing being.  The way it is structured is broken down like physical anatomy: "Calligraphy was said to have bones (authority and size), meat (the proportion of the characters:, blood (the texture of the fluid ink), and muscle (spirit and vital force)."  This image shows the development of the character for Li (now the symbol for tripod):

The Chinese contributed a lot to writing, beyond calligraphy, which is saying a lot since their written language consists of more than forty-four thousand characters.  They invented paper.  They also invented printing.  They made it possible to transfer historical events that had been previously documented in stone onto paper, thus making them easily accessible.  They also invented paper money.  They updated the way we read from scrolls to books.  They developed movable type.  China was the first society in which common people saw and used printed images in their daily life.  

Chapter 4: Illuminated Manuscripts

Illuminated manuscripts were originally pages that had gold leaf on them that reflected light, and we now know them as any of the decorated handwritten books from the Roman Empire.  A team of people created these books together, much the way a team of designers creates a product today.  The "scrittori" was the art director who was responsible for the overall design of the manuscript.  He would design the layout for the page and decide how it would look.  The "copisti" was the writer, and would spend many laborious days and nights hand writing each page.  The illuminator was the illustrator of the ornamental designs of the manuscript.  Together, this creative team designed illuminated manuscripts that allowed knowledge and ideas to be spread from region to region, and time period to time period. These manuscripts were a key part of our industry, and provided us with the earliest graphic forms, page layouts and techniques.

The Book of Kells is an amazing piece of history.  The designs are beautiful and intricate. They used many aspects of design in this book that we use today; borders, large first letters, and different font sizes. This picture shows how they used bigger letters with more illustration around them on words of particular significance:

Shortly after the time of the Book of Kells, Caroline minuscule was developed.  It was the beginning of the lower case alphabet that we use today.  Spaces were inserted between words and characters and reading became much easier.  The alphabet we use today with upper and lower case letters was coming into focus.

Sources: Meggs History of Graphic Design, Wikipedia

Week 1- Preface, Look at Every Picture in The Book

I am only at the beginning of this class, and already I realize how massively enormous the field of Graphic Design is.  In the preface of Meggs, they spend an entire page explaining how much Graphic Design work is out there, to the effect of not being able to cover everything in one book and apologizing for not having enough space for every design and designer who has contributed to the industry.  As a person who is very new to the industry, I am both inspired and overwhelmed by the amount of Graphic Design I see around me in my everyday life.   Literally everything we look at all day long is Graphic Design.  As I look around my room now, I find myself thinking about how these designs have come to be; my coffee cup, a book cover, a moving box, a bag from marshalls, etc.  The fact is, that each one of these things was designed by someone who put a lot of time and thought into something I see everyday and don’t think twice about. 

The first paragraph of the Preface to the First Edition is really powerful.  Zeitgeist “the spirit of the times” is one of the most interesting concepts I have ever thought about, especially when applied to Graphic Design.  The writer goes on to explain that you can look at a piece of art or design and know what time period it is from, where it is from and what was going on culturally at the time.  He says that Graphic Design is better able to “express the Zeitgeist of an epoch than many other forms of human expression.”  At only 4 pages in, I’m already creatively inspired. 

When I bought this book at the campus bookstore, I flipped through it and quickly realized that I wanted to own not rent this book.  The pictures in this book go in chronological order and really do tell a story as you look through them all.  This book is a must have for anyone who has interest in Graphic Design.  It takes you through the history of Graphic Design, from cave drawings to Art Nouveau to iPhone applications, making you think about one significant time period after another.  I am excited learn, and take in as much information as possible in this class and from this beautifully laid out book.

Sources:

Meggs' History of Graphic Design