Class #12 - April 3, 2012

Summary:

BAUHAUS

• 1923: exhibition is important: 1st time get to see what's going on.

Jan Tischichold

• 1925: Writes book about typography
• 1928: Writes about modern typography @ 28 years old
• Open asymmetrical movement
• Color palettes etc 
• Turn away from modern typography
• Arrested for making non-german typography
• Books were seized to "protect the german people".
• Able to take theoretical concept and give it practical discretion 

Study for the test:

1. White space in important - simplified and flat
2. Alphonse Mucha got a lucky break
3. Art nouveau: texture, tendrills of hair 
4. Decoration was popular as entertainment
5. Brands and stylingd comes from this time (art nouveau) 
6. A lot of flat planes of color
7. Photo-mechanical reproduction techniques
8. Art nouveau in Austria: Susstill
9. Art nouveau in Germany: Jucanstiall
10. Glasglow school - school of thought and approach to design
11. You like sex and stuff
12. Rectilinear structures with cuvilinear elements
13. Work extends into furniture
14. Talwin Morris- take ideas of 4 people and give them expression
15. Gustav is the head of viana secession
16. Generous use of white space "naked space"& Censorship
17. Viana secession inspired by Art nouveau from France
18. Influences from the glasglow school
19. Versacrum is the magazine they used to experiment "will it work?"
20. Peter Barins: 1st use of running san-serif text
21. Also started to see grids and proportions
22. Gives us the 1st logo - identity 
23. BernHard: placketshteel bfrigbiwgw
24. Name, flat panel of color and object
25. Axis-powers posters are abstract
26. Why would you have beautiful posters for war? War is brutal
27. Allies posters are touchy feely and emotional
28. Flag was the inspiration for Uncle Sam
29. Ludwig: powerful look and good figure ground
30. Cubism becomes popular in art and design
31. Three movements from Russia
32. Cut and paste
33. Black square: Maliavitch
34. Russian Constructivism
35. De stijl - utopian ideas
36. Bauhaus - know the 3 locations
37. Walter Gropius: 1st head of the Bauhaus
38. Johannes Itten: fondation course of the bauhaus
39. Typo-photo: taking a single image and integrating it with typography
40. Modernism is slow to come to America

Class #11 - March 27, 2013

Summary:

Walter Gropius: (1919-1928)

• Mastermind behind the BAUHAUS
• Creation of a school to marry Arts + Crafts
• A lot of utopian ideas -- very reoccurring

Council of Masters

• Grupius
• Johannas Ittan
• Got into the idea of being a monk
• Art supplies: picking up things from trash
• Understanding materials
• What is the nature of these materials?
• What differentiates these materials?
• BAUHAUS Exhibition of 1923
• Nasnsweif Niggy
• A lot of typography
• Graphic typography that is the imagery 
• Very open, lyrical and gesture-like
• Experiments with photograms
• Putting objects on top of paper and exposing them to light
• Photography: new technology, new image, new life
• Photo collages 

City of Weimar:
First Home-

• Become suspicious of the Bauhaus
• Becomes hostile when the city is exposed to their art

Second Home:

• The stairwell was important
• Emphasis of craft and materials
• Had a "made by" store which sold student work
• Bauhaus had their own magazine too
• Magazine cover: everything you need to know about the Bauhaus
• Produced books: experimented with type!
• Painted on glass and made it look 3D
• Kyle Cooper... SE7EN...geh! <3
• Looked at typeface and letter design
• Two alphabets: Aa Bb Cc Dd
• More efficient to combine both

Thoughts:

The Bauhaus has always interested me -- especially for a big fan of the band too! Although the Bauhaus has blossomed into a great movement, it was sad to learn about all of the depression the people apart of the school had to go through. The idea of combining artists and craftsmen was a brilliant idea-- we combine the two today and it works really well. Combining both craftsmen to produce high quality work and artists to make it aesthetically appealing, in my opinion, is what made the Bauhaus so successful.

Questions:

I wonder what it took to be apart of the Bauhaus school and how often students joined and left. Where parents objective towards this lifestyle? How long did it take to establish which classes would be the most successful and how did the idea of abstract form and color theory becoming a course. 

Class #10 - March 20, 2013

Russian Avant Garde Art

• Cubo-futurism
• Ideas of cubism
• Ideas of futurism
• Italian movement
• Seeking to express:
•  time
• movement
• kinetics 
• Supremitism
• Rejects function 
• Kazimir Malevich 
• The Black Square
• Russian Constructivism 
• Alexander Rochainco
• Kandinsky
• El Lissitzky
• What lies between painting and building?
• Calls his pieces "Prouns" (experiments)
• Worked on a poem book "For the Voice"
• Graphic poem book -- typography
• Montage
• Important as a new medium for a new age

• De Stijl
• About harmony
• Emphasized aesthetics but also wanted functionalism 
• Focused on rectilinear planes
• Tried to understand the mathematical structure of the universe
• Best known member of the group: Piet Mondrian
• Early on: all about horizontal and vertical lines
• Evolves in 1921 into asymmetry 
• Negative space becomes apart of a piece

BAUHAUS (1919-1933)

• Only existed for 14 years
• Had 33 Faculty members
• And 1250 Students
• 3 incarnations of the Bauhaus
• 1919-1925: Weimar, Germany - 1st location
• Leave because of the nazis and government
• 1923: 1st Public Exhibition
• 1924: Letter of Registration 
• 1925-1932: Dessau - 2nd location
• Kicked out because of the nazis
• 1928: Groupius replaced by Meyer
• 1930: Meyer replaced by van der Rohe
• 1932-1933: Berlin
• Utopian desire for a new spiritual society
• Unity of Artists & Craftsmen to build a new future
• Ideas from all Advanced Art & Design Movements were explored & applied to functional design
• Paul Klee -- Plainter
• Moholy Nagy -- Constructivist
• Johannas Itten -- Develops fondation program 
• Herbert Bayer 
• Kandinsky
• Mies van der Rohe
• Walter Groupus -- s1st Head of the Bauhaus
• Oscar Schlemmer
• Joseph Albers -- Color Theory

Class #9: March 13, 2013

Summary:

• Lucian Bernhard -- "Bern Hard"
• Creates a poster, Priester, which changes poster design
• Paints the family house -- bad idea
• Becomes and artist/painter
• Enters a poster contest working till the last minute
• His work was chosen from the trash
• New approach for design: Sachplakat
• Abstraction and common media
• Logo/name and one item
• Designer of typefaces and logos
• Attempting to do a lot of different things with his art

• WWI Posters were influenced by Bern Hard
• German and axis powers posters were "wrong minded" to Bern Hard and Hitler
• There's a point to these German posters
• Can still be illiterate and decipher the meanings
• Very powerful meanings and symbolism/abstract

• American posters were very literate
• Not very abstract --- looking in towards the future/sappy family
• A lof of manipulation on both sides toward buying war-bonds
• End of WWI, THE BAUHAUS ENTERS! 

• There is mathematics in artwork
• Every canvas deals with proportions
• Websites
• Painter's Canvas
• Videos etc
• If it's a pleasing composition, math is involved in design
• Negative spaces are used as an active component towards designs
• Very flat colors/planes are used to play with figure ground

Class #8 - February 27, 2013

Summary:
Art Nouveau:

• Starts within the Arts and Craft's movement
• Begins in France
• Youth style: Style for young people/kids/teens
• Influences of asian aesthetic
• Around until about 1914
• 1914: WWI

• Branding is starting to develop 
• Starts in Europe and takes a long time to come to America
• Covers/art created in Europe and shipped to USA
• Popularity and growth of art journals
• Flat panels of color were popular
• What id dimension?
• What is flat?
• Abstraction
• Overlapping
• Copy + Paste

• Harper's Covers
• Illustration based
• Starts to become more abstract
• Playing with spacial relationships
• Lippencott's Covers
• Flat backgrounds
• Influenced by Harper's

Aubrey Beardsley:

• Influenced by Morrison
• Used Morrison's works as inspiration for his work
• Influenced, also, by asian design 
• Flat
• Negative space
• Abstract form
• Dark sensuality to his work

Alphonse Mucha:

• Gets a big job that changes art
• Sarah Bernard commissioned Mucha
• Mucha got his reference from past art
• Didn't finish project= new aesthetic
• Mucha was influenced by asian design
• Mucha draws amazingly
• Abstraction is a dominant

Charles Ray Macintosh: 

• Working with abstraction
• Androgyny was popular
• Sexual experiments in art
• "The Four"
• 4 students with similar art-forms and techniques
• Immediately click when put together
• Purvy artists
• The Glasgow School
• Rectilinear structure
• Uses Curvilinear structure for interior 
• Very spiritual -- it shows in their motifs 
• Purvy artists

Versacrum:

• Versacrum = Magazing
• metaphors within artwork
• Tree busting out of the pot
• The fruit>three=three guys> phallic symbols
• Influenced by French Art Nouveau
• A lot of experimentation
• Going against "The Man"

Peter Barrings

• Circles and Squares
• 1st Identity logo
• geometric shapes
• typography
• metaphors in designs
• honeycomb motif
• "it takes more than one man"

Personal Thoughts:

Questions and Research:

Class #6: February 13, 2013

Summary:

Art Nouveau:

• Starts within the Arts and Craft's movement
• Around until about 1914
• 1914: WWI

Aubrey Beardsley:

• Influenced by Morrison
• Used Morrison's works as inspiration for his work
• Influenced, also, by asian design 
• Flat
• Negative space
• Abstract form
• Dark sensuality to his work

Test Review:

1. First communication
2. Clay tablets before paper
3. Greek letterforms
4. Roman letterforms
1. Formal
2. Nonformal
5. Celtic letters: Book of Cels
6. Uncials: rounded letterforms
7. Carol letters
8. Playing cards: first form of printing
1. Block printing
2. Xylography
3. Devotionals
4. Though bubbles
5. Letterforms are becoming more refined
9. Guttenburg: printing press
1. Letter "punch"
10. Early manifestation of printing:
1. Letter of indulgence
11. Words to know:
1. Xylography
2. Ligature
3. Incunabla
4. Fleurons
12. Negative space interacting with text
13. Examplar page: thumbnails/layouts/example page
14. First book printed in the colonies:
1. The Whole Book of Psalms (1640)
2. Printed by Steven Daye
3. Just guys trying to make a living
1. It's for the money
15. Examples of letters with the grid system
16. Rococo design -- French
1. Rococo ended with the French Revolution
17. Neo Classism: the french bat porn page 
18. Copper plate printing = more designs - easy to engrave
19. Bodoni: early forms of Rococo design
1. Fat face fonts
2. Egyptian type face
3. Tuskin letters: cowboy letters
20. Power: machine wood-type
21. Pragmatic letters on advertisements: it is what fits
22. KNOW THESE:
1. Old style
2. Traditional
3. Modern
4. Egyptian
5. San serif
23. Be able to identify:
1. Cap Height
2. Ascender line*
3. X-height
4. Base line
5. Descender line
24. Leading: space between two lines
25. Linotype machines
26. Victorian Era
1. Aesthetic confusion
2. Ephemera: printed objects not meant to be collected
3. Scrap cards
4. Entertainment: money
5. Packaging design
6. Manipulation in media
7. Children entertainment: toy books
8. Letterpress, woodcut, mixture of the two
27. Thomas Nast: political cartoons
28. First large scale electric sign -- New York

Personal Thoughts:
Test next class!

Class #5: February 6, 2013

Summary:

The Victorian Era (1800s):

• is characterize by "aesthetic confusion"
• a lot of consumerism at this time
• This is similar to Rokoko design 
• Type and design was advancing: curved type and blending colors
• Typography moved around space 
• A lot of textures, details, travel inspired design -- a lot of stuff
• Nationalism influenced/inspired their design
• Circus/traveling entertainment with slots to "write-in" information 
• People were hungry for entertainment
• Packaging design started to flourish around this time era
• Printing on tin was established by printing backwards
• Products/logos influenced by people
• Advertising becomes manipulative
• Magazines and papers wouldn't endorse certain products
• Competition started arising with subliminal messaging
• It wasn't about the art, it was about the sale/money
• Type faces became bigger and bigger and more obnoxious
• Turf wars with billboard posting and advertisement-- government was involved
• A shift in children's literature -- for the entertainment purposes
• Imagination came to play 
• Gave more entertainment during leisure time
• Modern political cartooning flourished
• Thomas Nast was a political cartoonist 
• Harper's Weekly -- around 1871
• Heinz pioneered the idea of corporate image
• Had the first electronic sign
• "Took care of his people"
• Invested in art for hallways
• John Ruskin
• The son of a wealthy merchant
• Rejected the mercantile economy
• Believed there's a downside to capitalism
• Influences other people
• William Morris
• The son of a wealthy merchant
• Published 1st set of poems at the age: 24
• Known for textile design
• A very big "overachiever" 
• Reignited book arts and private book movement
• Carved in wood typefaces -- very detailed designs
• Had a very classical look to his designs
• "Rebellion" was looking towards the past
• Looked back to the old ways of doing things as an artisan
• Doing everything by hand again
• "The good old days"
• Knights, kings and honor
• Flaw in this view: time and money = $$$
• The average person couldn't afford that kind of labor

Ephemera: printed material

• Items that shouldn't be collected
• Not produced for art, but for function

Personal Thoughts:

This idea of change is a very familiar feeling. We have those who want to keep things the way they are, and those who want to change those ways and "advance". It's interesting to see how in the beginning of  the design timeline, it wasn't about the perfection of aesthetics but purely about the function and sales.

Questions/Research:
Was there anything William Morris couldn't do?