ANM245 | HISTORY OF GRAPHIC AND WEB DESIGN
CHAPTER 15 A New Language of Form POSTER DESIGN Constructivism • Russian artists in the late 18 and early 1900s used Cubist and Futurist influences in their poster designs. • Rejected the idea of “art for art’s sake,” adopting a more socially conscious expression of their ideas. • WWI and the Russian Revolutios were the subject of much of the work. William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.
A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM 2 POSTER DESIGN
El Lissitzky • Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, 1919 • Space is divided into white and black areas and elements have political symbolism • Strong use of diagonal elements, typography and imagery.
William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.
A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM 3 BOOK COVER DESIGN
El Lissitzky • cover of For the Voice, by Mayakovsky, 1923 • a rigid right angle is animated by the counterbalance of the M and circles
William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.
A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM 4 BOOK DESIGN
El Lissitzky • pages from For the Voice, by Mayakovsky, 1923 • the poem “Our March” begins, “Beat your drums on the squares of the riots, turned red with the blood of revolution.” • title type has staccato cadences of a drumbeat; the red square signifies the blood-stained town squares William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.
A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM 5 BOOK DESIGN
El Lissitzky • pages from For the Voice, by Mayakovsky, 1923 • the poem title “Order for the Army of the Arts” appears on the right page opposite a dynamic constructivist design
William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.
A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM 6 BOOK DESIGN
El Lissitzky • book cover for The Isms of Art, 1924 • format greatly influenced a visual program of informational organization for future books.
William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.
A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM 7 BOOK DESIGN
El Lissitzky • title page for The Isms of Art, 1924 • graphic spirit achieved by medium-weight sans-serif type, mathematical division of the space, white areas, and bold rules established a typographic standard for the modern movement
William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.
A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM 8 BOOK DESIGN
El Lissitzky • text format for The Isms of Art, 1924 • rigorous verticals separate German, French, and English texts, and horizontal bars emphasize an important introductory quotation.
William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.
A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM 9 POSTER DESIGN
El Lissitzky • exhibition poster, 1929 • stark, powerful image, showing equal positioning of the male and female faces—a symbolic communication in a traditionally male- dominated society.
William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.
A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM 10 POSTER DESIGN
Alexander Rodchenko • Russian artist and ardent communist who experimented with photography, typography, and montage. • Most known for his photography and use of heavy sans serif hand- drawn lettering.
William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.
A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM 11 POSTER DESIGN Constructivist Poster Style
• Elements were primarily geometric—squares, rectangles, circles and triangles. • Used a variety of materials like wood, nylon, tin, cardboard, etc., and glued them together to create their montages or collages. • Many layouts had a strong diagonal force with “in- your-face” typography.
William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.
A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM 12 POSTER DESIGN Shephard Fairey
• Graphic designer, illustrator, and modern “street artist” known for his constructivist-style poster work.
William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.
A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM 13 POSTER DESIGN Shephard Fairey • But known even more for the Obama poster that generated tremendous publicity and controversy about copyright and “referencing” others work.
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/04/ ap-accuses-shepard-fairey_n_164045.html
• http://boingboing.net/2009/02/09/milton- glaser-weighs.html
William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.
A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM 14 BOOK DESIGN
De Stijl • Founded in the Netherlands by Théo Van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian. • Sought universal laws of equilibrium and harmony. • Reduced elements to the 3 primary colors and eliminated curved or diagonal lines. • Sans serif letterforms based on a square.
William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.
A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM 15 PAINTING
Piet Mondrian • Dutch painter who eventually eliminated all representational elements and moved toward a pure, geometric abstraction which was the foundation for the DeStijl movement.
William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.
A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM 16 BOOK DESIGN
Théo Van Doesburg • Founder of the DeStijl movement. • Like Mondrian, reduced visual imagery to basic shapes and colors. • Designed typography based on tight rectangular blocks.
William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.
A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM 17 BOOK DESIGN
Théo van Doesburg • cover for De Stijl, 1922 • type is asymmetrically balanced in the four corners of an implied rectangle • De Stijl is combined with the letters N and B, which indicated Nieuwe Beelden (New Images).
William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.
A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM 18 BOOK DESIGN
Vilmos Huszár • cover design for De Stijl, 1917 • Huszár combined his composition with type and Van Doesburg’s logo to create a concise rectangle in the center of the page
William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.
A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM 19 MODERN APPLICATION
DeStijl • Mondrian’s style has been widely used by today’s designers.
William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.
A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM 20 POSTER DESIGN
Bart Van der Leck • Poster showing an open composition of visual horizontal and implied vertical lines • Again, used only the primary colors—red, blue, and yellow
William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.
A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM 21 Henryk Berlewi, exhibition poster, 1925. This early application of Mechano-faktura principles to graphic design is for an exhibition held in a Warsaw automobile showroom.
William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.
A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM 22 Henryk Berlewi • Putos Chocolates brochure, page 6, 1925 • copywriter Aleksander Wat closely collaborated with Berlewi to integrate text and form
William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.
A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM 23 BOOK DESIGN
Ladislav Sutnar • cover of Nejmensi dum (Minimum Housing), 1931
William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.
A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM 24 BOOK DESIGN
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy • title page spread for i10, 1927 • printer was deeply disturbed by this design, with its words running vertically, bold sans-serif type placed into serif text for emphasis, bullets separating paragraphs, and bold bars by page numbers
William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.
A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM 25 K E Y T E R M S
Constructivism
Ed Lissitzky
Alexander Rodchenko
De Stijl
Piet Mondrian
Théo Van Doesburg
William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.
A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM 2628 K E Y T E R M S
Cubo-futurism Constructivists The Russian avant-garde saw common traits in cubism a group of twenty-five artists led by Vladimir Tatlin and futurism and coined this term. Experimentation in and Alexander Rodchenko, who renounced “art for typography and design characterized their futurist art’s sake” to devote themselves to industrial design, publications, which presented work by the visual and visual communications, and applied arts serving the literary art communities. new communist society. This group called on artists to stop producing useless things such as paintings and Suprematism turn to the poster, for “such work now belongs to the a painting style of basic forms and pure color founded duty of the artist as a citizen of the community who is by Kasimir Malevich. Rejecting both utilitarian clearing the field of the old rubbish in preparation for function and pictorial representation, this the new life.” The three principles of this group’s work nonobjective geometric abstraction was meant to were tectonics, texture, and construction. express pure feeling through visual form. Tectonics the principle of constructivism that represented the unification of communist ideology with visual form.
Texture the principle of constructivism that dealt with the nature of materials and how they are used in industrial production
William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844. Continues…
A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM 2728 K E Y T E R M S
Construction Serial painting the principle of constructivism that symbolized the a series or sequence of independent works unified by creative process and the search for laws of visual common elements or an underlying structure organization. Infantilism PROUNS the fresh, spontaneous, naive techniques of children’s an acronym for “projects for the establishment art seen in Vladimir Vasilevich Lebedev’s work. [affirmation] of a new art,” coined by El Lissitzky to name his own painting style. He introduced three- De Stijl dimensional illusions that both receded (negative this movement sought universal laws of equilibrium depth) behind the picture plane (naught depth) and and harmony for art, which could then be a prototype projected forward (positive depth) from the picture for a new social order. Its artists worked in an plane. Lissitzky called this “an interchange station abstract, geometric style. Its founder and guiding between painting and architecture” spirit, Théo van Doesburg, was joined by painters Piet Mondrian, Bart Anthony van der Leck, and Vilmos Novyi lef (Left Front of the Arts) Huszár, the architect Jacobus Johannes Pieter Oud, a magazine for all fields of the creative arts designed and others. With their proscribed visual vocabulary, by Alexander Rodchenko. Overprinting, precise these artists sought an expression of the mathematical registration, and photomontage were regularly structure of the universe and the universal harmony of employed. nature. They believed the war was expunging an obsolete age, and science, technology, and political developments would usher in a new era of objectivity William Pickering, title page for the and collectivism.Book of Common Prayer, 1844. Continues…
A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM 28 K E Y T E R M S
De Stijl [journal] Roklama Mechano Edited and published by Théo van Doesburg, this In 1924, Henryk Berlewi joined the futurist poets publication spread the de Stijl movement’s theory and Aleksander Wat and Stanley Brucz in opening this philosophy to a larger audience. It advocated the Warsaw advertising firm. It introduced modern art absorption of pure art by applied art. forms to Polish society through industrial and commercial advertisements. Elementarism Théo van Doesburg’s theory that declared the diagonal Devětsil (Nine Forces) to be a more dynamic compositional principle than a group of avant-garde poets, designers, architects, horizontal and vertical construction. performance artists, and musicians who designed many of their publications using what was available in the Mechano-Faktura theory letterpress printer’s type case. developed by Henryk Berlewi, it mechanized painting and graphic design into a constructed abstraction that abolished any illusion of three dimensions. This was accomplished by mathematical placement of simple geometric forms on a background. The mechanization of art was seen as an expression of industrial society.
William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.
A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM 2928