New Visual LanguageJumanah Nessa

Modernism research

Post-Modernism research

Artist research

Highlights from each project

Typography research

Masthead research

Masthead design

Magazine research

The grid system

Thumbnail layout ideas

Zembla magazine research

Cover digital experimentation

Cover final

Bibliography

Research Document

ModernismModernism can be defined as movement which took place during the 19th and 20th century. It’s main focus was that ‘function should always dictate form’. This movement included art styles such as; Impressionism, Cubism, Fauvism, Futurism and Surrealism.

The movements overall conept was to reject all prior thinking and specifically the idea of ‘realism’ and to create something more unique, original and controversial to the times.

Modernism drastically changed many aspects of design including typography. Prior to the movement typography was very elaborate and over-decorated however after this movement type bean to become more strict, clean and structured with the introduction of the grid system. These new typefaces included; Helvetica Neue, Futura and Franklin Gothic.

Artists from the modernist era include; Matisse, Fernand Leger, Max Ernst, Magritte, Kandinsky and many others which I will research into in more depth following this.

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Impressionism originated in Paris in the 19th century. Artwork created throughout this era was typically lacking detail as the concept of this movement was to re-create something by just a quick glance using short, harsh brush strokes.

Impressionist art creates the illusion of movement using unusual angles and lighting tricks using different brush strokes.

The most famous impressionist artists include; Claude Monet, Édouard Manet, Paul Cézanne and Camille Pissarro.

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Expressionism originated in Germany in the 20th century. The main point of this movement was to portray the artists expressions and emotions rather than create just a representation of reality.

As this movement took place during World War I this gave the artists an opportunity to express how they and others felt about the conflict.

This allowed for a more subjective view on a certain topic rather than just a literal representation.

Famous expressionist artists include; Edvard Munch, Vincent van Gogh, Wassily Kandinsky and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.

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mɒd(ə)nɪz(ə)mNoun

A style or movement in the arts that aims to depart significantly from classical and traditional forms.

Impressionism Expressionism

Expressionism originated in Germany in the 20th century. The main point of this movement was to portray the artists expressions and emotions rather than create just a representation of reality.

As this movement took place during World War I this gave the artists an opportunity to express how they and others felt about the conflict.

This allowed for a more subjective view on a certain topic rather than just a literal representation.

Famous expressionist artists include; Edvard Munch, Vincent van Gogh, Wassily Kandinsky and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.

Cubism began in the early 20th century and was created by Pablo Picasso and George Braque in Paris in 1907 and continued into the 1920’s. It was regarded as the most influential movement of the 20th century.

Artwork within this era consists of the subject being disassembled, analysed and reassembled in an abstract form. This added dimension various more viewpoints, making the pieces more subjective as it could now be interpreted in various ways.

Some renowned Cubist artists include; Juan Gris, Picasso, Braque, Paul Cezanne and Marcel Duchamp.

De Stijl was a Dutch movement founded in 1917 in Amsterdam. The concept of this movement was to advocate universality by reducing art down to its essential forms and simplifying art to vertical and horizontal lines and only using the primary colours and black and white.

De Stijl was influenced by Cubism and can be seen in architecture as well as art. “Stijl” in Dutch means “a post, jamb or support” this can be seen in much work from this movement by the way the lines cross creating structures that look like carpentry joints.

The most famous De Stijl piece is “Composition” by Piet Mondrian.

Surrealism was a cultural movement, best known for its visuals and writings and started in 1920s Paris, then later spread globally.

The concept of surrealism in Graphic Design was to expose the conscious mind. Sigmund Freud, an unconventional Psychologist, practiced dream analysis in which he believed that dreams could uncover the truth about a person’s behaviour.

It was this concept of consciousness and repression which inspired a lot of surrealist artists at the time to create work that was illogical and strange, including Salvador Dali, Marcel Duchamp and Edvard Munch.

Art Deco was an art movement that began in France after WWI and slowly declined by the end of WWII.

The main features of this movement are the rich colours, geometric shapes and lavish, exaggerated decoration. This luxurious style reflected glam-our and wealth and has been seen commonly in cities such as New York where the Art Deco style can be seen in the design of the spire at the top of the empire state building.

Famous creators during this period include; William Van Alen, Roy W. Place, Lee Lawrie and William F. Lamb.

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Expressionism Cubism De Stijl Surrealism Art Deco10.

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Post-modernismPost-modernism is the period following Modernism beginning in the 70s. This movement was extremely experimental and brought around a completely different style by ignoring the conventional design. For example most post-modern work ignores the use of the grid system. It is also associated with deconstruction.

Under the movement of post-modernism there are several themes such as irony, however it does not consist of one unified style.

In Graphic Design, designers paid no attention to the traditional conventions such as legibility, the grid system or compositions. This could be seen as a political or social statement against ‘the system’ and ordinary design.

The most influential designers from this period include; Wolfgang Weingart, Javier Mariscal, El Lissitsky, Jamie Reid and April Greiman.

pəʊstˈmɒdəˌnɪz(ə)mNoun

A late 20th-century style and concept in the arts, architecture, and criticism, which represents a departure from modernism and is characterized by the self-conscious use of earlier styles and conventions, a mixing of different artistic styles and media, and a general distrust of theories.

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Artists

Wassily Kandinsky

Kandinsky was a Russian painter and art theorist. He is known to have created the first purely abstract work. Kandinsky studied law and economics at the University of Moscow.

He later taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture until it was closed in 1933.

Most of his work is based around spirituality, he had a devotion to inner beauty and called it an inner necessity. His inspirations varied but started when he became fascinated by colour as a child including colour psychology (which we covered in lectures). Before being accepted into Munich Academy he left his career in law and economics and began to learn about art on his own.

He took inspiration from artists such as Monet, Richard Wagner and H. P. Blavatsky.

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Frank Stella

Stella is an American painter and printmaker. He works mainly with minimalism and post-painterly abstraction. To this day Stella is regarded as one of the most renowned postwar American painters, this is due to the fact he does not incorporate any graphic illusions.

His inspirations rooted from visits to art galleries at an early age and from abstract artists such as Jackson Pollock and Franz Kilne.

Much of Stella’s work is very experimental in terms of materials and styles. For example in the 50s and 60s Stella mainly created standard paintings, in the late 60s and 70s he then moved on to experimenting with lithography and screen printing. In the 1980s he then began to create 3D sculptures such as “Memantra” and the “Scarlatti K Series”.

Stella has been awarded many honours such as an invitation to teach at Harvard University and the National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama.

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Kurt Schwitters

Schwitters is a German artist. His work has been featured throughout history through movements such as Dada, Constructivism, Impressionism, Expressionism and Surrealism. He is most famous for his collages such as “Merz Pictures”. He has also worked in other disciplines such as poetry, sound and graphic design.

His early work was largely influence by WWI, which can be seen through the continuing darkness expressed in his first pieces. Schwitters later work was inspired by his work time as a drafts-man, this is shown in his works using machines as metaphors of human activity.

Schwitters work created a legacy in the Arts and has been referenced by many people since such as Hip Hop Band Freundeskreis and Michael Nyman in the opera Man and Boy: Dada.

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El Lissitzky

Lissitzky was a Russian artist. He worked through many disciplines including photography, typography and architect.

He was regarded as one of the most important figures of the Russian Avante Garde and influenced the Bauhaus and constructivist movements.

His work in design was to promote “goal-orientated creation” and to create change in the world. Lissitzky created Yiddish children books to try to promote Jewish culture in a Russia that had only just repealed its anti-Semitic laws.

Lissitzky’s work used mainly geometric shapes and few colours. This was due to the constructivist movement that was popular at the time.

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Armin Hofmann

Hofmann is a Swiss graphic designer. He was one of the main characters involved in developing the Swiss Style in graphic design.

His work is renowned for his use of essential elements of design including; point, line and shape. He is also known for his posters which he regarded as the “trivialization of colour”.

In my opinion Hofmann seems to embrace simplicity and minimalism. We can see this through his use of few colours, often only black and white. It is these bold yet simple designs that caused Hofmann to stand out in an era where many artists were busy experimenting with colour and shapes.

Hofmann was also a teacher throughout his career from 1947 to 1987 when he retired.

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Highlights from each project

City In Flux

When beginning this project, at the start I was very confused as I was used to being told what to create and what was expected for me and so being put in a position where I was to choose the direction of my project was quite daunting.

However after a couple of conversations with different tutors I was able to plan and progress my project.

After this the project began to come together another obstacle I encountered was creating a final outcome as again I was just used to the standard poster or book for presenting my work. However after my assessment with spencer he introduced the idea of taking my designs off screen and creating a 3D object with it. It was after this I began to do more research into presentation and installations and decided to experiment with drawing on clear acrylic, which is what I furthered for my final designs.

Overall I am extremely pleased with my final outcomes however I do believe I could’ve took more time on it as I did feel it was quite rushed.

Earth Artefact

For this project again it took me a couple of weeks to get into the flow of things. I decided to begin by talking to a couple of people about the brief to get a broader view of how it could be interpreted. I found this very useful as I could think about various possibilities.

I decided to recreate the original images that were on the record but through typography. I came to this after thinking back to John’s workshop and realised that I did enjoy typography and wanted to experiment with it further which is exactly what I did.

Overall I think this concept worked very well and I am quite surprised at how much I have progressed with typography as it was something I had never really tried or thought about.

Workshops

During our Thursday sessions and workshop week we learnt various skills and techniques.

I later realised that these new skills we had learnt did feed into our studio work for example the typography workshops helped me a lot throughout the Earth Artefact brief as discussed previously. Furthermore tasks such as those in the branding workshop have helped me when creating mastheads and covers for this project.

These workshops allow us to gain more knowledge that builds our own very basic skills by teaching us short-cuts and new techniques that will help us in later projects both in university and in our professional lives.

Overall I am extremely satisfied with the sessions and only wish there were more sessions so we could learn more, as currently we only have one a week and I would prefer more each week.

Typography

This task was very interesting for me as it was during the Earth Artefact brief which was when I had just become interested in typography.

I found this interesting as we could follow the whole process of creating type, from simple sketches, detailed drawings and then transferring it onto the computer to render digitally.

This was completely new to me however I did enjoy it thoroughly as I now understand how difficult it actually is to create a font/typography. In conclusion I will continue to experiment with typography.

City In Flux

Earth Artefact

Workshops

Typography Task

Typography ResearchLeading

Leading refers to the spacing between the baselines of type.

Like kerning, leading can also be changed manually to change the aesthetics and to even save space on a page.

Kerning

This is the spacing between each letter.

Usually when selecting a font the kerning is automatically set however this can be changed manually in programs such as InDesign and Photoshop to create a more aesthetically pleasing look.

Hard spacing

Hard spacing is when you manually insert a space to force a body of text to fit correctly without creating ‘rivers of white’.

Alignment

This refers to where the text is positioned on the page. The options are, left, centre, right, Align towards/away from spine and Justify. The preferred alignment is Align left as it allows the text to be read in an easy and convenient way.

Justified text creates ‘rivers of white’. This is when text is stretched so that it fills the box. This creates uneven spacing between each word, creating an overall unappealing look.

Serif/Sans Serif

Serif fonts contain decorative shapes at the ends of each letter whereas Sans Serif fonts do not and instead have sharp, clean cut edges.

Font size

When creating a body of text, the font size is one of the most important factors.

A standard font size is 12pt, however depending on the importance/hierarchy of the text and the purpose this may be scaled up or down.

Masthead ResearchPrior to creating my own masthead/cover I decided that it would be necessary to carry out research so I could see what logo’s were already out there.

This would allow me to create an original masthead that could only be associated with my brand/magazine.

I also wanted to see how mastheads and sub-headings were being incorporated into each other and how I could possibly combine the two to create an original, aesthetically pleasing cover.

Overall I am very much attracted to the minimalist style and will consider this when creating my own work.

SOURCE: https://uk.pinterest.com/jumanahn/masthead-designs/

Masthead DesignsMasthead

While sketching up drafts for the masthead design I began by trying out what I already know. For example using the initials of each word and playing around with the thickness as it can be seen on popular logo’s the masthead is often quite bold.

As you can see below I have also experimented with different fonts and shapes. I took much of my inspiration from the source images above and from my own experience when looking at covers/magazines.

I also tried other new styles for example combining the initials so it looks like one continuous line/shape. I found this most appealing as it was extremely simple and fitted with the minimalistic/modernist theme I wanted to maintain. Furthermore the delicate lines meant the logo stood out but didn’t look too tacky or in your face.

Overall I believe my chosen masthead/sub-heading design is perfect for my minimalistic look and will complement any cover design really well.

Sub-heading

For the sub-heading I wanted to combine it with the masthead so that it was concise and blended well with the overall logo.

I began by again experimenting with fonts and using initials. It was then when I decided I wanted to combine both the masthead and subheading. I believe my chosen design is suitable as by merging the title and sub-heading together it creates an overall, in my opinion, aesthetically pleasing brand.

In conclusion I will now move onto creating a cover design and incorporating the modernist style into it.

Final Masthead & Sub-heading design.

Magazine Research

SOURCE: Pinterest.com /jumanahn/magazine-layout-ideas/

Prior to creating my own cover and layout I thought it would be best to see what is already out there and the various layouts I could recreate.

I decided from the beginning I wanted to keep a minimalistic style throughout the magazine and so this is what I leaned more to, however I did look into other various styles which I didn’t initially want to explore.

With this modernist style I believe it makes any work look more professional and smart and not tacky.

Overall I am really attracted to the simplicity of modernism and will continue to present my work in this style for both the research and final outcome.

The Grid SystemThe grid system in Graphic Design is a 2-D structure “..made of intersecting lines used to structure content.” (Wikipedia). It is used to organize graphic elements.

Josef Muller Brockman was the author of the book pictured opposite, in which he explained the various grids used for different purposes and the importance of a grid structure.

Grid structures are used in everything from basic print such as posters, leaflets and books to web design and digital documents.

Finally, in conclusion the grid system is obviously one of the main components to any successful design and this research has helped me to understand its importance for when I create my final magazine and the research document.

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Layout Thumbnails/ExperimentsPrior to creating digital designs for both the cover and inner pages I decided to create thumbnail sketches. This helped me to visualize the compositions without wasting too much time.

I was then able to see which worked best and was the most effective in terms of communicating a message and keeping the design minimalistic.

This whole process as explained above did allow me to work quicker as I could now pick the best layouts and only pursue these further when creating experimental designs later.

My chosen layout for the cover is the sketch numbered ‘4’. For the inner pages I would like to mixture of (bottom left) ‘1’, ‘3’, ‘5’ and (bottom right) ‘4’, ‘5’, ‘6’, as I believe these are the most minimalist and will fit very well with the theme of the magazine.

Zembla Magazine ResearchAfter carrying out general magazine research I wanted to look into a specific magazine that was similar to what I had in mind for my own.

I then came across Zembla magazine through one lecture and after looking more into them I really became interested in them as a brand. Their work is very similar to the style I want to go for and so it has been useful for me to see how modernism and minimalism have already been used for magazine design.

The main features from this magazine I will take are the clean lines, bold text and simplicity. I have since researching realised that less is more I will continue to keep this in mind when designing my magazine.

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Cover experimentation

Final Cover Design

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17. Http://designobserver.com/media/images/Wet_Magazine_cover2_525.jpg18. Https://m1.behance.net/rendition/mod-ules/10098793/disp/b6cbfd6bc6553519d2abd36cd-460bc92.jpg19. Https://classconnection.s3.amazonaws.com/960/flashcards/1196960/jpg/38_october_28-30_1966_artist_wes_wlson_card-handbill_for_captain_beef-heart___his_magic_band__chocolate_watch_band__the_great_pumpkin_at_fillmore_auditori-um-13EF2E2774874096CF8.jpg20. Http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rlnzbcXzv6A/TZBi-JefBy5I/AAAAAAAAAsI/aiZtZ7Xh7fc/s1600/Pic-ture+76.png21. Http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bEnANeNBjTI/UIbt-SpUH9xI/AAAAAAAAAxI/fVZsSgwTAMk/s1600/david-carson-11.jpg22. Http://asset0.itsnicethat.com/system/files/062013/51b984b95c3e3c46c40007a1/img_col_main/VA26_Cover-vAF_2.jpg?137111278423. Https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/a6/29/78/a629780b1fc2e3555ec7f60a3dff3937.jpg24. Https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/0f/c4/69/0fc4699135d89f7ad09bd2f948e61ff3.jpg25. Https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/81/14/b3/8114b32561b9a40383623cd-4c165ed8b.jpg26. Http://www.olivertomas.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/2374220307_850b687089_o.jpg27. Http://www.cvisual.com/graphics-techniques/graphic-design-cookbook/p1.gif28. Http://d39fx46bzv2q62.cloudfront.net/wp-con-tent/uploads/2012/10/Zembla_Original.jpg29. Http://www.adammarek.co.uk/wp-content/up-loads/2012/09/Zembla-Weisz-cover.jpg30. Http://payload85.cargocollective.com/1/8/273676/4013293/Zembla_015_850.jpg

31. Http://img.ffffound.com/static-data/as-sets/6/61792257ddb838306e905b6d66241bd-32152f91d_m.jpg32. Http://www.eternels-eclairs.fr/images/peinture/tableaux/wassily-kandinsky/wassily-kandinsky-com-position-8.jpg33. Http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/com-mons/d/db/To_the_Unknown_Voice.JPG34. Http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ae/La_scienza_della_laziness_(The_Science_of_Lazi-ness)_by_Frank_Stella,_1984,_oil,_enamel_and_al-kyd_paint_on_canvas,_etched_magnesium,_alu-minum_and_fiberglass,_National_Gallery_of_Art_(Washington,_D._C.).Jpg35. Https://chloenelkin.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/p1020149.jpg36. Http://dailyserving.com/wp-content/up-loads/2011/08/schwitters-mz-6011.jpg37. Http://uploads5.wikiart.org/images/kurt-schwit-ters/forms-in-space-1920.jpg38. Http://www.designishistory.com/images/lissitzky/NewMan.jpg39. Http://uploads1.wikiart.org/images/el-lissitzky/preliminary-sketch-for-a-poster-1920.jpg40. Http://www.aiga.org/uploadedImages/AIGA/Content/Inspiration/aiga_medalist/AH_Giselle.jpg41. Http://thinkingform.com/wp-content/up-loads/2011/06/armin_hofmann_9.jpg

Bibliography