by vshepherd | Aug 19, 2012 | typography
Last year the student AIGA group from Specs Howard School of Media Arts, and I took a field trip to the Russell Industrial Center in Detroit. We had the privilege of meeting Mark Arminski. Arminski a local Detroit artist who bridged the gap between the psychedelic 60’s and grudge of the 90’s. Arminski is an artist who works traditionally, painting or screening concert posters and whatever commissions he receives. He has done advertising work for large corporations, including liquor and cigarettes yet the concert poster is what he is most known for. Mark was very inspiring and warm, he welcomed the group in and said come back any time. The students were thrilled to here him talk about his design concept of painting and hand lettering, which he felt gave him the most freedom to shape the communication. In an interview Arminski talks about the ability for many people to create art because of the internet, and the ability to reach a far greater audience. As well as the open ability to sell art, that without the internet artists would be creating with a limited market. [1] While Arminski recognizes some of the merits of working with the computer, his work is done by hand. He exudes creation in whatever form grabs his attention. The first image is a poster, and the second a snippet of an oil painting he was working on the day we visited. http://insidetherockposter.highwire.com/product/black-crowes-1996-mark-arminski-uncut-poster-sheet-handbills-signed http://www.arminski.com/shop/my-dream/ Another Motown designer who later transplanted to teach at Cal Arts is Ed Fella. Fella is well-known for his explosion of self-expression in the 1980s when much of the design...
by vshepherd | Aug 11, 2012 | typography
As a kid growing up my boundaries were outlined by four streets, Newburg, Cherry Hill, Wayne and Palmer. Many streets dead ended at the woods, Wayne road held Norman’s market, were one dollar meant a weeks candy stash. As a teen a walk around the block meant a four hike, each intersection located a mile apart on the country road. Directions were easy because each road was one mile in all directions. Never gave this much thought until stumbling upon Holly Holzschlag, Thinking Outside The Grid article. Holzschlag recounts flying over cities and looking down on the city footprints. She tells us that Tucson was a planned city built on an orderly grid system. Whereas London, the city she compares Tucson with, is built in a spontaneous fashion. [1] It is also a much older city, growing organically through the centuries. Looking at these maps one can see how the structure of the orderly gird system is easy to navigate, even dependable. However, the trip can become a little monotonous. Driving around Detroit, built with a central district and circling out into the grid can be exciting as roads wrap and wind around the cities top attractions and business district. However it is also easy to get lost. Successful print and web designs are based on a grid system. The grid is an invisible foundation that helps the designer align the elements on the page/spread. Common grid systems are the Fibonacci Systems, the rule of thirds and a modular system. The modular is often thought to be the most flexible. Ellen Lupton, Thinking With Type, says this about the...
by vshepherd | Jul 23, 2012 | typography
Neville Brody, a London-based designer, began to breaking rules and informing design trends in the 1980s. Brody felt that art had lost its human-ess. While an art student, this consideration played on his deciding whether to do design or art. He wondered “why can’t you take a painterly approach within the printed medium.” (Meggs, 479-80) It was an expression of emotive art which Brody was aiming – the ability to not hold back in design. This was in response to the International style that had been in vogue. The International Style was based on the grid and clean communicative message where the authorship of the designer was reduced in favor of a universal message. http://megsmcg.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/va12cvwe.jpg Because Brody never learned proper typographic techniques, his designs were developed through his own experimentation. (Meggs, 481) Early on with his work for FACE magazine (English) his ability to demonstrate deeper meaning in his layouts. The use of repeated elements, contrast and the use of glyphs as graphic elements all work to create a hierarchy of interest and meaning. http://lisathatcher.wordpress.com/2012/01/14/neville-brody-a-type-of-art/ Nike ad Brody has a fearless approach to design. He states in an interview for The Architectural Review, “For there are, he says – in typography as in other things – no real rules; what we habitually regard as rules are really just assumptions too often unexamined.” (Farrelly 11 March 2011) In 2010 Brody attempted to unlock “unlock creative fires and ideas” by holding an Anti Design Festival. This was in response to what he deemed as “25 years of cultural deep freeze.” In addition to his independent works and lectures, he works with...
by vshepherd | Jul 14, 2012 | typography
Craig Mod, in his lecture Designing for the Future Book talks of his love of the own-able tactile qualities of the book. He begins is talk of an experience while traveling, of both he and his companion, both opening back packs and pulling out the same book in a romantic and completely random coincidence. Pulling out Kindles he contends would not have the same romanticism. He feels that books are bounded and digital books boundless. That the bounded tangible book feels familiar to us. Largely his talk is about the in between time in technology where books begin to look like books on digital readers. He also shows us the DynaBook sketched by Alan Kay in 1968 which looks very similar to hand held readers today. The one in the image is a cardboard prototype. For more on Craig Mod http://craigmod.com/ One of the concerns of the digital book is the lose of, or marginalized, the cover. Another is the typography. Joe Clark, in his post for A List Apart, declares “The internet did not replace television, which did not replace cinema, which did not replace books. E-books aren’t going to replace books either. E-books are books, merely with a different form.” This I find encouraging because while we must embrace the future – I still want to hold my book, have it fall on my face as I drift into sleep, aline my book shelves. Yet we can only carry so many books with us, and so with technology I will move forward. Eventually. Joe Clark offers that many of the fine details of typesetting will be handled...
by vshepherd | Jul 1, 2012 | typography
Much of the feedback received pertained to the use of negative space to surround the word ONE and the ability to flip the black and white for a variety of uses. Most felt that the negative space made the logo stand out as well as the use of a simple typeface and color scheme which made the typography emotionally appropriate. This example shows a clever use of negative space in a logo for a guitar store. Visually the “T” first stood out. Looking closer I realized it was actually two guitar necks and a shape that formed the “T.” Certainly a guitar player, the target audience, would have discerned the guitar shape immediately. Mark Boulton in A List Apart, discusses the use of micro and macro white space. He references Erik Spiekermann’s redesign of The Economist, allowing for better readability through the use of whitespace. Boulton states this, “adding more whitespace to the individual characters. He then set the type slightly smaller and with more leading. All these changes added micro white space to the design. The overall result was subtle…” Macro whitespace would be space between major elements and micro whitespace – the space between characters or words. Boulton suggests that whitespace which leads the reader from element to element is considered active whitespace. Passive whitespace then is the space that allows for compositional harmony. In Typographic Design: Form and Communication, Amos Chang regarding space to define form states, “. . . it is the existence of intangible elements, the negative, in architectonic forms which makes them come alive, become human, naturally harmonize with each one another, and...
