Dean Scicluna DCSGraphics

U1154130deano145@hotmail.co.uk

New Graphic Design Research

Form Follows Function

Research Pages

Movements

CubismFuturismDadaDe StijlConstructivism BauhausSwiss DesignPop ArtMinimalism

Post-ModernDesignersJaviar MariscalNevile BrodyOdermatt And TissiPeretStudio DumbarWolfgang Weingart

What is Form Follows Function ?

Before looking at form follows function, we have to look at what form and what function actually is.

Form

Form is the shape that the object takes, it’s the dec-oration of the piece, how it looks, feels, tastes, smells and what it sounds like.

Function

Function is what the object/ piece is designed to do, is it a kettle? Well does it hold water, retain the heat and pour effciently etc. the functionality of an object is how well it works.

So what actually is “form follows function” term originally coined by Lou-is Sullivan, refers to how something is designed, the form follows behind the function, meaning the function is the primary concern and whether it actually works, then depending on the movement, depended on how much they concerned with the form.

Movements.Cubism

JourneyCubism came out of France between 1906-1909 and was largely developped by considered one of the greatest artists ever, Pablo Picasso and also Georges BraquePicassos Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is considered early cubism and is what set the movement off. The bulk of cubism died down in 1914 but there’s still a lot of design and architecture that happens today, strongly influenced by Cubism, it influenced later movements such as Dada, Surrealism, Naturalism and realism

Style

Cubisms style explored lots of 3D objects, often used on a flat canvas, so there would be a lot of use of the same colour but in different shades to show the different angles that colour would be. Analytic Cubism eliminated colour and use of collage and emphasised the idea of the object, this was between 1909-1912. After this Synthetic Cubism revived this and brought back, this was between 1912-1914

Artists.Cubism

Pablo Picasso

(1881-1973) Picasso was one of the leading artists in the cubism movement. Picasso was a great painter from a young age and began to change his style around 1990, his revolutionary designs using different theories techniques and ideas lead him to be one of the best know figures in 20th century art.Picassos most famous works include Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Guernica and The Weeping Woman.

Georges Braque

(1882 - 1963) Along side Picasso, Braque helped develop the movement Cubism into what it became, growing up in Le Havre as a house painter and decorator. Braques paintings from 1908-1913 reflected upon his new design style using geomerty, Braque started to study light intensly and this reflected in his work with his ability to make his work on a flat surface appear flat, as well as 3D at the same time.He continued painting and developeda more unique style.

Movements.Futurism.

JourneyFuturism was a revolutionary art movement founded in 1909 originally by Italian poet and writer Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. It originated as a ‘library movement’ then the other arts later embraced it, this included painting, sculpture, music and architecture. The movement encouraged typographers and poets to produce.Umberto Boccioni, Giacomo Balla and Gino Serverini were some of the biggest names around this movement. Futurism declined rapidly around 1915

Style

Futurism was greatly influenced by cubism as it came just after it and a lot of it over lapped. The biggest difference would be that you would find a lot more curves in futurism, and it’s more abstract art than Cubism. The movement challenged the tradition of the printed page and began to use collage and type elements to create picture poems. These would have the words to a poem in what would appear to be a very random order, they would express how the words should be spoken.

Umberto Boccioni

(1882 - 1916) Boccioni was an Italian painter and sculptor. he was one of the leading designers who helped form what became Futurism. Boccioni focused only mainly sketching, and painting portraits, often using his mother as a modelin 1910 Boccioni painted The City Rises which is considered his turning point for him going into more futurism works. He also went on to develop sculpture work later on. Although Boccionis life was ended early due to an accident in the war, he was still a very influentual figure

Gino Severini

(1883 - 1966) Much like Boccioni, Severini was an Italian painter and one of the leading artists in the futurism movements. Invited by Fillippo Tommaso Marinetti and Boccioni, he co-signed the Manifesto of Futurist painters in February 1910. Serverini was also partially responsible for bringing Futurism out of Italy as he helped organise the first Futurism exhibition outside of Italy in Paris. Severini favoured painting dancers and forms of movement unlike other Futurists who painted more machines

Artists.Futurism.

Movements.Constructivism.

Journey.

Constructivism was a Russian art and archietctual movement that developed after the Bolshevik revoloution in 1917. The movement tried to redefine the role of an artist, it went on to have a big influence on later movements such as Bauhaus and De Stijl.The main school to represent Constructivism was the VKhITEMAS established in 1919Constructivism would go on to be taught at the Bauhaus and then Naum Gabo would go on to teach a version of it in England during the 1930s-1940s.

Style

The constructivism style was quite unique, they used lots of black and white images with geometric shapes, often the shames are in blacks, reds, whites or off whites. They often favoured sans-serif type, They used materials such as glass, sheet metal and car-board to design in varies ways such as collages, photogra-phy, photo montages and new printing techniques.

Artists.Constructivism.

El Lissitzky

(1890-1941) Lissitzky was a russian designer, painter, architect and photographer. He studied architecture in Germany between 1909-1914 and then returned to Moscow to become a full time architect.His graphic design pushed boundries with asymmetric layouts and use of negetive space. He designed the “Beat the whites with the red wedge” poster in 1919. Lissitzkys work has key links between contemporary graphic design and the roots of modernism

Alexander Rodchenko(1891-1956) Artist, designer and photographer born in st. Petersburg.He learned at the a school in Kazan and moved to Moscow in 1914 with El Lissitzky. He was a leading figure for constructivism in Russia. In 1921, Rodchenko started to leave fine art and favoured graphic design to favour the needs of society.He designed lots of photomontages using very political messages. From the 1930s onward Rodchenko worked as a Typographer.

Movements.Dada.

Journey.

The Dada movement came out of Switzerland in 1916 and grew in response to the first world war where a group of poets and artists set out to mock established values and beliefs. The movement quickly spread into the other major cities such as Berlin, Paris and New York. The photo montage form was adopted by Berlin Dadaists Raoul Hausmann, John Heartfield and George Grosz. The movement ended up dying down around 1922 and ended up being the forerunner of surrealism.

Style

Dada had many different aspects to it from many different areas of influence.Dadaists used collages influenced from the Cubism movement, as well as photomontages. Assemblage which was a 3D version of a collage, sticking physical objects together to create a piece. And readymades, developed by Marcel Duchamp by just adding signatures to objects in which he interpreted as art.

John Heartfield

(1891-1968) Heartfield was a German graphic artist and part of the Berlin Dada Group. Heartfield and Grosz experimented with photomontage in 1916 which was very new to them. Heartfield travelled a lot and created a lot of pro-communist posters between the years of 1918-1933. He then moved to London to design book jackets and posters before finally moving to East Germany around 1950 to create anti-Vietnam war photomontages.

George Grosz

(1893-1959) Grosz was born in Berlin and was a graphic artist and was most famously known for his satirical illustrations which exposed German society after WW1. He served in the army but was court-martialled for insubordination. He moved to America in 1932 to teach at the Art Students League in New York and stayed there for the remainder of his career. He finally returned to Berlin a few months before he died.

Artists.Dada.

Movements.De Stijl.

Journey.

De Stijl is a dutch art movement and magazine.It orginated from painter and designer Theo Can Doesburg in 1917.Van Doesburg introduced De Stijl to the Bauhaus in 1921-1923.De Stijl proposed ultimate simplicity and abstraction in its work. and used formal language.De Stijl was influenced by Cubist paintings.De Stijl still influences a lot of work these days even after it died down around 1931.

Style

De stijl has a very distinct style, they focused on perfect straight lines and created abstract objectivity through using rectangles and using the 3 primary colours, red, yellow and blue, combined with the used of blacks, whites and greys. The Typography and Graphic Design was very strict in the sense it was all sans serif, straight lines, tight rectangles with asymmetrical layouts. The whole style was very abstract and was used on paintings, furniture and architecture.

Artists.De Stijl.

Bart Van Der Leck

(1876-1958) Leck was a Dutch painter and designer and learnt his trade from the State School for Decorative Arts. In 1917 he joined Theo Van Doesburg to form the De Stijl movement and journal. Leck never really achieved De Stijls full abstract look and feel, he kept his work presentable and still designed with a purpose, but still had strong influences from De Stijl in his work, such as the primary colours but eliminated more of the strong hard black lines that was so prominant in the design style.

Vilmos Huszar

(1884-1960) Huszar was a Painter and Graphic artist and played a leading role in the development of the De Stijl movement. He studied in Munich before moving to Holland in 1905. He designed the first cover for the first ussue of Doesburgs De Stijl magazine. His designs weremade using tight squares and rectangles. While still using the typical red, blue, yellow with blacks whites and greys you see in a lot of De Stijl pieces. A lot of his work still can’t be found to date. Huszar died in Hierden in 1960

Movements.Pop Art.

Journey.

Pop art is what really kicked off graphic design into the mainstream industry, hence the name popular art, it became mainstream advertising. It emerged in the late 50s in britain and then later on in the early 60s in the USit was influenced by the surrealism and Dada movements. One of the first, and most iconic pieces from this movement was Richard Hamiltons “What Makes Todays Home So Different So Appealing”

Style

Pop arts style can be quite broad, but they use a combination of flat and brash colours, with super enlargements of halftone screen dots.It often uses images that are currently in advertising or popular culture, Andy Warhol uses this a lot. By the time Pop Art had got to America, a lot of English pop art had already got there and became popular so they had to change their style up slightly to differ from British Pop art in an attempt to stay original

Artists.Pop Art.

Andy Warhol.

(1928-1987) Andy Warhol was the lead artist for the Pop Art movement and from this became one of the most iconic artists ever.A lot of his work involved celebrity culture and was well reknowned for controversial art. Warhols pieces contained lots of different types of media, such as hand drawings, paintings, photography, sculpture, film and music. His most famous piece was the Marylin Munroe print made just weeks after her death.

Roy Lichtenstein

(1923-1997) Roy was an American Pop artist in the 1960sLichtenstein had a unique style, although very simular to the Pop Art culture, a lot of his work was comic book influenced. A lot of his pieces had a female character in with blonde hair and used bright old fashioned comic book colours.Later on in his career, Lichtenstein began to recreate masterpieces in his own style such as Van Goghs Bedroom in Arles.

Movements.Minimalism.

Journey.

Minimalism was at its most prominant stage between the 1960s-early 70s. Some people interpret it as a reaction against abstract expressionism, a lot of people disagreed with the amount of extra added detailed pieces from this abstract art, so the idea of Minimalism was to get rid of everything, and just leave the bare basics to pieces. It was from this movement the phrase “Less is More” was coined by Ludwig Miles Van Der Rohe

Style

There isn’t a lot to say about the style of Minimalism. The idea of it was to expose the pieces true identity by eliminating all the non-essential part to it.It’s aim is for the minimal amount of objects to create the largest effect and to strip everything down to its essential quality. Although it was very big in the 60s-70s, Minimalism is very popular within modern interior design these days and is a very desired design style.

Artists.Minimalism.

Frank Stella

(1936-present) Stella is an American painter and printmarked and is known for his minimalism work.He went to Princeton University and majored in History, but visites to galleries influenced him to develop into an artist. He was influenced by the abstract expressionism movement.

Donald Judd

(1928-1994) Judd was an American artist associated with minimalism. In the late 40s Judd practiced as a pointer, he later on went to explore woodcut and the slowly moved on to more abstract pieces. His artwork then slowly moved from this and started to use more angular straight lines. He then stopped painting in the late 60s to pursue sculpting. In the 70s Donald Judds work started becoming larger and larger, and he started making big installations in rooms.

Post-Modern DesignersJavier Mariscal

Mariscal is a Spanish artist and designer born in 1950. He’s been working in Barcelona since 1970. He’s a designer of graphics, interiors, furniture, lighting, fashion as well as textiles. He studied philosphy in Valencia between 1967-1970 and then went on to train as a graphic designer, he then went to go on to freelance in 1976 creating very witty designs. He was responsible for the designs of lots of famous bars and night clubs most famously the Duplex bar in Valencia, this went on to him designing one of his most famous pieces, the Duplex stool, his furniture design lead him to go on participate in exhibitions for his work. In the 1980s Mariscal designed many textile collections. He also went on to design the second Big Brother chair in 2001. To date Javier Mariscal is still designing and has been awarded many awards for his post-modern designs.

Post-Modern DesignersNeville Brody

Born in 1957 Neville Brody is an art director, graphic designer, but is mostly known for his typography. He went to college at the London College of Printing between 1976-1979.Brodys different design style challenged most conventions in editorial design. His unique style involves designing and manipulating images and type into new shapes and proportions. Brody was one of the new generation of designers to embrace the creative potential of the Apple Mac computers as apose to a PC.Brody has designed four typefaces for Linetype and he has an exhibition of his work put up in the Victoria and Albert museum in London in 1988.In 1994 Brody created Research Studios and was the founding member of Fontworks.

Post-Modern DesignersOdermatt and Tissi

This was a Zurich design practice founded in 1968 by Siegried Odermatt (1926) and Rosmarie Tissi (1937)Odermatt is a self taught designer and worked in Zurich with Georg Vetter and Hans Falk, he then went on to work at an advertising agency for three years with Paul Zurrer. He finall established his own studio in Zurich in 1950. Where as Tissi was taught at the Kunstgewerbeschule between 1954 and 1958, she then became an apprentice designer for four years.They have a clear yet dramatic use of colour and type in their work often using bright reds, greens and yellows, while still using lots of blacks, whites and greys. Odermatt has designed many typefaces and are reciepients of many international awards because of their works.

Post-Modern DesignersPeret

Also known as “Pere Torrent” born in 1945, he’s a spanish graphic designer that produces posters, corporate identities, stamps and television graphics. Theres not a lot to be found on Peret, but he was a contributor to the growth of post-modernism in Barcelona during the 1980sFrom 1965 he was an illustrator and graphic designer. He left spain in 1970 so go persue a career in Paris where he became an advertising art director. He then went on to establish himself as a freelance illustrator. He then later returned to Barcelona to design cultual posters for the city council. Between 1984-1988 he produced weekly illustrations for the newspaper in Barcelona. He was influenced greatly by the modernism art movements, Cubism, Constructivisim and Surealism. Peret was the designer behind the 1992 Olympic Games stamps which took the sporting activities, and reduced them to simple geometric shapes for a limited edition stamp.

Post-Modern DesignersWolfgang Weingart

Wolfgang Weingart was a self taught graphic designer and typographer born in 1941.hes an influential designers in the post-modern era.He learned hot metal composition as an apprentice in Germany and then went on to move to Basle in 1968 where he began to teach at Kunstgewerbeschule. In the late 1960s he challenged the rational order and dogmatic rules of the internation typographic style. He used wide word and letter spacing, step rules, reversed type blocks, unpredictable contrasts of type weight and diagonal letter forms. He then went on to explore Photolithography in the mid 1970s.Weingart went on to teach many students his design style while in Basle. This led to him being an influence on American designChanging it from the systematic Swiss Design principles.

Post-Modern DesignersPhilippe Starck

French product designer, Philippe Starck was born in 1949 and has become one of the most famous and prolific post-modern designers. Starck has designed lots of products over his time, with everything from toothbrushes to bikes and even yachts.Starck mainly works out of Paris, New York, Burano and London these days. He started to become more famous when he designed the interior for private appartments for the french preseident. He now designs for many companies such as Allessi where he designed what became on of the most controversial product designs in the post modern era as it completely ignored Form follows function and was more along the lines of form over function as the Juicy Salif lemon squeezer didn’t actually work at all but was still one of Alessis biggest sellers, people wanted it because it was Starck who designed it.

Covers and Mastheads.Cubism.

My first design was a cubism influenced cover, i went with a slightly dull yellow colour as i had just seen a cubism piece which used simular colour which influenced me to do something like this, over all i wasn’t too happy with the design but i couldnt seem to

get the shadings right, anyways there was minimal difference between the first 2, just the leading between the Masthead, i used a Cubism font which i found and thought it looked a lot better in the second design as i like that it hinted at the abbreviation.

The third design was something a bit more different what i placed the words on angles of the design, although making it a little harder to read, i quite enjoyed this design and thought it was the better of the three, especially with the added drop shadow to it.

Covers and Mastheads.De Stijl.

My second cover design was a De Stijl influenced design, more specifically, influenced by Piet Mondrians “A composition in Red, Blue and Yellow” using typical straight black lines, with the 3 primary colours. I used the white space to

place the subtitle and decided to have just NGD as the mast-head.For my second design i used the whole title and had them running down the side, i didn’t like this as much because i thought the over lapping didnt

really comply with typical De Stijl work. My final piece was my favourite and i thought it fitted in quite well with the design style and worked well with the geometric forms.

Covers and Mastheads.Minimalism.

Here was my minimalism cover design, there’s not much i could do with minimalism, so i just took the principles of it and got ride of all unnecessary elemany and just kept the 3 main aspects i needed. I stuck with a sans-serif font, again going with the no added detail that i don’t need, so this was Helvetica.I read somewhere in Minimalism interior design, they try and combine utilities together, saving space and really getting that minimalist feel, so this is what i did on my cover, using a difference overlay, i layed the “An exploration of modernism and post-modernism” on top of the “New Graphic Design” Masthead. there wasn’t a lot more i could do, so i inversed the colours and decided i still liked the original (left) better.

Covers and Mastheads.Pop Art.

Using Philippe Starck as my cover subject, i created a pop art style cover, the fonts i used have a comic book feel to them and i thought it fitted well, although it didn’t look too realistic so i wasn’t all sure about it, the blue on the left seemed to take over the subtitles a little.

I then moved the blue over and put an added backdrop over the title, this was to give it that extra comic book feel to it, although it did work like that, i wasn’t too sure, it didn’t seem to flow well. So switching things up a little more i put the blue out the way and got rid of the second

backdrop to the title, although this was my favourite cover of the three, and was originally the cover i was going to go with on my magazine, i decided i really don’t like it, it looked poor and quite amatuer, nothing about it looked presentable or professional.

Covers and Mastheads.Constructivism.

My final cover was Constructivism influenced. I used a very russian constructivism font, sans-serif and lots of straight line forms.I used a red ray shining down on the magazine along with 2 banners heading across the front of the magazine with the subtitle “Form follows function” on them. So far this was my

favourite design, i liked that i didn’t use the typical plan back ground as well, i was able to give it a brown old grainy fexture to it which i thought fitted in well with the movements influence. The first change was only slight at first, and it was deciding whether to have the subtitle in black, white or have it see

through.After looking at them i decided i prefered the third design and having the text see through. The white just didn’t seem to fit in and the black just seemed to blend in with the masthead too much, so this was my decision to keep this.

Covers and Mastheads.Constructivism.

From here the next step was pretty simple, where to put the subsubheading. My original thought was to put it in the bottom left in line with the masthead as it seemed to be quite empty and needed something to fill the space, then i had a new idea to put it across the banner in the

middle, this worked well and i kept it black orginally, I then thought i should put a typical black fist punching in the air on this cover to really give it that Russian constructivism feel, so i did this, but it interfered with the text, so like in the minimalism cover, i put a difference overlay on and this

just didn’t look right, it made it hard to read and so i wasn’t happy. In the final version i lowered the ribbons and raised the fist, including the date and issue in line with the masthead worked well, this was my favourite cover and i was happy to use this as my cover design.

Grids.

Grids. Finally, messing around with grids on the inner pages was the last part of designing my magazine, as you can see, just playing around with these for a bit makes a massive difference, the design on the left was my first draft and after having a play, i got to the design on the right, which looks far more professional and neater, i’m happy with layout and thinks it fits well.

Dean SciclunaU1154130

New Graphic Design