Wednesday, 1 May 2013

Wolfgang Weingart

Wolfgang Weingart was a graphic designer and typography who was internationally known. Born in 1941 in south Germany his work catagorised into Swiss Typography which then developed on his creation of 'New Wave' and 'Swiss Punk' design.

His work consisted his experimental typography which to him was a form of visual enjoyment. meaning his work was quite playful while sticking to rules of swiss typography and graphic design.
He enjoyed experimenting and making patterns in much of his work, shown in one of his typography books - 'My Way to Typography' shown below.




















His typographic layouts became even more abstract later on in his career. During the 1980's he created many posters which has a lot of overlapping type. This would have been done using film montage.



 In 1968 he came a lecturer of his own postgraduate course which was inspired from his own work and also work of the Swiss 'International' Style' he taught his students to experiment with the limits of legibility and repetition.

He also later on new skills in photolithography which meant he could play photographically with type changing the size, focus and also being able to distort his type manually. While also being over to overlap and mask film to add depth to his image making.






palomar.edu/users/gkelley/Weingart.html

http://typography-daily.com/blog/2011/03/02/6-must-have-books-about-typography/

Laszlo Moholy-Nagly

Laszlo Moholy-Nagly first studied as a law student but during his three year military service he took up drawing which he followed up with evening classes on figure drawing and late joined a hungarian free art school, which subsequently voluntarily quit law school/
He was then appointed a master specializing in typography and film making at Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar but left five years later to open his own studio. During his time at Staatliches he created a 
catalogue for the exhibition at the school.



Within the book he used innovative image and text layouts to represent the designers work. He got a lot of influence from contructivism which originated in Russia. The design of the binding was by Herbert Bayer, which is still different to most of todays binding techniques. His use of block capital letters were also quite new to design, with its two colour block printing technique, it added a modern look to a book front cover.

Later on in his his career, he joined designers in becoming a graphic design, this allowed his to move to Amsterdam and then later on, London. This gave him opportunities to work on commissioned documentary films.

For the rest of his career he worked as a freelance artist and designer until his death in 1946.























One of his contructivist inspired paintings from 1922


http://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/werke/cover-of-the-bauhaus-exhibition-catalogue-1923
http://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/werke/construction-z1
http://www.moholy-nagy.com/Biography_1.html



Saturday, 27 April 2013

Gender Identity - Malala Yousufzai



Malala Yousufzai is a girl from Pakistan who was brutally attacked by the Taliban due to going against the grain and wanting an education in her country. This made international headlines which made the vast difference of gender equality in eastern counties. She began actively writing blogs, and news articles about the education system which the Taliban put in place to stop girls having a right to education after primary school.

She was an inspiration to many girls which allowed her to earn a name for herself which made her known by the BBC. A few years later however the Taliban failed an assassination attempt on her way home from school on the bus.

The view of women in countries like this have not developed over many years, equality is taken for granted in western countries. This may be due to lack of education, or religious views being manipulated so that fatalities like this can happen.

Modernism - Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge




















Modernism was an art movement which started in the early 1900's which used a new style, new tools and new artists appeared. Constructivism was a part of Modernism which held a dominant part in Russian Propaganda.

El Lissitzy's 'Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge' is a modernist work of art which is a lithograph during the Russian Civil War in 1919. The Red wedge is a representation of the Russian Revolution edge which were against the 'white' anti-revolutionaries - Capitalists.

The wedge is shown to be breaking into the white circle with shards coming off. This denotes 'invasion' or breaking something. In this case a, group/army of people. Even though the lithograph is in Russian, due to it's bold visual display, it can be depicted by anyone. This was handy during the revolution due to many working class people not being able to read, they could still read the propaganda, allowing more people to understand the political meaning behind the poster.

The red triangle is a sign of strength, it dominates the image thus denoting the stronger side.

The words on the image actually simply saying 'beat the whites' or 'beat whites' so is even simple to other classes who can read the poster. Although the words do not stand out on the poster due to the dominating strong shapes.



(2012). Utopia/Dystopia. Available: http://utopiadystopiawwi.wordpress.com/constructivism/el-lissitzky/beat-the-whites-with-the-red-wedge/. Last accessed 25/04/2013.




Semiotics - The Treachery of Images



This painting of a pipe is painted by RenĂ© Magritte which was painted to show deception from what is actually being seen. Under the painting it says, 'This is not a pipe'. Which is meant to explain that it is a picture of a pipe and not actually a pipe. To an audience which do not know french people could
read it.

The aesthetics of the painting are very smooth using highlights and shadows to illuminate the most important part of the image. The background colour compliments the pipe due to it being on the same hue scale. The type itself is just basic scripted text, made to look like someone has written it. This makes it more personal.