DESIGN FOR PRINT AND WEB// Typography Research

Over Christmas I've been doing some reading for the print book and ISTD briefs which I need to get on with urgently now. I have been generally brushing up on terminology and processes with these books. They mostly focus on typography and occasionally print.

 Firstly ABC of 20th Century Graphics by Sergio Polano and Pierpaolo Vetta.The book is fairly text heavy with a large number of essays covering just about every style of graphic design up until 2003, making it a tad dated but still extremely useful for the majority of typography related themes. 

 Kurt Schwitters 'phonenticization' of his name experimenting with weights and strokes to get the right sounds as you pronounce the letters.

 The book runs on to cover some more recent typography, but in 2003 this section is full of stuff that is fairly unpopular right now.

 Typography by Gavin Ambrose and Paul Harris covers the fundamentals of typography and typographic design. This was probably the most informative book I have come across on the subject. The book walks through various aspects of typography and puts examples in context for the reader.

This page about the anatomy of type has been particularly useful. Its all stuff I have look into before but its just so easy to forget this stuff, you really need to know it to be respected.

The books gives loads of examples for every subject which is about the most helpful thing which the project I have to get on with.

Just My Type by Simon Garfield is more like a story book than the others, it covers intersting stories about the ways various typefaces came into existence. For the subject of my website this is particularly useful because I just don't have the knowledge to link all of my characters to a typeface at the moment.

Again the book uses a fair number of examples to illustrate general theory and usually uses famous places or people, giving the typefaces an essence of celebrity also, something which I would like to do with my own website.

LECTURE 9// Identity

Historical conceptions of identity
How foucualt thought of 'discourse methodology.
To place and critique contempary practice of identity.

ESSENTIALISM
-We have a biological make up that makes us the way we are
-Allows stereotypes.
-Disagreed by post modern theorists.

Phrenology
-Quake science.
-Brain is separated into areas that control different aspects of  personality. Head shape will allow people to be considered differently.
-Born in western Europe anglo historic face proportions are considered more intelligent.
-Hitler used this thinking to develop the idea of Arianism.

Hieronymous Bosch, Christ crucifixion paintings, drew Jews as stereotypes. Lead to a large amount of anti-semitism.

Historical Phases of Identity

Pre-Modern Identity
-Determined by Marriage, Monarchy, Government, Religion, Patriarchy. Very difficult to move out of the divides. Only really by marriage.

Modern Identity.
-Vested interests broken, farmers and workers move to city and build working class with an identity.
-Venlen 'Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentlemen of leisure', speaking of the flaneur. You don't have to go to work, you are free to wander and its something to aspire to.
-Upper class vs lower class identity.
-Driven by fashion, there is a trickle down theory, emulations, distinction, the 'mark' of fashion. The poor copy the rich fashion. The rich change fashion and the fashion cycle is born.

-Foucualt said that 'discourse analysis' a set of statements that define someone: Age, Class, Gender, Nationality, Race, Sexual orientation. 
-People become 'others'.

Class
-You have an awareness of your own class status, if you see someone as lower class you will know or perceive that you are higher than them.
-Perceptions of how people live their lives are loaded in other class circles.
-Martin Parr, New Brighton, Think of England, Think of Germany, is it social commentary, or a mockery?

Gender
-Gender identity in art is strong, female artists are labelled 'Female Artists'.
-Tracey Emin made the artwork, 'everyone who I have slept with' and was labelled a slag. Picasso slept with lots of women and was called a bit of a lad. 

Post-Modern Identity
-Liquid Modernity and Liquid Love, books.
-Identity is constructed through our social experience.
-Life is like a theatre. identity is "an objective". Zygmunt Bauman.
-Other people lives can be more shit than yours, you can take some conciliation from this and enjoy looking at them, i.e Eastenders.

LEGO RESPONSIVE// Lego Machine

LEGO RESPONSIVE// Visual Experiments

Turning pieces of popular culture into their Lego equivalents is a good idea for a project if it was aimed at the cultural backgrounds of the parents that this project is aimed at. This is all about detail, imagination and creativity.

A retro poster Idea from when the parents were children could bring back emotions of nostalgia and happiness towards the brand. This one is slightly too old.

Here is an example of someone using the Lego brand to promote their own product in and interesting and creative way, it shows that adults still see Lego as a part of culture.

This last poster is a lot more like the sort of thing I would like to create. The colours and lack of colour and well managed and the message is delivered very well.

LECTURE 8// Creative Rhetoric

"Different artists often have quite diverse conceptions of what they are doing."

D&AD the blank sheet project, idea started to illustrate what creatives think that creativity means.

Rutger thinks that the Dutch are pessimistic.
Then talks about Silvester Stilone being a non-creative, comparing him to Ridley Scott as someone who he could really have a 'Creative Flow' with.

Rosso, Diesel Founder.
"The best must be the next" Idea that every idea has to be the best idea a person has.
"When you do things before other people, they treat you like you are stupid."

Plato spoke of Mimesis, there is a world that exists beyond the physical world, a real word. He writes that art and creativity is a mimic or the mimicked world. A low form of intelligence.

Bernal argues that northern Africa built the foundations of ancient Greece which in turn built the western world.

1 The creative Genius. Kant spoke of romanticism, this movement redefined the role of the creative mind as a role of intelligence and importance. Value was found in originality. The artist is a creator, not an imitator. Hegarty thinks that collaboration ruins the aspect of individual creativity.

2 The Creative Classroom, Accadamies of art in 14c Italy, grew idea of creativity as an academia.

3 Democratic and political creativity, creativity is closely related to democratic and political ideas and philosophies. Internet has allowed people to share information, and ideas. 

5 Creativity as an economic imperative.

6 Play and Creativity, divergent thinking techniques.

7 Creativity and Cognition. Physic-cultural perspective on creativity. Occurs when challenges and skills are both high.

8 The creative accordances of technology.

Lanier says "you have to be somebody before you can share yourself".

LEGO RESPONSIVE// Visual Research

Before I start the brief I thought it would be a good idea to see how other people use and interact with Lego in different and interactive ways outside of the normal 'build what's in the box' stuff.

More and more people have started building construction projects with Lego to build what ever they want. All of them must cost thousands of pounds to build however. This is an idea that I could use for the parents angle of the Lego brief, that often its the dads that just want to play with the Lego.

Lego has a very iconic design aesthetic that they are worried loosing to smaller companies like MegaBloks. Design which re-enforces this image of the traditional brick may be useful.

Legoland Denmark. This is eerily similar to the real thing, right down to the posts on those two little piers. This amazing attention to detail is another tenant of Lego's philosophy I could explore.

This is a professional Lego Team hired by Lego to build show pieces and design new models. They have a rather untold story that I think Parents would be interested in because there job is very technical and challenging, things that parents might want their kids to be tasked with at home.

Here Volvo has used Lego of some promotional work in a huge project. Turning ordinary city objects like this into Lego is an idea I could explore to fully display Lego in a new light to parents, but to also inspire children to want Lego even more as art piece advertisement.

Presenting artwork and philosophical theory in a Lego medium may get paretns interested in buying their children Lego purely because it presents Lego in a more meaningful and adult way. It could also cut back the perception that Lego is just for younger children to older kids and young teenagers.

WEB AND PRINT// ISTD Visual Research/ Fakery

Evolution vs Fakery, these photos are visual representations of what I consider to be fakery (Michael Jackson and comic sans), vs Evolution (the early vertebrates and Century Gothic). These images will be juxtaposed at some point in a website and print based product to make a point about good vs bad typeface design. For now I'm using comic sans, however I do feel that despite the hate it generates, its not really an example of terrible design to the degree that Michael Jackson is an example of terrible plastic surgery. In contrast copying and fakery in nature can be a result of the evolutionary process, and is a good thing, taking a good thing and making it better still, so it can continue to exist as the world and environment changes.

Fakery, comic sans based on batman and watchmen comic strips. A good thing turning bad.

Fakery, Jackson. A good thing turning bad.

Evolution, Early vertebrates, Evolving from fish and walking on land.

Evolution, early sans serif typefaces like Futura evolve into Century Gothic to suit printing methods, saving ink, the environment and costs.