Bauhaus

Important topics of the lecture:

• De Stijl Journal
  
• Everyday objects elevated to level of art
• The New Typography
• Gerrit Rietveld
• Russian Suprematist and Dutch de Stijl are most hated of all art movements
• Influence for all arts of 20th century
• Bauhaus - model for most art schools in 20th century
• Bauhaus establishes design as a discipline taught and practiced
• Photoplastics - the essence of art and design was the concept, not execution
• Photoplastics - expanded role of photography in design context
• Typophoto - typography is printed information, photo is the visual representation of what is optically perceptible.
• Bayer developed a widely imitated recipe for a modernist page
• Jan Tschichold brings 20th century typographic expression to full realization then looks back rejecting many of it's dictums.
• Functional design by the most straight forward means.
• White space given a new role as interval and structural element.
• Tschichold declared families of sans serif fonts modernist type.
• Tschichold turns away from new typography.

It was interesting to see how heavily the Bauhaus influenced all art forms which we know today. Even though originally founded for architecture, it's teachings and practices melted into other forms of art. This is one of the many reasons why graphic design started evolving into what it is today. Photography started becoming a more integral role in graphic design as the movement was looking for new ways of expressiveness. Graphic design as a whole grew significantly during the Bauhaus era.

Unit 2 Lecture 2

Important topics of the lecture:

• Russian Constructivism
• Approaching design as cultural force
• Pure form becomes content
• Suprematism uses only pure form and color.
• Suprematism evolves into constructivism.
• Suprematism was the theoretical model for an abstract visual language.
• Collaboration increased.
• The emergence of the Constructivist movement lasted 5 years between 1917 and 1922
• The role of art in the revolution was to oppose old orders.
• Photography was much more powerful than illustration.
• Influence on film.
• The goals of constructivism were the unification of Communist ideology with a visual form. As well as forming a new world of objects for a new social order.
• Style was indigenous to revolutionary Russia.
• Rodchenko
• Architectonic
• Photomontage innovations
• Constructivists enhanced rhetorical power through hyperbole.
• Rodchenko turned his energy into commercial art.
• El Lissitzky remained idealistic to goals of Suprematism.
• Art meant the creation of new 'objects'
• Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge
• Visual forms represent a set of abstract forces to serve the utopian cause.
• Cinematic power
• Pictorial spreads
• The 'Isms' of Art book
• The Steinberg Brothers

Much like the posters of WWI, the Russian Constructivist posters featured some propaganda. It was interesting to see how graphic design and film were so influential on one another. They started experimenting more and more with text and objects, and photo montage. This brought around abstraction in graphic design, which expanded the overall flexibility of design.

Unit 2: Lecture 1

Important points of the lecture:

• Cubism replaced a rendering of natural appearances with purely invented form.
• Graphic translations
• Synthetic Cubism constructs "signs" the graphic essence of an object rather than outward appearances of the object.
• Minimalism became the norm
• Posters were "seven second medium" to catch passerby's
• Propaganda art
• Propaganda boost morale and recruit armies, raised funds, war bond sales, assailed the enemy for barbarism, and promoted readiness and discipline on the home front.
• Axis used symbolic image to convey essence of event.
• Allies confront the individual with patriotic emotions.
• Futurism
• Dadaism
• Typographic Materiality becomes the catalyst for modern graphic design.
• Sign
• Calligrammes and Simultaneity
• Marinetti launches typographic modernism.
• Avant garde poets became the graphic designers, teachers and systematic theorists of the 1920's and 30's.
• Readymades threaten relation between signifier and signified
• Berlin DADA was very political.
• Invention of the photomontage by Dada artists in 1918.
• Kurt Schwitters - MERZ - one man art movement
• Automatism
• Surrealism

I thought it was very interesting to see how the poster was utilized during WWI. It is very interesting to learn how powerful the propaganda really was. The evolution and conversion of typography into a more illustrative means set path for much of modern graphic design. Learning how it all came about lets me look at designs less passively.