Here is the information I have collected for the remaining 5 questions or the 'What is a book?' brief. I now have to plan the grid layouts for the information to be implemented into.
Design Movements
Art Deco
Art Deco is distinguished for its stylized representation of shapes. Art Deco artists seemed to use the geometric rules of architecture. One of those artists was A. M. Cassandre, who became popular for his logo design for Yves Saint Laurent. His poster design Pivolo is highly representative of Art Deco.
Principal elements here are a celebration of geometry and a near-fetishization of the machine. Pay particular attention to big sweeping curves, which have a luxurious quality to them. Art Deco reached its nadir in the 1920s and shares that era’s opulence and wastefulness. Designs share the Bauhaus school’s fascination with form but celebrates form as a means to a “new” aesthetic, rather than trying to reconcile it with function. Art Deco’s most lasting influences can be found in grandiose architecture and industrial design, so look to New York City’s Rockefeller Center, Chicago’s Mather Tower and the paintings of Tamara de Lempicka. As a pure style without ideology, Art Deco could be applied to any subject or theme. Its distinctive graphic look was identifiable regardless of national origin. Art Deco’s international dominance ended in the wartime austerity of World War II. The 1960s, another period of widespread consumerism, witnessed a nostalgic revival of the style.
In 1919, the Bauhaus school was founded in Weimar Germany. It was the birthplace of a revolution in modern design. Founder Walter Gropius’ form-follows-function philosophy transformed advertising, typography, architecture, people’s living spaces, and the public’s aesthetic expectations in fundamental ways.
According to the aesthetic, designs should be simple, daring, bold and uncomplicated. These designs stick out in your mind because of their lack of ornamentation and beautiful, brutal simplicity. Today, their crisp, geometric style is reflected in successful design everywhere: from billboards to infographics. And it still serves its original purpose: to honor functionality with beauty, to please the eye and capture the mind. Herbert Bayer was the school’s first master of typography. His participation in the movement led to his invention of a Bauhaus style font, called Universal. It was an incomplete work that was finished in 1969 to create the font entitled ‘Bauhaus.’
Constructivism
A movement with origins in Russia, Constructivism was primarily an art and architectural movement. It rejected the idea of art for arts’ sake and the traditional bourgeois class of society to which previous art had been catered. Instead it favored art as a practice directed towards social change or that would serve a social purpose. Developing after World War I, the movement sought to push people to rebuild society in a Utopian model rather than the one that had led to the war. Constructivists were to be constructors of a new society - cultural workers on a par with scientists in their search for solutions to modern problems.
The term construction art was first coined by Kasmir Malevich in reference to the work of Aleksander Rodchenko. Graphic Design in the constructivism movement ranged from the production of product packaging to logos, posters, book covers and advertisements. Rodchenko’s graphic design works became an inspiration to many people in the western world including Jan Tschichold and the design motif of the constructivists is still borrowed, and stolen, from in much of graphic design today.
Dada
Dada or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century. Dada was born out of negative reaction to the horrors of World War I. This international movement was begun by a group of artists and poets associated with the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich. Dada rejected reason and logic, prizing nonsense, irrationality and intuition. Dada questioned all established convention and the very origins of design.
The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature, poetry, art manifestoes, art theory, theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a rejection of the prevailing standards in art through anti-art cultural works. In addition to being anti-war, Dada was also anti-bourgeois and had political affinities with the radical left.
Key figures in the movement included Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings, Hans Arp, Raoul Hausmann, Hannah Höch, Johannes Baader, Tristan Tzara, Francis Picabia, Richard Huelsenbeck, George Grosz, John Heartfield, Marcel Duchamp, Beatrice Wood, Kurt Schwitters, and Hans Richter, among others. The movement influenced later styles like the avant-garde and downtown music movements, and groups including surrealism, Nouveau réalisme, pop art and Fluxus.
Influential Graphic Designers
Aleksandr Rodchenko
Aleksandr Rodchenko is widely considered one of the founders of the
Productivist movement of in the early 20th century Russian avant-garde art
scene (which preceded landmarks such as Bauhaus and the De Stijl movement). He
emerged as a prolific painter, sculptor, photographer, graphic designer,
industrial designer and architect. Rodchenko sought to combine all mediums
together for a socially engaged and aware purpose. He photographed modern
monuments of his time, created bold opinionated graphics and posters that spoke
to his derision for propaganda, and sought to use design to shape a better
world.
Alvin Lustig contributions to book design, magazines, interiors and
textiles have had a long-term influence on contemporary design practice. A
Denver native Lustig’s family moved to LA when he was just a boy, it was here
he met “an enlightened teacher” who introduced him to Modern art, sculpture,
and French poster design. He started off as a printer and typographer, and
after a few years focused solely on design, designing books for New Directions.
In 1944 he moved to NYC top further pursue his career. Here he worked for Look
Magazine until 1946. Lustig was a true Modernist designer. He was a kin to the
Bauhaus school of thought, that designers should pursue a holistic approach to
their work and design every aspect of a project, and applied it to every aspect
of his career.
Jacquelin Casey
Jacqueline Casey did more in her position as a designer at MIT than most
people do in a lifetime. She began working at MIT in 1955, brought on board
through the suggestion of her friend and former classmate Muriel Cooper, and
remained at the Institute until her death in 1992. Casey helped pioneer the
institute’s Office of Design Services and acted as director for the office from
1972 until 1989. Her posters for MIT are iconic; they’re elegant and energetic,
clean and creative. Casey had a real talent for depicting concepts through
simple forms and type. Her posters are still an inspiration to designers.
Massimo Vignelli
Massimo Vignelli lives by his famous mantra. He is a packaging designer, a furniture designer, a graphic designer and so much more. Vignelli has designed the identity for American Airlines, and signage for the NYC Subway System and the DC Metro system. In 1971 Vignelli opened Vignelli Associates with his with and partner, Lella. Together they crated work for companies like Knoll, Benetton, Heller, IBM, Bloomingdales, Xerox, and the Guggenheim among others. Massimo Vignelli is the co-founder and President of Vignelli Associates and Chief Executive Officer of Vignelli Designs in New York. His work includes graphic and corporate identity programs, publication designs, architectural graphics, and exhibition, interior, furniture, and consumer product designs for many leading American and European companies and institutions.
Milton Glaser
There’s no doubt that you’ve seen Milton Glaser’s work. He founded New York Magazine with Clay Felker and created the I <3 NY logo that every tourist annoyingly proudly wears. Born in 1929, Glaser attended the Cooper Union and was a Fulbright scholar, traveling to the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, Italy to study. In 1954 he co-founded Push-Pin Studios with Reynold Ruffins, Seymore Chawst and Edward Sorel, In 1963 Glaser and Felker founded New York Magazine and in 1983 he and Walter Bernard formed WBMG; a publication design firm with clientele like LA Times, Boston Globe, Time, AdWeek and Brill’s Content
To many, Milton Glaser is the embodiment of American graphic design during the latter half of this century. His presence and impact on the profession internationally is formidable. Immensely creative and articulate, he is a modern renaissance man — one of a rare breed of intellectual designer-illustrators, who brings a depth of understanding and conceptual thinking, combined with a diverse richness of visual language, to his highly inventive and individualistic work
Paul Rand
Born in Brooklyn in 1914, Rand attended art school in New York City at both Pratt Institute and Parsons School of Design. Despite this formal training Rand found these institutes not stimulating and ultimately taught himself design, studying the works of A.M. Cassandre and Lazlo Moholy-Nagy through European magazines. Although, Rand began his career designing covers for Direction magazine, his most notable contributions to the field of Graphic Design have been his corporate work for companies like IBM, ABC, UPS and Westinghouse.
Saul Bass
A native New Yorker, Saul Bass moved to LA in his mid-twenties to pursue a career in Graphic Design. Bass is a jack of all design traits, dabbling in both print design and movie animation. You may be familiar with Bass’s work if you’ve ever flown United or Continental, supported United Way or the Girl Scouts, or have seen the title sequences for Psycho, Anatomy of a Murder, Spartacus or The Man with the Golden Arm, a trend Bass spearheaded. It’s a cliché, but Saul Bass really has done it all. Films. Packaging. Products. Architecture. Corporate identification. Graphics. His work surrounds us.
Stefan Sagmeister
Stefan Sagmeister is no mere commercial gun for hire. Sure, he’s created eye-catching graphics for clients including the Rolling Stones and Lou Reed, but he pours his heart and soul into every piece of work. His design work is at once timeless and of the moment, and his painstaking attention to the smallest details creates work that offers something new every time you look at it.
While a sense of humor invariably surfaces in his designs, Sagmeister is nonetheless very serious about his work; his intimate approach and sincere thoughtfulness elevate his design. A genuine maverick, Sagmeister achieved notoriety in the 1990s as the designer who self-harmed in the name of craft: He created a poster advertising a speaking engagement by carving the salient details onto his torso.
Influential/Famous Typefaces
Helvetica
Helvetica
is a design classic and a real exponent of modernism. Developed by Max
Miedinger with Eduard Hoffman in 1957 for the Haas Type Foundry in
Munchenstein, Switzerland. Originally called Neue-Hass Grotesk, the font was
renamed Helvetica – the Latin name for Swiss. Its success depends on its clarity
and simplicity, for this reason, Helvetica can be used as a neutral font, where
the content and context of messages shine through rather than being evoked by a
font. It is suited to signage and advertisements and has been used by companies
such as American Apparel, American Airlines; BMW and NYC Subway.
Garamond
Garamond
can be credited to Claude Garamond a type designer who was commissioned to
create the typeface for a French King, Francis I, in the 1540s. The new
typeface quickly began to have influence all over Western Europe as it was a
clean but elegant typeface that was a move away from the hard-to-read Gothic
styles of the time. It can be said therefore that Garamond is very much a
renaissance creation. It is
extremely popular for lengthy and continuous text, due to its elegance and
warmth. Making it suitable for magazines, books and most printed material.
Bodoni
Named after
designer, Giambattista Bodoni, often called King of Printers, the Bodoni font
has a very unique style and a very pronounced contrast between thin and thick
strokes. Bodoni is suitable for displays, posters, headlines and logos and the
Bodoni typeface is considered to be one of the first modern typefaces. His type
was characterized by simplicity as he rejected old-style letters and introduced
clear and simple type. It has been used in books for the last three hundred
years
Rockwell
Rockwell is a variation of the geometric slab serif design primarily used by Egyptians in the early nineteenth century. The typeface was designed at the Monotype foundry´s in-house design studio in 1933 and since then has found its way into many popular products including Time magazine and Apple’s Tiger operating system. Because of its mono-weighted stroke, Rockwell is used mostly for display in headlines, short text and posters, rather than for lengthy text.
Times New
Roman
Who can forget Times New Roman when creating a list like this one. Probably the most ubiquitous typeface ever, Times New Roman is used extensively in books, magazines and various other forms of printed material. The font was designed by Stanley Morison and Victor Lardent, and it first appeared on 3 October 1932 in the issue of the famous British newspaper, The Times.
Univers
Univers is a sans serif typeface that was designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1954 and released by Deberny & Piegnot in 1957. It was then acquired by Haas in 1972, and later by D. Stempel AG and then Linotype. It also has lots of similarities with Helvetica. Univers’ design is such that it can be easily read from long distances when compared to other fonts. Hence you could find it being used for signage and by various airline companies. Some of the prominent firms which used this font are Swiss International Air Lines, Deutsche Bank and Frankfurt airport.
Futura
Futura is
another sans-serif typeface widely used in graphic design. This font is based
on geometric shapes and used in logos, displays and books where the text size
needed is not significantly large. It was first used commercially in 1927 when
it was released by the Bauer type foundry.
There are
different versions of this font like the Futura Black, Futura Display, Futura
Condensed etc.
Frutiger
Frutiger
was first used at the Charles De Gaulle International Airport in France for
their new signage. It was designed by the Swiss designer Adrian Frutiger and
you could see this font being widely used in signage, symbols, displays and
similar design work. The font
has many variations and available as sans-serif, serif and ornamental
typefaces. You can also find it on many websites and web 2.0 apps.
Myriad
Myriad is
another great font designed by Carol Twombly (and Robert Slimbach) for Adobe in
the nineties. The best use of this font could be found in all Apple products
and marketing campaigns as it is Apple’s corporate font (although lately some
of the Apple’s products have used other font types).
Myriad has
many versions like Myriad Pro, Myriad Web, Myriad Wild and more.
Gill
Sans
Gill Sans
first appeared in England in 1928 when it was introduced by Monotype. This
sans-serif typeface was originally designed by Douglas Cleverdon and later
adapted developed by Eric Gill. Inspired by Edward Johnston’s font design for
London Underground, this font finds use in a variety of products and designs
like Mac OS X and some Microsoft products.
Digital & Traditional Offset Printing
The
Pros and Cons of Digital Printing
Digital
Printing
PROS
Digital
printing is incredibly fast, making it ideal for projects with a tight
deadline. Traditional offset printing has a much slower turnaround due to the
set up, so consider your deadline carefully when choosing which type of
commercial printing to opt for. If the deadline is short and you’re running out
of time, digital printing could be your best choice.
Budgetary
concerns are extremely important when choosing how to print your project. If
you have a low volume print job, digital printing is far more cost effective
than traditional offset printing.
If you
need a fast turnaround of a short print run you should use a digital printer to
meet your deadline and keep the cost down.
One of
the key advantages of digital printing is the accuracy of the proofing it
allows. Extremely detailed samples can be made of your print job quickly and
cost effectively, enabling you to hold a sample in your hands which will be
exactly recreated in the final print run.
Another
great strength of digital printing is how easily a design project’s text,
images and colours can be customised during the print process without
significantly slowing it down. If you need to customise different parts of the
print run, for diverse marketing campaigns for example, Variable Data Printing
presses are by far the best option in terms of speed and affordability.
Pantone
Colors
CONS
What are
the cons of digital printing? Well, despite digital printers constantly
improving, they still can’t quite match the colour quality and sheer
flexibility of traditional offset printers, which offer a wider range of paper,
ink and finish options and use the Pantone Matching System and inks to deliver
unparalleled colour accuracy. Digital printers use a four colour printing process
utilising a colour matching process to simulate colours, which cannot compete
with traditional offset printers.
Another
weakness is that digital printer inks aren’t fully absorbed into the print
paper, which means cracks can appear in the colour near edges which are folded
in the finished publication. This isn’t a problem in traditional offset
printing.
It’s also
important to remember that traditional offset printing can be more cost
effective than digital printing for higher volume print runs as the individual
unit price comes down.
Considering
the superior quality of traditional offset printing, a traditional offset
printer is a better choice for higher volume print runs than a digital printer.
The
Pros and Cons of Traditional Offset Printing
Offset
Printing
PROS
The pros
of traditional offset printing are clear. It remains the best quality type of
printing available for graphic designers, particularly when image quality is
concerned. Technology has developed so that the computer-to-plate system delivers
superlative accuracy and quality.
As
previously mentioned, traditional offset printing enables more choice when it
comes to print materials. Many graphic design projects demand unusual paper
types and sizes, specialised inks and finishes. If this is the case with your
project you should use a traditional offset printer. Special effects like spot
varnishes are far better quality when done through traditional offset printing.
The
combination of the Pantone Matching System and the Pantone inks makes traditional
offset printers the best choice when complete control is needed and colour
accuracy is paramount. The four colour process used for digital printing simply
cannot compete with traditional offset printers, so if colour counts opt for
traditional offset printing.
If your
graphic design project is high volume, traditional offset printing is not only
more cost effective but can be quicker. Much of the costs and time involved
with traditional offset printing relate to the preparation and press set up. However,
if you have a high volume print job the unit costs are drastically reduced,
because once the set up is complete the extra units are relatively cheap to
print.
What are the cons of traditional offset printing? It is far more difficult to personalise and customise print jobs during the print run as the printer set up has to be adjusted. This can be rather time consuming, particularly when compared to digital printing, which is perhaps the best option for print jobs requiring a lot of customisation within a short time frame.
Traditional printing is also slower and more costly for lower volume print jobs than digital printing. This is because of the time it takes to set a traditional printer up for a job, which raises the individual unit prices for shorter print runs. Digital printers remain the best choice for quick and low cost short run print jobs.
How Is Woodblock Type Made?
Wood has been used for letterforms and illustrations dating back to the first known Chinese wood block
print from 868 CE. The forerunner of the block print in China was the wooden stamp. The image on these stamps was most often that of the Buddha, and was quite small. Provided with handles to facilitate their use, they were not unlike the modern rubber-stamps of today. In Europe, large letters used in printing were carved out of wood because large metal type had a tendency to develop uneven surfaces, or crack, as it cooled.
In America, with the expansion of the commercial printing industry in the first years of the 19th century, it was inevitable that someone would perfect a process for cheaply producing the large letters so in demand for broadsides. Wood was the logical material because of its lightness, availability, and known printing qualities.
1. Wood
engravings are a form of relief printing. The starting point would be a
hard block of wood that would create a solid shape when printed. The
letterforms are created by wood been cut away from an outline leaving a final
image. The other common relief printmaking methods are the woodcut and
linoprint methods.
2. All
engravings start with a drawing. The image you cut into the block needs to be
the reverse output of the final print. This means when the print is pressed the
letterform appears the right way round. A good tip would be too create mockups
on acetate so the actual print outcome can be viewed on the other side of the
acetate.
3. The
block engraving. The wood that you intent to use needs to be cut across the
end grains of the block. The depth of the block is normally the
height of the letterform. The traditional wood to use for wood engraving is
boxwood, alternatives could be lemonwood. The wood needs to be capable of
coping with fine detail and be robust enough to withstand many prints.
4. There
are 2 methods of drawing onto the block. You can draw onto the natural wood
block, or you can cover the block in watercolor wash and draw on in pencil. Its
a good idea to use tracing paper before hand to plan on were to place the
visual elements onto the block.
5. Using
typical woodcarving tools like; spitsticker for curved lines.
A scorper for straight lines and large surface areas. A tint tool for
parallel lines.A lozenge graver for cutting lines of varying widths. The
multiple tool cuts several parallel lines at once.
6. After
lots of patience the block glyph is finished with sandpaper for curved elements
of the letterform.
7. The
block is ready for printing now, good quality printing paper
is recommended. Strong thin paper like a Japanese paper is
the traditional medium.
8. In
terms of a printing press it can be done by hand for a more worn out rustic
effect. Or a proof press or a typical letterpress were moveable type can
be placed in the pressing tray.
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