#weekeight

As we have been slowly going through the history of design week by week, I thought it was particularly relevant to my grandpa’s old stamp collection that he gave me and I have been continuing for him. This little book has stamps from all over the world from about 1890-2000, and it is really interesting to look at what design motifs and styles went in and out of fashion over the years. 

‘Architexture’ was a small workshop activity we were proposed to undertake. This is where we had to find type letters in our built in and/or outside environment, not manipulating the subject matter at all, just using the tools of cropping and rotating with a phone.

I decided to take my photographs in my backyard, and I was surprised that just by observing an environment I am so familiar with in a different lens caused me to see letterforms I had never previously noticed. I went around to different parts of my backyard, trying to picture different elements as letterforms if I were to crop parts out. In the end I found six different letters. My favourite composition is the letter ‘a’, as it was a less noticeable letter form where the image had to be rotated 90 degrees, as well as the way the horizontal line of the ‘a’ is composed of a background element while the other two parts are in the foreground.

To make this short, I'm grateful for languages that never fail to make me wonder, and for people who let me into their languages' world.

As always I'm grateful for blarkes that make me smile or not bored whenever i need it. I admire you all.

Be well. Be kind.

2019 Building Challenge ! - Build 08 - Cat Cafe! :)

Futurism. Following last week’s lecture on Bauhaus, futurism was introduced as a response to the often strict world of minimalism, grids and ‘rules’ that surrounded this new era of modernist design. Futurism was an Italian Art and Print Movement that aimed to capture the dynamism and energy of the the modern world, embracing new technologies. This included revolutionary machines such as the car and the automobile, which represented movement and acceleration. The Manifesto of Futurism listed all the things that Futurists embraced and technologies they wanted to see more of. This was translated into paintings and artworks, represented a more ‘lived experience’, a sense of time and speed, capturing moments differently and more humanly than a camera would. Interestingly, as Karen noted, the role of paintings had changed during this time period; they had been freed from their role as a representative medium as people could now use photography. 

One of the examples Andy and Karen presented was the Parole in Libertà, I found looked drastically different from any of the other printed publications that we had previously learnt about and were being made at the time. The words had been freed and liberated, and it was radicalising the way that language was being used. ‘Type had taken on a voice’, as Karen noted. Funnily, it was considered a very violent design at the time. Print up until then had become a mathematical harmony and the futurists were breaking these rules. 

‘In the Evening, Lying on Her Bed, She Reread the Letter from Her Artilleryman at the Front’ by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, 1919 (source: arthistoryproject.com)

This piece is titled ‘In the Evening, Lying on Her Bed, She Reread the Letter from Her Artilleryman at the Front’. After researching some futurists works, the typography and meaning behind it struck me. It reminded me of the animation that Andy had showed in the lecture, with the dramatic and animated voice narrating the words that flew onscreen. This ink work shows how the woman is reading the letter she has been sent from the soldier through the dramatic stylisation of the words, using onomatopoeia to exaggerate these sounds. The messiness and violence of the wordforms and type, clashing into each other is representative of this violence of war. It had captured what futurism was all about - showing speed, showing an abstract view of the movement of reality. 

‘Blue Dancer’ by Gino Severini, 1912 (source: guggenheim.org)

Too colourful 

Too direct 

It looks like a textbook 

There is so much you can bring through emotively through the type

Look on pinterest for dynamic work 

Content is there but it's too clean 

Make it a puzzle to figure out – Contemporary so young men will interact with it

Create tension 

There are all these materials on pinterest you could be learning from 

A bad idea can be done well