Journal Research Lab

Sunday, 3 October 2010

Herbert Bayer

At the age of nineteen Herbert Bayer took up an apprenticeship with the architect and designer Georg Schmidthamer in Linz, where he produced his first typographic works. From 1921 Bayer worked at the Darmstadt artists' colony as assistant to the architect Josef Emmanuel Margold. In the same year Bayer enrolled as a student at the Weimar Bauhaus, where he initially attended the pre-course under Johannes Itten followed by a workshop on mural painting, lead by Wassily Kandinsky.
In 1925 the artist completed his training with a final examination. Herbert Bayer was appoined head of the newly created workshop for print and advertising at the Dessau Bauhaus, where they also produced the school's own printworks. In 1928 the artist left Bauhaus to focus more on his own artwork and moved to Berlin, where he worked as a graphic designer in advertising and as an artistic director of an advertising agency called "Studio Dorland".
During his time in Berlin, the artist also devoted his time to the design of exhibitions, painting and photography and was art director of "Vogue" magazine in Paris.
In 1938 Herbert Bayer emigrated to the US, where he arranged the exhibition "Bauhaus 1919-1928" at the New York Museum of Modern Art in the very same year.
In 1946 he moved to Aspen, Colorado, where he worked as a painter, graphic designer, architect and landscape designer. Furthermore, Herbert Bayer worked as an artistic consultant for several companies and institutions, including the "Container Corporation of America", the "Atlantic Richfield Company".
He was also the design consultant for the Aspen cultural center and member of the art board for the information bureau of the United States of America. In 1974 the artist moved to Montecito, California, where he died in 1985.
Herbert Bayer received numerous awards and honors, including an honorary doctorate of the "Technische Hochschule Graz", the "Österreichisches Ehrenkreuz für Wissenschaft und Kunst", the "Ambassador's Award for Excellence" in London and the "Kulturpreis für Fotografie" in Cologne.

Bauhaus Movement

Bauhaus and German modernism

Defeat in World War I, the fall of the German monarchy and the abolition of censorship under the new, liberal Weimar Republic allowed an upsurge of radical experimentation in all the arts, previously suppressed by the old regime. Many Germans of left-wing views were influenced by the cultural experimentation that followed the Russian Revolution, such as constructivism. Such influences can be overstated: Gropius himself did not share these radical views, and said that Bauhaus was entirely apolitical.^[2] Just as important was the influence of the 19th century English designer William Morris, who had argued that art should meet the needs of society and that there should be no distinction between form and function.^[3] Thus the Bauhaus style, also known as the International Style, was marked by the absence of ornamentation and by harmony between the function of an object or a building and its design.

However, the most important influence on Bauhaus was modernism, a cultural movement whose origins lay as far back as the 1880s, and which had already made its presence felt in Germany before the World War, despite the prevailing conservatism. The design innovations commonly associated with Gropius Deutscher Werkbund was formed in 1907 by Hermann Muthesius to harness the new potentials of mass production, with a mind towards preserving Germany's economic competitiveness with England. In its first seven years, the Werkbund came to be regarded as the authoritative body on questions of design in Germany, and was copied in other countries. Many fundamental questions of craftsmanship vs. mass production, the relationship of usefulness and beauty, the practical purpose of formal beauty in a commonplace object, and whether or not a single proper form could exist, were argued out among its 1,870 members (by 1914). and the Bauhaus—the radically simplified forms, the rationality and functionality, and the idea that mass-production was reconcilable with the individual artistic spirit—were already partly developed in Germany before the Bauhaus was founded. The German national designers' organization

The entire movement of German architectural modernism was known as Neues Bauen. Beginning in June 1907, Peter Behrens' pioneering industrial design work for the German electrical company AEG AEG Turbine Factory, and made full use of newly developed materials such as poured concrete and exposed steel. Behrens was a founding member of the Werkbund, and both Walter Gropius and Adolf Meier worked for him in this period. successfully integrated art and mass production on a large scale. He designed consumer products, standardized parts, created clean-lined designs for the company's graphics, developed a consistent corporate identity, built the modernist landmark

The Bauhaus was founded at a time when the German zeitgeist ("spirit of the times") had turned from emotional Expressionism to the matter-of-fact New Objectivity. An entire group of working architects, including Erich Mendelsohn, Bruno Taut and Hans Poelzig, turned away from fanciful experimentation, and turned toward rational, functional, sometimes standardized building. Beyond the Bauhaus, many other significant German-speaking architects in the 1920s responded to the same aesthetic issues and material possibilities as the school. They also responded to the promise of a "minimal dwelling" written into the new Weimar Constitution. Ernst May, Bruno Taut, and Martin Wagner, among others, built large housing blocks in Frankfurt and Berlin. The acceptance of modernist design into everyday life was the subject of publicity campaigns, well-attended public exhibitions like the Weissenhof Estate, films, and sometimes fierce public debate.

Black Mountain College

The story of Black Mountain College begins in 1933 and comprises a fascinating chapter in the history of education and the arts. Conceived by John A. Rice, a brilliant and mercurial scholar who left Rollins College in a storm of controversy, Black Mountain College was born out of a desire to create a new type of college based on John Dewey's principles of progressive education. The events that precipitated the College's founding occurred simultaneously with the rise of Adolf Hitler, the closing of the Bauhaus by the Nazis, and the beginning of the persecution of artists and intellectuals on the European continent. Some of these people found their way to Black Mountain, either as students or faculty. Meanwhile, the United States was mired in the Great Depression, and Franklin Roosevelt, committed to putting people back to work, established the Public Works Arts Project (a precursor of the WPA).

The founders of the College believed that the study and practice of art were indispensable aspects of a student's general liberal arts education, and they hired Josef Albers to be the first art teacher. Speaking not a word of English, he and his wife Anni left the turmoil in Hitler's Germany and crossed the Atlantic Ocean by boat to teach art at this small, rebellious college in the mountains of North Carolina.

Black Mountain College was fundamentally different from other colleges and universities of the time. It was owned and operated by the faculty and was committed to democratic governance and to the idea that the arts are central to the experience of learning. All members of the College community participated in its operation, including farm work, construction projects and kitchen duty. Located in the midst of the beautiful North Carolina mountains near Asheville, the secluded environment fostered a strong sense of individuality and creative intensity within the small College community.

Legendary even in its own time, Black Mountain College attracted and created maverick spirits, some of whom went on to become well-known and extremely influential individuals in the latter half of the 20th century. A partial list includes people such as Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, Josef and Anni Albers, Jacob Lawrence, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Cy Twombly, Kenneth Noland, Ben Shahn, Franz Kline, Arthur Penn, Buckminster Fuller, M.C. Richards, Francine du Plessix Gray, Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Dorothea Rockburne and many others, famous and not-so-famous, who have impacted the world in a significant way. Even now, decades after its closing in 1957, the powerful influence of Black Mountain College continues to reverberate.

Paul Rand

Paul Rand (born Peretz Rosenbaum, (August 15, 1914 – November 26, 1996) was an American graphic design

Graphic design

Graphic design is a collaborative process between a client and a designer — in conjunction with producers of form — to convey a specific message to a targeted audience. The term "graphic design" can also refer to a number of artistic and professional disciplines that focus on visual communication...

er, best known for his corporate logo designs, including the logos for IBM

IBM

International Business Machines is a multinational computer, technology and IT consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, North Castle, New York, United States. IBM is the world's fourth largest technology company and the second most valuable by global brand...

, UPS

United Parcel Service

United Parcel Service, Inc. , commonly referred to as UPS, is the world's largest package delivery company. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, UPS delivers more than 15 million packages a day to 6.1 million customers in more than 200 countries and territories around the world. Since...

, Westinghouse

Westinghouse Electric (1886)

Westinghouse Electric was an American power company. It was founded in 1886 as Westinghouse Electric Company and later renamed Westinghouse Electric Corporation by George Westinghouse. The company purchased CBS in 1995 and became CBS Corporation in 1997...

, ABC

American Broadcasting Company

The American Broadcasting Company is an American television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

, and Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs

Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs, is an American business magnate and inventor. He is well-known for being the co-founder and chief executive officer of Apple...

’ NeXT

Next, Inc. was an American computer company headquartered in Redwood City, California, that developed and manufactured a series of computer workstations intended for the higher education and business markets...

. He was one of the originators of the Swiss Style of graphic design.

Rand was educated at the Pratt Institute (1929–1932), Parsons The New School for Design (1932–33), and the Art Students League

Art Students League of New York

The Art Students League of New York is an art school located on West 57th Street in New York City. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists, and has maintained for over 130 years a tradition of offering reasonably priced classes on a...

(1933–1934). From 1956 to 1969, and beginning again in 1974, Rand taught design at Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. Yale has produced many notable alumni, including five...

in New Haven, Connecticut

New Haven, Connecticut

New Haven is the second-largest municipality in Connecticut and the sixth-largest municipality in New England with a core population of about 124,000 people. "New Haven" may also refer to the wider Greater New Haven area, which has nearly 600,000 inhabitants in the immediate area...

. Rand was inducted into the New York Art Directors Club Hall of Fame in 1972. Rand died of cancer in 1996. He is buried in Beth El Cemetery in Norwalk, Connecticut.

Influences

The core ideology that drove Rand’s career, and hence his lasting influence, was the modernist philosophy he so revered. He celebrated the works of artists from Paul Cézanne to Jan Tschichold, and constantly attempted to draw the connections between their creative output and significant applications in graphic design. In A Designer’s Art Rand clearly demonstrates his appreciation for the underlying connections:
This idea of “defamiliarizing the ordinary” (or "making the familiar strange," a strategy commonly credited to Russian Formalist critic Viktor Shklovsky

Viktor Shklovsky

Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky was a Russian and Soviet critic, writer, and pamphleteer.-Life and work:Shklovsky was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and attended St. Petersburg University...

) played an important part in Rand’s design choices. Working with manufacturers provided him the challenge of utilizing his corporate identities to create “lively and original” packaging for mundane items, such as light bulbs for Westinghouse.

Tuesday, 28 September 2010

Robert Brownjohn

Robert Brownjohn (August 8, 1925 — August 1, 1970) was a graphic designer known for blending formal graphic design concepts with wit and sixties pop culture. He is best known for his motion picture title sequences, especially From Russia with Love and Goldfinger.

'Peace' poster, created for the New York Peace campaign in 1969

Design from the experimental typography booklet, 'Watching Words Move' 1959

Eric Gill

A wood engraver, sculptor, typographer, and draughtsman, Arthur Eric Rowton Gill was born in Brighton. He studied in Chichester at the Theological College, and then at the Technical and Art School before moving to London and attending the Central School.
Gill’s early training there under the calligrapher and stonemason, Edward Johnston, is reflected within the purity and severity of his work; his forms lose all extraneous and superfluous detail in favour of a more austere and abstract method of representation, which has come to be recognised as neo-Byzantine and anti-naturalistic. An equal importance laid upon lettering and the compatibility of the engraving with any accompanying text is also indicative of his early pupillage.

Gill lived in Ditchling, Sussex 1907-24 and around him sprung up a community of artists. Gill’s Roman Catholic views were influential upon the community and in 1917 a religious order of artists was conceived, and in 1921 members of the community formed the Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic (which exists today). Among the artists surrounding him at Ditchling were David Jones, Hagreen, Pepler, and Johnston. In 1924 he moved to Capel-y-ffin, near Hay-on Wye and over the next four years produced much of his best engraved work.

Gill’s often radical approaches set him apart from other contemporaneous engravers: he did not stick solely to the white-line method, nor was he afraid to experiment with the inclusion of large areas of white in his engravings through the cutting away of the equivalent areas from the block.

Gill never strayed far from the religious roots which inform his work. Eroticism also forms an important part of it. Gill was not afraid to combine these two elements. Among his many and varied achievements are the numerous books he designed, both type and illustration, The Canterbury Tales and The Four Gospels being among the greatest book productions between the Wars.

He held a number of teaching jobs, including gilding at the Central School and lettering at the LCC Paddington Institute. He was a founder member of the SWE and an associate of the RA. In 1937 he was awarded an honorary associateship of the Royal Society of British Sculptors.

Arthur Eric Rowton Gill (22 February 1882 – 17 November 1940) was a British sculptor, typeface designer, stonecutter and printmaker, who was associated with the Arts and Crafts movement. He is a controversial figure, with his well-known religious views and subject matter being seen as at odds with his sexual and paraphiliac behaviour and erotic art.

Gill Sans is a sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill.

The original design appeared in 1926 when Douglas Cleverdon opened a bookshop in his home town of Bristol, where Eric Gill painted the fascia over the window in sans-serif capitals that would be later be known as Gill Sans. In addition, Gill had sketched a design for Cleverdon, intended as a guide for him to make future notices and announcements.

Gill further developed it into a complete font family after Stanley Morison commissioned the development of Gill Sans to combat the families of Erbar, Futura and Kabel which were being launched in Germany during the latter 1920s. Gill Sans was later released in 1928 by Monotype Corporation.

Gill Sans became popular when in 1929 Cecil Dandridge commissioned Eric Gill to produce Gill Sans to be used on the London and North Eastern Railway for a unique typeface for all the LNER's posters and publicity material