Discovering new inspiration

I have been interested in Art and Design for a long time, but I've always been viewing modern art and digital creations. The start of the OCA file is a range of designers and artists from as early as 1890 with the Art Nouveau movement with Aubrey Beardsley. This movement features beautiful and natural lines and forms. But the one thing that really stuck out to me was the more politically relevant pieces, I loved the idea of not just creating something beautiful but creating something with purpose and deeper layers. 'The construction of the USSR' by Alexander Rodchenko is an example of Avant -garde which pushes the boundaries of the 'norm' and is a way of artists expressing themselves beyond the status quo. The movement is also meant to promote radical social reforms, I'm not an expert on Russian politics but this seems to be representing Lenin and is socialism movement. What I love about this piece is it incorporates and combines different media, it gives off the look of a collage.  The large use of red in this piece represents socialism, red is the oldest colour used to represent socialism and dates back to its use in the French revolution, so it's fitting that it's featured here. The images used also further empathise the idea of socialism, the bottom image is of a crowd of protesters, these people are the beating heart of Russia and their voice needs to be heard. Red has another meaning here as it represents the blood of the workers who died overthrowing capitalism. Above is an image of what looks like speakers, these images depict 'freedom of speech' and further pushes the idea that people need a voice with the direct and self-explanatory connections to communication. Top right is the image of Lenin ( don't hold me to this, I can't find who it exactly is I'm just presuming) he is mid speech, given the fact Alexander has chosen to use just his head and placed him above the people, it gives the idea he is someone who they can look up to, furthermore he isn't looking down on them but instead speaking, which shows that he can be their voice and isn't a dictator. But Lenin did kill a considerable amount of people that opposed him, so the red on the page can also represent the blood of his 'enemies', furthermore the red looks to be the bottom layer and these images of people and speech are layered on top which perhaps suggests that this is the image the artist wants to portray and is covering up this 'evil' underneath.

There are many other pieces that stuck out to me inside this section such as the really powerful work of  Douglas Emory with his piece on Huey P Newton, and also work in the era of Modernism and Post Modernism. What this taught me was that early forms of graphic design are amongst the most valuable when learning the trait, and like when becoming an Author you reflect on older books. Yes these artist weren't designing websites and digital media (which is an area I want to work in) but instead are producing work that is the core of graphic design and that is portraying a message and I personally have learnt a lot from this work, particularly different styles and as made me think deeper into what I'm creating. Before I would pick up a pencil and start to draw, and whilst this is a good method for creating ideas, I was missing out the process of analysing the true message of what my design would represent even if it's something so simple, my design needs to portray that to the audience.