Preliminary research Unit 3
There is a small research point inside of Part 3 that wants me to gather work from my favourite graphic designers. I fell in love with a designer called Paula Scher, I watched a TED talk where she discussed how good design is serious not solemn. Which when I first heard this analagy it was very wishy washy however there is a lot of ground when it comes to it. She said that great design is random and spontaninous and not very often perfect. This is because the idea of perfection is subjective, serious design is the first of its kind and once it becomes a trend and other people replicate it, it becomes solemon. My aim with graphic design is too have fun and experiment and be spontanious. I think its very easy for young designers to fall into a trap of design trends and never really find their own originality. Although saying all this I find it difficult to be completely spontanious. Here is a couple of pieces from Paula's portfolio.
The boldness of the designs is what resonates with me in particular, the first design has no real order to the text, its abstract and a playful way of making a poster, I also like the varied colours used with the text, some, such as the word 'Hubbard' have shapes behind to add contrast. Also the letters B E S and T are big and bold which nicely splits up the page adding focal points to the poster without being overpowering. Another element I like is the fact that there is a border to the poster but its been overlapped with text, this non conformity is quite interesting, the poster feels as if its almost 3 dimensional and popping out of the border. Its an often overused phrase 'pop off the page' but with this particular piece it does just that.
Going onto the 2nd image, this is work that Paula did for Bloomberg I believe. It was part of a series of building interiors she designed. Again there is a strong presence of type and her use of type is incredibly creative. She manipulated the text around parts of the building, her argument was that why should text always be confined to small readable panels. One part of the building had text on the floor and up the wall. Its this idea of breaking cultural norms and being slightly rebellious with her designs.
The Citi Bank logo is a perfect example of a simple yet thoughtful logo. The starting point of the logo was an umbrella, this symbolised how CITI bank would take care of all its customers. Now having the actual image of an umbrella is too complicated and far less memorable, logos have so much potential to become great when they are simple, having complicated logos often don't resonate with people, mainly because they have too many elements inside them and also they are harder to describe and recreate. Using a simple shape to be the umbrella also increases the longevity of the logo, it isnt following any current design trend, and is simple enough so that it will be timeless like the Apple logo.
One of the stand out features of Paula's work and something I find very inspiring is how she uses text. She has completed multiple buildings and an underpass all with this unique use of type.
Another couple of designers I've been heavily looking into is Massimo Vignelli and Michael Bierut who are connected. Massimo and his wife Lella took Michael in and gave him his first job. All 3 designers are very inspiring.
His packaging style is stunning and so many of his original stylish ideas are now being replicated and used in modern society (solemn).
What I've been really trying to get at is being spontaneous and original, pushing boundaries, this designer does that and he is slowly becoming my favourite the more I look at his work. I had never heard of him before but I'm so happy I've discovered him for myself. His work is defiantly going to inspire me going forward. With the shopping bags, Massimo has created such a simple concept of having the weight of the G increase given the size of the bag and its a concept that's so creative and original but simple.
I love the overlapping colours of design 4, this is a concept seen quite a few times over lots of peoples work, I dont know if it was Massiomo who created this idea but its such a cool and interesting way of manipluating type and colour, it's also quite legible which is suprising, but it also shows how much of a great visual communicator Massimo is to be able to pull it off. The word Knoll is also perfectly sized and spaced to fit the page and there is small spaces for information which is set parrelel to the K. This use of composition helps the page to flow better and to be visualy interesting.
Peter Saville is the next designer I researched, he is most well known for his record covers and is often regarded as Britain's best graphic designer.
The first is a mark for SORG arcitects, the biggest stand out feature of visual language here is, shape. Eddie has manipluated shape and perspective so that the word SORG appears 3D and is extruding out the page. Not only is it legible it also fits with the company, arcitecture is all about shape primarly and this logo captures that perfectly, its also pretty and nice to look at, which again is important for the logo. I really like as well how the logo is made up of white lines instead of filled in shape, this allows the logo to take on a differant identity when placed on differant backgrounds, colour has a huge power over how something is percived and really makes the mark versitile.
His creative use of shape can also be seen in the bottom image, the 3D triangles are supposed to resemble to the body of a stealth bomber. They create a really interesting way of mounting text and overall is a very exciting use of shape.
Ian Gabb is a graphic designer I was advised to look at by my tutor Laura, his use of type is something again like Paula I'm very interested in, he also uses color very well but he combines all together with shape. On his website he as a large portfolio of such inspiring designs, he overlays shape and colour very often for beautiful results.
Quite an obvious observation at first glance is the colour choices, they're incredibly bright and 'in your face'. This is because these colours are associated with joy, energy and happiness. These colours represented the psychedelic era very well, art produced in this era often featured high contrasting colours and fractal patterns.
Ive already experimented with the '3D' effect in my postcards for the first assignment, this effect is prominent in 60s design although for a different reason. Its popular given the eminent drug use, its supposed to represent the effects of an LSD trip. You don't have to take drugs to be able to appreciate the effect though, I for one think this effect just adds an extra layer to artwork and makes it interesting and less flat. Its a great way of manipulating colour to give an image movement and also stimulate the effect of a trip as it appears the images is distorted.
Wes Wilson: He is one of the most famous graphic designers of the 1960s and created some remarkable designs.
The boldness of the designs is what resonates with me in particular, the first design has no real order to the text, its abstract and a playful way of making a poster, I also like the varied colours used with the text, some, such as the word 'Hubbard' have shapes behind to add contrast. Also the letters B E S and T are big and bold which nicely splits up the page adding focal points to the poster without being overpowering. Another element I like is the fact that there is a border to the poster but its been overlapped with text, this non conformity is quite interesting, the poster feels as if its almost 3 dimensional and popping out of the border. Its an often overused phrase 'pop off the page' but with this particular piece it does just that.
Going onto the 2nd image, this is work that Paula did for Bloomberg I believe. It was part of a series of building interiors she designed. Again there is a strong presence of type and her use of type is incredibly creative. She manipulated the text around parts of the building, her argument was that why should text always be confined to small readable panels. One part of the building had text on the floor and up the wall. Its this idea of breaking cultural norms and being slightly rebellious with her designs.
The Citi Bank logo is a perfect example of a simple yet thoughtful logo. The starting point of the logo was an umbrella, this symbolised how CITI bank would take care of all its customers. Now having the actual image of an umbrella is too complicated and far less memorable, logos have so much potential to become great when they are simple, having complicated logos often don't resonate with people, mainly because they have too many elements inside them and also they are harder to describe and recreate. Using a simple shape to be the umbrella also increases the longevity of the logo, it isnt following any current design trend, and is simple enough so that it will be timeless like the Apple logo.
One of the stand out features of Paula's work and something I find very inspiring is how she uses text. She has completed multiple buildings and an underpass all with this unique use of type.
Another couple of designers I've been heavily looking into is Massimo Vignelli and Michael Bierut who are connected. Massimo and his wife Lella took Michael in and gave him his first job. All 3 designers are very inspiring.
Vignelli
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| Design 4 |
His packaging style is stunning and so many of his original stylish ideas are now being replicated and used in modern society (solemn).
What I've been really trying to get at is being spontaneous and original, pushing boundaries, this designer does that and he is slowly becoming my favourite the more I look at his work. I had never heard of him before but I'm so happy I've discovered him for myself. His work is defiantly going to inspire me going forward. With the shopping bags, Massimo has created such a simple concept of having the weight of the G increase given the size of the bag and its a concept that's so creative and original but simple.
I love the overlapping colours of design 4, this is a concept seen quite a few times over lots of peoples work, I dont know if it was Massiomo who created this idea but its such a cool and interesting way of manipluating type and colour, it's also quite legible which is suprising, but it also shows how much of a great visual communicator Massimo is to be able to pull it off. The word Knoll is also perfectly sized and spaced to fit the page and there is small spaces for information which is set parrelel to the K. This use of composition helps the page to flow better and to be visualy interesting.
Peter Saville is the next designer I researched, he is most well known for his record covers and is often regarded as Britain's best graphic designer.
The first design I want to address is the poster he did for a nightclub in Manchester called the Hacienda, the use of colour is spot on, he has used the same yellow that is used in warning posters and danger signs. The message is to use hearing protection which is ironic because people go into clubs for loud music obviously the poster isn't telling people to actually wear protection but instead its used as a selling point "Our music is the loudest". I also like the illustration of the man with his fingers in his ears, its been duplicated to look distorted which mirrors how you would feel if you were to be affected by loud music, its a visual representation of 'ringing in your eyes' and dizziness. But overall it should be seen as playful and not serious and in a time where people were rebellious and edgy it works very well.
The other images collected here are some of his various album covers, now I haven't listened to the tracks on the albums but from a design point of view, these are very interesting. I particularly enjoy his use of basic geometric shapes and how they visually represent more complicated and detailed shapes, simplifying does what I talked previously, it allows them to be more timeless, shape and colour will always be a trend because its two main factors that makes up visual language itself, so manipulating them to make a piece of art is a great way of increasing the longevity of the design and generations to come will be able to appreciate the work without it becoming dated.
These designs are all inherently simple, they feature basic shapes, but this should not be mistaken as lazy, the job of a designer is to make something practical but pretty. Looking good is as important, if not more important than practicality. Its human nature to be attracted to visually pleasing things, one thing that the brain likes is simplicity, the phrase less is more is quite relevant here. Furthermore using circles and rounded rectangles to represent objects forces the consumer to think more, they are intrigued and want to research about the design.
Eddie Opara is another designer I researched into, again this was a totally new design for me as I really want to expand my knowledge on multiple designers to build up an inspiration bank.
The first is a mark for SORG arcitects, the biggest stand out feature of visual language here is, shape. Eddie has manipluated shape and perspective so that the word SORG appears 3D and is extruding out the page. Not only is it legible it also fits with the company, arcitecture is all about shape primarly and this logo captures that perfectly, its also pretty and nice to look at, which again is important for the logo. I really like as well how the logo is made up of white lines instead of filled in shape, this allows the logo to take on a differant identity when placed on differant backgrounds, colour has a huge power over how something is percived and really makes the mark versitile.
His creative use of shape can also be seen in the bottom image, the 3D triangles are supposed to resemble to the body of a stealth bomber. They create a really interesting way of mounting text and overall is a very exciting use of shape.
Ian Gabb is a graphic designer I was advised to look at by my tutor Laura, his use of type is something again like Paula I'm very interested in, he also uses color very well but he combines all together with shape. On his website he as a large portfolio of such inspiring designs, he overlays shape and colour very often for beautiful results.
60's
Heston Blumenthal isn't a graphic designer but instead a chef and he had a series where he tried to make meals based on the 'psychedelic' 60s. Everything was very colourful and random but In a way where there was the larger than life flow that made it feel free and disconnected from the clean modern design of today. I began to research into the graphic design of the 60s and found what I expected. The design had the same feel I had just described, its free and full of colour. Given both my love for this type of design and the fact that this unit is partly based on colour as well, I thought I would write about the use of visual language and my thoughts on it.
Ive already experimented with the '3D' effect in my postcards for the first assignment, this effect is prominent in 60s design although for a different reason. Its popular given the eminent drug use, its supposed to represent the effects of an LSD trip. You don't have to take drugs to be able to appreciate the effect though, I for one think this effect just adds an extra layer to artwork and makes it interesting and less flat. Its a great way of manipulating colour to give an image movement and also stimulate the effect of a trip as it appears the images is distorted.
Wes Wilson: He is one of the most famous graphic designers of the 1960s and created some remarkable designs.
He basically invented the popular font of the peace movement. The font is designed to contain motion and appear to be melting and distorted in some places. It also works perfectly around objects such as drawings and photography. Its also perfect for filling large pages with interesting looking text. Again this text is important in the 60s era and heavily uses psychedelic themes such as the colour and use of shading to make the text appear to be vibrating.
This ties nicely into the last graphic designer I researched and that was Victor Moscoso, he was a famous designer in the 60s who borrowed a lot of work from comic books and art nouveau. He used the concept of vibrating colors to create the ‘psychedelic’ effect in many of his pieces. The vibration is achieved by taking colors from the opposite end of the color wheel, each one having equal value (dark to light) and intensity (brightness).
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