Assignment: This module continues more of the same material as Module 7, European influences and contemporary design. Tell me what or who impresses you most.
Herb Lubalin is the one designer who was an immediate favorite on seeing his work, I loved his exuberant style and creativity. Some of my favorite poets played with the spacing of words on the page (like Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos William, most of E.E. Cummings’ work) and even punctuation (Emily Dickinson), and to see someone play with letterforms in the same way in design is wonderful. Of course other designers have played with typography before Lubalin, but his exuberance and flourishes make his work more memorable and impactful, at least for me.
I spent time reading up on him and looking through the digitized issues of Eros and Avant Garde. His creativity, his willingness to play with form and meaning, and his not letting his color-blindness limit him in any way are all reasons to enjoy and appreciate his work.
Links for more reading:
http://eros.110west40th.com/ All four issues of Eros magazine, complete and digitized and https://www.openculture.com/2017/05/a-complete-digitization-of-eros-magazine.html An explanation on Open Culture as to why there are only 4 issues.
http://avantgarde.110west40th.com/ All 14 issues of Avant Garde magazine, complete and digitized. The “Resources” tab has even more articles and readings.
https://designarchives.aiga.org/#/entries/lubalin/_/grid/relevance/asc/40/20/90 A gallery of more than 100 of his works, but many aren’t in color, unfortunately.
https://www.printmag.com/daily-heller/my-favorite-lubalin/ A personal essay by Stephen Heller, columnist at Print magazine.
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/04/inspired-design-decisions-herb-lubalin/ Another personal essay about Lubalin.
https://www.sessions.edu/notes-on-design/graphic-giants-herb-lubalin/ A blog post that focuses on Lubalin’s lettering and font design – he could give contemporary lettering artists some tips!
https://qz.com/quartzy/1230989/graphic-designers-are-planning-100-birthday-parties-for-typography-idol-herb-lubalin This is an article about the celebration around Lubalin’s 100th birthday (he died in 1981), one of which is the people at his archive at Cooper Union in New York deciding to share 100 pieces of his work on a website (https://lubalin100.com/). Unfortunately the website is either using outdated frames or doesn’t like Firefox because it was hard to read the complete essays and look at the graphics. Others might have better luck however!
More links about typography in poetry:
https://poemhome.net/poetry-typography/
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/29/books/review/on-poetry-punctuation.html
Did anyone ever make memorable art with the principles of concrete art? Also called art concret.
Did they make art? Yes, they did. Was it memorable? Well……Art Story has a nice summary, along with a progression of art made in this style: https://www.theartstory.org/movement/concrete-art/ In short, this wasn’t a long lived art movement, not did it produce any artworks of great renown. However, it did influence (much like it influenced Swiss Style through Max Bill, who also painted along with his graphic design work) some movements in Brazil, as well as other smaller movements in Europe. Other than that, most of the works remind me of diagrams in math textbooks, or even quilting patterns, with repeated motifs of geometrical elements.
The one painting you would think would be a prime example of Concrete Art would be Piet Mondrian’s Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow, but he was not part of this movement, although it was cited as an example of Concrete Art by its adherents.
Greek Rhetoric at Ulm – wait, what? What does Greek rhetoric have to do with design, or more to the point, semiotics?
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1511852 This is an article by Paul Betts, titled “Science, Semiotics and Society: The Ulm Hochschule für Gestaltung in Retrospect”. This opened up a rabbit hole, since the Ulm Institute was actually founded in 1946 to honor members of the White Rose resistance group, who executed by the Nazis in 1941 when someone reported them to the secret police. Inge Aicher-Scholl (her sister Sophie School – revered in Germany today and her brother Hans were part of the White Rose) and Otl Aicher (also part of the resistance to the Nazis within Germany) founded the design school to incorporate political education with architecture and other design topics to help prevent anything like the Nazis happening again. When Max Bill came along, compromises were made and the mission of the school changed into what a more design-focused curriculum, but it did retain sociology, history, and other classes to further the aim of educating students to be active and compassionate citizens. The paper doesn’t mention rhetoric specifically, but it is easy to imagine teaching Greek rhetoric to analyze propaganda tactics, along with clarity of writing and logical speech. Additional research didn’t turn up any more sources, but I didn’t have time to thoroughly look either.
Sophie Scholl’s story: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57008360 and https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/sophie-scholl-and-white-rose
The Bob Dylan illustration for the Push Pin Studio in the lecture section looked like a technique used often in the 70s/80s, is that a signature look for Push Pin?
Found this site:http://www.pushpininc.com/about/pushpin/ and this quote:
Their work, which rejected tradition in favor of reinvigorated interpretations of historical styles (Victorian, art nouveau, art deco), provided a fresh counterpoint to both the numbing rigidity of modernism, and the rote sentimental realism of commercial illustration.
So, upon looking through their gallery and looking up the different designers, I think the Bob Dylan poster was a one-off by Glaser, but I did realize that I’ve seen Seymour Chwast’s work through the years, he did a lot of books for children and even some graphic novels. In fact, he’s still around and people in the comic world love him – this interview is pretty cool: https://www.tcj.com/seymour-chwasts-graphic-novels/
And then here’s a pre-copy of The Nose, a comic magazine he did from 1997 – 2008: https://www.printmag.com/daily-heller/case-missing-nose/
More questions than I have time to answer!
Anton Stankowski and fractals, how did he study them? What was his theory of design?
Emil Ruder’s book Typographie. “A Manual of Design”, is this available to read online?
Zapf did Optima on drawings of arch of Constantine in Rome – what is story behind that. Look up his book Manuale Typographicum
I’d like more information about Bea Feitler – she did a LOT more than just MS magazine!
Meggs description of Thothmic machine is confusing, how did this machine actually work?. Invented by E. K. Hunter and J. R. C. August of London.
Loewy was much older then some of other designers – just a long career?
Look up Muriel Cooper and MIT Media Lab, they did incredible work
is Unimark still around?
The National Park Service, Unignid stuff looks like it is still being used, that image is very familiar.