Level 5 To-Do List

As much as I learnt in first year about my own work methods and approach to graphic design, in terms of design I spent a lot of it in my comfort zone. There is a lot to the subject itself that I wanted to explore and didn't, so second year is my chance to do so:

• Photography- look more into using my own photography in my work and as primary research.
• Screen printing - I didn't spend anywhere near as much time as I wanted to screen printing and need to get to the studio in my spare time and practice if I don't feel my printing is otherwise up to standard.
• Look into some areas that really interest me but have had no experience in - digital collage, film making - use research of these areas to aid my own work when I get around to doing them.
• Go back to what it is that made me want to do graphic design - illustrative typography - use my skills more frequently on top of exploring new fields.
• Use the letter press!
• Blogging! Always go the extra mile and don't just blog the bare minimum - use posts from sessions to aid the work I'm doing.
• Spend more time researching and exploring initial ideas! Stop jumping straight into one thing without exploring other options.
• Use the library more - stop relying on the internet, it is not a reliable source.
• Stop staying in my comfort zone when it starts to matter - a good grade is not gonna be built on being one dimensional, be willing to take some chances.

Saul Bass Cont.

After doing some further research into a couple of the design areas I initially chose, I decided to further the research I started on Saul Bass. I saw a lot of depth in some of the aspects that I was just glossing over in order to research everything.
There were a variety of reasons I chose to further this:
- As the inventor of film title sequence as design, I was keen to see how films translate to design in this format.
- I have an interest in this area and plan to explore it in second year, so this would also lend itself as research into that area.
- Bass' minimalist style is executed to a standard of which I could only hope to reach, as I have struggled with effective minimalist design in first year.


Bass was born in the Bronx, New York in 1920 and studied at the Art Students League in New York and Brooklyn College. After multiple apprenticeships with some design agencies in Manhattan, Bass worked as a freelance graphic designer, after which he moved to LA and opened his own studio in 1950, where his main focus was advertising.

This was until Preminger recruited him to design the poster for his film Carmen Jones in 1954, and after the impressive result, asked him to also create the title sequence. It was the series of title sequences that Bass created that earned him recognition for having a gift of capitalising on one image that then became symbolic for the film, and continued to transform it into a modern style.

"He creates an emblematic image, instantly recognisable and immediately tied to the film"

Martin Scorsese

However, in 1974, Bass returned to more commercial graphic design:

United Airlines logo

AT&T logo

Minolta logo

Bell Telephone System logo

Warner Communications logo

To many younger film directors who were new on the scene, Bass was a cinematic icon with whom they all longed to work, and in 1987 he was persuaded to go back into title sequence design, when he created the title for James' Brooks' Broadcast News and then again for Big in 1988 by Penny Marshall.

At this time one of those new directors who idolised Bass was Martin Scorsese, with whom he found a long term collaborator, and they went on to do 1993's The Age Of Innocence and 1995's Casino:

Not only was Saul Bass iconic as a designer, commercially and within the film industry, he was also an accredited filmmaker, his most recognisable being Why Man Creates which was created as a short, animated documentary in 1968 and discusses the nature of creativity. It focuses on the creative process and the variety of ways in which this process is approached.
The film won the Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject and was selected to be preserved in the US National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".

Bass subtitled Why Man Creates as "a series of explorations, episodes and comments on creativity" and keeps the film so tongue-in-cheek and both playful and profound throughout. The film is made up of a series of, at first, unconnected sequences but eventually all fall into place and converge into an alluring exploration of man's fundamental conscious to create.








Saul Bass died in 1996. His New York Times obituary hailed him as "the minimalist auteur who put a jagged arm in motion in 1955 and created an entire film genre…and elevated it into an art."

"Beneath theory and rhetoric, and well beyond technique and jargon, the reason for design is to speak to people in a language that is familiar, but also new, to entice people to understand an old thing in a new way, or grasp a new thing in an old way. There has never been a designer who can do this better than Saul Bass, who adds the 1981 AIGA Medal to his long and quite extraordinary list of honors and achievements. Saul Bass honors this award."

New York Times obituary, April 27, 1996. 

Even to the untrained eye, it is no secret that Bass's work is relatable, not just to designers but simple to many people.

Visual Puns Cont.

A visual pun is an image that holds two or more meanings and may portray a single message with varied levels, or several messages. in 1969 Dan Reisinger's ideally represented the effectiveness of the visual put with 'Let My People Go' which he has made memorable through the clear message which on top of that provokes a level of understanding and an emotional connection. It enters the viewers consciousness through various windows of understanding.

Within the field of design there are two 'toys' for the designers, one being type and the other image, and even the most systematic designs and solutions derive from a form of 'play' within visual  research. However, there are many very talented designers who are still unable to or lack the ability to transform a good verbal sense of humour into a visual one. The ones that work well are those that do not try and fit a previously tried and tested formulae, but those who invent new forms of visual humour.

There are some characteristics to humour within design that are common:

• an exaggerated or improper scale
• ironic relationships between different aspects of one design
• odd or unaccustomed juxtapositions

However, these are all traits that apply to what is called 'straight' design (not intended to be a pun or humorous design), but a big head on a small body isn't considered funny, which goes to show that humour in design cannot follow a set of rules, it has to be recreated and reinvented every time.

Stephen Heller, author of Design Humour: The Art Of Graphic Wit 2002 wrote that the visual pun "is as endemic to conceptual graphic design as the metaphor is to creative writing." Often visual puns will not be made obvious, particularly in logo design, because it makes the second or third meaning more illusive.

On of the most famous puns in a logo, FedEx logo designers managed to create an arrow between the uppercase 'E' and lowercase 'x' without changing it from the rest of the design.

This logo for Spartan Gold Club uses the exact same series of shapes, without altering position to make up two images that are still equally distinct: a golfer swinging his club, and a Spartan helmet. While this one is seemingly more obvious that the FedEx logo, it is easier to appreciate the impressive thought process that went into this design.

This Goodwill logo shows the smiling half face is the same shape as the G in the title.

More lesser known logo examples:

While most will argue that the pun is the lowest form of wit, Eli Kince,  in Visual Puns In Design 1982, argues that "the pun is the conveyor of credible visual messages" and it has been argued by Mashall McLuhan that "the pun is smarter, more devious, than it looks", which may be much more applicable to the visual pun than to the verbal one.

Kince goes further in claiming that visual puns fall into two categories, ones with "humorous effect" and ones with "analytical effect", meaning that not all puns are intended to be funny but to provoke a comparison between one idea and another, through creating a mental jolt of recognition.

Another more complex pun, recognised for the fusion of letters and image, is Herb Lubalin's Families, where the 'ili' in the words are transformed to be recognisable as mother, father and son (similar to his Mother & Child logo, in which the ampersand is positioned over the letter 'o', suggestive of a foetus in a womb).

These are examples of puns that appear simple but the thought that had to go into the designs to make them effective and recognisable and the skill that went into some of the typographic changes would have to have been very sharp.

Puns that are mainly pictorial can appear easier than typographic ones, but again it is difficult to assume this is the case with any aspect of graphic design. There are suggestive puns that are made by combining two or more unrelated references, sometimes used as more of a substitution for a reference, which allows int to convey several meanings. Other puns will capitalise on triggering some sort of recognition for the viewer, be it a fond memory or an emotion.

2004 Olympics poster by Milton Glaser

Person/Place

Saul Bass

1920-1996

Bass is easily considered one of the most if not the most influential and iconic designers of the 20th century. He was the first to break the mould of the design conformity pre-1950s and shaped the way in which future generations of designers would interpret aesthetics. There is such bold simplicity in his designs, particularly the film title sequences, which are brought to life through the most basic of movements.

"I want everything we do to be beautiful. I don’t give a damn whether the client understands that that’s worth anything, or that the client thinks it’s worth anything, or whether it is worth anything. It’s worth it to me. It’s the way I want to live my life. I want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares.” 

Saul Bass

Above being one of the greatest Graphic Designers of all time, Bass was a master of film title design as a result of his collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger and Martin Scorsese. Before Bass' designs, the opening title sequence of films was usually considered so dull that the curtain in a movie theatre would stay closed until it had finished, however, in Preminger's The Man With The Golden Arm, the title sequence was considered a vital part of the film for the first time.

Bass' first title sequence for Hitchcock was for 1958's Vertigo was considered a haunting interpretation of the film and pretty much set the mood for it, forcing viewers to see it in the same eerie nature it was intended.

Bass was often though of as a minimalist legend, and this skill is what made him the king of, not only the title sequence, but the film poster as well. The basic forms he used were infected with such energy through colours, subtle textures and these elements created a sense of urgency, emanating the same thrill that features in the films:

Schindler's List 1993

The Shining 1980

The Anatomy of Murder 1959

The Man With The Golden Arm 1955

The Big Country 1958

Vertigo 1958

Alex Steinweiss

Album cover art has fallen in to it's very own category within graphic design, and has Steinweiss to thank for their existence. In 1940 the legendary designer created the first ever illustrated album package while he was a young art director at Columbia Records, and replaced the then-traditional brown paper wrapper with a poster-like illustration. This made a huge alteration to the sales of the album, and also altered the audiences relation to the music.

"I love music so much and I had such ambition that I was willing to go way beyond what the hell they paid me for. I wanted people to look at the artwork and hear the music.” 

Alex Steinweiss

1948 album cover

1950 album cover

1959 album cover

1944 album cover

Steinweiss' designs revolutionised the way in which records were packaged and marketed and transformed not only the design world, but the music world as well. His first cover was for a collection of songs by Rodgers and Hart in 1939, and referenced French and German posters, using geometric patterns and curly script fonts, soon to become his signature style, with the font to be copyrighted as 'Steinweiss Scrawl'.

“His images are lively, playful, boundlessly inventive and seem almost to throb with the spirit and emotion of the classical music he loved.”

Rick Poynor, review of For the Record: The Life and Work of Alex Steinweiss, Financial Times Weekend Magazine

“He is an alert, energetic, twentieth century personality. He is charged with ambition—an ambition that is controlled and directed by a cool logical mind, and which has an enormous capacity for work at its service. Add to that an innate talent for design and you have a combination that almost assures success. That success is abundant and has come early, but to Steinweiss it is a by-product.”

Henry C. Pitz, The American Artist

Invention/Discovery

Book Jacket

The first form the dust jacket took was as plain paper covered boards on books, occasionally with a printed label on the spine at the end of the 18th Century. This form was intended to be temporary, like most early forms of the dust jacket. It was the publishers themselves that first fashioned the oldest book jackets out of leather, wallpaper and other materials, initially to protect the delicate bindings, and the first official dust jacket appeared at the end of 1820s.

Below show examples of the variation in more vintage and modern dust jackets:

The most famous example of the dust jacket is the first edition publication of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby in 1925. Withe the jacket, this book can fair up to between $20,000 and $30,000, compared to the $1,000 the book is considered to be worth without it.

Other examples of the most prized dust jacket collections include most of Hemingway's titles and first editions of classics such as J.D. Salinger's Catcher In The Rye and Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird.

A section taken from an article by James Furgusson, arguing what importance a dust jacket has:

"Dust jackets have long been noticed as design objects: the first International Book-Jacket Exhibition was held at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1949, and many books have been devoted to book covers in general, two notably, in 2001 and 2003, by Alan Powers. But G. Thomas Tanselle is the first writer to outline an orthodox history. In its nature, much of his work is initial ground-clearing, but at least future book historians should now be able to see where they’re going. For the first time, the dust jacket has been given its due status: in the rich density of his footnotes, the splendour of his eight indexes, Tanselle is nothing less than magisterial."

http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1029591.ece

Decorative Dust Jackets

The Victoria and Albert museum has previously exhibited the History of the Dust Jacket, in which it is detailed that the main form of decoration prior to that on a dust jacket was confined to the bindings, so in the late 19th Century, the jackets were designed with 'windows' on the spine that allowed the detail of the binding to be displayed. The decorative dust jacket only started when these binding designs were replicated onto the jacket in order to protect the original binding.

A section from 'The History of the Dust Jacket', detailing some of the features of the Dust Jacket exhibition at the V&A:

"The oldest dust jackets held in the British Library Dust Jacket Collection date from 1919. Because of their ephemeral nature, there are few surviving examples of early dust jackets prior to the 1890s. The earliest existing example of a decorative dust jacket is thought to be a wrapper which was recently rediscovered in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The wrapper is for a silk-bound gift book called Friendship's Offering and is white with the title in black, enclosed by a decorative border. The wrapper was designed to enclose the book completely, traces of the sealing wax used to hold it in place can still be seen on the paper. Prior to this discovery, the earliest known example of a dust jacket was a 'pale buff paper printed in red' that was created in 1833 by the publisher Longmans to protect copies of Heath's Keepsake. This early dust jacket even included advertisements for other publications by Longmans, showing that the firm was way ahead of its time in terms of marketing its wares."

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/h/history-of-the-dust-jacket/

Dust Jackets for Advertising

Once Dust Jackets became a decorative feature of the book, it came to the attention of publishers that these could be used for promotion of the books and other publications. This is when the dust jacket became increasingly decorative and as a result, increasingly important as a promotional tool to the book, but also for the publishers to promote more of their material.

Visual Puns in Graphic Design

As a field that is almost entirely dependent on the visual aspect of information, the prospect of being humorous or witty within Graphic Design depends solely on visuals. However, where design is an at an advantage is with visual puns. Telling a joke entails creating a vivid image for the recipient to understand, but in design, they can be shown. The most skilful and effective form of wit, must appear effortless but be seemingly loaded with meaning.

The puns significance a visual component of wit might relate to how, in terms of words, it is ridiculed for being a very low form and that it plays on the varied meaning of the same or similar word. The fact that it's a play on words mean that the visual pun has to be much more creative, and doesn't have the same 'rules' as visual puns. So much more information can be translated through one image than through one sentence and the best puns, both verbal and visual, are manipulations of communication.

Charles Lamb was quoted in Eli Kince's Visual Puns in Design stating that puns are "a pistol let off at the ear, not a feather to tickle the intellect".

One designer that exhibits a keen understanding of how the brain accesses and interprets imagery is Noma Bar, most recognisable for his references to existing figures and plots of films within his designs:

Tea For Two

Where There's Darkness

Stephen Fry

The Dark Knight Rises

Citizen Kane

Hobby/Interest

Little White Lies

LWL is a bi-monthly film magazine featuring written reviews and articles, illustrations and photography all centered around cinema (mostly recent), it's first issue release in february 2005 with The Life Aquatic issue:

Each issue falls into six different sections: a review of the feature film (cover), an introduction to feature film, a variety of articles inspired by or based on the film, more reviews, the 'Back Section' and some information or tit bits about future releases.

The design and content is primarily based on that of the feature film, reflected in typefaces, layouts, chapter headings etc but the underlying template remains the same in each issue.

Examples taken from the first issue (The Life Aquatic):

The Church of London and Huck Magazine

LWL is published by the creative agency The Church Of London, publishers of surfing snowboarding and skating lifestyle magazine Huck, meaning that much of the cover art, interior illustrations and more bare similarities and sometimes interact with each other.

http://www.tcolondon.com/

January 2011 - LWL releases a clip that exhibits 2 month process of creating issue no. 33 (The Black Swan issue):

Nike

In terms of design and campaigning, Nike is one of the most frequently updated companies in the world, constantly reflecting new themes off responses to old ones and events that the designers see the world being captivated by, more recently the 2012 London Olympics:

However, my interest in Nike lies more in the visual aspects of some of their more creative campaigns, namely the digital art in much of the Nike Air advertisements, and the use of typography, which they use not only to sell the product but to embody a whole rush or explanation of sport.
The simplicity in the 'Just Do It.' slogan allows for such vast variation in design, as three short and self explanatory words can carry off such detail in their designs:

Since I find that my skills lie mostly in illustrative typography, I find that most of my interest lies in it, and would love nothing more than to embody something as captivating as a sport or form of exercise in nothing but hand rendered letters.

National Geographic Magazine

NG published its first issue in 1888 some months are the National Geographic Society was founded, and has been published monthly and continually for the 125 years since. NG is a magazine that in some cases exhibits articles that purely serve and back up the exquisite photography, and even it's current Editor-In-Chief Chris Johns is first and foremost a photographer.

Cover of January 1915 issue of NG

The magazine is an exhibit of some of the highest quality photography and photojournalism in the world and published it's first colour photography issue in the early 20th Century, but it wasn't until 1959 that photos began to grace the front cover. However, a consistency has been maintained over the many years of it's publishing, in the yellow border of the front cover.

The National Geographic Photography Competition ran for the first time in 2006 with the participation of over 18 countries. Below are some examples of winners and runners up for the 2013 Traveller themed contest: