ITAP - Colette Jeffreys - Design Heroes: Otto Neurath

Colette gave us a very broad and extensive talk about the subkect of Information Design, talking about a broad number of people however I am going to talk about one of those names. Otto Neurath, one could say that he is the founder of information design, he certainly is the founder of the Isotype System and undoubtedly one of the key figures in the history of information design. 

Otto Neurath, born in Austria in 1882, died in England in 1945 sadly seeing non of his work come to completion. His work was continued on after he died by Marie Neurath, his 2nd wife who later died in the 1980's having completed and published Otto's work and herself written many children's books using the Isotype system.

What is the Isotype System? 
It is the International System Of TYpographic Picture Education. It's the idea of communication without words. It's a global language using symbols and pictures to speak and communicate with people. Let's take a look at some of his work. I'm going to jump straign into a very specific example of Neurath's work, I get the sense that it has a style but it's done completely for information purposes. It's as if the style isn't as important as the actual fact, figures, processes, stats etc.

http://www.humantific.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/image_04-450x600.jpg

http://www.humantific.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/image_02-450x600.jpg

Here Otto is displaying information about the production of plastics and their properties, sounds like a boring science lesson to me but when you look at it it's strangely inviting and you find yourself wanting to learn wanting to see what the plastics are made from. I think this is for a few reasons.

1 - Curiosity. You want to see what symbols have been used to represent each element. This hooks you in

2 - Simplicity. It's designed in such a simple way that you don't feel bombarded with scientific nonsense, it's clear and concise, so you're not put off.

3 - Use of shape and colour. Your eye follows the process through cleaver use of arrows and shapes that flow into each other and through cleaver use of colour that again makes it simple to follow.

I had a go at creating my own in the same style. It requires a lot of skill to use the right kind of symbols. Hence a near lifetime spent working on such symbols.

ITAP - Ros Sinclair - Design Heroes: Sir John Hegarty & Juan Cabral

Ros spoke about many different designers and art directors but I have chosen to blog about two, Sir John Hegarty & Juan Cabral as it was their work that stood out to me the most and I was interested in comparing the old and the new.

Sir John Hegarty

This man has been in the business of advertising since the 60's. He is a firm believer of being a specialist in your particular field and he's a believer of reductionism. Reductionism is where you strip an idea to it's bare bones whilst staying succinct and to the point.




I particularly admire his work for the launch of black Levis in 1982, it is a perfect example of Hegarty's Reductionism theory. It was a very bold decision to go with such a simple poster design but the idea behind it is so strong and Levis obviously wanted the bold statement of being different and not going with the crowd to represent their now product launch. You can agree that over 20 years later this is still a good advertisement, the idea still stands strong!

http://thegalleryfromoverthere.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/when-the-world-zigs-zag.png

"Music is 50% of advertising."

Hegarty was a big believer in music in advertising. Many of Hegarty's commercials would put songs in the charts and often right to the top. Which reminds me of the Windows Internet Explorer 9 advert with the Alex Clare's song, "Too Close" that went into the top 10 in both the UK and US charts and went double platinum all from the advert the aired the song a month early to it's release. This brings me nicely onto the 2nd design hero of this blogpost.

Juan Cabral - famously used Jose Gonzales, "Heartbeats" for the sony bravia 'colour' advert to it's glorious success.

This ad is so beautiful, when I first saw it I was in the cinema about to watch a film and I was utterly captivated and mesmerised by the stunning images that were before me. It hooks you to believing anything they tell you, "this TV has the best colour", "this TV uses alien spaceship technology". I would buy it; "because of the trance like state you have just lulled me into you can say thing you want to me and i'll buy it!". It's no secret that this advert heavily relies on it's music, if it was silent it would still be beautiful but the music engages your soul and spirit into it, as music has that unique capability.

Similarly this advery of Juan's also relies heavily on music and it really does contribute masses to the overall success of the advert. 

So what do we take from this? As designers, visual communicators you could take this information about music making 50% of an advert as bad news however I think we can use it to our advantage. It provides us with a new challenge, to create images/visuals that compliment, enhance or even outshine the music in an advert, it's more of an art to be able to create a perfect relationship between sound and image and I think Juan has this skill within his grasp and we too can aspire to attain such skills.

ITAP - Jonny Griffiths - Design Heroes: Matt Pyke.

http://www.arch2o.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Hyundai-Vision-Hall5.jpeg (edited by me)

In the creative world you often hear about people who 'push the boundaries  and 'think outside the box', these people are the ones who 'break all the rules' and 'try not to be bound by one discipline'. Matt Pyke is no exception to this character profile. He is one of those people who let's nothing get in his way of success and he utilises anything and everything to help him progress. He spoke to Apple about the use of the Macintosh and how it helps him work from his attic in the northern town of Sheffield yet still uphold a robust and professional appearance to the outside world. He is a person to look up to and learn from certainly and I am glad Jonny chose Matt Pyke as his design hero.

With a list of clients like MTV, Apple, Hyundai, Coldplay, Chanel, Audi, Nissan, the V&A, Nike all projects of which were full of diversity yet had the unique stamp of Matt Pyke, I couldn't help but spend a good half an hour lost in his website. Universal Everything is the name of his company and he has recently launched Matt Pyke.com as a seperate entity, he said in an interview with 'It's Nice That'. 

"There’s more people now involved with Universal Everything. Other people are working on things, leading projects, but ultimately it’s still my baby. A lot of the work still stems from initial seed ideas I have, and I then tend to oversee the creative direction, help to push people further."

Some of my favourite pieces of his work are the work he did for Hyundai filmed here:

The beauty of the movement is captured beautifully and then represented by the digital work with such excellence, it's art. The idea behind this particular video, is 'Made By Humans' there are other works in the set that capture different elements of the creation of these Hyundai cars.

"What we tried to do is really emphasise the importance of the human and their role in the creation of things. Although a lot of what you see industrial and automated the important part is that the human spirit is in everything."

Matt Talks about the design process and how working on the computer is an essential part of that process. They transfer the video captured by dancers or tai chi masters and animate around the subjects so that only when the movement is applied, the play button is pressed, you can see what is actually going on. And in Matt's words "that's the thing that breathes the soul into the work".

ITAP - Jane Anderson - Design Hereos: Stefan Sagmeister & Kate Moross

Janes talk on Stefan Sagmeister & Kate Moross was one of those talks that you hear and it makes you want to do stuff. I couldn't help but get passionate in my note taking, i was inspired to get out there and make stuff with stuff just for the sake of it! I believe in those kind of talks/lectures because they have movement and action in them.

I think the reason for such a motivational talk was the two subjects  you cannot look at Sagmeister or Moross' work and not be inspired to 'do'. Their simple philosophies...

Personal work makes client work better.

- Sagmeister

"Make your own shit, just make shit."

- Moross 

...inspire you to get out there, forget about clients brief and projects and just do stuff for the fun of it, the reason you enjoy it in the first place.

Sagmeister's work is heaviy influenced by what he does in his private life. I watched his talk at one of the TED conferences and he talks solely about his personal work, his travels, his own self initiated projects and it's clear that he deems these things highly important. 

http://www.sagmeisterwalsh.com/images/made/images/u_work/Aizone-13_1800_1114_75.jpg

http://www.sagmeisterwalsh.com/images/made/images/u_work/Aizone10_1_1800_1114_75.jpg

These two images are from the "Art Direction & Design for Aizone, a luxury department store in the Middle East. Taking the vibrant nature of the brand and presenting it in campaigns that are printed in newspapers, magazines, and billboards throughout Lebanon."

http://kingydesignhistory2012.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/trying-comp1.jpg

These images are from his personal work entitled, "Things I Have Learnt In My Life So Far", you can clearly see the influence. Experimental and environmental typography is very striking and when doing the Aizone project they decided to do as much as they could in physical and not on computers for a 'next level' quality of image. Which brings me nicely onto Kate Moross who believes in 'making shit'.

Kate Moross' work has a very hands on feel to it also, she seems to have developed her style simply by making stuff, having a go and not discounting anything right from the beginning of here career.

http://a4.ec-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/7/561c23d7ff3628fb7161e810a85af9ad/l.jpg

http://payload85.cargocollective.com/1/7/237494/4015761/RIDEJOURNAL_800.jpg

These two pieces the first one from 2006 and the second from 2013 you can see how her style has progressed and improved but you can see where it has come from and how she has been on a journey. Much like Sagmeister, the work she has done in the begging (which I would imagine was in the early, fun stage of her career) has influenced her more professional work.

Both these designers are inspirational and I hold them very high up in my hero's list.

ITAP - Mark Murphy - Design Heroes: Saul Bass & David Carson.

Mark Murphy from Surely Creative Design and a visiting lecturer to our course gave us a very diverse and informative talk about two of his design heroes, Saul Bass, the American graphic designer and film maker and David Carson the American, graphic designer, art director and surfer.

SAUL BASS - This man had a very distinctive style. Using Limited colour palates  and hand made type in most of his film title work, but he was also a very prolific graphi designer, designing some amazing logos along with loads of other work.

Here you can see some of the iconic, simplistic logos, all of which were deigned in the 60s and early 70s. His use of white space and drawing with space is exceptional and what every logo designer wishes to achieve. Many of these logos are still in use today, not many of them have needed to be adapted and they are such timeless design pieces.

http://www.graphic-design.com/design-bookshelf/2012/saul_bass/Saul_Bass_Logos_t.jpg

In the talk Mark showed us many different examples of Bass' work I particularly liked the Lawry food packaging for it's timeless design, great use of colour and illustration and typography. These designs would fit right into the supermarket shelves of today and would out rank some of the competition still. That is the mark of great design in my opinion, weather it's still going to look good in 30/40/50 years!

(source: Mark Murphy's presentation slides)

DAVID CARSON - A rule breaker and experimenter, a mad scientist of design. Mark described this guy as 'a marmite designer' you love him or you hate him and at the time I disagreed. My stance was exactly the same as my stance on marmite,  I actually didn't mind his work. I din't love or hate it, it was just ok. I have to be in the mood for it to like and appreciate it. BUT as time has gone on, I have seen more of his work and had time to think about it and i have decided that I am not the biggest fan. In some cases i think his work is good, but i would never choose to design in the way he does. Unless i was requested to.

http://www.creativereview.co.uk/images/uploads/2010/12/lwl_black_swan_0.jpg

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgug7HQZlwHq9clK0NSO5LKoHBC_n4wK4gJzzjD285pCS99HzTyKEolCAAY4zjngH0EK16tBKxhDstzcSYw65ask0MdHvMwZmeyZVf3rFeTONW18OLcpLMYau7uchEuHQl49ON_CrK-ib8h/s400/mastercard_david_carson.jpg

I do like this cover image he produced for Little White Lies and I do appreciate his style somewhat. I think in this context it works really well, I also like his use of hand written type in his master card work but a feel that both of these images I like are not typically 'David Carson', they have elements of his style but they're far from signature pieces.

These magazine covers and ads are more what you would think of immediately when someone says David Carson.

http://mabsoota.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/4590744095_a8c360d082_o.jpeg?w=900

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnbVw5zsIyjI0H9ce3QEYTeaX2hm-uGWpYibmzd8p4YA5qDZsHks7rQf8LCvhY1cUR92VOfmsquRUvNQC-iNtQQbFOAIfFw9n_1deBV6ncygmHMBZ4XUQonxp7SVXDtDlRV0LDOQJ7Ca3g/s400/casron%2527s+work+3.png

One thing I cannot bypass is the amazing ability to break the rules of design and come out with innovative and exciting work that forces you to engage with it, 1 - because it's genious and 2 - cause it's slightly different and difficult to read. I have to hand it to him.

ITAP - David Osbaldestin's Introduction

To kick us off and launch us into our new Graphic Communication module David Osbaldestin gave us a talk about the main roles of graphic communication.

• Design for invitation 
• Design for information
• Design for expression

These three roles within the graphic communication world are key to understanding any piece of design in it’s purpose and intention.

Take this Advert from Nikon for example, 

http://markertising.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/i_am_brave.jpg

Nikon launched their 'I AM' campaign back in 2010 but it is still going strong, I can isolate each of the three design roles within this one image.

Design for Invitation - This image persuades/invites you to engage with it in many ways,

 - the quality of the image.

 - the bright, bold, striking graphic in the centre.

 - choice of language, 'BRAVE'.

 - capital letters.

 - subject in in the photograph.

 - warm, inviting colours within the photograph.

 - the size of the tagline being small, requires you to read deeper, focus in more and that itself is a technique to get to you engage with it.

All these things are examples of design for invitation but what are they inviting you to? 

I think the invitation is one of the IDEA, the concept of 'I AM'. Nikon have gone personal, using real life images captured by Nikon cameras and real people, Jamie Oliver and Robbie Williams to name two, they have made it about the customer. Birgitta Olson says, 

“We hope this campaign will help to extend the legacy of the Nikon brand to a wider European audience. By reminding our customers that they too are at the heart of the image, we hope to ignite a new understanding of photography – one where anyone can express themselves, regardless of their photography experience.”

 I AM *insert line here*, you can make it whatever you want. They've invited you to be a part of Nikon, not just a consumer.

Design for Information - This campaign is one with little conventional 'information', or information as you would expect to see it. This is the beauty of the campaign. The main information in the image is the Nikon logo, but along with this goes the colours and typefaces used in the graphic in the centre of the image, they are all within Nikon's brand guidelines informing you of the brand, the product. 

In the case of the TV ads there is more design for information at the end of the video when the viewer needs to know the product comercial is advertising and also the tagline and the website are arranged on screen in the perfect way so that you get all the information needed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwEZUiE97Uk

 

Design for expression - The print ads are the best example of design for expression, using inspirational lines matched with excellent images. The designer is allowed to express the concept freely. 

http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/print/2010/3/i_am_neil_armstrong.jpg

I particularly like this 3rd prize Nikon competition winner. The composition, symmetry and humour expressed through the image is great and it's a very cleaver entry. Good enough for 3rd place and a D3100 kit package prize!

http://blog.iamnikon.com/en_GB/wp-content/uploads/I-am-a-lady.jpg 

3 Principles that influenced my work

Over the course of this ITAP lecture series i have learnt so much that is important to the development of my thinking as a designer as well as important to the development of my work in the module.

Here I will write about 3 of the principles i have written about in my ITAP blog series and show how they apply to my work.

Legibility
This is a very important principle for my work particularly as we as a group chose to use a typewriter as the main provider of the body copy of our magazine. This was a deliberate choice because we decided on maintaining the principle that not everything that is old, is bad. we wanted to show that old techniques are still useable. So here are a few things i did to ensure that legibilty was always the best it could be.

So as you can see from this original scan this document is very hard to read. Well we scanned in the documents at an extremely hight resolution, 1600dpi so that when I got the images into photoshop I had the best quality possible. that meant I sort out blemishes to detracted form the words themselves and also correct spelling mistakes (a manual spell check!!!).

I concluded this in my study of legibility "The context of the image (web/print/screen) is important in analysing weather something is legible." So i considered this when making the final product and i think the final outcome is one that is legible, it's not the easiest of things to read but I'm not designing a magazine for children nor am i designing a magazine for people who have trouble reading. Our taget audience is one that is intelligent, educated, doesn't mind reading and has an interest in the things of old.

Visual Hierarchy
Using my magazine cover as the example here we can asses the visual hierarchy of this image.

- The thing that stands out the most is the large letters 'see?' partly because they're black on white on a brown coloured background so they colours help is to stand out. Also the text size is large as titles normally are this draws the eye to text, 1 - because our eyes a drawn to titles, 2 - because it's the biggest text on the page. The position also helps, it is central this draws your eyes to it also.
- The second thing the eye is drawn to is the text below, 'the birmingham issue - for the creative mind'. This is because the eye follows downward when reading naturally so after reading the title 'see?' you then move on to whatever it beneath it. This was an intentional design feature based on what i learnt in my study of visual hierarchy.
- your eye then having nowhere 'natural' to go looks around the rest of the image and picks up the title at the top of the page and any other details that may be ont he document.

Text and Image
This one again is very apt to my project mainly because we used the typewriter we had to treat our text as images, they were photographed or scanned in and therefore were .jpeg images. We did use computer text too in our magazine, everything except the body copy of out articles was Times Italic. We chose this as we felt it offered a nice contrast to the gritty hand typed typewriter text, it was nice and clean yet still 'old enough' to be in keeping with the design of the whole magazine. This was important because we didn't want a magazine that looked like it had conflicting styles, we wanted something that worked well as a whole and party due to the correct us of text and image i believe we achieved this.