OUGD501 - Defining the Brief

1x A3 design sheet

Choose 1:
CoP themes (Politics, Society, Culture, History, Technology or Aesthetics)

Choose 1:Typography / type design, Advertising / public awareness, Branding / logo design, Editorial, Design for screen or Print making).

Identified from my interests:

Cop Themes:

Technology
Aesthetics - 'A set of principles concerned with the nature and appreciation of beauty.'
Culture - 'The arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.'
History- 'The ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society.'
Graphic Design Disciplines:


Editorial Design
Traditional Print
Design for print
Typography
Aesthetics 

Primary Essay Concepts:

How do analogue processes still impact graphic design in the digital age?

Find traditional printers past/present
What are the pros and cons of anaologue techniques
What roles do they play
Still relevant?
PYLOT Magazine

Bauhaus' impact on editorial design

Method of learning - Artists working together
Lissitzky
Wassily Kandinsky

Paul Klee’s

Herbert Bayer
Impact on contemporary graphic design

Swiss Design/International Typographic Style

Modernist movement

Typography

Development

Associated with Bauhaus

Mueller Brookman
Weingart
Cleanliness, readability, objectivity
Helvetica

New Wave Graphics

Development of Swiss Design - More abstract

Wolfgang Weingart (b. 1941)
Swiss Punk
http://www.designhistory.org/PostModern_pages/NewWave.html

'Wolfgang Weingart is a German graphic designer credited as the progenitor of New Wave typography. According to Weingart, "I took 'Swiss Typography' as my starting point, but then I blew it apart, never forcing any style upon my students. I never intended to create a "style." It just happened that the students picked up—and misinterpreted—a so called 'Weingart style' and spread it around."

“His typographic experiments were strongly grounded, and were based on an intimate understanding of the semantic, syntactic and pragmatic functions of typography. Whereas traditional Swiss typography mainly focused on the syntactic function, Weingart was interested in how far the graphic qualities of typography can be pushed and still retain its meaning. This is when the semantic function of typography comes in: Weingart believes that certain graphic modifications of type can in fact intensify meaning. “What's the use of being legible, when nothing inspires you to take notice of it?” Excerpt from Keith Tam.

How well was his progressive idea about typography received at that time? Weingart recalls, "in my presentations in 1972, there was always a group of audience that hated it, one group that loved it, and the rest would all leave during the lecture."

Lots of content to research:

http://keithtam.net/writings/ww/ww.html

Potential to look at the development of Swiss into New Wave.

Specifically:

• Poster design
• Editorial
• Typography
• Text and Image
• Layout
• Appropriateness and Uses

This concept would provide a lot of scope for practical experimentation. 

New wave graphic design - Ligature

Semantics, syntax and pragmatics of typography in the development of Swiss Design to New Wave design?

Approaches to typography and relationship with aesthetics 

Analysing the relationship between typography and aesthetics during the development of Swiss Design into New Wave design. 

Aesthetic relationship between text and image in Swiss Design/New Wave design

Approaches to typography during the development of Swiss Design to New Wave design in relation to aesthetics 

Defining the aesthetic development between typography in Swiss Design and New Wave Design

What is there to study?

• Typography - Sans-serif - Helvetica, Futura
• Progression
• Purpose
• Grid Systems
• Weingart
• Armish Hoffmann
• Emil Ruder
• Tschichold
• Aesthetics
• Semantics
• Pragmatics
• Syntax
• WHY it changed
• Text/Image

How?

• Online resources - Articles/J Store
• Library Resources

Sources:

Armin Hoffmann, Graphic Design Manual: Principles and Practice

Keith Tam

http://keithtam.net/writings/ww/ww.html

http://keithtam.net/documents/weingart_article_q&a_keithtam.pdf

Written by a tutor at University of Reading 

'Figures such as Armin Hoffmann and Emil Ruder were the major proponents of Swiss typography, who were teachers at the Basel School of Design at the time. They believed that typography should be unobtrusive and transparent, in order to clearly communicate its textual content.'

'Weingart works with a very limited palette of typefaces. He suggests that four typefaces are enough to address all typographic problems. One of these typefaces would certainly be Akzidenz Grotesk, an early sanserif of the grotesque genre designed by the Berthold Foundry in Germany at the close of the 19th century. ‘I grew up with Akzidenz Grotesk and I love it. Akzidenz Grotesk has a certain ugliness to it, that’s why it has character.’ He feels that Univers, which is Emil Ruder’s favorite, is too slick and cosmetic for his taste. The simplicity of his choice of typefaces speaks of his fondness of simple tools.'