Graphic Designers of today

Graphic designer of today:

Paula Scher:

Paula Scher is an American graphic designer and illustrator who is a principal at Pentagram. In 1970 she began designing for the music business. Much of her work was for the theatre or dance or other forms of popular culture. After CBS records she worked for a seven years with Terry Koppel, a magazine designer. Paula Scher is known for the identities/logos like citi,

windows 8, highline park and many more. Paula Scher produce environmental design like the new jersey performing arts center and the first endeavour school. Paula Scher has some work that looks like Dada for example this poster:

 Some movements that Paula Scher is inspired from Constructivism, Futurism and Dada. She is also inspired from Seymour Chwast and pushpin studios. She joined Pentagram in 1991 where she designed corporate identity and environmental graphics.

Stefan Sagmeister:

Stefan Segmeister is a graphic designer that he began his career at the age of 15. Segmeister is known for upsetting norms, he tricks the senses through design, typography, environmental art, conceptual exhibitions and lately video. His designs are rooted in disorienting images and self-defining aphorisms.

In 1985 Sagmaister went to study at Pratt Institute in New York. Tibor Kalman, of M&Co was the most influential person of Stefan Sagmeister’s design life. In the 90’s he began to design for musical heroes like Mick Jagger, Lou Reed, David Byrne, Jay-Z and a lot more. He used printing and packaging tricks that involved laser-cuts, die-cuts, model building and more. One of the clients that Sagmeister worked for are Rolling Stones – CD cover Bridges to Babylon.

Stefan Sagmeister and Paula Scher are two of the graphic designers that are still active till today and I think that they will be very significant  in history because of their originality.

 References:

 AIGA | Paula Scher . 2015. AIGA | Paula Scher . [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.aiga.org/medalist-paulascher/. [Accessed 28 January 2015].

paula scher interview. 2015. paula scher interview. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.designboom.com/design/paula-scher-interview/. [Accessed 28 January 2015].

 AIGA | Stefan Sagmeister . 2015. AIGA | Stefan Sagmeister . [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.aiga.org/medalist-stefan-sagmeister/. [Accessed 28 January 2015].

Grunge and Art Chantry

Grunge

Grunge is a subgenre of alternative rock that emerged as a fusion of punk, alternative, and heavy metal during the mid-1980’s in the American state of Washington, particularly in the Seattle area. A lot of people started to contribute with grunge, and this group began to expand. A lot of rock bands like Nirvana were born from this group. With 1987’s seminal Gluey Porch Treatments album, the Melvins would become one of the founding fathers of what eventually became known as “grunge”- a new mutant form of punk rock that absorbed heavy metal as well as hard rock bands such as “kiss” and “Aerosmith”.

The typography was messy, words were splayed and chaotic, letters blurred. Textures were thick and heavy. Concert posters looked like splattered paint and scratched out band names. It looks like unfinished and frenzied aesthetic.

David Carson

David Carson is known as the “Godfather of Grunge”. His style explore the ‘rule breaking’ ideas of Punk and Deconstructivist design. His style challenged the traditional editorial and advertising design of the 80’s and 90’s. His method was simple, his gospel two fold: you don’t have to know the rules before breaking them, and never mistake legibility for communication. In 1983 became the designer of ‘Transworld skateboarding’. In 1992 created the magazine ‘Ray Gun’. The covers of this magazine were bold and often disorienting.

His techniques were ripping, shredding and remaking letters and his characteristics were asymmetrical layers, pages with densely layered images and fragmented typefaces.

The rise of grunge typography coincided with the burgeoning popularity of the Macintosh, which, introduced in 1984, permanently altered the landscape of graphic design and typography. Young typographers in the 90’s, armed with new software and ideas, rejected the rule-based fonts of their forebears. The typography of grunge wasn’t just the experimental design of the letters, but the way they were placed on page.

These are some posters of today that were inspired from grunge.

Art Chantry

Arthur Samuel Wilbur Chantry is best known as Art Chantry, that is a graphic designer he is often known for the posters and the album covers he did for bands from the Pacific Northwest, such as Nirvana, Hole and the Sonics. Chantry also designed the cover for ‘some people can’t surf’.

The influences of Art Chantry are many forms of “outsider art”, such as monster magazines, hot-rod art, and psychedelic culture. The design of Chantry relates to punk scene in Seattle as he finds himself, with the avant-garde, creating posters for local rock concerts. Art Chantry was an Art director of the Rocket newspaper, which documented Seattle’s music scene in the 90’s. The posters that he produces where inspired from comics, pop art and industrial catalogues. His

design work for Independent record labels, commercial clients and political and community events, always on a low budget and with a quick turnaround, remains influential and much imitated today. His posters juxtapose large type, often fractured or distressed and lifted from vintage sources, with starting pictures appropriated from clip art, exploitation magazines and hot-rod culture. His posters mostly where produced from recycled materials which were simultaneously chaotic and clear.

Influences of Art Chantry today:

References:

History of Grunge. 2015. History of Grunge. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.citelighter.com/music/overall/knowledgecards/history-of-grunge. [Accessed 24 January 2015]



The Rise And Fall Of Grunge Typography - The Awl. 2015. The Rise And Fall Of Grunge Typography - The Awl. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.theawl.com/2012/08/grunge-typography. [Accessed 24 January 2015].


Art Chantry | Biography, Life, Work, Logos and Awards . 2015. Art Chantry | Biography, Life, Work, Logos and Awards . [ONLINE] Available at:http://famouslogos.net/art-chantry/. [Accessed 28 January 2015]


Search Artists / American Art. 2015. Search Artists / American Art. [ONLINE] Available at: http://americanart.si.edu/search/artist_bio.cfm?ID=7244. [Accessed 28 January 2015].

Post-modern Graphic Design

Post-modern Graphic design

Post-modern reacted against the sterility of modernism. Embracing art, architecture, fashion, graphic design, furniture, postmodernism re-established interest in ornamentation, symbolism and visual wit. In other words, this was a funny period of design. The constructivist poster also uses the geometrical shapes. The punk movement often used found material to create their band promotions. The loose, arbitrary collage approach would later inspire postmodern artists.

An influential designer was Wolfgang Weingart. He was a teacher at Switzerland’s Basel school of Design. Weingart rejected the dogmatic typography of Tschichold and Emil Ruder. Weingart took the grid and typeface Akzidenz-Grotesk from its restrictive Swiss design and applied it to his designs. He created more visually complex and more appealing designs. He created rectilinear stepped blocks. Weingart embraced collage and experimented with sandwiching layers of film, juxtaposing textures with images, overprinting of colours, wide letterspacing and type in bars. Although he made a lot of experiments, he never moved away from using his favourite type face – Helvetica.

In the 1984 Apple Macintosh launched the 1^st personal computer. Apple contributed to make key features that then became tools for graphic design like the mouse, Adobe softwares and post script lasser printer. A graphic designer that was one of the first that made use of these tools was April Greiman.

April Greiman

Greiman was a student of Wolfgang Weingart. She made use of Swiss Modern mixed with Californian colouring and the new technology and of multi layering effects. Greiman would often use the condensed version of Helvetica, usually in italic and letter spaced. She designed for Esprit, Xerox, Wet, Benetton, Optica and the 1984 Olympic Committee.

Other British designers who experimented in the New Wave were Neville Brody, Peter Saville and Malcolm Garrett.

Neville Brody

Brody was an Art editor of magazine “The face” and worked for the British labels Stiff records and fetish records. Brody incorporated hand-drawn typefaces and custom graphic symbols into his page layouts.

Peter Saville

Peter Saville is the most influential rock graphic designer within the British music industry. Saville was inspired by the current retro chic of the 80’s; he recycled past images to make contrasts of today. He does not only work for rock music but worked with Pentagram, ABC Television, Christian Dior, Swatch, Mercedes Benz and Smart.

Malcolm Garrett

Malcolm Garrett studied typography at Reading University from 1974-75 and graphic design at Manchester Polytechnic from 1975-78. In 1977, he produced his first professional work and made an immediate impact with his designs for Manchester Punk rock group Buzzcocks. In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. Garrett was rapidly identified, along with colleagues Peter Saville and Neville Brody, as one of the most influential designers working for youth culture clients such as the music business and style magazines. Later album covers included Simple Minds and then collaborated with Jamie Reid.

Some differences of the Swatch posters of the 80’s and 2000’s:

 

The poster of toady is simpler and the focal point of the poster is the watch.

References:

•         Eye Magazine | Feature | Reputations: Malcolm Garrett. 2014. Eye Magazine | Feature | Reputations: Malcolm Garrett. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/reputations-malcolm-garrett. [Accessed 31 December 2014].

•         Graphic Design History | Postmodern. 2014. Graphic Design History | Postmodern. [ONLINE] Available at: http://gds.parkland.edu/gds/!lectures/history/1975/postmodern.html. [Accessed 31 December 2014].

Punk

Punk

In the 60’s there was a lot of changes in a lot of things like the rise of divorce, the increase of pregnancies in teenage. Rock music, in the 70’s had developed into a mature industry with multinational companies. Rock music was more like a commercial profit than a rebellion like the 50’s and 60’s. England in the 70’s was a very bad time because of high unemployment, General feeling of disillusionment, sense of boredom, no hope for the future attitude and rebellion through sarcasm and cynicism.

Punk started in the 70’s in England and the USA. It affected everything from music to fashion. This movement occurred right before digital typography. Members had an aggressive visual of appearance.

Janie Reid:

Jamie Reid was born in 1947 and grew up in London. In the late 1960’s, he met fellow student and future sex pistols manager Malcolm Mc Laren. Mc Laren asked Jamie Reid to design posters, T-shirts and adverts for the sex pistols. He used collage techniques, Random unusual typography, use of Letterset, Day glow links and highlighter pens and anarchic graphic design was created.

The fanzies anarchistic qualities are similar to Dada however the home made quality of the posters made it different while Dada remained artistic, Punk was not.

I think that punk of today is like normal not as shocking as it was in the 70’s.

Rock band

References:

•         . 2014. . [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/jamie-reid-20937155. [Accessed 30 December 2014].

Psychadelia 60's

Psychadelia 60’s

The psychedelic movement began in the mid 1960’s and had an effect, not just on music, but also on many aspects of popular culture. This included style of dress, language and the way people spoke, art, literature and philosophy. The name “psychedelic” refers to drugs that were popular with the youth culture of the time. Americans in the 1960’s and 70’s addressed many controversial issues-from civil rights, the Vietnam War, nuclear proliferation and nonconformity. Many eastern Mysticism and psychedelic drugs.

 Posters for rock concerts tried to visually express the feeling of tripping out. Psychadelic images made to recreate the sensation associated with mind expanding drugs. Distorted imagery and illegible lettering in garish colours applied to posters magazines and album covers. In the 60’s there was a populist vulgar and fanciful commercial graphic design. 

Designers of psychadelia were inspired from the movements Art Nouveau-curvilinear shapes, illegible hand drawn type, lettering is wrapped and elongated almost illegible, using close value complimentary colours, recycling of images from popular culture and intense optical colour vibration inspired by the pop art movement. Artists clients were rock and roll groups and promoters.

Designers from psychadelia were Wes Wilson and Victor Moscoso,

Wes Wilson:

Wes Wilson was best known for the psychedelic font around 1966 that made the letters look like moving or melting. Another thing that Wes Wilson is best known for the posters for Bill Graham, he invented a style that is now synonymous with the peace.

Victor Moscoso:

Moscoso was trained as a graphic designer. His technique was to reduce photographic images to their basic essentials. Moscoso was inspired from Art Nouveau: curvilinear shapes with vibrating reflect the concert, he simply used them for the graphical effect.

Influences of op Art and Pop Art:

The popularity of the op art and pop art was in the 1960’s. Op art is an abstract style that has geometric shapes, lines and colour juxtapositions to create optical illusions for the viewer. Pop art was first started in Britain in 1955 but the pioneers of movement were the Americans. Pop art and pop culture were used mostly for the products of the mass media evolving in the late 1950’s and 60’s like packaging , television, advertisements, comic books and cinema. Pop culture was like a protest against the seriousness. Pop art made its way to the United States in the 1960’s with the help of ground-breakers Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg.

Roy Lichtenstein was well known for the way he used stencil-like dots, thick lines, bold colours and thought bubbles to represent the comic book style. His paintings were the size of billboards.

Andy Warhol became famous pop artist when he was begun to make labels on food cans and bottles.

Some influences of Pop art today:

References:

•             Psychedelic 60s | Graphic Design History. 2014. Psychedelic 60s | Graphic Design History. [ONLINE] Available at: http://visualartsdepartment.wordpress.com/psychedelic-60s/. [Accessed 30 December 2014]