History of Graphic Design

The object is the hero of the poster. They are simple, paired down, message is blunt and to the point, usually has only the product and the name of the company. Ex: Lucien Bernhard poster for Priester matches. Powerful message with minimal information. Only the matches and the name of the company on the poster.

• A movement or cause to the art movement, influenced the graphic language of form and visual communications in that century.
• Came out of the turbulence from the first of two global wars, people began to awaken and demand independence. The slaughter from the two wars fought with destructive weapons of technology, shook the traditions and institutions of Western civilization. What came out of this time was a creative revolution that questioned long held values and approaches to organized space as well as the role of art and design in society.

• A design concept independent of nature. Cubism changed the course of painting by its new approach to visual composition.
• Dissects figurative forms and looks at them from multiple angles
• Minimalized all into cube, sphere and cone
• Structured off underlying grids
• Underlying theme of mechanics
• Abstract but not emotionless
• A Design concept independant of nature, challenging the tradition of pictoral art.

• Which artists were part of this era?
• Pablo Picasso,
• George Braque
• Fernand Leger
• Jean Gris

Launched by Filippo Marinetti as a revolutionary movement, they were in favor of the war, machine age, speed and modern life.

• Futurism advocated machines, cities and new technologies
• Themed on motion, progress, energy
• Destruction of old sociatal means and methods
• Simultaneous appearance of positive and negative
• Political fascism
• Boldfaced typefaces represented violent noises and sounds
• Noise and Speed
• Pattern Poetry: the verses where often the shape of objects or religious symbols.

Which artists were Futurist?

• Fortunato Depero
• Edward McKnight Kauffer

• Protest war but with mockery and irony
• Embraced Futuristic ideals (advancement of new technology and breaking from tradition
• Chaos is equal to change
• Nonsensical
• Collage and found objects
• Claimed they were not creating art but mocking and defaming a society gone insane
• Nazi party were targets in posters
• Would cut pieces from newspaper, unrelated in a collage, placed at random paying no attention to size and shapes of letters.
• Rebelled against religion, war, the establishment of art
• Nonconformist
• Poet Hugo Ball opened a Cabaret in Switzerland as a gathering place for independent young poets, painters and musicians.

Which artists were considered Dada?

• Marcel Duchamp
• John Heartfield
• Man Ray

• Searching for the "more real than real world behind the real"
• The world of intuition, dreams and the unconscious realm explored by Freud.
• Dream becomes reality (Freud)
• Optimistic belief of the human spirit
• Sought renewal and non-violence
• Expressionist symbols found in work but done so through realism (super-real)
• Rooted in Dadaism
• A way to reveal the "language of the soul"

Which artists were identified with Surrealism?

• Salvador Dali
• Rene Magritte,
• Georgio de Chirico

• Depiction of subjective emotions and personal responses to subjects and events
• Color, drawing and proportion were often exaggerated or distorted and symbolic content was very important
• Line and color were often pronounced; color and value contrasts were intensified.
• Tactile properties were achieved through thick paint, loose brushwork and bold contour drawing.
• Woodcuts, lithographs and posters were important media for expressionists.
• Convey ideas through symbol and emotion
• Distorted forms
• Rejected military, repressive educational practices & government
• Imagery projects how the world feels
• Grew out of the Vienna Secessions

Which artists were considered Expressionists?

• Oskar Koskoshka
• Egon Schiele
• Kathe Kollwitz

• Founder was Theo van Doesburg
• Abstract geometric style
• Influenced by cubism
• An expression of the mathematical structure of the universe and the universal harmony of nature
• Curved lines were eliminated and sans-serif typefaces were favored
• Primary colors plus black, white & gray only
• 90 degree horizontal & vertical only

• Which artists were part of the De Stijl movement?
• Theo van Doesburg
• Piet Mondrian

• Founded by Kasimir Malevich, using a painting style of basic forms and pure color.
• An elemental geometric abstraction
• Expression of feeling, seeking no practical values, ideas or promised land.
• Art experience was the perceptual effect of color and form.
• Believed art should reject a social or political role and be the sole aim of art through the realization perceptions of the world by inventing forms in space and time
• Rejected pictorial content in favor of pure geometric forms and color
• Circles, rectangles, triangles
• Express pure feeling through visual form
• Completely abstract, non representational
• Rebelling czarist in Russia
• No basis on realit, non representational.
• No need to create realism anymore-that role was taken from artist by photographer.

• Which artists were Suprematists?
• Kasimir Malevich

• Founded by El Lissitzky
• Stop producing useless things such as paintings and turn to the poster,
• Felt art could serve the utilitarian needs of society
• Communist ideology with visual form
• Dimensional qualities to work
• Black, white and red
• Angles and 90 degree horizontal /verticals

He started the object style poster. As youth saw exhibit of Art Nouveau and was so inspired painted his fathers house. Poet in Berlin. Entered contest for matches and won because of the simplicity, his genius. He had dancing girls in the background but kept painting over everything until all that was left was a poster of the matches and the name of the company. The success was the abiity to convey message with minimal information.

He was the leading Plakalstiyl designer. His poster of man in a saddle, the eye was drawn to the checker pants. Lines not finished on the arms. Hero is the clothes.

• He led the cubism movement. He applied elements of ancient Iberian and Africa tribal art to the human figure. Dissected figurative form and looks at them from multiple angles. Minimized cube, sphere and cone.
• His pictures have a strong relationship with the process of human vision. Our eyes shift and scan a subject; our minds combine these fragments into a whole.
• Introduced paper collage elements into their work, allowing free composition independent of subject matter. The texture of collage elements could signify objects. Ex: To denote a chair, he would glue oilcloth printed with a chair cane pattern onto a painting.
• Cubists invented forms that were signs rather than representations of a subject matter. The essence of an object and its basic characteristics, rather than its outward appearance, were depicted.

• A futurist painter, worked in New York and designed covers for Vanity Fair, Movie Makers and Sparks.

American in Europe displayed cubism. Critics hated it. He was upset at their reaction because US is more conservative. Went to Europe to study and moved to Great Britan, refused to travel and stayed in GB. He did the posters for the futurist film "Metropolist"

• Exhibited found objects, like a mens urinal, which he snuck into an art exhibit claiming it was a piece of art (a fountain). Also famous poster of chair and bike wheel you can "see" a face, a nose of a body. His picture of Mona Lisa with a mustach LHOOQ pun meaning "she has a hot ass".
• Dada painter, became it most prominent visual artist, inspired him to convey time and motion and to create ready made sculpture like a bicycle wheel mounted on a wooden stool.

• A Dadaists, his artistic activities toward visual communications to raise public consciousness and promote social change. This is his English name adopted by Helmut Herzfelde as a protest against German militarism and the army in which he served.
• The Nazi party was his target in posters, he used photomontage, in book and magazine covers, political illustrations and cartoons.
• After he fled to Prague, he continued his graphic propaganda and mailed postcard versions of his graphics to Nazi leaders.
• Learned he was on a secret Nazi list of enemies and fled to London.

• He was a Dada and his picture of woman with violin pieces on her back. The meaning could be interpreted as she "is a beautiful piece of music or an object being played." The tears were really small glass balls and eyelashes had beads on the tip. He did work in commercial art. Posed the question of Dada, why? Who cares? Makes you think.
• He was working as a professional photographer using both darkroom manipulation and bizarre studio setups.
• He was the first photographer to explore the potential of solarization.
• He frequently made his exposures with moving beams of light.
• He used distortion, printed through textures and multiple exposures as he searched for dreamlike images and new interpretations of time and space.

• Famous for the "Cotton Picker", a female figure, vertical image seperate from type- peasant blood spots on the cotton plant.
• His self portrait for "Der Sturm" magazine he shaved his head, creating himself like Jesus, sticking fingers in his wound.

Used religion in his work (Last supper). Self portrait of red faced man. Religious figure of St. Sebastian pierced by arrow, emotional pain expressed, distorted figures.

• An expressionist painter, concern for the human condition. Married to a physician who ran a clinic in Berlin, she gained firsthand knowledge about the miserable conditions of the working poor. She documented their plight in figurative works of great emotion.
• She had great empathy for the suffering of woman and children.

• Theatrical Spanish painter, influenced graphic design in two ways: his deep perspectives inspired designers to bring vast depth to the printed page, his naturalistic approach to simultaneity has been imitated in posters and images.
• Fantasy and intuition could be expressed in visual terms.

He was a Suprematism artist allowed him to construct images that had no reference at all to reality. His paintings were of geometric shapes and narrow range of colors and sitting and staring would bring up emotions. (Ex: White on white series.) A portrait of a black square was meant to cause an emotional reaction to it. Rejected pictorial content for pure geometric form and color. Rebelled against Russia.