Entry 2 - Unit 3 & 4

Victorian Age:

• No design philosophy. Mostly Pluralistic
• Rapid transportation leads to rapid need to sell goods.
• Type begins to become mostly illustrative.
• Driven by commerce and commodity culture.
• Birth of editorial design.
• Mass Communication is born.
• Late English Gothic style.
• Scrap - collectible cards start
• Chromolithography is used to print component colors.
• Becomes the method of mass output for graphics
  
• Lithographic Naturalism - images with a romantic bend. Sweet pious to cover up kids dying in coal mines.
• Louis Prang most prolific innovator of the medium
• Master of Ephemera - Invented seasonal cards for Christmas, Easter, and Birthdays. Santa Claus is invented
• Type and images come together in a panorama
• Ephemera large and small is created.
• Billboard and poster wars start.
• Ottmar Mergenthier invents first type setting machine. The monotype is created.
• First newspaper.
• Birth of dailey/weekly news.
• Harper Brothers open first magazine.
• Thomas Nast father of political cartoons
• Invented Donkey and Elephant symbols for political parties.
• Birth of Advertising to sell mass of goods.
• Production Art becomes the first Graphic Design
• Volney Palmer is the first ad agency 1841.
• Branding is born
• Arts and Crafts movement redirects role of artists and designers
• Total Design could states that art needs no reason to exist rather than to be beautiful.
• Kelmscott Press revitalizes the book.
• Art Noveau works with a new language of forms, ornaments become structure, symbolic and philosophic concerns.
• Modern Poster is born as an immediate form of communication
• Cheret is the father of the modern Poster
• Mucha caries Art Noveau style. Simplifies unimportant forms. Integration of illustration and lettering.
• Klimt designs a break through poster for the Secessionist Exhibition. Unseen before amounts of whitespace.
• Modernism cleans up design.
  
• Peter Behrens transforms every aspect of the AEG company. First corporate identity.
• Henry Beck redisigns London Undergound.

The most intriguing part about this lecture to me was the victorian style. The fact that it masked the tragedies of overworked children with an illusion of happiness and a perfect world fascinated me. I feel that victorian style images have come back in a huge way into design. Refrencing them seems to be a very contemporary thing to do. Its an interesting juxtoposition contemporary design and Victorian imagery. You can see it in works by artists like Eduardo Recife. I also really liked the aspects about illustrated type because this is also something that seems to becoming very trendy to do. I'd actually like to do more of it myself. The desirability of design aesthetics will seem to always fluctuate throughout time. Machincal versus hand made style fall in and out of favor. Now it seems both are acceptable, but I see a push for hand done aesthetic in a lot of current culture.

Lecture Unit 1 Part 1 & 2

Important Points:

• All civilizations show a cognitive need to structure their communication with figure ground, repetition of forms, and hierarchy.
• Early markings show that human beings were capable of abstract thought even early on.
• Early pictographs were similar to letter forms, in all ancient civilizations.
• Cuneiform established a shorter quicker system of writing.
• Early on writing became a way of controlling the populous.
• The Chinese contributed the first book, paper, the first relief prints, and movable type which further advanced written communication.
• Phoneticians create a 22 letter alphabet that is used by the Greeks
• The Greeks determined the direction of writing. Left to Right.
• Serifs first appear in the Trajan Column.
• The Codex is the first early Christian book
• Illuminated manuscripts set the pace for all modern books.
• Ascenders and Descenders come from Uncials
• Illuminated manuscripts in conjunction with the mystical nature of writing amazed early Christians who were illiterate.
• Textura is the first international style of type. It is used by Gutenberg in the first type printed.
• Gutenbergs first printed book starts the Incunabula
• 290 Character styles were invented and became the first font family.
• Collectives of type designers, and printers start to produce the first scholarly books.
• Griffo is the first printed italic.
• Garamond is the first type setter to break away and start making typefaces for others.
• In the 18th century type begins to be based off of science and math. No longer is it based off calligraphy.
• Fournier Le Jeune creates the first type measuring system
• 6 Families of type:
• Old Style Roman
• Cursive / Italic/ Griffo
• Modern - Bodoni
• Egyptian / Slab Serif
• Sans Serif

An aspect of this lecture that fascinated me was the religious power of written word. The fact that writing, something we take very much for granted these days was a special, heavenly skill. The illuminated manuscripts were seen as divine. The beauty of text and graphical elements amazed people in a way that was thought to be spiritual. It is interesting to think that it was once not so taken for granted. It'd be nice to see images like this take on their old mystical status again. Not to the full extent of the past. I think that's impossible. But to be appreciated more absolutely again. How can I do that?