joana_POST.8

PIET ZWART

Piet Zwart (1885 – 1977) was a Dutch photographer, typographer, and industrial designer.

He started his career as an architect, as a designer, Zwart was well known because of his work for both the Nederlandse Kabelfabriek Delft (the Dutch Cable Factory in Delft) and the Dutch Postal Telegraph and Telephone, and as a pioneer of modern typography. He did not adhere to traditional typography rules, but used the basic principles of constructivism and "De Stijl" in his commercial work. His work can be recognized by its primary colors, geometrical shapes, repeated word patterns and an early use of photomontage.

He preferred to call himself a form engineer or form technician rather than a designer. He believed in functionality, standardisation and machine production, and profiled himself as one of the first industrial designers in the Netherlands. In his eyes, a design must take account both of ergonomics and user-friendliness, and of the demands of mass production. The kitchen he designed for Bruynzeel in 1938 is a good example. It was highly progressive for its time. This was the first time that domestic appliances like a refrigerator and stove could be integrated in the design in a practical way. All the elements were designed with logical proportions, and customers could combine them as they wished. 
The same urge to innovate is also evident in Piet Zwart’s graphic work. His designs are simple and functional, but also playful.
Zwart was not part of the Amsterdam School or the ‘De Stijl’ movement, though he was influenced by them. At the same time, he was drawn to the international avant-garde, particularly Russian Constructivism. In the 1920s, when Piet Zwart began to work for the progressive Nederlandsche Kabelfabriek In Delft, he was able for the first time to experiment with upper and lower case, lines, circles and screens. He used alliteration, the visual reworking of letter shapes, repetition and combinations of figures and letters, creating his own unique new style that still has great influence today.

Father of a very original style, He taught at Bauhaus and borrowed his name to one of the most prestige design schools at the "low countries", The Piet Zwart Institute. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piet_Zwart
http://pzwart.wdka.hro.nl/
http://www.gemeentemuseum.nl/index.php?id=035578&langId=en

Joana_POST.9

RAYMOND SAVIGNAC

"Reading a poster must be instantaneous. In a fraction of a second, the man in the street must be able to understand it. Poster art is the creation of a fleeting image which people will not forget."

The artist Raymond Savignac designed over 600 advertising posters and helped usher in a new age of optimism and consumerism in France after the end of the Second World War. His colourful and witty images for products such as Monsavon soap, Gitanes cigarettes, SNCF railways, Bic razors, Air France and Citroën cars came to embody the very idea of France to many foreigners.
Over a fruitful career lasting 50 years, Savignac was an advocate of the "less is more" approach, his work is distinguished by a humorous simplicity.

Often just abbreviated to "Savignac", he was born on November 6, 1907 in Paris, and died on October 31, 2002 in Trouville-sur-Mer (Calvados), aged 94. 

Always immacutely dressed, Savignac was a committed environmentalist; he also railed against modern-day advertising techniques and their over-reliance on photographs rather than the broad, brash strokes he had pioneered. In an interview with Le Monde newspaper in 1996, he called himself,

an old brontosaurus who does a job that no longer exists for a species that's well on its way to extinction.

His art reflects the special place cleverly drawn posters have occupied in France from the time of Toulouse-Lautrec.
He apprenticed with the great A. M. Cassandre, but instead of glorifying the merchandise, as Cassandre did, Mr. Savignac made gentle fun of what was being sold.
He said his intellectual inspiration was Charlie Chaplin and the other slapstick comedians, and he came to criticize present-day advertising for its lack of humor. Photography -- not to mention today's bewildering proliferation of media and messages -- seemed to have overwhelmed the sharp artistic vision he shared with contemporary French poster artists.

"A poster creates the illusion if not of happiness, then at least of comfort and ease, It is optimism at its most absurd -- no more indigestion, no more floating kidneys, no more unrequited love.''

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Savignac

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/raymond-savignac-601006.html

http://www.art.com/gallery/id--a9114/raymond-savignac-posters.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/01/arts/raymond-savignac-94-french-poster-artist.html

http://www.posterclassics.com/i2/Savignac-posters.html

Post 9 - Chris Nowlan - Takashi Kono

Takashi Kono

Takashi Kono was shaken by the arrival of free and wild American creative power, at that time, in the world of graphic design what was imported was in fashion. For Takashi Kono an Edo craftsman at heart, who wanted to re-create Japanese shapes and colours from chaotic commercial art, so it was a natural creative posture to take. It is easy to understand how his natural sensibility made his resolution firm. He is unparalleled among graphic designers of his day.

Is best known by his posters for Shochiku Kinema, a major movie production company, Takashi Kono (1906-1999) was a designer whose career almost entirely overlapped with the history of Japanese graphic design. 

He was a central figure in post-war Japanese graphic design; Kono has produced number of masterful works combining simplified motifs and an original style of coloration. His discreetly refined creations display a typically Japanese kind of sensibility especially - but not only - Japanese viewers will feel particularly comfortable with. In particular, his work for the magazine NIPPON contributed to innovation in visual expression.

A clear "Japan original" can be found in the works created by Takashi Kono who had the essence of good Japanese tradition in his blood

Links

http://jeansnow.net/index.php?s=kono+takashi&submit=Search 

http://c20thgraphicdesign.blogspot.com/2008/06/leilani-takashi-kono.html 

http://www.tokyoartbeat.com/event/2004/E881.en

Alphonse Maria Mucha

 

Alphonse Maria Mucha(1860-1939) is most often remembered for the prominent role he played in shaping the aesthetics of French Art Nouveau at the turn of the centrury. As a struggling and relatively unknown artist of Czech origin living in paris, Mucha achieved immediate fame when, in December 1894, he accepted a commission to create a poster for one of the greatest actresses of this time, Sarah Bernhardt. Though the printer was apprehensive about submitting Mucha’s final design because of it’s new unconventional style, Bernard loved it and so did the public.’Le style Mucha’ , as Art Nouveau was known in it’s earlist days, was born. The success of that first poster brought a 6 years contract between Berhardt and Mucha and in the following years his work for her and others included costumes and stage deccorations, designs for magazines andf book covers, jewelleryt and furnature and numerous posters. Mucha returned to Czechoslovakia in 1910, where he dedicated the remainder of his life to the production of an epicc series of 20 paintings depicting the history of the slav people.

1860 - born in Ivancice in Southern Moravia on the 24^th July.

1879 - Goes to Vienna to work as a theatrical scene painter.

1883 - Invited by Count Khuen-Belassi to decorate his castle at Emmahof in Austria

1885 - Begins studies at the Munich  Academy of Arts, sponsored by Count  Khuen- Belessi.

1887 -  Moves to Paris to study at the Academie Julian

1892  - Commissioned to illustrate “scenes et episodes de l’histoire d’Allemagne” by Charles Seignobos.

1894  - Designs his first poster for Sarah Bernardt, Gismonda, a play by Victor Sardou. This success leads to a six-year contract with “la divine Sarah”

1896  - Mucha’s first decorative panels “The four seasons” are printed.

1897 – Febuary: first one man exhibition at the boudinere gallery, Paris, showing 107 works, followed in May by the Salon des Cent’s Mucha exhibition, which shows 448 works.

1899  -  Recieves commission from the Austro- Hungarien Government for the 1900 Paris Universal Exhibition.

1900  -  Begins to work on designs for Georges Fouquet’s jewellery shop, one of the   outstanding Art Nouveau interiors.

http://www.mucha.cz/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfons_Mucha

http://www.bpib.com/illustrat/mucha.htm

http://www.muchafoundation.org/MHome.aspx

http://www.mucha-museum.co.jp/index_e.html

 

SHEPARD FAIREY

Shepard Fairey (born February 15, 1970) is a contemporary artist, graphic designer, and illustrator who emerged from the skateboarding scene.

In 1992, Fairey graduated from Rhode Island School of Design with Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration.In addition to his successful graphic design career, Fairey also DJ's at many clubs under the name DJ Diabetic and Emcee Insulin, as he is a diabetic. 

After graduation, he founded a small printing business in Providence, called Alternate Graphics, specializing in t-shirt and sticker silkscreens, which afforded Fairey the ability to continue pursuing his own artwork. Fairey was also a founding partner along with Dave Kinsey and Phillip DeWolff of the design studio BLK/MRKT Inc. from 1997-2003 which specialised in guerrilla marketing, and "the development of high-impact marketing campaigns". Clients included Pepsi, Hasbro and Netscape.

Shepard Fairey has developed into one of the most influential street artists of our time. Despite breaking many of the spoken and unspoken rules of contemporary art and culture, his work is now seen in museums and galleries, as well as the worlds of graphic design and signature apparel. His multi-faceted, open-ended and generous artistic practice actively resists categorization. Building off of precedents set by artists such as Andy Warhol and Keith Haring, Fairey shifts easily between the realms of fine, commercial, and even political art.

Fairey has developed a successful career through expropriating and recontextualizing the artworks of others, which in and of itself does not make for bad art. (he was inflenced by Roy Lichtenstein whom based artworks on the world of American comic strips and advertising imagery).

His multi-layered renderings of counter-cultural revolutionaries and rap, punk and rock stars, as well as updated and re-imagined propaganda-style posters, carry his signature graphic style, marked by his frequent use of black, white, and red. 

[ Left: Meeting - Vladimir Kozlinsky. Linocut. 1919. Kozlinsky’s depiction of workers listening to a revolutionary agitator. Middle top: Fairey’s plagiarized version of Kozlinsky’s linocut. Right: Have You Volunteered? - Dmitry Moor. Famous recruitment poster for the Soviet Red Army. 1920. Middle bottom: Fairey’s plagiarized version of Moor’s Red Army poster.

Fairey launched his career with a series of obscure street posters,stickers and stencils that combined the words "Andre the Giant Has aPosse" with the visage of deceased wrestling superstar, Andre the Giant. By the early 1990’s the incomprehensible images had become ubiquitous in major urban centers around the world, but in 1993 Titan Sports, Inc. (now World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc.) threatened to sue Fairey for violating their trademarked name, Andre the Giant.

Fairey’s self-titled "absurdist propaganda" campaign was born. The supposed intent of the project, according to the artist, was to: "stimulate curiosity and bring people to question both the campaign and their relationship with their surroundings - because people are not used to seeing advertisements or propaganda for which the motive is not obvious."

[ Left: Political power comes from the barrel of a gun - Artist unknown. 1968. Chinese poster from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution period. The title of this poster quotes the famous pronouncement made by Mao Tse-Tung. Right: Fairey's plagiarized version titled, Guns and Roses. The Chinese poster's central motif of hands bearing machine guns was plainly digitally scanned without any alteration. Fairey, or his assistants, then applied a modified sun-burst background, placed clip-art roses in the gun barrels, and released the imitation in 2006 as a supposed original work.]

[ Left: Fairey’s plagiarized poster. Right: Original street poster from Czechoslovakia’s, Prague Spring - Artist unknown 1968. The poster depicts a Soviet Red Army soldier in 1945 as a liberator, then as an oppressor in 1968.]

Fairey has incorporated Art Nouveau borders and graphic flourishes in many of his posters.  Another example of Fairey’s plagiarism exists in his directly stealing the work of Austrian artist Koloman Moser (1868-1918),  Fairey merely altered Moser’s original work with some clumsy border enhancements, a small portrait of Andre the Giant, and the words, "OBEY Propaganda".

 Fairey openly admits to directly copying an image created by someone else (he calls this "referencing")

Perhaps the most important falsehood concerning Fairy's behavior is that it is motivated by some grand theory of aesthetics or weighty political philosophy - but it’s also not impossible to view Fairey’s work as right-wing in essence, since it largely ransacks leftist history and imagery while the artist laughs all the way to the bank.........

but, 

there are those who say that artists should have the right to alter and otherwise modify already existing works in order to produce new ones or to make pertinent statements.

The Institute of Contemporary Art said in a statement Saturday that "we believe Shepard Fairey has made an important contribution in the history of art and to popular thinking about art and its role in society." 

and at the end of the day his work is visually exciting and striking, it is influential and inspiring, and if anything reflects the very nature of current society.

www.art-for-a-change.com/Obey/index.htm

www.thegiant.org/

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_Fairey

www.icaboston.org/exhibitions/exhibit/fairey/

40's, 50's ......... and into the future!!!

http://www.plan59.com

http://www.citrinitas.com

The years around and following the second world war saw graphic design in the modern style gain widespread acceptance and application. A booming post-World War II American economy established a greater need for graphic design, mainly advertising and packaging. The emigration of the German Bauhaus school of design to Chicago in 1937 brought a "mass-produced" minimalism to America; sparking a wild fire of "modern" architecture and design. Notable names in mid-century modern design include Adrian Frutiger, designer of the typefaces Univers and Frutiger; Paul Rand, who, from the late 1930's until his death in 1996, took the principles of the Bauhaus and applied them to popular advertising and logo design, helping to create a uniquely American approach to European minimalism while becoming one of the principal pioneers of the subset of graphic design known as corporate identity; and Josef Müller-Brockmann, who designed posters in a severe yet accessible manner typical of the 1950s and 1960s.

A new graphic design style emerged in Switzerland in the 1950s that would become the predominant graphic style in the world by the ‘70s. Because of its strong reliance on typographic elements, the new style came to be known as the International Typographic Style.The style was marked by the use of a mathematical grid to provide an overall orderly and unified structure; sans serif typefaces (especially Helvetica, introduced in 1957) in a flush left and ragged right format; and black and white photography in place of drawn illustration. The overall impression was simple and rational, tightly structured and serious, clear and objective, and harmonious.