Saul Bass

The inventor of the modern film title, brought motion in graphics into cinema.  Saul Bass say graphics as a way to create a climate for the story that was about to come to life.  He saw the opening credits as a way to set up the mood and texture of the film.  With his graphics, he could tell the story behind the film, and lure the audience into the film.  He saw everyday things, and wanted to put them into a new light.  With the movie "Walk on the Wild Side" he took an ordinary cat and created a mysterious, dominant, masculine feeling just from the angle of the shot and the way the cat moved.  He also had a way with selecting fonts that went with the theme of the film.  His graphics and his text were designed to emulate the emotions of the film.  in "West Side Story" he didn't show the credits at the beginning.  He waited until the end of the film, because it was a tragedy and wanted to give the movie the respect it deserved.  By holding off on the credits, it allowed the audience to still around after the tragic ending and kinda collect themselves.  Also with "West Side Story" the ending credits were graffiti style, to go along with the motif of the film.  This direction of artistic design, helped portray the importance of the graffiti in the film.  Bass brought the ambiance of the film to the titles, with motion.  Bass helped launch films by also creating the film's posters.  He did poster like, "The Man with the Golden Arm", It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World", and "Nine Hours to Roma".  He was the inventor of motion graphics, and the pivotal point of motion pictures.  Motion graphics have changed films and the rest of the world forever.  They started in film and have expanded to computer backgrounds, creation of own typography, and cell phones.  This branch into other areas is all because one guy wanted to make graphics move across the screen.

Milton Glaser

    Milton Glaser always operated by interrupting.  He interrupted peoples' mundane lives, by giving them something to think about with his artwork.  He was the Czar of Graphic Design but believed that a piece of work shouldn't look like it was designed.  Through his artwork he has redefined American graphic design and shown the world the simplicity of design.

    Glaser was born in 1929. He founded New York Magazine with Clay Felker and established Milton Glaser, Inc. He made a name for himself with his poster artwork, and the way the colors and designs in the artwork spoke as thought they were full sentences.  He is best known for his design for New York:
                                               
This simple design that he came up with while riding in a taxi cab, has become the icon for the city of New York.  Galser has been an artist since he was in high school.  He has been known for his poster and prints, and his refusal to just follow what has worked.  Glaser believes in creating art, not just doing what someone else has already done.  He has permanent collections in many museums, and has had one-man shows at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  Glaser is also an educator, and strongly believes in teaching the youth about staying creative and inventive.  He has done it all, from cartoon, to design, to architecture, he has achieved many awards in all of these categories.  His most recent award was the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, in 2004.  Glaser has been the pioneer for graphic design through his interruptive art.  He has been an inspiration to many artist and continues to help them down the path.
   I enjoyed the film on Milton Glaser very much.  He is an inspiration of what you can do if you really want it.  He holds internships to help students get hands on experience. One of his most famous quotes about being your own designer was , "Computers are to design as microwaves  are to cooking."

Kiss my Font

    The world of typefaces began with Gutenberg and his printing press.  But as time as gone on and we as the human race have evolved, so has the typeface.  Most typefaces have variations, such as: bold, italic, regular, etc.  These variations are called "fonts".  But somehow in the world of words, the word "font" has become generalized to mean the typeface.  So now that we understand that confusing circle, we can continue on with the ever-expanding world of fonts.
     Most fonts were created in the 80's when the computer became a huge part of our lives.  But some fonts were created before this era, and used in the business or consumer world, like Helvetica.  Helvetica is  the most commonly used font because of its legibility.  Helvetica was designed in the 1950s as a neutral sans-serif typeface, and is most commonly used for signs. Because of it's simplicity and its functionality, the font is easy to read, and easy to design with.  Arial is another one of the most used fonts.  It is the default font for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS.  Created in 1982 it has been the most common font for computer systems.  Courier is another common font, that came in the 1950s and was meant to be used on typewriters.  It is a serif font and is meant to look like the type from a typewriter.  Its fixed spacing between the letters means that the sentences line up perfectly.  Matthew Carter created the next two fonts, Georgia and Verdana.  They were created for Microsoft.  These fonts were created to be legible at very small sizes, Verdana is the sans-serif, while Georgia is the serif.
    From these popular fonts have come thousands upon thousands of other fonts.  Fonts have become more than just letters.  They have become a form of expression.  The way capitalization of certain words put emphasis on them, so do the fonts.  Fonts are used in ever day life, and as we become a more technical world, the font becomes and extension of our personality.
     Fonts can convey happiness, sadness, adolescence, flirting, and many other emotions simply with its shape.  Some fonts are used for business, while others are used for personal.  Fonts are becoming more personalized, because we are making fonts our source of communication.  Just as a hand-written signature use to be your mark on the world; your own font will one day be your signature.

The Bauhaus

The Bauhaus was the gateway into Contemporary art.  This school of art and design was the school of innovation with professors that were borderline schizophrenic geniuses.  It was built in Weimar, Germany in 1919 and crafted to join, art with industrial design.  This school pushed the idea of art as a function and created a new era of design all together.  In 1923 the founder and first director Walter Gropius opened an exhibition that showed the world the full spectrum of the Bauhaus.  The Haus Am Horn fused art with function in a futuristic way, into a residential building.  The school continued producing outstanding architecture and influential design even after moving to Dessau, due to loss of funds.  The school became it's own factory, when Hannes Meyer became director.  In his efforts to create a harmonious society, he managed to create artwork that was made for the masses, but blurring the lines between craftsmen and artists.  He wanted there to be no separation between the two.  Through the pressure of the government, the Bauhaus changed hands and directions again.  Ludwig Mies van der Rohe led the school into a technical school of architecture with workshop departments.  The students were taught by the most creative minds of the times, and through hands on experience.  The funding for the Bauhaus was cut off and the Nazis closed the school down in 1933.  But the teachings and the idea of the Bauhaus is still seen throughout the world and continue on.

The idea of the Bauhaus was to create through an industrial method without being destructive.  The invention of fonts, architecture,  and the explosion of graphic design all took place at the Bauhaus.  The professors were either artists or craftsmen, and the students were introduced to every aspect of both.  The Bauhaus brought it's theories to the Chicago and created a world of luminous architecture.  The idea of glass and steel shining from tall buildings (known as skyscrapers) brought the basics of the Bauhaus into the everyday world.  The Bauhaus was the innovator of functional art in the industrial world, and now it is status quo.

Merchants of Fad

The video on "Merchants of Cool" was more of an overview of how we as consumers, can kill something that is "cool" just by consuming it.  "What is Hot" is a term that never has a precise answer.  It is like asking what time it is, because just as time moves forward, so do trends.  The trends of today will fade into new trends that will also expire.  The cycle of this ever-changing, consumer driven, clutter of advertising world, is nothing but the cycle of life.  We are born, we grown, we adapt, we die.  The same goes for what is "cool".

The video starts off by telling you about the growing market of teenagers.  This market wasn't as big until we as a specie became too busy.  As teenagers of the 70's grew up, they wanted more for their children.  They worked longer days, in more concentrated areas of work; with the idea that if they worked now, they could play later.  They had children and wanted to provide the best for them, so they worked harder thinking they could eventually enjoy time with their children.  But as those children grew up with less parental supervision, they turned to other forms of attention: television, music, fashion, friends.  These children spent their time and their parents' money (sometimes their own) on the materialistic things that made them feel comforted.  As the commercial industry began to grow, so did the desire to consume it.  These, now young adults, were the most consuming generation in history, and still growing.  They had to have anything that was new or that their friends had, and their parents wanted them to know that they cared about them, so they bought it for them.  This began a spiral of "I bought you what you wanted to show you that I care".  This spiral has spun out of control and helped the commercial industry take over family values.  

The commercial industry saw growth in sales in this generation and monopolized on it (who could blame them).  They kept creating new things for the youth to want, to need, to buy.  And the youth did exactly that, they bought it!  Just as a songwriter comes up with a song and wants to share it with friends, hoping they will be a fan of it and will spread the word.  Eventually that songwriter will become well known enough to get a record contract, a radio station will start playing their song, people will go out and buy the album, and after everyone has heard the song, it no longer becomes in demand.  The "trend" is dead. Time for a new song.  This is how trends in the world live and die.  

With great understanding of their markets, the commercial industry has capitalized on letting the youth decide what is next as far as trends.  They no longer go with the "cookie-cutter, everyone wants what's 'hot' today" idea.  They want to stay in this business, and to do that they have to be ahead of the curve.  So they go out and find some small circle of the market that are doing something the majority is not doing, and exploit it.  The video shows a perfect example of this with the following of Insane Clown Posse.  ICP is hardcore hip hop (horrorcore) group, that introduced "supernatural- and horror-themed lyrics" to separate themselves from the 'gangsta rap' that flooded the airwaves back in the late 80's early 90's.  The commercial industry picked up on the new underground uprise of the "juggalo" following.  A record company (Jive Records) swooped in and helped make them a more mainstream name.  Disney jumped in and opened them to an even larger market.  They had gold and platinum records in no time, and all because the commercial market, shot them into stardom.  As their following continued to grow, the commercial industry was done with them and already moving on to new musical talents, like Linkin Park.  The cycle was complete in this "trend" and it was time to move on.

This video was very interesting, in that it shows us that nothing we do is without someone else's judgement -be it acceptance or ridicule.  We are here for the industry to use as muses and for us to live in the life and death of trends.  Without us, trends have no future; and without trends we have no place in this consumer industry.

Obey Advertising

The film on Shepard Fairey was amazing.  The most influential part of his story, in my opinion, was why he changed the Andre the Giant sticker to Obey.  The fact that advertising is meant to 'persuade' us into thinking that we want what they are selling is exactly advertiser's M.O.  Fairey takes the blinders off (or puts the glasses on like in the movie "They Live"), and expresses the simplicity of advertising with this piece of artwork.  Almost every aspect of life nowadays is filled with nothing but cluttered messages and advertising to consume, obey, follow, and "stay asleep"; and Fairey exposes the reality so simplistically.   His concept of taking one simple word and one simple picture and combining them into a powerful message that tells you the truth is amazing.  I see his artwork as a breakthrough for graffiti artists and expressionists.  His stories about coming up as an artist and just trying to show his views on politics, religion, government, and life are inspiring.  I see him as a leader for those artist that don't fit into a mold of 'contemporary', 'modern', or  'pop'.  He has opened the door for artists, and the eyes of the public.  

Fairey creates a bridge between expressionism and pop art through Phenomenology.  He describes Phenomenology as "an attempt to enable people to see clearly something that is right before their eyes but obscured; things that are so taken for granted that they are muted by abstract observation."  His artwork portrays this idea perfectly and enlightens his viewers.  I think Fairey will continue opening doors and leading art in a Phenomenological direction.

Fairy, Shepard. About "Manifesto." 1990. 25 October 2010. <http://obeygiant.com/contact>

Comic of our Lives

    

     Comics began as scribes of out time, and have transformed into a culture all its own.  As design began to flourish in books, so came the book of illustrations.  Cartoon characters became the story and soon the story was told with only pictures.  In the 1938 the first superhero comic was introduced, and it was Superman.  This comic book was created toward young kids that needed something to read that was more on their level.  As children began reading, more and more of a demand for comics came about.  With this need for more comics, came the comic book era.  

     

     Comic books were everywhere and designed for everyone.  But as the comics took over the publication scene, concerns about the issues and topics began to rise.  The government stepped in and set rules and regulations for comics, banning any that were too vulgar or did not depict a happy home life.  These 'guidelines' created many problems with the artists and eventually forced them to go underground.  The artists that remained in the comic scene created love comics and stories about superficial lives.  The artists that went underground kept to the idea of comics and wrote creatively.

    Comic art has gone from humorous, to realistic, to home decor.  The illustrations of many of the comic book characters of the 1970s portrayed such realistic emotions, that people have since requested them as art for their own homes and galleries.  Comic art is continually changing and yet some of the 'classics' are still in circulation.