Seminar 2

Modern- New, improved, automatically better ( assumed )
Modernity- Urbanisation, Industrialisation, social experience
Modernism- Response to the conditions of modernity and its experience

The start of Modernism
Adolf Loos 1908 'Ornament and Crime' - rejection of ornament and extra decoration
Louis Sullivan 1896 ' The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered' - form follows function (how it looks is secondary to communication, function of graphic design)

Both of these pieces are written about architecture but they showed the starting principles of modernism.

Cheret 1884 and Toulouse 1891, not completely 'modern' but shows progression towards it.

Parole in Liberta - Layout and Type
Marinetti, Zang Tumb Tumb - Minimalistic, Type and Colour only, Onomatopoeia therefore Internationalism.
Futurists- The ultimate Modern, apocalyptic views of modernism, technology over humans.

Fortunato Depero 1927
Bolted book, held together with bolts. Truth to material and a representation of the industrial. Aesthetic Self Reflexiveness- questions what the book really is.

Apollinaire 1918
Concrete Poetry
Il Pleut
The way it is laid out represents what its about.
Il Pleut = It's Raining
Image looks like rain.

Jan Tschichold 1927
Typography 
Came up with a set of rules

• No fonts except groetesk, fit for the modern age ( striped down, sans-serif ) ( then became aksidenz groetesk and then Helvetica.
• Against Fraktur font ( used by the German Nazi Party for all its publications and propaganda) ( handwritten, historical, germanic greatness, national )
• Use of strong Grid Systems

Switzerland
post WW2
Helvetica- reference of the style in switzerland
Flush Left, Ragged Right Text
Abandoning of the hand drawn
In favour of photography ( new technology therefore modern ) 

Neue Grafik
(New Graphics)
Front Cover
Internationalism- three different languages ( most commonly used throughout the world at the time; English, French, German)
No Decoration
Aksidenz Grotesk (Helvetica)
Logical 
Form follows Function
Grid System
Name itself is functional and effective

Joseph Muller Brockman
Still experimental
Strong use of grids and aksidenz grotesk only


5 Characteristics

1. Aesthetic self reflexiveness
2. Montage
3. Paradox, Ambiguity and Uncertainty
4. Loss of the Intergrated individual subject ( alienation)
5. Optimism

Utopianism
Universal
Typeface designed by Herman Bayer 

Serif- originated from the roman empire, made by the use of the chisel
Different Weights- Brush Strokes

Whereas
Sans-serif - Machines, Technology. 

Herman Bayer said we shouldn't copy text from the past, wanted an international style,  that had no contextual background. It would also be easier for children to read and learn. It would be cheaper and reproducible.


Film Helvetica 
Extras 
Current designers who are both Modern and Post Modern.