DemelzaB, Author at Demelza Design

Critical Thinking

24 October 202124 October 2021 DemelzaB Leave a comment

We began this week’s lecture, by reading the beginning of the book Ways of Seeing by John Berger. I have read the book earlier in the week but found it far more helpful to read it as a group. Our lecturer Luisa pushed us to find the meaning in each sentence. This was not an easy task as there was a lot of information squashed into the first few pages. Luisa drew our attention to the fact that the text of the first chapter begins on the front cover. I have never seen this in a book design.

back and front cover of *Ways of Seeing*

I made notes throughout the process of analysing the book:

I went away and watched the rest of the series on YouTube.com. (parts 1,2 &3)

Each episode expresses a different point.

Episode 1

In the series- questioning the tradition of European painting (1400-1900) not focusing on the paintings themselves but the way we see them.
A large part of seeing depends upon habit and convention.
All the paintings of the tradition used the convention of perspective, which is unique to European art. Perspective centres everything on the eye of the beholder. Appearances travel into the eye. Perspective makes the eye the centre of the visible world, but the human eye can only be in one place at a time, it takes its visible world with it as it walks.
The invention of the camera has changed not only what we see, but how we see it. The painting on the wall, like the human eye, can only be in one place at one time. The camera reproduces it, making it available in any size and anywhere, for any purpose.
Venus and mars used to be a unique image, which it was only possible to see in the room where it was actually hanging. Now its image, or a detail of it can be seen in a million different places at the same time. As you look at the images now, your wallpaper is around them, your window is opposite them, your carpet is below them. At this same moment, they are on many screens, surrounded by different colours, different objects and different sounds. You are seeing them in the context of your own life. They are surrounded not by gilt frames, but by the familiarity of the room you are in and the people around you.
The paintings are part of the history of the building it is in. for example, the church or chapel.
Now the images come to you, you do not go to them. It is the image of the painting which travels now.
The faces of paintings become messages. Pieces of information to be used, even used to persuade us to help purchase more originals, which these very reproductions have in many ways replaced.
A reproduction does not have the same feeling of authenticity as the original artwork
The pages of a book and a screen is never still. The lines are slightly moving. With a genuine original painting, there is a moment of stillness you have with the painting in a museum that cannot be replicated.
Words you notice consciously. Music is subtler. It can work almost without you noticing it. However, music changes the meaning of a painting when it is played over the top. Words around it and music played over it changes the meaning of a painting.
When paintings are reproduced, they have to hold their own against all the other information jostling around them to appear on the same page or the same screen.
The meaning of an image can be changed according to what you see beside it or what comes after it.
When you turn from one channel to another on television, this affects the next image you see on your screen. It alters the impact of an image in different ways.
It means: reproductions of works of art can be used by anybody for their own purposes.
Images can be used like words, we can talk with them. Reproduction should make it easier to connect our experience of art directly with other experiences.
Reproductions make the paintings easily accessible, however the context they appear in can oppose this. The example Berger gives is the old paintings reproduced in an art book. The language used in the book, which surrounds the image, can inhibit the accessibility. Because of the use of difficult language. (mystification)
Children connect images directly with their own experience.
On television programmes, we receive images and meanings which have been arranged. Be skeptical of what a programme arranges for us to see.

Episode 2

‘Men dream of women, women dream of themselves being dreamt of.’ There is a focus on what women look like. They are looked at by men. How they look or how they should look. Behind every glance is a judgement. A woman is always accompanied by an image of herself
The video switches between footage of working women in a lab, models, classical paintings of women and old and young women, plain and glamourous women.
‘From earliest childhood she is taught and persuaded to survey herself continually. She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others and particularly how she appears to men is of crucial importance for it is normally thought of as the success of her life.’
In the average European oil painting, there were portraits of women as well as men but in one category, they were an ever occurring subject. That category was the nude. In the nudes of European painting, we can discover some of the criteria and conventions of which women were judged. We can see how women were seen.
What is a nude?
Different views on what a nude is: 1) to be without clothes- a form of art 2)to be naked is to be one’s self. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for one’s self. A nude has to be seen as an object in order to be a nude.
In the bible- Adam and Eve. The woman is blamed and punished by being made subservient to the man. In relation to the woman, the man becomes the agent of God. Moment of shame. It is the spectator’s looking which shames them (covering up with a leaf or hand)
The nude implies an awareness of being seen by the spectator.
Men looking at naked women and judging them is a theme in European art. They even call the women Vanity, thus repeating the story of Adam and Eve where the woman is blamed/shamed.
‘We are not discounting the role seeing plays in sexuality but there is a different between being seen as one’s self naked or seeing another in that way, and a body being put on display. To be naked is to be without disguise. To be on display is to have the surface of one’s own skin, the hairs of ones own body, turned into a disguise, a disguise which cannot be discarded.’
It is possible to tell when the artist has actually seen the woman he has painted. There are not many examples if this in European art.
Most of the nudes in oil paintings have been lined up and painted for the pleasure of the male spectator owner who will assess and judge them as sights. Their nudity is another form of dress . they are condemned to never being naked.
‘The painting is made to appeal to the sexuality of the male spectator, it has nothing to do with her sexuality. The convention of not painting the hair on a woman’s body helps towards the same end. Hair is associated with sexual power and passion. The women’s sexual passion needs to be minimized so that the spectator may feel he has the monopoly of such passion. The expressions on the women’s faces are responding with calculated charm to the man who she knows is looking at her although she doesn’t know him. The woman’s attention is directed at the spectator owner of the painting. Women are seldom shown dancing, they have to be shown languid, exhibiting a minimum energy. They are there to feed an appetite, not to have any of their own.’
Absurdity! The only images we were seeing of women were them silent, mute.
How men see women, or how they saw them in the past and how this influences how women see themselves today.

Berger asks women from the general public their thoughts about these paintings:

‘Paintings idealized and therefore unreal in any connection I might have of an image of myself. They don’t mean human beings to me.’

‘I compare myself to photographs more than paintings.’

‘Manet painting- the women aware of being humiliated.’

‘Women are always dressing as a part, to show the kind of character they want to be.’

‘Concept of availability = passivity. Opposite of action.’

‘Women’s sense of identity is based on what others think of them. But a man’s identity is based on his interaction with the world.’

Episode 3

The beginning of the video shows footage of apples and fish at a market are interspersed with fish and apples in oil paintings. Playing over the top of the video is the sound from a modern day marketplace. Berger shows us people buying from the market. The exchange of money for these fresh products.
‘We buy, we consume, ours to give away, or more often, to keep.’
The focus of the footage is not on the people’s faces or their identity, but on the act of handling goods, valuing them and buying them. Jewellery. Buying valuable objects.
The most valuable object of all has become the oil painting. Oil paintings depict things. Buying the painting is almost like buying the object within the painting. Paintings often show treasures, but paintings have become treasures themselves
A love of art= a sublime human experience
What are these paintings? They are objects which can be bought and owned. Unique objects. A patron cannot be surrounded by music or poems as he can by pictures. They show him sights and many subjects. The only thing the paintings have in common : oil paints.
The scenes that are depicted show wealth. Implicit in the wealth of European cultures, was the destruction of other cultures. But the Europeans believed their civilization was more advanced than any other.
Paintings have symbolised wealth and power for centuries in different cultures, but they showed an order , European paintings showed a different kind of wealth. Their paintings glorified the ability to buy and furnish and to own.
The paintings show the owner’s social status. Exaggerated claims. It is their clothes, not faces that dazzle. Oil paint allowed the subjects to be painted and look tangible. Privileged minority. Making a record of themselves.
A painting gave the owner the pleasure of seeing themselves as the owner of their land.
‘The sight of it, makes us want to possess it.’ Publicity has taken the place of oil paintings in this way. (paintings were a place to show off our possessions)

Hella Jongerius

In class, we were shown 2 images and ask to write 100 words on each. I felt there was a connection between the 2 images, but did not guess that they were made by the same designer, Hella Jongerius. For the first image, I decided to write a creative response to the image. Luisa has told us that writing creatively and telling a story is part of a graphic designer’s skills. This piece was called Red Flower. When I first saw the image, I did not notice the plate until my classmate pointed it out. Then I saw the plate and the table as a setting for the artwork. I could not see how the stitches were attached to the plate. Only now, can I see the holes made in the plate to thread the thread through. (I could have got closer to the screen in the classroom and I may have been able to see the holes in the ceramic plate.)

My response to the image:

For the second image, we were asked to write about how it compares to the first. This image is called Stacked vase sculpture:

Hella Jongerius | Stacked vases sculpture (2009) | Artsy

It was really interesting to hear my classmate’s views on the same images. I agreed with their points.

I quickly searched the designer and mainly looked at her other artworks. This helped me gain an understanding of the pieces we were shown and how they link.

Jongeriuslab design studio

At the end of the lecture, Luisa introduced us to the next brief, which is the presentation based on our chosen object. She explained that InDesign is a good programme to use for making presentation slides. I have only ever used Microsoft powerpoint, so this will be a new task for me. It was good to have an idea of what our aim is for the trip on Monday. This will help me to prepare, for example, I can take a sheet of questions written down to act as pointers to guide me. Going to London might be busy and hectic, so having these questions or bullet points can help me stay focused.

Looking at The Design Museum website helped us to get an idea of what to expect on our visit.

DESIGN MUSEUM POINTERS

Relationship between form and function

How it looks, what it is, your photos and other’s photos

Use rich vocab: composition, layout, asymmetry, symmetry, organic, ephemeral, geometric, texture, luster, tactile quality

Function- ergonomics, sometimes obvious, sometimes not, user friendly, does it communicate a message, is it entertaining? How does it do it?

Context- history of the designer- where in the world? From a movement? When was it made?

Was it successful for its purpose? Bear in mind when it was made. Did it discriminate people? Appropriate for design needs? Problematic? It may be successful in 1 aspect but problematic in another aspect.

Emotional needs- functional but boring, emotionally dry, entertaining, environmental needs- 80s object may be disposable, toxic plastics, no thought for environmental problem.

Gut reaction – what is your initial mood about the object?

The presentation runs for 5 minutes. You will need to make it interesting and tell a story about your object, could be the story of you encountering the object. Take photos of the building.

Form & Space

23 October 202123 October 2021 DemelzaB Leave a comment

Geometric graphic design

From the brief ‘Form & Space’:

‘Composition refers to the visual structure and organisation of elements within a design. Designers organise images and text – each with their own shapes, sizes, colours and textures. Through the control and placement of simple geometric forms this workshop explores the dynamics of composition: the relationship between positive and negative space, variations in scale and the space between the shapes – the basics in visual language, a designer’s ‘design vocabulary’.’

Paul Rand

Exploring form & space, I looked at the designer Paul Rand. I looked at the book Paul Rand: A Designer’s Art (1985). I was surprised at the modern look of his designs, since the book spanned his career from the 1940’s to the publication of the book.

Rand was known for his typography and designs for advertising. Influenced by Modern art, particularly the Bauhaus movement. He was one of the world’s leading graphic designers. He learnt design by looking at the work of others such as Cassandre. His poster designs have been called timeless. He approached ad design in a radically different way that had not been done before: Ads used to be very text heavy, and if they did include images, they all looked very cluttered. Rand minimized the text to only what was necessary to breathe space into the design. He saw image and text as a continuum to be used together. Graphics and type act as one unit to convey the message of the ad and inject some art and beauty into the design. He and his wife published children’s books and he was also an accomplished painter, painting the book covers.

Information sourced from: Celebrating The Life Of The Greatest Graphic Designer-Paul Rand – YouTube

For this announcement card, Rand has used symmetry and order by the even-sized circles he has placed across the page. This simple design is eye-catching while also portraying a sense of order and efficiency. Since the card was probably small, the design is suitable with its lack of detail. A detailed design would be difficult to see on a small scale.

This is a magazine advertisement from 1961. The page is informing the viewer about a traffic light system being set up using the new technology of the time. The black background allows the colours at the centre to stand out in comparison. This is the effect actual traffic lights have on a dark night. The central placement of the column of circles makes the composition symmetrical and therefore balanced.

For this newspaper advertisement, Rand has taken apart the logo for Westinghouse Electric Corporation, and scattered the pieces in the upper right corner of the page. The scattered pieces follow no pattern and they appear chaotic. If the logo was familiar to you, you would be piecing it together in your mind. In this way, the viewer would be engaging with the design.

In this poster, Rand again uses chaos within the design. This time he is placing identical pieces of bread at different rotations across the poster. This has created a sense of movement throughout.

For this magazine cover, the letters have been scattered and cut up. Because the alphabet is placed in order, we are able to see which letters are missing. This is a way of engaging the viewer into the design, almost like showing the viewer a puzzle. The background is quite noisy and helps the white ground behind the letters to show clearly.

Magazine cover for Direction in 1941

Here, Rand uses visual noise to distort what we are seeing. It is not possible for me to see what the image is of. This confusion makes the clear ‘v’ stand out even more clearly. There is a shape below the ‘v’, that looks like a distorted ‘v’. it emphasizes the ‘v’ above it, creating repetition. I like the areas of negative space and the clean rectangle shape that appears to be cut from the design.

Number design

23 October 202123 October 2021 DemelzaB Leave a comment

This week, I am re-visiting the ‘Number’ brief. Since I struggled with this task last week, I decided to give it another go and try to understand Adobe Illustrator a bit better, as well as how I could go about designing numbers.

Figure and ground

‘Look at the Rubin vase (example 1) where the figure– ground relationship relies upon a visual confusion so that the eye sees either faces or a vase.’

In this image, we can view the white area as negative space, therefore seeing the 2 faces. Or we can choose to read the image as a white vase, where the black area becomes the negative space. The figure is the object in a given space, and the ground is the background space around the object.

Numbers are everywhere in the world around us and they are instantly recognisable to us. Since they are so easily recognised, we can playfully customise them away from a basic number form, and they will still be readable- we have a lot of room to experiment. This is what we did in the Number workshop.

Number Designs

I looked at the way designers have approached numbers. These designs are suitable for use in posters, as the numbers have eye catching styles, shape and composition. They are functional, as they can convey information, and also are interesting designs.

From The graphic design idea book by Steven Heller & Gail Anderson:

Non-Format

Non-Format are a pair of designers who are known for bespoke typography and interesting image making.

The designers were asked to create their version of the number 25. The colours they were given for this task were red and grey. I like the way they have played with the rotation, it reminds me of the staircase images by MC Escher. I like the 3D effect because the number looks tactile and I can envision it as an object in the room.

Image from: non-format.com/slanted-25

I also came across this design by Non-Format, which is styled quite differently to the 3D number. This figure is two-dimensional, but this does not make it flat looking. It looks as though they’ve designed this number using a grid. They have sometimes chosen to group the squares of the grid together and in other places, it’s easier to see the individual squares of the grid. The Zigzag lines that form the edge of the 2, add a sense of movement, it is as if we can see the shape vibrating. They have used smaller chequered patterns within a single grid square, they have used stripes, circles, triangles and dots. The figure itself is cohesive as one piece, because all the smaller elements within the 2, such as the different patterns and different colours, are presented in similar sizes to each other.

Leonardo Sonnoli

This looks to be a poster design, using the numbers three and two. I like the boldness and simplicity. The thin lines are important, as they balance out the boldness and add a sense of delicacy. The designs are quite elegant, and I would expect this to be a poster for an art event or for a sophisticated audience. I associate these numbers with the Art Deco style. The numbers themselves are black and white but the colour comes from the background. The number 2 is not joined up in a way we would expect, but instead it’s our eyes that join the top and bottom half to form one object because we are familiar with the figure of the two.

This poster does not contain numbers, but it interested me when I was thinking about number design. I like the overlapping of colours, particularly in the top third of the image where it looks as though the colours are mixing in layers before our eyes. Because these figures are chunky, and they are placed so closely together, my eyes naturally wanted to read the negative space as part of the design.

Dan Chamberlain

I was immediately drawn to the refreshing colour palette. This design looks fun and energetic. The two links that make up the eight do not need to be connected for us to read the pattern as an eight. This is helped by the fact that the figure of eight appears next to a seven. (Our mind makes the association that we are looking at numbers.) I like the outline of the 7 and I was inspired by the fact that I do not need to fill the figure with a colour.

Here I liked the use of half tones with negative shapes. It is interesting to see where they intersect at the centre stop. Using yellow and blue was a good choice because it helps the outline to stand out.

I was drawn to the boldness of this figure of 5. I like the way that certain areas are cutaway around the outside of the shape. It makes it look imperfect and accidental. This helps to include some negative space in what would otherwise be a bulky shape. The bottom half of the 5, to me resembles the bottom of the J. There may be some significance in this or not. Where the colours intersect at the centre, there is the murky dark colour. This shows that the blue and orange are transparent, and resembles the effects created by screen printing for example.

Because of this transparency, the 5 appears airy and light if it was to be physically lifted. It makes me think of jelly, this makes it a fun design to look at. I like the way the angles are not visible, but we can still see the shape is 3D because of the angle the designer has drawn it at. The use of orange and blue is very strong and works well because they are opposite to each other on the colour wheel.

From The graphic design idea book by Steven Heller & Gail Anderson:

Studio Myerscough

from the book: *The Fundamentals of Typography (3rd edition)* by Gavin Ambrose, Paul Harris and Sallyanne Theodosiou

This number 3 has been applied to the side of a building, it may have been painted on. I like the disjointed quality of the figure. It helps to break up the chunky parts of the design. She has used curved and angled shapes and the results is bold yet stylish. I like how the end of the three looks like a quotation mark or, or a backwards comma. This might suggest a relationship to a literary theme.

Adolphe Mouron Cassandre

AGI Open London 26—27.09.13 (tum blr.com)

This is a typeface for numbers and letters from 1929 (the Art Deco period). I like the combination of block shapes and half tones to make up each figure. Each number is unique and yet clearly belongs to the same family of numbers. The half tone, or stripy areas sometimes stand in for positive space, sometimes stand in for negative space, and other times are connecting and representing both.

My designs- using Adobe Illustrator

After experimenting with the numbers 2 and 5, I moved on to see what potential there was in a 4. I pushed myself to learn new skills on Illustrator and to practice the skills I have recently learnt.

From my second time on Illustrator, I learnt a few basic principles:

The white arrow is the Direct Selection Tool. It can be used to round the corners of a rectangle and to stretch the rectangle.
Add Anchor points just adds anchor points.
Anchor Point tool just moves anchor points that are already there.
The Pen Tool draws lines.
Shift+command+[] to move an object in front or behind

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