Kiana Lopez - Blog 1
One of the photos that I enjoyed the most from pages 7-36 in Graphic Design: A Concise History by Richard Hollis, is located on page 22 and is a print of Jan Tschichold’s print in color, Basle 1938. I am someone who is drawn to anything with color, especially when one plays with the effects of colors, just like the way Tschichold did in his print. This print is a collage of texts and an image. The main text heading uses a gradient with four different colors, which are also used throughout the rest of the collage. The other text is placed all throughout the print so it keeps the audience’s eyes moving, especially since they are in different sizes. The one image that is present appears to have a negative filter on top of the photo so it looks very much like a silhouette of a woman, rather than just a simple photo of her. Printing technique and design are important to graphic design because it is the ability to create something that can be clean, professional and simple while being meaningful.
According to Article Critic for The New Yorker, 1979 was the year when Massimo Vignelli’s New York subway map was printed, thus being easier to navigate. I have always admired this map because of its way of being so minimal yet so maximal. One can tell that Vignelli thought this piece of artwork out thoroughly and fixed any issues that might have made the graphic appear even the tiniest bit confusing. It is amazing how his creation was created almost 40 years ago and is still used today. Vignelli’s use of colors and lines are the base of this graphic because it is what moves the viewer’s eyes throughout the page. Along with this, a unique and clean typeface was used to label each stop and the city which made the poster very legible.
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Another poster that resonates with me is the “We Can Do It!” World War II wartime poster created by J. Howard Miller in 1943. Not only do the colors of this photo make the print, but so does the woman that is presented in it. Rosie the Riveter is a cultural icon that is in this poster and she represents the women who worked in factories and shipyards during World War II and their strength, motivation, and womanhood. Most of these women started entirely new jobs to replace the male workers who joined the military. I enjoy seeing this mix of colors because they are the three primary colors, red, yellow and blue. Red normally represents love or anger, yellow represents optimism and joy and then, blue represents stability and intelligence.
I also did some research on the use of the transit map, and I also find it very interesting how over time the maps have barely changed at all. The basic uses of lines, color, direction, and dots for location stops are used all over the world and have been used for quite some time. However, I wonder if there are any simpler ways to make a map even easier to read for those who may have never used the subway before, or don't know the area, because like you stated, they can be sometimes hard to understand.
ReplyDeleteI, too, was really drawn to the first image you discuss, the print by Jan Tschichold. What was fascinating to me was the contemporary look that this colored print had. For being created nearly a century ago, it shows that certain tendencies are staples in design. That print, to me, looks like a student from DePaul could have created it for a course just yesterday. Maybe Tschichold was way beyond the times, or maybe there is an intentional stagnation in the creativity of design, because if something works, why fix it?
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