Make up for week one blog post

My take away from this reading was the stylization and distortion of typefaces that started to emerge in Vienna during this time. The door to the die Zeit telegram offices is a great example of these somewhat experimental types in practical use at the time and does a great job at showcasing just how a change-up in type can really transform a layout to something spectacular.
  I myself am a huge fan of experimental typefaces. and find myself looking for examples of new and unique fonts online. Some of the typefaces showcased in the book reminded me of a font I've seen a lot recently called 'digestive'. This highly stylized font definitely prioritizes aesthetics and an artistic message over conventional legibility. 
This prioritization of typeface as art instead of something that should be legible is maybe best pushed to its extreme in the case of black metal band logos. Here letterforms are abstracted to a point of near illegibility. they serve to be signifiers of the bands past just conventional lettered band names, you really have to be in the know to understand who and what you're engaging with.  
 

Comments

  1. Viv LopezJanuary 22, 2020 at 2:05 PM

    I think that your comment about having to know about what you're viewing in order to understand it was really interesting. I'm not too much of a fan of illegible typefaces, but I am intrigued about how typefaces can be linked to one thing. Like your example of black metal band logos, I thought of the Disney logo. It has a specific typeface that we can distinctly understand as 'the Disney typeface.' It's interesting that we can equate one typeface to a single brand. In both our cases you have to "be in the know" to understand what you're looking at. Otherwise a black metal band logo looks like scribbles and the Disney logo looks like a made-up word.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dani CummingsJanuary 22, 2020 at 3:45 PM

    I love your examples of these stylized typefaces. I think your comment on time and place of experimental fonts is important. who the font is communicating to I think sets the tone with how crazy the font can get, like for your example bands. If the fans will recognize the imagery of a distorted font on an album cover than perhaps it is appropriate versus a poster promoting that band.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dolores WilberJanuary 26, 2020 at 6:34 AM

    Terrific observations and descriptions.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blog Post 1 (Matthew Donald)

Image
One of the pieces that really caught my eye during the reading was Alphonse Mucha's Job  cigarette papers advertisement. There was something very intriguing about the way he created a background texture using an element from the foreground. "JOB" is written in big letters at the very top of the poster and its accented by "job" written in little letters evenly throughout the background. I think it does a good job at creating an interesting composition while maintaining the central focus around the brand. The big "JOB" flows on top of a large ring where a woman sits. I think the overall shape of the illustration was executed very well because of its emphasis on curves. The curves of the hair and the woman are all reinforced by the circle in the center of the page. Mucha, A. (1898). "Job" poster for cigarette papers. Retrieved from  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JOB_(rolling_papers)  on January 1st, 2020. In this piece of typography created ...
Read more

Post 3 - Sam Weible

Image
From the experimentation and norm-breaking designs of the avant garde movement came some of my favorite European designs predating 1940s. From this period, I particularly love the posters advertising the London Underground. I first saw some of these posters at the Art Institute over the summer and was immediately intrigued by their design, how they managed somehow be both artistically beautiful and utilitarian. The elements of each poster followed suit, text and imagery being generally separate from one another on the page yet communicating a since of uniformity. While that was the case for most of the poster I got to see, it wasn't for every Underground poster. There are actually a great variance of design and style between these mass-produced posters. This poster, "Power", from the textbook, for example, hardly has any visual unity. What it's trying to communicate is unclear and the visual ties the artist tries to make between each element isn't as unifying as...
Read more

2/5 in class reflection

I liked learning a bit of back story on Bert Stern. I like learning a more in depth about a designers history. Its interesting to see where these designers are coming from however, I know that the time frame of this class doesn't really allow for too much of that. I didn't really like watching the ted talk at the beginning because, while the message is good, this is the fourth class I have had to watch that talk in.
Read more