Week 4

1919

Bauhaus established in Weimar by Walter Gropius.

Freikorps assassinates the Spartacist leaders,

Bauhaus Graphic Design Introduction

-       These designs were knowsn as “New Typography”, no preferred style of type.

-       “We use all typefaces, type sizes, geometric forms, colours etc”- Laszlo Maholy-Nagy in 1923.

-       All attempts at the Bauhaus to design new letterforms were based on strict geometry, in a functionalist attempt tp shun Renaissance designs. "FRAKTUR" and heavy calligraphic typefaces. "Neuland" was designed by Rudolf Koch in 1924 and consisted of marks made a craft tool. Koch designed Cable in 1927, at the same time as the most popular san-serif type, "Futura"

-       The Bauhaus magazine began publication in 1926; this and the fourteen Bauhaus books were important vehicles for spreading ideas about arty theory and its application to architecture and design. Kandinsky, Klee, Gropius, Mondarian, Moholy-Nagy, and van Doesburg were editors or authors of volumes in the series.

Presentations

Over weeks 5 and 6, we did our presentations, which were all very interesting.
Ashley probably spoke for 25 minutes, but it was an interesting topic.

Looking at infographics

Over week 7 and 8 we looked at some infographic books, which were very intense, and pretty much impossible to read, but it did look good nonetheless.


We split into groups to come up with an infographic, and think of ideas on how we would present it. Blake, Richard and myself got together and surveyed the class 'anonymously' on their guilty pleasures. We had written a list for them, including 'Britney Spears", 'Justin Bieber', 'Beards', 'Singing in the shower', 'love stories' and so on, and then calculated how many ticks for each. We started thinking of doing the infographic with heaps of different doors representing the different guilty pleasures, and on each door, depending on how many ticks that particular one got, it would have that amount of 'locks' on the door, and if no one had selected one of the 'guilty pleasures' on the sheet, then the door would be open, as it doesn't seem to be much of a guilty pleasure.

Typography Timeline

First 'completed' timeline without the two main typographers.

Second timeline with an attempt at the idea of using an image behind the 'clothesline of books'

This is the same as above, but wider to show more of the city/image.

This is also the same but enlarged the photo behind and move it up a bit.

After I had decided that the image wasn't working, I decided to try and draw in my own buildings and balconies to match the rest of the timeline. It still wasn't wide enough though because I had to somehow fit in the bigger books with the typographers and more information on each, on each building.

This is the final Typography Timeline, I had widened the buildings to add the 2 larger books with the information of 2 typographers, Matthew Carter and Hermann Zapf.

Week 11

Typography Infographic

At first, I had no idea what to do for the Typographic Infographic. I wanted to do something simple. I went from just wanted to do lines and curvy lines with the information, then I tried to work around whether books would work on a bookshelf, so then i combined both of the idea and made it into a type of clothes line that had books on it. Each book being a different typeface, with the name of the typeface, the designer and the year on the book. Then the idea was to have a hanging sheet of paper with a little more information on each typeface. I used soft colours on the books so it wouldnt be heaps dominant. I didn't do much of a 'key' for the infographic. I did however with the colours, if it was in the same year, I would continue with that specific colour until the year changes, but after I used a certain amount of colours I just lapped them again and used the same colours.

I got some suggestions that I should put buildings on either side to put emphasis on the 'clothes line'. I tried to find an image, but no image was large enough for my document and it took the attention away from the information and was too crowded. I then ended up just drawing in my own buildings and for the two main typographers I am doing 2 bigger books on either side of the buildings with more information on a larger 'piece of paper' coming from the book.

Presentation Photos

 Walter Crane, John Ruskin, William Morris