The art of Hand Lettering. It’s the art of crafting unique and creative letters by hand, instead of using a font on a computer. It has always been intrigued by this type of talent and skill. To make each letter unique in its own form but look collectively uniform to other letters on the word, sentence, or quote. One artist that I particularly am impressed with and like their style is Tom Lane (Ginger Monkey). Lane is an independent graphic designer, lettering artist, and an illustrator. His clients includes Coco-Cola, Nike Air Jordan, Bloomsbury, Sony Ericson, BMW, Mercedes Benz, and Heston Blumenthal. The aspect of his design that I mostly respond to, is the curve and the flow of each letter into the next. Some of his images that I resond to the most are posted under this paragraph.

http://inspirationfeed.com/inspiration/typography-inspiration/meet-10-hand-lettering-artists-you-should-know/

Postmodernism is the return of expressionist. The era of psychedelic posters, magazines, and album design. postmodernism borrowed from past movements without adopting the ideology or principles of any given historical movement. It also focused on the concept of deconstructing. This is the process of breaking down forms and revitalization print media.

Psychedelic posters, were influenced by non-other than psychedelic drugs, particularly LSD which played a monumental role on the artist attitude. By using LSD it effects the artist brain, causing  hallucinations that resulted in a dream-like trip. ” Believed to lead to more enlightened thinking and an expanded consciousness.”

In my opinion one of the most important part of the psychedelic movement is the use of color. While looking at these images the first thing  I notice the use of bright and overbearing use of color. They use these colors as an affect to grab our attention.

The characteristics that defined International Style/ Swiss Design favored simplicity, legibility, and objectivity. I believe this style became so popular at this time because of the movements before. Most styles before this also focused on simplicity seeing the simplest form of an object, which they later infused into typography. Based on the influence and the typography used before this, I do believe that this new and structured style was inevitable. I believe that each style or movement is developed much by the influence of the movement before it. The posters that represent the style of this movements are structuralized, balanced, and what some people would say “clean”. There is a point to everything on the poster, and these posters are used to tell information so it is recognizable legible.

The thing that amazes me is not entire the International Style is not the style itself. What is interesting to me is the influence it has on the designs that follow. It is so structured that the next style rejects the belief of simplicity, objectivity and most importantly legibility. Underneath are some pictures that reflect the International Style/ Swiss Design. And also some picture of what these images influenced later on.

There are many things that factor into the Second World War that was affected because of the Nazi’s use of propaganda. To get an entire population to believe that just because people are different, they are not considered equal or that their lives don’t matter or mean as much. They used propaganda to influence people’s minds, to get people to think how they want to persuade them into thinking treating people like this is okay. That it’s not wrong or inhuman, that they are justified in what they are doing to all these men, women, and children.
I believe as evil and cruel as these times where they did affectively use propaganda. They Nazi’s knew that even though most of the information they were giving was not true they believed that people would think this was honest and true facts. The Nazi’s did not have a problem giving out untrue statement to get people to believe in their cause, and why they were correct in treating people like they were less.
Although the Nazi’s and Hitler obviously lost the Second World War, I believe their strategy on using propaganda was successful. This can be explained on how many people joined the Nazi part and also how many people were imprisoned, starved, tortured, and killed.

The Bauhaus style included characteristics such as a setting talked about social issues. Their style also became one of the most influential currents in modernist architecture and modern design. Their subject covered theory of color and vision and psychology of form. I believe their movement has a major influence on how we are educated on design today. Formed a school that combined craft and fine arts, their famous approach is what made them different in which they publicized and taught. I can not even image what this would be like now in todays time. These students were taught by the best of the best in their fields. I feel as if this would be one of the hardest schools to get into if this existed in todays time.
The Bauhaus movement profoundly influenced todays architecture, graphic design, interior design, industrial design, and typography.

This week one of the movements we focused on was Russian Constructivism. Artist used the philosophy of rejecting the idea of “art for art’s sake” to affect social change. Artist tried to create a setting where the viewer felt like an active part of the artwork. Making the viewer feel like they were not only looking at an image but as if they were apart of it.

The part of these images that amazes me the most is the fact that at this time there was no Photoshop or tool that were used to create these photomontages. They layered several images over top of each other to create a dynamic look, while developing them in different amount of time so they all have their own unique look.

In my opinion the image that represents this the best is the image of the hands. They layer the hands on top of each other and they get smaller as they go. All of these hands create one image which looks like a huge hand and a sleeve.

There were many methods of propaganda used during the time of the first world war. Some of these included belittling men, using women and children to influence them to join the war, and also the loyalty of patriotism. They also made the war look more luxurious, like an adventure which we all know is not the case in any war.

To belittle men, they used posters or advertising that represent men that did not join the war as less manly. The made them feel as if they were not equal to the men that were fighting in the war. They used women and children to influence men to join by making images with little children asking their father to join or asking them to buy another bond for them like it was a present and not money to help fund the war.

Patriotism was represented by images of men joining and signing up to help fight the war. It was part of their patriot duty to lay down their life to fight in this war. And finally they used women to advertise how exciting it would be for men to travel. They made going to war look more like a trip and not something that could get them killed.

I believe that some of these are stilled used today, and I also believe that many of them would still work. Although I do not believe they could get war to look like an adventure. But now a day there are new way for them to influence people to join the arm or air force.

In my previous post I talked a little about what some countries were creating at this time and how they were very different. The first week’s art was based from England, France, and the United States. This art work was simple in form. While the patterns were inspired by British Flora and Fauna. To me many of the patters were very crowded and looked chaotic, like there was not enough room to fit everything they wanted so the compacted it all into one little spot. In these patterns they use bold and strong colors. These countries were also strongly influenced by the Japanese. Some like the United States were influenced more than others. Another thing I realized while looking at the United states art work during this period was the influence the creation of the bike and the industrial revolution.

The second portion of the Art Nouveau era that were concentrated on were countries like Spain, Germany and Switzerland. Many of German’s images often used unique typefaces worked harmoniously with the images. Meaning the type is worked into the image and is does not just lay on top of the image or where ever there is an “empty” space. In my opinion this is the first images were the type is starting to be more thought out on the placement, size and font.

The Art Nouveau image that I chose for this week, was created by non-other than Alphonse Mucha. In this image he represents many of the characteristics based on the Czech Art Nouveau region. The first characteristic that I recognized was in the style of the women’s hair. The hair is styled as if there is a fan blowing the hair back and around the women’s face. The second characteristic I recognized was the ring of cigarette smoke that forms a halo around the women’s head. These are all characteristics that represent this type of art nouveau along with the board that is around the image.

There are many differences comparing his art work to art work created in America. The first major difference that I recognized had to do with the influence of each country. The American art work during this time were influenced greatly by the Japanese artist. Many of the art works from America also do not show any body form in their women, while the women in the Czech art work are very young and curvy. There are many differences comparing these to style even though they are form the same time period, and in my opinion that is a little crazy to me.