blog 5

Paul Rand was an American graphic designer who is said to be possibly one of the most influential of his time. He was one of the founders of Swiss Style design, which emphasized cleanliness and readability. He grew up as an Orthodox Jew originally named Peretz Rosenbaum. Although he later changed his name to move away from his heritage and used the name as a symbol for himself. He worked early on creating stock images for a syndicate. Later he taught at Yale University.

He is most famous for his branding logos for some of the most prominent corporations for even today.  What is told of most of his branding designs was his ability to meet the needs and desires of the companies’ goals through his logos. On his bibliography on http://www.paul-rand.com Mark Favermann states about his IBM branding identity “was not just an identity but a basic design philosophy that permeated corporate consciousness and public awareness.”

Much of his philosophy of design was based around idea of keeping with “utmost simplicity and restraint”.  Along with this Rand based much of his branding identities with the idea of keeping the brand recognizable even after the image had been “blurred or mutilated”. Much of his own influence though had been from other artists/designers from the same time such as Jan Tschichold and Paul Cezanne. Which most of Rand’s works had similar qualities such as Tschicholds legible yet wildly interesting typography. Obviously much of his work is based on modernist ideas which he saw as “it means integrity; it means honesty; … it means simplicity; it means clarity.” These ideas carry over in the sense in which his work consisted of a simple shape and typography such a great example of which is the abc logo which incorporates a simple circle, with nice typographic abc overlaid in white above it. Much of this came from his need to “defamiliarizing the ordinary”.

Later when he began producing books about his design theory he drew from John Dewey (an American philosopher who helped found functional psychology) whose philosophy for “functional-aesthetic perfection” obviously drew from modernist ideals.

            

Blog #5 : Saul Bass

"Design is thinking made visual."-Saul Bass

Saul Bass is a huge part of design, he’s always one designer I like to look at when I have no idea’s, I choose this designer because I find no matter how much I already know about him, I always am learning more every time I study him.

One of the most influential places he has affected would be motion title sequence, his sequences have spurred a line of titles that are still being used today. Works from such movies as Catch me if you can (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaLDyrun_Cc) Duplicate Saul Bass style opening credits.

The idea Saul Bass lived by was “symbolize and summarize” since he used very simple graphics, he chose not to clutter the stage with things that didn’t matter. Instead focusing on drawing the users attention by using pictures that people would associate with certain elements that conveyed the story quickly, such as The Man with the Golden Arm (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGnpJ_KdqZE) where he draws the focus of the viewers to the crooked arm to convey the drug addict’s arm who the movie is focused on.

Along with the motion titles and movie posters he was also well known for graphic design long before these, designing such famous logo’s as AT&T, United Airlines and Girls scouts of USA (http://cineleet.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/bass-logos.jpg).

After all of this he also is said to have helped Alfred Hitchcock with the famous shower scene in Psycho, though there are some that dispute this claim, I think there’s no doubt there is a touch of Saul Bass in this scene when we are catapulted through the drain of the shower in the movie, just like his vertigo poster, the same type of imagery is used in my opinion. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JH5r_Kenaes)

Content, The next big thing

We are interdependent, from our city block and parks to the world wide web in a Facebook group, our actions affect the community at large. With the emergence of new media and our dependence on the screen in mainly graphical user interface systems we are spending more time in front of a single sensory medium. We are limited in digital design in the most part by the screen and its low resolution. The lack of interactivity is a major detractor to emerging technologies there is no texture, smell and most of us aren’t expecting sound, so basically this interacyive platform is a glorified piece of moving paper. You see nice beautiful pictures of the desert or the rainforest without the experience of having sand everywhere, taking a bite of a sandwich and getting a mouth full of sand, or being in the rainforest drenched freezing from a typhoon rainstorm that last for months. The screen environment takes the world boxes it up, throws a cup of bleach on it and makes the world seem sterile. The increasingly global community has the ability to open the flood gates and access to things we could never dream of, but somehow make the world fit into 2 square feet of pixels. the PC needs to be an ancillary tool to the greater word of design rather than the entire focus.

New media has boundless potential, the ability to create anything digital or motion graphic related from your laptop in the comfort of your own bed or on a bench in a third world country, access to creation has never been more instantaneous and available to the creative mind. The access and immersive ability provided is the direction of the future. Instead of having to shoot a film and travel around the world and edit in a world that has none of the qualities experienced during production, you can hunker down and do your postproduction on location. New media is enabling a Swiss army approach to design, the designers who stretch the limits of the possibilities, will possess the qualities necessary to apply design to all fields of study enabling a proactive approach to the worlds needs.

I think designers should be outgoing people and work with the community at large. I think it is essential to good design to be immersed in your community and interact with everyone, service workers, business leaders, locals visitors and children. It is one thing to have the technical expertise but it is another to know how the same expertise aid in your community. I think working with materials will also help immensely the feel of clay or a paintbrush ingrain the theories much better than clicking a mouse. I think getting back to the basics of mastery and mastering your craft is the key to bringing design to new heights. The technology is now here with dual core processors and software that we only scratch the surface of its potential, to create anything we can dream of.

The future is now, the next big thing in according to Rudy Vanderlans is content, the ability to convey the most applicable content and have it absorbable. I believe this is half the battle, this needs to happen with an increasingly educated population we need to focus on our future and allow people the skills to interpolate the content being thrown at us and have the ability make an educated decision. I agree whole heartedly with Vanderlans, we need to get back to our roots, become, a society that strives on quality content something that is positive and community educating. Content is not how many people were shot, content is how many people are making a positive influence in their community. I think the key to this essay is where he says “ this combined knowledge must be able to generate a visual language capable of being both legible and engaging”. The audience needs to be able to read, absorb and act on content to retain the message.