The comic Strips of Posy Simmonds

Posy Simmonds is a cartoonist, writer and illustrator of childrens’s books. She has a long association with the guardian which she is best known for. Posy Simmonds' Guardian newspaper strip, Literary Life, one is that shows the comic came to become something from the world of literature.
One of her other pieces of work is, Gemma Bovery, Simmonds' Simmonds's unique approach includes the usual panels and balloons, but also voluminous amounts of text on each page. The result is a graphic novel that reads like an actual novel.
The perceptive writing is as revealing as the art, concisely capturing the monotony of Gemma and Charlie's life, the shallowness of London yuppie society and the moments of happiness that are doomed from the start. She has observed in words and pictures and captured the moment that what i like about her work.

Futurist Typography

Liberated text………
In the early decades of the twentieth century, European artists, poets, and designers called for the destruction of outdated assumptions about vision and language. Numerous manifestos resulted, demanding new artistic forms. None of these manifestos was more aggressive than Filippo Tomasso Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto of 1909. This influenced Painting, sculpture, literature, architecture, theatre, and cinema.
The first image is called Zang Tumb Tumb and is a sound poem written by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti the Italian futurist. He uses creative typography in a poetic expression. I just couldn’t take my eyes of this image, I think it is the strong bold yellow behind the text and the way that the text is laid makes it look like it is moving and intrigue’s the eye to want to know what is going on. The reason that he has done this is because he wanted it to look like he is expressing sound. By placing the text in a non standard way adds movement and sound. I think it works really well.
The second image that looks like shapes and lines also made me think that he is trying to portray sound. I like the movement of lines that he has used here. It is a very experimental piece and does the same as the first image it is an expression of sound.
I could have used this method of displaying text in my final piece. The lyrics to the song could have been splashed across the page. I decided against it because I had a lot of words and I don’t think it wouldn’t have worked with my stencils. The display of data and information would have been confused.

Us and them by Paul Davis

Paul Davis an illustrator Travelled around Britain and American observing details and spoken words on both sides of the Atlantic. Davis aim was get to grips with national stereotypes on both sides. He has produced a collection of sketches which capture the nuances of appearance, tone of voice and attitude of his subjects.
The illustrations look like he has interviewed both sides of people and tried to capture as much or as little as there character as possible. From observing the illustrations it looks like he has interviewed a cross section of characters. From people who just don’t care to people who have a big opinion.
I like the way he has done two different front covers one for the uk and the other for America. The Baseball cap symbolises the Americans and the old fashioned bowler hat resembles England. Do they Americans think that we still wear these hats???
From the snippets of pages that I read neither the brits or the Americans had anything good to say about each other. Which I am quite surprised about. I think Paul chosen a much debated and interesting subject that both sides would want to read. If I was in a book shop I was certainly pick it up and read it because it would intrigued me.His illustrative style has a lot of depth when he portrays his characters. Sometimes the lines are darker if it is a darker character.

Neville Brody

Designer and art director Neville Brody has now been at the forefront of graphic design.
Brody has consistently pushed the boundaries of visual communication in all media through his experimental and challenging work, and continues to extend the visual languages.
The first image I have chosen from the Face magazine is a women which looks like she is screaming, with broken glass in front of her and small text to the top right of the page. The way this small text is positioned draws the eye to the shattered glass and creates movement. It also draws the eye to the bigger font text to the left and bottom of the page. In this image Neville shows us that photography doesn't necessarily have to be about the subject, it is more to do with how you present the subject. He has presented his subject in a shattering effect to set mood that this pop star Christina Aguilera has unstoppable power. He has also used a simple theme of colour. The red logo of “Face” stands out as does the black text.
In the second image Neville Brody has demonstrated how to position lettering around a focal point, that being the column of text and the photographic image. This draws the eye throughout the front cover and article.

Brody’s work has influenced my work through his minimalist style that creates striking pieces of work and he has a continuous colour theme and very simplified lettering forms. In my book assignment i have chosen a simplified style and minimalist look. I have limited the number of stencils that I was going to use so the book is easier to read. I also have only two colours to make the effect simple.On the back of the book I have place the song titles together with a space and a song title underneath this is so it is clear to the reader. I have only placed it this way after reading some of Brody’s work.

El lissitsky’s

Designer, typographer, artist, photographer, architect, and teacher. Lissitzky studied at Darmstadt and later taught at the Moscow Academy of Arts, collaborating with avant-garde artists and architects. He produced many prints, which were key works in the Russia's suprematist movement.
About 2 Squares is a short picture book for children, which offers a unique minimalist way of telling a story. The main character of the book is the red square which travels to earth with its revolutionary companion (the black symbol). This was very a experimental story for it’s time.
In the story he plays with the composition and space of both the lettering and shapes. He was also very careful with his choice of colours. In this image the red square has and intensity which is finely tunes the black number two type and gives contrast. I have been influenced by these methods because it has opened my eyes to the use of simple type and shapes. The choice of colour is minimal look like Brody it makes an impact.
There are two famous quotes that Lissitzky wrote that are very thought provoking. The first one is "Today we have two dimensions for the word. As a sound it is a function of time, and as a representation it is a function of space". The second, "the words on the printed page are learnt by sight, not by hearing," The first quote made me think that a word has two meanings, it function in the way we speak it and the way we present it on our page as designers. I bared this in mind when sewing my letters onto my final piece. I thought about where I was going to place my lettering how it would read and sound and the function of the space. As he said in his second quote, “words printed on a page are learnt by sight”, I positioned the lettering so when read the words would follow and it would be easy to read. Lissitzky is able to transmute words and pictures. His work expresses sharp, and energetic sounds. His treatment of the letters brings out the sound quality embodied in the words.

Edward Tufte

Edwards Tufte a university professor has taught at Yale and Preston in America, using his background in statistics, graphic design, and political science.
His two books I looked at were “The visual Display of Quantitative information” and “Envisioning Information”. When I picked up his books from the library and glazed through them I thought oh god this totally bores me to death. but after reading articles on the internet about what his books are trying to do I then picked up his books with a fresh mind. I never thought for one minute that his work would influence my work.
The book that I found most useful was “Envisioning information” here I looked at chapters Escaping flat lines, layering and separation and Narratives and Space and Time
In the chapter escaping flat lines he looks at Yumi and Ikukyo, Colour coordination images.
There work is of 36 small shirts in a rectangle position in a different multicolour’s. He talks about how there multiplied smallness enforces you to locally compare with in your eyespan, relying on your active eye to select and make contrasts on them rather than memories of images scattered over a page. The first thing I did when I looked at these images of the t-shirts was to do this comparison. I was reading it like I would a written sentence in a book. This has brought to my attention how people read images. If the images were scattered over the page then the reader would not compare them. As they are placed closely together then in a rectangle shape it gives more impact and we compare the multicolour’s on the t-shirts.
Researching Edward Tuft has influence my work the most. I never would have thought that he would have because he seems too scientific. In the chapter escaping flat lines I have understood what he has discussed and used this technique in my work. I have clutter free images and have thought about where I should put them after reading this chapter. I have also most importantly only stuck to two colours which is mostly blue and a little orange. I have put the orange at the beginning and at the end of the narrative data display. This is to attract the eyespan to read the data and information differently. The eye will cross the page from right to left because the orange stands out.
Layering and separation. In this chapter he talks about how we can confuse things and clutter things in design, which is bad design. Confusion and clutter lead to the viewer’s lack of understand. Effective layering is difficult but how designers can over come this is by subtle design. His example of what layering and separation of what works is Uboku Nishitani, techniques of calligraphy. This is of Japanese lettering horizontally positioned down the page. The black Japanese lettering is bold and takes up most of the page, the red text is a lot smaller and compact and lays spaced perfectly to the top left and bottom left of the black text.
Edwards describes this as “by creating a distinctive layer, the red commentary maintain the, seniority and crisp precision side by side with a gesture and expressive black line in this marriage of colour and information”. What he is saying here is the colour balance and separation of text has been placed well together. The black text stands out while the red smaller text complements it and gives the viewer more information.
From this chapter I got inspiration to do my Thailand text big and bold and the English text small and compact but laid neatly next to it.
Narratives and Space and time. Edward looks at how Czechoslovakia Air Transport have made a brilliant example of how to record both time and spatial experiences. They have a complex network of routes, which is brought together by flight times and number identification. The graphic front cover makes it an exceptional combination of graphic and information design. They had so much information to get across to their audience and they manage to produce a simple graphic front cover with very demonstrative data and information that is easy to follow.
Envisioning Information book has opened up my mind. I now understand the importance of data and the way in which it should be displayed. I am now looking at maps and data so differently than I have done before. The empathies on his books are to demonstrate how graphic design and information presentation affects thinking, decision-making, and emotion.

David Carson

I read that David Carson has a degree in Sociology, the same area as Ian Anderson studied from designer’s republic. I am guessing this has helped them a lot in their graphic response to brief. They understand a bit more about the audience than the rest of us.
Raygun magazine needed a new style. It’s art direction was led by David Carson designing more than 30 issues. The magazine was aimed at the youth market in music and style. It carried revolutionary content and page layout. The content and pictures were displayed in a graphical and experimental way that kept the audience interested.
One of the covers I like of Raygun is the one called hot tomatoes. It is a black and white picture of a woman bending over and a red tomato in front of her. Placing the tomato in mid air in it’s full red colour makes it disconnected from the black and white image. I thought to myself why is it there? So the front cover did what it was purpose to do. It drew me in, because I asked myself what was going on.
Raygun covered an article on Shamen that was over 3 pages. The article plays with elements of space. The first page is left nearly completely blank with a small image the face of Shamen at the top left side of the page. The next page still screams space but has a curved small column of text to one side to the left and right of the page. I like the way that he has played with the space on the page, it makes it more interesting. I have taken inspiration from David in this technique because my current project I have considered space and were to lay things.
I read in an article about him that some of his work for Raygun he wanted communicate to a narrow group of audience instead of the broader audience. The narrow group of audience he was trying to communicate with was one with a particular visual culture. I found this most interesting as some of his work I didn’t understand and found it a bit mismatched. But I am sure the narrow audience and probably the experienced designers he was aiming for understood his intentions. I also read that he likes to show the reader that he is the designer and most of his ads carry his name, sometimes bigger than the name of the brand. By doing this he is self promoting/ self advertising and this has given him the opportunity to show that he is linked with some of the major brands. He knows how to market himself and I think this is a good tip to take on board as a designer. Self promotion…. Self promotion ….

Chris Ware

I am not a lover of comic books but Chris makes it all more readable by the structure of the comic. The story line of Jimmy Corrigan the character who is pushed into an emotional territory that is unusual for a comic book. He is a lonely and emotionally-impaired 36 year old man, who has the opportunity to meet his father for the first time.

Chris ware’s structure of the comic is a sophisticated use of design. He has different structures and layout for the narrative linear and display and data information on different pages. He holds my attention with his innovative jaw-dropping use of design techniques, with crisp clean lines. When read rapidly in sequence, provide a convincing illusion of life and movement. The complex narrative techniques are intriguing and demand you pay close attention.

The first image I have chosen is set out map like with lines interconnecting to one another. This is thought provoking and I have experimented looking at this image with my own sound and vision project. My idea is to do a map and I have gained inspiration from this image because I have thought about having every image interconnecting.

The second image of the comic strip of the character Jimmy also has an inspiring sequence. I like the way he has got a large image at the beginning of the sequence to set the scene and then it follows on to different sized images. The picture of the two birds at the top right hand of the corner adds movement to the sequence as he is pulling the cord.

Edward Gorey

A is for Amy who fell down the stairs. B is for Basil assaulted by bears. C is for Clara who wasted away. D is for Desmond thrown out of a sleigh. Some people regard Gorey primarily as a writer who drew, or an artist who wrote and even a cartoonist. He has produced books set in a surreal late Victorian era of sudden death, and has had a long cult following. At first glace the books do look like they are meant to be for children but adults are the real audience here. Gorey insisted there was nothing morbid involved in his books. He said that he wrote about everyday life. He never strayed from his curious, careful and sinister nostalgia.

My favourite book is the The Gashlycrumb Tinies. It is simply illustrated and written. It consists a number of rhythms about small children who suffer various deaths. I found this book hilarious because it has a very witty with a drop-dead humour involved and should be taken light heartedly. Gorey's children have a proper Victorian look to them which makes their scenarios that much more bizarre. Looking at some of his works I will take away with me simplicity and space which he depicts in his drawings. I found the idea of the story amusing. His work does leave me with one question. Why do story books need to be for children? Rather than writing more about Edward Gorey, I feel it would be better to display and illustrate his work. This underlines the graphical impact and visualisation that his work captured.

The Title Sequences of Saul Bass

The title sequences of Saul Bass
The opening credits can be the most important moment in a film. Other than trailers and marketing campaigns, they are the first images the audience sees when the lights go down. Saul Bass was the industry's pioneer, a graphic artist in the film industry he said, "making a main-title was like making a poster—you're condensing the event into this one concept, this one metaphor…a back-story that needs to be told or a character that needs to be introduced.”
During his 40-year career he worked for some of Hollywood's greatest filmmakers, including Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Martin Scoreses & Stanley Kubrick.
I looked at the title sequence of Hitchcock’s Psycho. Hitchcock wanted the sequence to look like a major feature film. To accomplish this goal, Saul Bass created one of his most prestigious title sequences. The graphic motifs that Bass suggested were nervous, horizontal and vertical bars that expanded and contracted in mirror-image patterns. To me they suggested prison bars or crashing gates. The title sequence was haunting and suggested the something bad was going to happen in the film. The movements of the bars symbolized the psychotic schizophrenia of the main character.
My initial thoughts were that title sequences can set the mood of the film's story, to express the story in some metaphorical way. I saw the title as a way of conditioning the audience, so that when the film actually began, viewers would already have an emotional resonance with it. A title sequence should catch the whole essence of the film, and in itself be a short movie. Saul Bass does this in all of his title sequences. His title sequences show an acute attention to pace, rhythm and detail. As his is a graphic designer he has mastered the graphic compositions in movement and switched his expertise from graphic to animation.
With new technology emerging there is a need for graphic designers to be able to put their existing skills to motion graphics.

Designer Republic

The Designers Republic (TDR) is the super-club of design, storytellers, strategists and visionaries. Having created some of the most definitive and widely imitated works, for clients such as Pulp, Supergrass, Cabaret Voltaire, Gatecrasher and Warp, they have a strong hold on the world of visual communication globally.
The Designers Republic is a group of graphic designers, founded by Ian Anderson, and are based in Sheffield. It is known for its anti-establishment aesthetics. An anti-establishment view or belief is one that goes against the conventional social, political, and economic principles of a society.
TDR have exhibited globally featured in numerous books and magazines. Ian Anderson has lectured to over 50,000 people in Britain, Europe, USA and Asia. But, they have been misunderstood of why they got involved in education. Some people seem to think that it is to educate people about their work when really it is quite the opposite. Their aim is about creating dialogue or engaging in a conversation about design. The view is that a lot of their work is conceptional and quite complex. They prefer to give people the key and it’s up to them whether they open the door or not.
I took a look at an exhibition called Brain Aided Design Soyou by TDR.This collection is an interesting concept of consumerism and subsequently they opened up the People’s Bureau for Consumer Information in Tokyo. This was an extension of their influence in consumerism. The People Bureau for consumer information enables the public to buy their posters, books and exhibition catalogues. I feel it was a bit hypercritical of them. On one hand they are making a joke and highlighting the point of consumerism in their Brain Aided Design exhibition the next they are building a brand to be consumed by the public.
A interview from fused magazine -
Tell us a bit more about the exhibition, itself.“It’s called Brain Aided Design, and it’s like a mission statement for us. The main aim for the exhibition is to show the evolution of ideas behind our work. The majority of the work is either personal or commercial work we have remixed, to what we would have done if we hadn’t had to work with a client.
We happen to use graphic design as a means to communicate those ideas. Not designing for the sake of it. It’s important to us that people understand the thought process behind all that. What we’re not doing is just exhibiting record sleeves, packaging or the print ad campaigns that we’ve done. It’s the idea behind the record sleeve design that we want people to see. We’re taking things out of their original context and doing something new with the same idea and design.”Ian studied psychology and philosophy at university, so he is more interested in the communication of the idea. This really does show in his Brain Aided Design Soyou exhibition. I have taken a few samples of his work that I feel was the best in the exhibition.
My images, a lady with the McDonald’s logo behind her and “Work buy consume die”. To me they are very intriguing pieces. I think with these two pieces they are aiming for the impact on audience rather than the aesthetically pleasing graphic piece. But I do feel that I shouldn’t be as surprised as they are anti establishment.
These two images are trying to get you to think about consumerism and what effect it has on our daily lives. The “work, buy, consume die” image made me think well yes we all do that and it is right. We can go along with our daily busy life’s and we are always doing the first three words till the 4th one hits us. The colours that they have chosen to use in these images are mostly reds. This is because in advertising red and gold are used to draw customers/consumers in to buy.

What I got from this exhibition is that you still have to love your design, but you need to be far more aware what effect a particular design will have on its audience. Taking this realization into the university is beneficial as it has taught me to get talking to students more and see what they are doing. Our critiques at uni are as important as TDR have their lectures and exhibitions to create dialogue or engage in a conversation about design. It is a way for us to get a response about our work and how it communicates to other people.