Category: Grids and Layouts

  • International Swiss Style

    International Swiss Style

    edited from Wikipedia International Topographic Style

    Overview

    The International Typographic Style, also known as the Swiss Style, is a graphic design style that emerged in Russia, the Netherlands and Germany in the 1920s and developed by designers in Switzerland during the 1950s. The International Typographic Style has had profound influence on graphic design as a part of the modernist movement, impacting many design-related fields including architecture and art.

    It emphasizes cleanliness, readability and objectivity. Hallmarks of the style are asymmetric layouts, use of a grid, sans-serif typefaces like Akzidenz Grotesk, and flush left, ragged right text. The style is also associated with a preference for photography in place of illustrations or drawings. Many of the early International Typographic Style works featured typography as a primary design element in addition to its use in text, and it is for this that the style is named. The influences of this graphic movement can still be seen in design strategy and theory to this day.

    History

    The style emerged from a desire to represent information without the influence of associated meaning; i.e.)objective information. In the year of 1896 the Akzidenz Grotesk Typeface was released by H. Berthold AG type foundry as an attempt to capture an objective style, and from this point the International Typographic style evolved as a modernist graphic movement that sought to clearly convey messages in a universally straightforward manner.

    Two major Swiss design schools are responsible for the early years of International Typographic Style. A graphic design technique based on grid-work that began in the 19th century became inspiration for modifying the foundational course at the School of Design in 1908. Shortly thereafter, in 1918 Ernst Keller became a professor at the Zurich School of the Applied Arts (Kunstgewerbeschule) and began developing a graphic design and typography course. He did not teach a specific style to his students, rather he taught a philosophy of style that dictated “the solution to the design problem should emerge from its content.”This idea of the solution to the design emerging from the problem itself was a reaction to previous artistic processes focused on “beauty for the sake of beauty” or “the creation of beauty as a purpose in and of itself”. Keller’s work uses simple geometric forms, vibrant colors and evocative imagery to further elucidate the meaning behind each design. Other early pioneers include Théo Ballmer and Max Bill.

    The 1950s saw the distillation of International Typographic Style elements into sans-serif font families such as Univers. Univers paved the way for Max Miedinger and collaborator Edouard Hoffman to design the typeface Neue Haas Grotesk, which would be later renamed Helvetica. The goal with Helvetica was to create a pure typeface that could be applied to longer texts and that was highly readable. The movement began to coalesce after a periodical publication began in 1959 titled New Graphic Design, which was edited by several influential designers who played major roles in the development of International Typographic Style. The format of the journal represented many of the important elements of the style—visually demonstrating the content—and was published internationally, thus spreading the movement beyond Switzerland’s borders. One of the editors, Josef Müller-Brockmann, “sought an absolute and universal form of graphic expression through objective and impersonal presentation, communicating to the audience without the interference of the designer’s subjective feelings or propagandist techniques of persuasion.” Many of Müller-Brockmann’s feature large photographs as objective symbols meant to convey his ideas in particularly clear and powerful ways.

    After World War II international trade began to increase and relations between countries grew steadily stronger. Typography and design were crucial to helping these relationships progress—clarity, objectivity, region-less glyphs, and symbols are essential to communication between international partners. International Typographic Style found its niche in this communicative climate and expanded further beyond Switzerland, to America.

    One of the first American designers to integrate Swiss design with his own was Rudolph de Harak. The influence of International Typographic Style on deHarak’s own works can be seen in his many book jacket designs for McGraw-Hill publishers in the 1960s. Each jacket shows the book title and author, often aligned with a grid—flush left, ragged-right. One striking image covers most of the jacket, elucidating the theme of the particular book. International Typographic Style was embraced by corporations and institutions in America from the 1960s on, for almost two decades. One institution particularly devoted to the style was MIT.

    Experimental Jetset Lars Muller Norm
    Wim Crouwel

    Associated movements

    During 1900s other design based movements were formulating, influencing and influenced by the International Typographic movement. These movements emerged within the relationships between artistic fields including architecture, literature, graphic design, painting, sculpting etc.

    De Stijl was a Dutch artistic movement that saw prominence in the period between 1917-1930. Referred to as neoplasticism, this artistic strategy sought to reflect a new Utopian ideal of spiritual harmony and order. It was a form of pure abstraction through reduction to the essentials of form and colour, employing vertical and horizontal layouts using only black and white and primary colors. Proponents of this movement included painters like Piet Mondrian, Vilmes Huszar and Bart van der Hoff as well as architects like Gerrit Rietveld, Robert van’t Hoff and J.J.P. Oud.

    Bauhaus was a German-based movement that emphasized purity of geometry, absence of ornamentation and the motto ‘form follows function’. This was a school of thought that combined craftsmaking with the fine arts and was founded by Walter Gropius. The goal was to work towards the essence of the form follows function relationship to facilitate a style that could be applied to all design problems; the International Style.

    Constructivism was an art/architectural philosophy that emerged from Russia in 1920s. The style develops by assorted mechanical objects that are combined into abstract mobile structural forms. Hallmarks of the movement include geometric reduction, photo-montage and simplified palettes.

    Suprematism, which arose in 1913, is another Russian art movement similarly focused on the simplification and purity of geometric forms to speak to values of spirituality.

    All of these movements including the International Typographic styles are defined by reductionist purity as a visually compelling strategy of conveying messages through geometric and colour-based hierarchies.

  • Joseph Muller Brockman

    Josef Müller-Brockmann (May 9, 1914 – August 30, 1996) was a Swiss graphic designer and teacher. He is recognised for his simple designs and his clean use of typography (notably Akzidenz-Grotesk), shapes and colours which inspire many graphic designers in the 21st century.

    Each letter has its own personality …the forms of letters can create simultaneously both tension and nobility…The new typography differs from the old in that it is the first to try to develop the outward appearance from the function of the text…uses the background as an element of design which is on a par with other elements.
    (Muller-Brockman)

    Work and books

    Many of Müller-Brockmann’s works can be found in the online gallery “Blanka”

    Müller-Brockman was author of several books on design and visual communication.

    • The Graphic Artist and his Design Problems (Gestaltungsprobleme des Grafikers), Teufen, 1961
    • A History of Visual Communication (Geschichte der visuellen Kommunikation), Niederteufen, 1971
    • History of the Poster (Geschichte des Plakates), co-author Shizuko Yoshikawa, Zurich, 1971
    • Grid Systems in Graphic Design (Rastersysteme für die visuelle Gestaltung), Niederteufen, 1981
    • Graphic Design in IBM: Typography, Photography, Illustration, Paris, 1988
    • Fotoplakate: Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, co-author Karl Wobmann, Aarau, 1989
    • Mein Leben: Spielerischer Ernst und ernsthaftes Spiel (autobiography), Baden, 1994

    Biography

    Muller-Brockmann studied architecture, design and history of art at both the University and Kunstgewerbeschule in Zürich. In 1936 he opened his Zurich studio specialising in graphic design, exhibition design and photography. From 1951 he produced concert posters for theTonhalle in Zurich. In 1958 he became a founding editor of New Graphic Design along with R.P. Lohse, C. Vivarelli, and H. Neuburg. In 1966 he was appointed European design consultant to IBM.

    See:
    Layout
    Modernist Typography

  • Massimo Vignelli

    Massimo Vignelli (1931 – 2014) was an Italian designer who worked firmly within the Modernist tradition. He focused on simplicity through the use of basic geometric forms in all his work. He worked in a number of areas ranging from package design through houseware design and furniture design to public signage and showroom design. He was the co-founder of Vignelli Associates, with his wife, Lella.

    If you can design one thing, you can design everything

    Google Images

    Vignelli Associates website

    Corporate and public design

    His clients at Vignelli Associates included high-profile companies such as IBM, Knoll, Bloomingdale’s and American Airlines (which forced him to incorporate the eagle, Massimo was always quick to point out).

    • New York City Subway signage and the 1970s–80s map of the system. Contrary to news reports. This became a landmark in Modernist information design and Vignelli regarded the map as one of his best creations. In 2011 he updated this for an online-only version and described it as a “diagram”, not a map, to reflect its abstract design without surface-level features such as streets and parks.
    • Washington Metro signage and wayfinding system – the Map was designed by Lance Wyman and Bill Cannan. 
      Film and documentary
    • Helvetica,  with filmmaker Gary Hustwit  
  • Jan Tschichold

    Jan Tschichold

    Jan Tschichold (1902- 1974) was a typographer, book designer, teacher and writer.

    Modernism: Die neue Typographie 

    Tschichold became a convert to Modernist design principles in 1923 after visiting the first Weimar Bauhaus exhibition. He wrote an influential 1925 magazine supplement; then had a 1927 personal exhibition. The book ‘Die Neue Typographie’ was a manifesto of his theories of modern design and codified many other Modernist design rules:

    • importance of machine composition
    • use of standardised paper sizes for all printed matter
    • effective use of  sans serif (Grotesque) typefaces using different sizes and weights of type in order to quickly and easily convey information.
    • non-centred design and asymmetrical placing of contrasting elements with flush left headlines of irregular lengths
    • layouts based on horizontal and vertical underlying grids with spatial interval and empty spaces employed as design components.

    He advocated the Van de Graaf canon based on proportions in medieval manuscripts and based on Golden Section used in book design to divide a page in pleasing proportions.
     
    This book was followed with a series of practical manuals on the principles of Modernist typography which had a wide influence among ordinary workers and printers in Germany.

    Return to Classicism

    Tschichold slowly abandoned his rigid beliefs from around 1932 onwards (e.g. his Saskia typeface of 1932, and his acceptance of classical Roman typefaces for body-type) as he moved back towards Classicism in print design. He later condemned Die neue Typographie as too extreme. He also went so far as to condemn Modernist design in general as being authoritarian and inherently fascistic. He now advocated:

    • symmetrical typographic treatments as more appropriate for great works of literature.
    • classical typefaces like Garamond, Janson, Baskerville and Bell because of legibility
    • importance of grids underlying layout design.
       

    Penguin Books

    Between 1947–1949 Tschichold lived in England where he oversaw the redesign of 500 paperbacks published by Penguin Books, leaving them with a standardized set of typographic rules, the Penguin Composition Rules. Although he gave Penguin’s books (particularly the Pelican range) a unified look and enforced many of the typographic practices that are taken for granted today, he allowed the nature of each work to dictate its look, with varied covers and title pages. In working for a firm that made cheap mass-market paperbacks, he was following a line of work—in cheap popular culture forms (e.g. film posters)—that he had always pursued during his career.

    Typefaces

    His abandonment of Modernist principles meant that, even though he was living in Switzerland after the war, he was not at the centre of the post-war Swiss International Typographic Style. Unimpressed by the use of realist or neo-grotesque typefaces, which he saw as a revival of poorly-designed models, his survey of typefaces in advertising deliberately made no mention of such designs, save for a reference to ‘survivals from the nineteenth-century which have recently enjoyed a short-lived popularity.’
     
    Sabon typeface 1967 is the best known.
     
    Between 1926 and 1929, he designed a “universal alphabet” to clean up the few multigraphs and non-phonetic spellings in the German language. For example, he devised brand new characters to replace the multigraphs ch and sch. His intentions were to change the spelling by systematically replacing eu with oi, w with v, and z with ts. Long vowels were indicated by a macron below them, though the umlaut was still above. The alphabet was presented in one typeface, which was sans-serif and without capital letters.
    Other typefaces: Transit (1931), Saskia (1931/1932) and Zeus (1931).

    Biography

    (edited from Wikipedia)

    Tschichold was the son of a provincial signwriter, and unlike most other typographers of his time, was trained in calligraphy. This may help explain why he never worked with handmade papers and custom fonts as many typographers did, preferring instead to use stock fonts on a careful choice from commercial paper stocks.

    After the election of Hitler in Germany, all designers had to register with the Ministry of Culture, and all teaching posts were threatened for anyone who was sympathetic to communism. Soon after Tschichold had taken up a teaching post in Munich at the behest of Paul Renner, they both were denounced as “cultural Bolshevists”. Ten days after the Nazis surged to power in March 1933, Tschichold and his wife were arrested. During the arrest, Soviet posters were found in his flat, casting him under suspicion of collaboration with communists. All copies of Tschichold’s books were seized by the Gestapo “for the protection of the German people”. After six weeks a policeman somehow found him tickets for Switzerland, and he and his family managed to escape Nazi Germany in August 1933.

    Apart from two longer stays in England in 1937 (at the invitation of the Penrose Annual), and 1947–1949 (at the invitation of Ruari McLean, the British typographer, with whom he worked on the design of Penguin Books), Tschichold lived in Switzerland for the rest of his life. Jan Tschichold died in the hospital at Locarno in 1974.

  • David Carson

    David Carson

    David Carson (born September 8, 1954) is an American graphic designer, art director and surfer. He is best known for his innovative magazine design, and use of experimental typography.

    He worked as a sociology teacher and professional surfer in the late 1970s. From 1982 to 1987, Carson worked as a teacher in Torrey Pines High School in San Diego, California. In 1983, Carson started to experiment with graphic design and found himself immersed in the artistic and bohemian culture of Southern California. He art directed various music, skateboarding, and surfing magazines through the 1980/90s, including twSkateboarding, twSnowboarding, Surfer, Beach Culture and the music magazine Ray Gun. By the late 1980s he had developed his signature style, using “dirty” type and non-mainstream photographic techniques.

    As art director of Ray Gun (1992-5) he employed much of the typographic and layout style for which he is known. In particular, his widely imitated aesthetic defined the so-called “grunge typography” era.  In one issue he used Dingbat as the font for what he considered a rather dull interview with Bryan Ferry. In a feature story, NEWSWEEK magazine said he “changed the public face of graphic design”.

    He takes photography and type and manipulates and twists them together and on some level confusing the message but in reality he was drawing the eyes of the viewer deeper within the composition itself. His layouts feature distortions or mixes of ‘vernacular’ typefaces and fractured imagery, rendering them almost illegible. Indeed, his maxim of the ‘end of print’ questioned the role of type in the emergent age of digital design, following on from California New Wave and coinciding with experiments at the Cranbrook Academy of Art.

    In the later 1990s he added corporate clients to his list of clients, including Microsoft, Armani, Nike, Levi’s, British Airways, Quiksilver, Sony, Pepsi, Citibank, Yale University, Toyota and many others. When Graphic Design USA Magazine (NYC) listed the “most influential graphic designers of the era” David was listed as one of the all time 5 most influential designers, with Milton Glaser, Paul Rand, Saul Bass and Massimo Vignelli.

    He named and designed the first issue of the adventure lifestyle magazine Blue, in 1997. David designed the first issue and the first three covers, after which his assistant Christa Smith art directed and designed the magazine until its demise. Carson’s cover design for the first issue was selected as one of the “top 40 magazine covers of all time” by the American Society of Magazine Editors.

    In 2000, Carson closed his New York City studio and followed his children, Luke and Luci, to Charleston, South Carolina where their mother had relocated them. In 2004, Carson became the Creative Director of Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, designed the special “Exploration” edition of Surfing Magazine, and directed a television commercial for UMPQUA Bank in Seattle, Washington.

    Carson claims that his work is “subjective, personal and very self indulgent”.

    Bibliography

    Carson, David (1995). The End of Print: The Graphic Design of David Carson. Chronicle Books. ISBN 0-8118-1199-9.

    Carson, David (1997). David Carson: 2nd Sight: Grafik Design After the End of Print. Universe Publishing. ISBN 0-7893-0128-8.

    Meggs, Phillip B.; David Carson (1999). Fotografiks: An Equilibrium Between Photography and Design Through Graphic Expression That Evolves from Content. Laurence King. ISBN 1-85669-171-3.

    Stecyk, Craig; David Carson (2002). Surf Culture: The Art History of Surfing. Laguna Art Museum in association with Gingko Press. ISBN 1-58423-113-0.

    Mcluhan, Marshall; David Carson, Eric McLuhan, Terrance Gordon (2003). The Book of Probes. Gingko Press. ISBN 1-58423-056-8.

    Carson, David (2004). Trek: David Carson, Recent Werk. Gingko Press. ISBN 1-58423-046-0.

    Mayne, Thom; David Carson (2005). Ortlos: Architecture of the Networks. Hatje Cantz Publishers. ISBN 3-7757-1652-1.

  • Flatpans

    The Task

    Using one of the hardback books that you sourced in Part One, create a flatplan of the first eight pages of your selected book, similar to the example on the previous page.
    Indicate where important text and images occur, on a recto (right-hand) or verso (left-hand) page, or as a double-page spread.
    Indicate images by a crossed box, as in the example for ‘front cover’ in the diagram on the previous page. These crossed rectangles indicate image boxes in desktop publishing (DTP) software, and are used in drafts and sketches to signify image material. There is no need to go into detailed drawing regarding text or image material at this stage. Text can be indicated by a series of thick horizontal lines, with main headings sketched in.
    Use the flatplan to familiarise yourself with the structure of a book. Note the blank pages and how they are organised to complement the preceding or following page. Note the extent (number of pages) in the book and whether it has been printed in signatures, or sections. Document your flatplan and research in your learning log.

    Below are photographs of some pages from Sketchlog 1: Books where I produced flatpans showing the contents of different types of book. For further details see Sketchlog 1.

  • Golden Ratio

    Sources: Elaine J. Hom, LiveScience Contributor | June 24, 2013 07:02pm ET

    What is the Golden Ratio?

    In the golden ratio, a + b is to a as a is to b.

    The Golden ratio is a special number found by dividing a line into two parts so that the longer part divided by the smaller part is also equal to the whole length divided by the longer part. It is often symbolized using phi, after the 21st letter of the Greek alphabet. In an equation form, it looks like this:

    a/b = (a+b)/a = 1.6180339887498948420 …

    As with pi (the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter), the digits go on and on, theoretically into infinity. Phi is usually rounded off to 1.618. This number has been discovered and rediscovered many times, which is why it has so many names — the Golden mean, the Golden section, divine proportion, etc.

    Golden Rectangle

    Golden Ratio Construction

    Golden Spiral

    To form a golden rectangle from a square, the square is divided in half. The diagonal of the half square is rotated to the horizontal, defining the length of the rectangle.

    Golden ratio in history

    Historically, the golden ratio can be seen in the architecture of many ancient creations, like the Great Pyramids and the Parthenon. In the Great Pyramid of Giza, the length of each side of the base is 756 feet with a height of 481 feet. The ratio of the base to the height is roughly 1.5717, which is close to the Golden ratio.

    Phidias (500 B.C. – 432 B.C.) was a Greek sculptor and mathematician who is thought to have applied phi to the design of sculptures for the Parthenon.

    Golden ration and pentagram

    Plato (428 B.C. – 347 B.C.) considered the Golden ratio to be the most universally binding of mathematical relationships.

    Later, Euclid (365 B.C. – 300 B.C.) linked the Golden ratio to the construction of a pentagram.

    Around 1200, mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci discovered the unique properties of the Fibonacci sequence. This sequence ties directly into the Golden ratio because if you take any two successive Fibonacci numbers, their ratio is very close to the Golden ratio. As the numbers get higher, the ratio becomes even closer to 1.618. For example, the ratio of 3 to 5 is 1.666. But the ratio of 13 to 21 is 1.625. Getting even higher, the ratio of 144 to 233 is 1.618. These numbers are all successive numbers in the Fibonacci sequence.

    These numbers can be applied to the proportions of a rectangle, called the Golden rectangle. This is known as one of the most visually satisfying of all geometric forms – hence, the appearance of the Golden ratio in art. The Golden rectangle is also related to the Golden spiral, which is created by making adjacent squares of Fibonacci dimensions.

    In 1509, Luca Pacioli wrote a book that refers to the number as the “Divine Proportion,” which was illustrated by Leonardo da Vinci. Da Vinci later called this sectio aurea or the Golden section. The Golden ratio was used to achieve balance and beauty in many Renaissance paintings and sculptures. Da Vinci himself used the Golden ratio to define all of the proportions in his Last Supper, including the dimensions of the table and the proportions of the walls and backgrounds. The Golden ratio also appears in da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man and the Mona Lisa.

    Other artists who employed the Golden ratio include Michelangelo, Raphael, Rembrandt, Seurat, and Salvador Dali.

    The term “phi” was coined by American mathematician Mark Barr in the 1900s. Phi has continued to appear in mathematics and physics, including the 1970s Penrose Tiles, which allowed surfaces to be tiled in five-fold symmetry. In the 1980s, phi appeared in quasi crystals, a then-newly discovered form of matter.

    Golden Ratio in nature

    Phi is more than an obscure term found in mathematics and physics. It appears around us in our daily lives, even in our aesthetic views.

    Flower petals: The number of petals on some flowers follows the Fibonacci sequence. It is believed that in the Darwinian processes, each petal is placed to allow for the best possible exposure to sunlight and other factors.

    Seed heads: The seeds of a flower are often produced at the center and migrate outward to fill the space. For example, sunflowers follow this pattern. Sunflower seeds grow in Fibonacci spirals.

    Tree branches: The way tree branches form or split is an example of the Fibonacci sequence. Root systems and algae exhibit this formation pattern.

    Pinecones: The spiral pattern of the seed pods spiral upward in opposite directions. The number of steps the spirals take tend to match Fibonacci numbers.

    Human and animal bodies: The measurement of the human navel to the floor and the top of the head to the navel is the Golden ratio.

    Golden ratio in human anatomy Zeisling

    The length of our fingers, each section from the tip of the base to the wrist is larger than the preceding one by roughly the ratio of phi.

    Studies have shown that when test subjects view random faces, the ones they deem most attractive are those with solid parallels to the Golden ratio. Faces judged as the most attractive show Golden ratio proportions between the width of the face and the width of the eyes, nose, and eyebrows. The test subjects weren’t mathematicians or physicists familiar with phi — they were just average people, and the Golden ratio elicited an instinctual reaction.

    Dolphins, starfish, sand dollars, sea urchins, ants, honeybees  also exhibit the proportion. Many shells, including snail shells and nautilus shellsare perfect examples of the Golden spiral.


    DNA molecules: A DNA molecule measures 34 angstroms by 21 angstroms at each full cycle of the double helix spiral. In the Fibonacci series, 34 and 21 are successive numbers.

    Spiral galaxies: The Milky Way has a number of spiral arms, each of which has a logarithmic spiral of roughly 12 degrees. The shape of the spiral is identical to the Golden spiral, and the Golden rectangle can be drawn over any spiral galaxy.

    Hurricanes: Much like shells, hurricanes often display the Golden spiral.