And the Gold Goes To...

I love this photograph.  As a runner, I know that the first moment of the race is one of the most tense, wondering who will have a good start, who will be in front , what will happen next.  That is the reason I love this photograph, taken by Osamu Hayasaki.  The lighting is really amazing in  how it shows the people from first place to last place, at the time, in lightest to darkest lighting.  The Tokyo 1964 across the bottom, designed by Yusaku Kamekura, seem to point out what the olympics are all about, saying that the competition will all be this tense, always.  This seems to be the way that all designers and photographers for the Olympics have worked since the use of works like this.

"Music" Television

When Pat Gorman, Frank Olinsky, and Patti Rogoff created the MTV logo with the idea that a logo did not have to be one set design, with no changes, the world of design could then be changed, and now companies could continually change their identity, while maintaining the same basic design.  

Recently, after the station became solely "MTV," the logo has slightly changed, or "refreshed," with a more rectilinear, wide design:

Really it has not changed much, only a little of the bottom has been trimmed, making it look a little bit more streamlined.  This opens the station to some new design changes like these:

Which make the characters within seem to say "I am MTV" saying what the station has now become.

Once Upon A TIme

This the opening scene to the Nicki Minaj video for "4 life" 

This is the opening scene to the movie Shrek 2 (clearly)

This is the opening scene to Disney's Sleeping Beauty, just one of the many times that they would use this (also in Cinderella, Snow White, and Enchanted)

Similarities? Yes. Coincidences? No way.  These opening books have been used for years in cinema to tell a background story before moving into the movie or music video.  I understand that it looks more sophisticated and all, and it's every little girl's dream to be a princess, but why would the designers set the scene at this particular time period? Because the world at this time was kind of a mess with the tyrant kings and the Plague, I don't get it.  The design may look better, but if dragons are running around, I do not want to live at that time.

Too Loose Lautrec

In the episode of Spongebob Squarepants entitled "Squidward the Unfriendly Ghost," an episode where Spongebob and Patrick accidentally melt a wax sculpture of Squidward, therefor thinking they killed him, there is a scene when Patrick and SpongeBob are carrying Squidward around in servitude to him, with Squidward complaining it is "too hot" or "too wet", they stumble onto an aquatic version of the painting La Troupe de Mlle. Eglantine. Squidward quips that it is "Too loose, Lautrec", a pun on the name of the painting's artist, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, with an accompanying sting.

I think it is hilarious that this was added to this episode, because unless you were in a class like this where you learned about Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec once in your life, you may never understand this quick joke.  I know that as a child i never understood the reference, and did not until just this year.  I also love that they added this in for any artists who were watching, for it shows that the people are thinking about all audiences when creating the episode.  

FONTS!

Be careful watching this please, its like watching epilepsy.

Enough fonts in here? I think so.  It seems like there is this movement in music videos to have many words flashing on the screen to explain the emotion of the music, also shown in this video

I kind of like it.  It's different than people dancing around, because it's like the words are doing the dancing this time, which is kind of cool to see since it forces us to think of ourselves, and what we might do in the situation, and the words show just what we may expect to.

Shapely Things

When we read about Guillaume Apoillinare, I was really quite intrigued by his work.  I feel that because the words actually create the shape of what they are explaining, it also gives off the feeling of the object it creates, therefore making the poem make more sense to the reader.  It takes illustration to a different level, where you are not reading the words then looking at the illustration, but looking at both at the same time, having more of an impact.  I like this better, and feel that it was too short lived, and it should be used in books today too.  Maybe I'm just living in the past, but I feel it's a little more interesting to look at a vase of flowers when I read than a brick of words. 

Boats and..

While searching for another picture, I came across this 1929 poster.

It's nothing super special, it just happened to catch my eye at the time, because wile looking throught the book, I cam across multiple boat posters, like this:

which emphasize the great height of the boat.  Now, which you see the ships for cruise lines, the boats are shown from the side, to show how long it is.  I do not know which is better, but I do know that when I went onto one of these ships, I saw the ship from this angle, and feel it is more interesting than what is shown now, so maybe commercials should try a few angles from in front to show the great feat that engineers have made in getting a behemoth like this to float. 

Peter Max

Peter Max has seemed to define what vibrancy in art is.  His pieces are wildly colorful, often with much abstraction, making it fun to look at for people of all ages.  He has done illustrations for children's books, cover art, as well as many poster designs.  One noteworthy poster was "Love."

The poster above is just one of Max's many psychedelic posters with fading backgrounds and colorful graphics. It seems to have inspired British artist Mika, who's show in 2007 based many of the ideas exhibited from Peter Max's work, shown below.

The work has a feel of optimism due to it's bright candy striped colors, a feel Peter Max always brought through in all of his pieces.

Ohh the Irony

Recently in class, we visited the Three Faiths Exhibit in order to see the Gutenberg 42 lined Bible, as well as all of the other beautiful illuminated manuscripts on display.  As I was looking at these holy books, I was wondering what the stories connected to the illuminations were.  I know that these were illuminated because most people at the time of their publication were illiterate, and therefore needed the illustrations to tell them what was happening in the book, but at the same time, knew what would be happening if they looked at these often.  I, however, do not know the stories of the Bible, Torah, or Koran, and even though the books were open to look at, I would have no ability to see the story as it goes.  I find slightly ironic that the books, that were meant to serve both the literate as well as the illiterate of the time, cannot continue to serve the purpose they once did, due to my inability to decipher the illuminations.

Some Things Never Change

Looking at the text book, I came across a page ad for Volkswagen which reads "Think small." These two words perfectly represent the small Beetle. The words are also in the Futura font, which, when I looked, I realized that even though it has been 50 years since the ad ran, the font used has not changed.  

Above is the 1960 ad by Helmut Krone and Julian Koenig.

The font is not the only thing that has changed, however.  The slogan "Think small" has just been modified slightly to fit the new clean technology Volkswagens are being powered with.  This shows that even though an idea may be old, it may not be played out.

Simple, Yet Perfect

Target, a store who attempts to get the market away from Wal Mart, uses a simple design as their logo, but at the same time an effective one.  The Wal Mart identity has changed two times since it's rise to the top, while Target has always retained the same, simple, design.  

The first, Target's logo, which illustrates the company's name, while also subliminally telling people this is where they want to go, by making it a target, as if this is their set destination.

Wal Mart, on the other hand, has used the name of the company with a star in both versions of the name, which is clearly ineffective, if the design has changed already in it's short existence.

To me, Target has a much more effective design due to it's simplicity and way of making people think that it is where they will be able to find a better price there.

Writing? or Symbolism

The cave paintings at Lascaux show, that even no form of writing at all, through pictures, everybody has the ability to know what may lie ahead.

The signs above, which have been used everywhere from roads, to airplane terminals, take the same idea as a language barrier, and use it so that people who may not know the area very well, or may not speak the language, may figure out what may lie ahead.

Abstraction

In the 1912 Lucian Bernhard poster for Stiller shoes above, we see that the poster is mainly to show the product.  All other elements that may have been in the poster, possibly a woman to wear the shoes, have been stripped away so to simply show what the company is there to sell.  This idea would then be taken a few steps further, shown below by the J.P. Morgan Chase symbol, which takes the idea that the bank is  the shapes which form an octagon around a square, you, protecting you from theft, the main thing people look for in a bank.  The idea takes simplicity and pushes it forward to total abstraction of an idea.

Down Below

The map shown above, created by Henry C. Beck, is a schematic concept of the subway lines, as opposed to a conventional map.  This, therefore simplified the information, making the process quicker for a rider.

The New York/New Jersey subway map above takes the same concept of a schematic design, and overlays it onto an abstracted version of the five boroughs and the North Jersey.  This design is more practical for the the city, since the land is separated, and can clearly show someone which area they will be in when they get off of the train.

Over the Pond

One can see by the London Underground signs that there was a shift in the look of signage towards more abstract symbols for companies.  This let's people know where the public transportation lies for them to travel through the city.

Even in American subways, like this particular New York subway sign, there are simple symbols used to represent transportation locations.  The simple sign helps people see where they need to go by telling the subway lines running through the location, and where on the line you currently are.

Recruitment

This was a British military poster from 1915 by Alfred Leete.  It shows an officer pointing at the viewer of the poster provoking the viewer to join the army and fight for "your" country, as if the viewer is doing nothing for the country if they do not join in the actual physical fight.

Above is a current U.S. army poster.  Though it does not directly say that the army "wants you" to join, but it does, however, ask if the viewer is "army strong" which sends a very similar message, provoking the viewer to see if they are tough enough to be in the army.  Though the words are not the same, the points made are: the posters are created to get people to help their country in whatever war they happened to be in, or may soon be in.

The Use of Photo Then, and Now.

Before it was developed as an artform, earlier photographs were often used as reference material for other woodprints or drawings to be made.  The first picture, attributed to Mathew Brady, was later recreated as a wood engraving by John Macdonald.  The original provided the illustrator the evidence needed to reinvent the image with the wood-engraved line, as well as document the event.

Similar to the illustration above, in Chuck Close's paintings, he uses a photograph, which he then creates into a grid so he can create photorealistic paintings, as well as his newest paintings, which from afar, the blotchy shapes create one cohesive image. 

 This shows that though, now, photography has become an art form in it's own, it is still used as reference material for a more traditional medium.