Discussion Point 2 - Shinn Vs Bell

Pre-Digital

Nick Shinn is a typeface designer, and attended school at Leeds Polytechnic where he earned a Dip. AD in Fine Art.

In 1976 he moved to Canada, where he worked as an art director and creative director at a number of Toronto advertising agencies from the 1970s into the 1980s. In 1989 he started ShinnDesign, his own digital studio, specializing in publication design. Nick has designed everything from books and magazines, to more recently web sites.

Since 1980 he has designed over 20 typeface families, including Walburn and Brown for the Canadian daily “The Globe and Mail”. In 1999 he launched ShinnType, which now publishes and markets his fonts worldwide. Nick is a prolific writer and often contributes to “Graphic Exchange” magazine, as well as many other publications.

Of his typeface designs, Shinn says, “Beautiful letters aren’t enough to make a successful typeface; I also want to create faces that are design solutions.”

Contemporary

Jill Bell is an American lettering artist, calligrapher and type designer.

A graduate of  UCLA and Otis/Parsons, Bell is a graphic artist who creates custom lettering, logotypes, titles, fonts and handwriting for advertising, entertainment, packaging, and publishing. Before establishing herself as a freelance artist, she worked as a sign painter in a shop.

Bell has created fonts for most of the major type foundries including ITC (International Typeface Corporation), Adobe Systems and Monotype Corporation. Her fonts include: Gigi, Smack, Carumba, Hollyweird, Bruno and Swank. She has also designed and produced proprietary fonts for companies including Loehmann's, Enesco, GSW Worldwide, the Navicor Group and Nestle. 

She has spoken at numerous schools, universities, professional organizations and conferences, and was the guest speaker at TypoTechnica 2002 in Heidelberg, Germany. She was a Maestro (judging calligraphy, speaking and teaching) at the Delphic Games in Jeju, South Korea in September, 2009.

Comparison

In comparison, Shinn created typefaces originally for newspapers and thus his typefaces like Walburn and Brown are very clean and simplistic for easy reading on a hard copy medium. Bell’s creations on the other hand, such as Gigi, are much more experimental, with huge serifs and particular stylistic qualities. This most probably reflects the competition between websites today, where Bell has created very original typefaces to attract attention in a digital world of uncountable typefaces. 

Discussion Point 2: Soul Bass Vs Wang Zhihong

Wang ZhiHong (1975-)

An award-winning graphic designer based in Taiwan, 38 year old ZiHong graduated from Department of Advertisement Design at Fu-Hsin Trade and Arts School in 1995 and started his studio in 2000. He has collaborated with trade publishers in launching his imprints “INSIGHT” and “SOURCE”, two bold works featuring translated titles on art and design, with many renowned Japanesse and Taiwanesse artists including, Kashiwa Sato, Araki Nobuyoshi, Kenya Hara, Yayoi Kusama, Tadanori Yokoo and Otl Aicher. A six-time winner of Golden Butterfly Awards (One of Taiwan's most treasured Graphic design and Creative Industry awards), Taiwan’s highest honor for excellence in book design. This has been the main focus of his work for the last few years. He has also won the Kaoru Kasai’s Choice Award and Silver Awards from HKDA Global Design Awards, as well as Excellent Works from Tokyo Type Directors Club Annual Awards.

What I find Most interesting about some of his work is the attention to detail within context. The examples below show ho ZiHong used the essence of the work itself to create a meaningful conceptualisation of his own finished design. READ and BREAD are perhaps the clearest examples. 

You Can Find more of his work, here, at his website.

Saul Bass: (1920-1996)

"Design is thinking made visible."

Born in Manhattan, Saul Bass was an American graphic designer and Oscar winning filmmaker, best known for his design of motion picture title sequences, film posters and corporate logos. He is also most noted for the close affiliation and work he has completed for Alfred Hitchcock Films, with his most famous animation being the opening sequence for "Anatomy of a Murder".

Bass uses modernist techniques combined with simple form and animation that created revolutionary results for the time. It was this kind of innovative, revolutionary work that made Bass a revered graphic designer. Before the advent of Bass’s title sequences in the 1950s, titles were generally static, separate from the movie, and it was common for them to be projected onto the cinema curtains, the curtains only being raised right before the first scene of the movie. (So in other words, it's him to blame for the ever growing title sequences to wade through!)

However, it has also been noted that once you see the opening titles to a film that Saul Bass has done, you can walk out of the theatre because you know exactly what the film's about: he has shown you the entire thing in the first minute or so. Which in the case of "Anatomy of a murder" (see below) seems true.

Below is also a montage of some of Bass' most famous pieces:

References:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000866/bio

http://cargocollective.com/wangzhihong

http://amycanwrite.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/poster-saul-bass.jpg

http://amycanwrite.wordpress.com/2010/06/09/movie-poster-fun-time/

Dominic Le-Hair is a typography designer from the United Kingdom. His designs are influential because of his move away from printed typography and toward 3D, made typography. He is well known for his work with magnetic type, but also has created types using fire, steam and light, licorice, sugar and food dye. His work has a tactile quality, much of his work is created by using objects not usually associated with type and reworking them, something that is quite in vogue with typography now - i.e. the push for typgographers to move away from digital type again, letter press and other designers such as Anna Garforth.

Discussion point 2- typographic designers (Christina Rita)

Select two innovative typographic designers - one pre-digital (1984), the other contemporary. Provide a brief comparative analysis of their contributions to typographic practice supported by relevant examples of their work.

Typographic design has significantly evolved within the last half-century alone thanks to the digitalization of media and the adoption of cutting edge technologies. Artists are using a myriad of tools to translate the typographic tradition for the new age palette. This can clearly be observed by the the two artists Alex Steinweiss and Yulia Brodskaya whose work can be observed below.

Alex Steinweiss is known as the inventor of the modern album cover. He pioneered the tradition of album cover design that we still use today. From creating the first illustrated 78 rpm album package to the simple idea of replacing standard plain brown wrapper with an eye-catching poster-like illustration, his work began a revolution and created a whole new area for typographic artist to manifest the beauty of their designs. 

 

As you can observe in the above examples, his work combined bold typography with elegant, graphically ambitious artwork. The creation of this new form of artwork meant that limitations involved with other typographic design such a size and hierarchy were eliminated and the new format allowed for experimentation on all fronts. Something particularly adored about much of his work was his use of colour and the effect that this had on he identity of many of the artists he was designing for. His work is said to be responsible for record sales increasing by eightfold. Although his work waned in the late 70s, his concepts and traditions have left a timeless effect on the music industry as well as for designers worldwide.

Yulia Brodskaya was born in Russia (Moscow), significantly later than the time of Alex Steinweiss. Moving to the UK in 2004 she was interested in diverse creative practices ranging from Textile Painting, Origami and Collage to more traditional Fine Art practices. She became a graphic designer but became renowned for her work which combined typography, paper, and highly detailed hand-made craft objects. Extremely innovative in her approach, her work demonstrates the value of experimentation with trype and colour, in a format that Steinweiss set the foundation for. 

 

Many of the examples show the way her art relies on form, using a centralized structure and colour experimentation. Although her innovation lies in the use of paper and craft which is instantly appreciated in these examples, the true beauty still lies in the traditional typographic practice, where no space is used unintentionally. Her use of colour and gradients express meaning beyond the type, something also reflected in the traditional work of Steinweiss.

Although both artists have significantly different inspirations and styles, the comparison of their life’s work demonstrates how the adoption of new technologies can reinterpret the value of the traditional type practice. The introduction of the new form of album cover work meant that typographic design could speak for itself in the purest way and not just hidden within the pages of a publication. This has run into a long standing tradition of artists finding new exciting methods of expression but keeping with the tradition of type design. 

references: 

1.  A. Enright, 'Alex Steinweiss: The Pioneer of Album Cover Art'

<http://artformusic.wordpress.com/2013/05/15/58/>

 2. AIGA 'Alex Steinweiss Biography'

<http://www.aiga.org/medalist-alexsteinweiss/>

3. Yulia Brodskaya 'about' <http://www.artyulia.com/index.php/About>

4. This is Collosal 'New Quilled Paper Portrait from Yulia Brodskaya' <http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2013/03/new-quilled-paper-portrait-from-yulia-brodskaya/>

DISCUSSION POINT-CANDY

Select two innovative typographic designers - one pre-digital (1984), the other contemporary. Provide a brief comparative analysis of their contributions to typographic practice supported by relevant examples of their work.

 

Neville Brody is a typographic designer. Born in London 1957. He is also a graphic Designer and Art director. He is best known for his work on “face Magazine” (1981-1986) and “Area Magazine” (1987-1990). Brody almost got thrown out of college for putting the Queen’s head on a stamp design sideways not straight as it should have been.

Neville Brody worked with Nike and came up with some great designs like this one, with type going in all different directions which makes it stand out. I like how the trainers sites on the type and also how the word “Bounce” looks like it is bouncing as well.

 

 

 

“The Face” magazine is one of the reasons why Neville Brody is very famous. With this design i like how the “F and E” have been exagerated so that they bleed of the edge of the paper, i also think that the slanted writing looks neat and keeps in well with the design.

 

 

 

 

 

Luke Lucas is a 37 year old freelance creative, art director, illustrator, designer and typographer from Melbourne, Australia. He loves that the same word, passage or even letter can be treated in bunch of different ways and embody entirely different meanings... That and through subtleties like a slight shift in line weight, the elongation of a tail or the arc you use, a letter can go from contemporary to traditional or happy to sad in a single stroke...

 

Compared two typographic designers. Neville Brody always use bold typeface. From his design I can roughly know what the product is and what they want to show. Luke Lucas uses similar method too. He use product to be the texture of typeface. I can know what this about. These two designer, one in pre-digital and the other in latter-day, they all make a huge contributions to typography.

 

References:

http://ashleyattwood1.wordpress.com/top-10/top-10-designers/

http://abduzeedo.com/10-amazing-typography-artists

http://www.lukelucas.com/About

http://www.moonsaildesign.com/typography/inspiring-typographic-artists/

 



Discussion point 2 Cheryl

Select two innovative typographic designers – one pre-digital (1984), the other contemporary. Provide a brief comparative analysis of their contributions to typographic practice supported by relevant examples of their work.

The two innovative typographic designers that will be compared are Fred Smeijers and Claire Coullon. Fred Smeijers is a Dutch typographer who was active in 1980s, whereas Claire Coullon is a contemporary French typographer. Smeijers worked as a typographic advisor in designing typefaces for laser printers. He developed his interest in the early 16^th century’s typography technique – punchcutting –, and started to design typefaces based on his insights from his experiments of punchcutting. Smeijers has designed many retail typefaces throughout his typographic career, such as FF Quadaart, Nobel, Arnhem, Fresco, etc. On the contrary, Claire Coullon is a freelance typographer who is obsessed with hand drawn lettering typography. Her typographic designs are always functional and subtle, which consist of warmth, a strong sense of personality and a solid, enduring quality as well.

In terms of their contributions to typographic practice to their periods, Smeijers has helped develop a trend of neat, clean typography for laser printing, in which his typefaces has highly been used in books printing. Examples as follow: 

Arnhem - Typeface developed by Fred Smeijers

Example of the use of Quadraat (Cover of Good Beer Guide)

However, Coullon has developed a trend of hand writing typography, which could be understood as a more free style in typography. She has contributed to typographic practices in many aspects, including company logo, wedding invitations, website layout, packaging, and many more.

Logo designed for Class Atlas

Design development with the use of different pens

Collectural design mock-ups 

What I found the most interesting between these two typographers, is the contradictions of their typographic design characteristics between the social and technological conditions of their period. It is interesting that Coullon, who as a typographer in this digital society, prefers to establish typefaces with hand drawing, while Smeijiers was keen on developing typefaces for digital printing during pre-digital period. 

References:

http://www.coullon.com/index.html

https://www.fontfont.com/fonts/quadraat-sans/in-use

https://www.typotheque.com/authors/fred_smeijers