Memories

But soon will become reality in 2 months.

The Girl Effect: The Clock is Ticking

This video was great. I really liked it because its simple and bold.

Anti Bullying

These videos below would be perfect for my ChildLine, Green Room Installation.

 Problem is which one should I pick?

OR

?

(Videos courtesy from YouTube)

Must read soon!

Term 2: ITAP Presentation

Alexey Brodovitch was Russian, born in1898 and died in 1971 He was

• An artist
• A photographer
• A graphic designer
• A teacher
• And an art director.

This is a brief history about Alexey Brodovitch creative career, 1924 Brodovitch won a poster competition for Bal Banal, with his innovative design this was the start of his career as a graphic designer. He became noticed for this poster by other designers and artists, and it was not long after that he became the art director for ‘Athelia’ studio in Paris. In 1930 Brodovitch was offered to create an advertising department for Philadelphia College of Art which he accepted and moved to the United States. When Brodovitch became a teacher he bought a new way of teaching, he given students real design assignments to do and challenged them. His students then became very successful. Then in 1938 Brodovitch was an art director in Harper’s Bazaar and stayed there for more than ten years. Since I’m inspired by his editorial work e.g. his designs, layouts and spreads, this will be discussed a lot in my essay.

Alexey Brodovitch style in Harper’s Bazaar magazine spreads consists on three elements, which are commonly shown throughout the years, which are text, photography and white space. White space because it creates breathing space and readers can focus on the information more.He was the first to integrate image and text as well as using colour to create striking contrast. Carmel Snow described his work as ’a fresh, new conception of layout technique that struck me like a revelation: pages that bled beautifully cropped photographs. Typography and design that was bold and arresting.’ 

Brodovitch was also inspired by Surrealism. Which was mostly centred in Paris, Surrealism style uses visual imagery from the subconscious mind to create art without the intention of logical comprehensibility.There are many layouts that shows this style in his work, for example this layout (below) where the pages are made to look like the women are coming out of the page also when he experiments with light and shadows to create an illusion of the model appearing skinnier than she actually is.

When designing for the magazine his composition for the spreads where elegant, innovative and fresh. I found this quote from Frances MacFadden who was the editor of Harper’s Bazaar at the time describing the amount of detail Alexey Brodovitch invested in the magazine. “It was a pleasure to watch him work. He was so swift and sure. In emergencies, like the time the Clipper bearing the report of the Paris Collections was held up in Bermuda, his speed was dazzling. A quick splash or two on the cutting board, a minute's juggling of the Photostats, a slather of art gum, and the sixteen pages were complete. His layouts, of course, were the despair of copywriters whose cherished tone poems on girdles or minks had to be sacrificed to his sacred white space. Just before we went to press, all the layouts were laid out in sequence on Carmel Snow's floor, and there, under his eye, re-arranged until the rhythm of the magazine suited him.”

What I liked about his designs are for example when he would create versions of small movie stills or spreads in which women were supposed to see themselves rather than the model. For example, he would have used a model's silhouette rather than her whole form, or keeps her face in shadow, so that any reader could place themselves in those fashions. Brodovitch worked hard to avoid repeating the same visual ideas. And his passion was to be unique and different from everybody else.  

When designing editorial work I like to keep my layout simple and easy for my audience to follow. I do this by using white space a lot or keeping my work structured with a strong grid. On the other hand as well as getting inspired by Brodovitch work, I also get inspiration from Minimalism. A good example of this is in my composition project where I had to design a double-page spread about my article France banning the burqa. I started off by drawing sketches of the layout of how I wanted my spreadsheet to look. So it would be easier to design it in Adobe InDesign, this technique is what Brodovitch done too when designing his spreads. This helped because it allowed me to think of where the grids and how I wanted the layout to be positioned. For the image, I looked into photography. I used a model wearing the  traditional Islamic clothing, making sure that the woman’s face wasn’t showing. Because I wanted the audience to picture themselves in the image and try to feel how they would react to the situation that they see in the photograph. It was difficult at the start to create an emotion without showing facial expressions however I found a way of expressing this at the end.  

_________________________________________________ 

Written by Kawsar Ahmed 

Images from Google

Book: Alexey Brodovitch by Gabriel Bauret

Web Links

http://www.surrealism.org/

http://www.iconofgraphics.com/Alexey-Brodovitch/

http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/medalist-alexeybrodovit

Disruption is Key

DISRUPTION = SUCCESS

Disruption in Advertising

The definition of disruption in the design world means to do something that stands out. This is often used in advertising. When disruption is used in adverts it makes the ad more memorable and could increase the sales of the product, depending on how successful the ad was. Nowadays disruption is much more amusing for example advertising agency 'HHCL' created this advert for fizzy drink company 'Tango' in 1991. Showing a man drinking a can of Tango and then a man painted in orange slapping him across the face. With the iconic catchphrase "You know when you've been Tango'd shown towards the end of the ad. The ad uses the familiar 'Ralph and Tony' rewind technique to explain the drink's refreshing qualities. This ad became very popular amongst the young audience to the fact that children would copy what they seen and slap others on their faces which leaded to the ad being banned from TV. 

However after the major success of the first advert the same agency came up with another commercial, but this time advertising Tango new blackcurrant flavored drink aired in 1996. the ad basically show the manager getting a letter of complaint about the flavour of blackcurrant Tango he has received from a French exchange student. He then marches out from the building and is joined by a flag waving crowd as he enters a boxing ring, its ends as the camera circles and the man shouting 'Come on France, Europe, the world. I'll take you all on! I'm Ray Gardner. I drink Blackcurrant Tango. Come and get me!' This ad won a lot of awards. what I like was how 'HHCL' had a eye for detail for instance when the clothing always linked to the colour purple to link back to fruit colour. These ads both have humor, it was so different from there competitors that even til today Tango ads are probably the most famous for its successful and innovative idea. 

   

There are many other examples of good commercials that are disruptive, here are few I liked.

Advertising companies                     Products

Mother                                            Pot Noodle

Fallon                                              Cadbury's Dairy Milk Chocolate

Simons Palmer                                 Nike

Shulton                                            Old Spice                                             

Disruption in Art

Picasso, a famous artist known around the world is a good example of being disruptive in his work. Take is cubism paintings, at that time its was very common to paint flat. however what made him different and stand out from other artists was him painting in 3D. It was a new way of painting that looked into all sides and viewpoints. at that time people was not sure how to react to this technique. however through time eventually people grown to like this type of style to the fact that other artists tried to incorporate this style into their work. I like how Picasso taken a risk and done something innovative and abstract.  

A more contemporary version of disruption in  art is artist Damien Hirst. In 1991 he created this installation of a shark in a tank which was controversial as well as successful this made him a household name around the world. there are many views by people saying this isn't art or artists might be just jealous of not thinking of the idea sooner. But I would like to know your view on Damien Hirst work? 

Written by Kawsar Ahmed

Videos from YouTube

Images from Google

Rob Tovey: Technology and Typography talk

In the Latin alphabet overall the alphabet is good but I feel there is room for improvement for instance the letters that does not work well are Dd and Aa. However the letter I thing that works well are Mm and Kk.

Type through the Ages

Roman Type

Woodblock Type

Typewriter and Font

Bitmap

Scriptographer

One thing that amazed me in this presentation was 'Scriptographer', it is so easy to do and use and it gives a nice effect to your work, even Creative Review magazine have used it in their front cover (Below). 

I would definitely like to use Scriptographer in future projects. 

So what exactly is Scriptographer you may ask?

Scriptographer is a plug in for Adobe Illustrator, it creates new, user designed tools within the interface. The tools take the form of scripts, bespoke nuggets of code that slot into the Scriptographer plug-in. these are either downloaded from the official website or written by the designer/programmer.

Written By Kawsar

Images from Google