Month: March 2022 (Page 5 of 9)

Jan Tschichold believed that the every essence and basis of New Typography is clarity. He stated that the old style Typographies focus too much on beauty then what is eligible in comparison to the Typographies of today. He believed that in the modern generation clarity serves a greater importance because it is necessary and essential to capturing the attentions of the audiences, especially with the large amount of print seen in todays time. In the reading “The New Typography” Jan Tschichold stated “The essence of the New Typography is clarity”… “old typography whose aim was “beauty” and whose clarity did not attain the high level we require today”.

Karl Gerstner believed that designing means to “pick out” determining elements and combine them. He believed that in design, there is no single outcome, but one which would be best suited for the necessary task/topic. In the article “Designing Programmes” Karl Gerstner states ” There is always a group of solutions, one of which is the best under certain conditions”… “Designing means: to pick out determining elements and combine them.””

Josef Muller-Brockmann believed that a designer’s work should have the clearly intelligible, objective, functional, and aesthetic quality. He suggest the uses of grid, as it shows a certain mental attitude a designer will have for their work, that the grid is a expression of professional ethos.

The early days of design were filled with manifestos, people making bold proclamations about the future of society and about what design needed to be to meet the demands of the coming times. Designers are one part problem solver one part artist, and some believe in order to be effective on a consistent basis they must wrangle the multitude of solutions for a given problem. The ideologies of the authors from this week’s readings made huge contributions in shaping the field of graphic design for designers today. One of design theory’s pioneers is Jan Tschichold.

Tschichold, inspired by New Typography believed that it was the key to communication, and that alignment was its companion “Every part of a text relates to every other part by definite, logical relationship of emphasis and value, predetermined by content. It is up to the typographer to express this relationship clearly and visibly through type sizes, weight, arrangement of lines, use of color, photography etc. The typographer must take the greatest care to study how his work is read and ought to be read.” According to Tschichold mere aesthetic preference should take a back seat to design decisions that represent the content’s core message accurately, and clearly conveys ideas in accordance with how people native to that region read. Typography should not distract with Ornament  or nonsensical alignment. Everything must serve the reader, and the content. Another designer who felt the same way was Josef Muller-Brockman.

Muller-Brockman, inventor of the grid, much like Tschichold and the Constructivists believed that their work served a purpose greater than mere aesthetic delight. These men sought to tackle the various problems the field offered in a clear effective manner “ This is the expression of a professional ethos: the designer’s work should have the clearly intelligible, objective, functional, and aesthetic quality of mathematical thinking.” Typically when a designer merely follows their instincts without thinking the process through they run the risk of being ineffective in their execution. Design thinking reduces the amount subjectivity one may encounter and get hung up on while designing. One tool to wrangle typography and images in this highly subjective landscape was the grid. As Muller-Brockman says the grid represents more than a tool to wrangle type “The use of the grid as an ordering system is the expression of a certain mental attitude inasmuch as it shows that the designer conceives his work in terms that are constructive and oriented to the future.” Muller-Brockman believed the grid legitimizes a designer’s decisions. I’m sure Muller-Brockman believed that by having a clearly thought out process his customers wouldn’t feel they were at the mercy of a self serving lunatic. Most interesting to me however was Karl Gerstner a wannabe chemist turned graphic designer who devised a system to solve all potential graphic design problems. 

Gerstner with the belief that design posed an infinite number of questions to which there were an infinite number of answers, wanted to create a way to find the proper answer for the question being asked at the moment “The creative process is to be reduced to an act of selection. Designing means: to pick out determining elements and combine them. Seen in those terms design calls for method.” Designing his “Morphological box of the typogram” Gerstner was able to pick specific elements of a design and combine them creating new works. The Morphological Box of Typogram reminds me of the current typography settings in indesign. The filter capabilities on inDesign allow you to choose from sans serif, serif decorative, and display typefaces, wide letters, tall letters, thick letters, thin letters, square letters and list goes on and on. While a bit extreme I understand what Gerstner is saying. How does one fit into a machine and remain productive if they has no systems to maintain their productivity. It is impossible to be creative everyday, but with tool such as the Morphological box of typogram the guessing is taken out of the process. 

The authors of these writings are seeking to utilize scientific methods in pursuit of streamlining and legitimizing their work in the eyes of would be patrons, onlookers, and future designers. According to these men an eye to the future, striving for clarity of message and content, legibility, and logical order are paramount. A designer must be able to create, and innovate in a timely manner using more than just their instincts. To do that he needs process they can rely on.   

There are different interpretations of designing and how one should approach it. Sometimes art is no only through the colors or materials used, but also from how certain elements are organized. The three articles assigned for this week explain this in further details and what benefits and drawbacks it may have with design.

Some designs explained or given examples within each article reflect what can be done with type in terms of design, one notable thing is how some examples show it constructed is how they are arranged in specific grids or amount of spaces. Some examples in the article show how complex a design may appear in terms of shapes used, but the text itself remains organized. While it is presentable for different language arrangements and quality, it is also seen not to be as a solution when creating designs but instead a part of it. And type itself must be organic to work as part of a design instead of being forced into a design even within a grid like structure.

From my understanding, even if certain type have to arranged to fit languages and cultures of how they are read or whether they are meant to fit a design style with old typography or pseudo-modern type, typography does play an important role within art. Sometimes the structure of the type’s positioning itself is just as important as how the entire piece is made, whether because of how it appeals to certain viewers or if it is legible and makes sense in context to the piece. What some see in typography as organized and natural others may also see as static and forced into a shape.