Joshua Steele,
Topics in Graphic Design,
3/13/2019
Essay 5
Trendsetters are all around us and are constantly shaping the world. I can’t help but think about all the people that work in fashion spending months coming up with the best new dress for shirt for the runway before a dozen other people try to make their own version. It’s an organic way for any industry to change, ideas inspiring others for it to grow ns change for however long it lasts.
Speaking of the designers that had become Trendsetters in class reminded me of the writer of Frankenstein Mary Shelley, it’s said she really kick started Science-Fiction as a genre, her book being a warning many would say, to the limits of science, and it is true that until recently much of Science-Fiction ends up boiling down to a warning, like 2001 A Space Odyssey or maybe even Passengers. I’m a fan of Science Fiction so it’s the first thing that came to mind for me.
Design wise, there’s a trend that few people talk about,and those are the designs and trends that go on in the world of lettering, before there was the mountain of sans-serif typefaces we have today, we had serif, but that changed when Helvetica came into the picture in 1957 created by the Haas type foundry, when it came out it was the first time people had seen a typeface so clean and simple, most type was geared towards evoking emotion but Helvetica was simple and professional, advertising changed with a now infamous that showcased a photograph featuring a glass of coke with works to the side, a simple ad in today’s standards that in those days shook the landscape since it was mostly a lot of type and colorful paintings that were done.
Learning about everything we did in class, like the body harm done in order to make striking ads, and how the featured designer kept himself from following trends or having a style in order to be more inventive, taught me that there’s always value in spreading one’s skills and trying styles, rather then becoming complacent.
