Author: Taneisha Bailey (Page 1 of 2)

McLuhan’s interpretation of media and technology being an extension of humankind extends to humanity in general by the similarities between media and man. McLuhan breaks down into sections different aspects of a human and how that interconnects into electric technology. Individualism is one, another is family, your job, and the government that surrounds you. He bridges a connection between your eyes and books, how a booklet extended through sight as an originator. How an automobile is an extension of your foot in terms of movement. He even references clothing being an extension of the skin as it covers and shields your body. How media can be an extension of our nervous system by projecting and influencing our thoughts and actions.

Hazards that technological progress can possibly bring for individuals and society are the process of control and lack of origination. How tech brings in structural systems and pushes us to think in terms of being one-track-minded and having fixed ideas. How the media can provide society with one big misconception of the life we create around us. If “the medium is the message,” artists and designers can play the role of innovators and the plug that connects a message to a medium. They can take control of the media and create new ways for the masses to relate and make sense of the world that surrounds them by defining their own needs and not the needs and wants of the media that’s trying to control them.

The work of a designer can become subordinate to the media they use to distribute information by designing work the way they were told to instead of in a  way that can challenge the old world order and bring in new means of communication and information. If designers decided to use a medium that does not directly provide instructions on how to process that message that is being told to the public then there is the opening that is needed to help designers become in control of their own medium source.

According to the authors Jan Tschichold, Karl Gerstner, and Josef Müller-Brockmann, one should design through structural and systematic matters. Providing a system ensures that design is being held in an acceptable manner through means of simplification and clear understanding. Gerstner makes an interesting perspective in the forms of designing programs. Using, in his words a more “ intellectual criteria” as opposed to one’s feelings. He argues that his morphological box of the typogram is a solution to the problem of designing with a set structure that makes the design more organized in terms of basis, color, appearance, and expression. His grid determines what and how type should be used and in what context but lack complete efficiency because of undetermined factors that can not be placed into a category.

Müller-Brockmann takes on an approach that highlights the very same idea but that those elements that can not be categorized from Gerstner function, which are unable to be organized or chaotic that can indeed put places into a program that does the opposite of what they are. This means that they can be organized and fit into a structure based on his personalized grid and design system. He believes his system should contribute to the general culture in terms of the “ clearly intelligible, objective, functional, and aesthetic quality of mathematical thinking.” But I can help but think this is a contradiction based on  his point “that every visual creative work is a manifestation of the character of the designer.” This system places design in a way that I feel lacks creativity rather than embraces it from an individual designer standpoint.

Jan Tschichold argues that new typography is just a type that indulges in fascism and makes type illegible. He makes a point of centralization of the axis and that design influenced by De Stijl and constructivism disregards the basic principles of typography that help keep the idea of a universal language intact. That abandoning this technique would serve us no purpose in a future context. He believes in a logical relationship between sizes, typefaces, hierarchies, and alignments. That the Bauhaus and its influences lack the basis to structuralize typography. But does bring in a unique era, one that is destined for aesthetic purposes rather than functional purposes.  

After a comprehensive read, I can give a good reason that what was missing from past art and education according to Walter Gropius was the liberation of being an individualistic artist. That true artistry cannot be taught but techniques and the language of fine art can. Collaboration and unity which was lacking in academic training for the mass of students was the very solution needed to provoke and unleash the unique artist within according to Bauhaus philosophy. Author Herbet Bayer makes a strong argument that art in the form of typography was missing a universal type that would help the human civilization simplify a complex and dividing system of communication and type. Photography and typography play an essential role in shaping new art. For instance, Photography is a visual tool to help aid in communication and in capturing moments in life. Typography is used for helping us process information being communicated in a particular style. Both create visual elements in the design to produced art in a communicative manner which helps artists develop a thirst for innovating new forms of design. 

Media should play the role of advocacy to help society embrace new art concepts by broadcasting the relevancy that these concepts play in their everyday lives. Media should be that tool to bridge artistry in all forms of media. The role language plays in art and design is the role of the connector. In other words, Languages help tie together design and art to create a visual language. The use of letters and words and information being strategically placed in a visual design concept to help us gain a wider perspective on how art can proclaim many forms. An artist should approach future art norms as everchanging. Knowing that norms can become different according to the period in which this form of “normal” art is taking place. Art is a growing process that always has the door open to innovative ways of expanding.

“The academy” should educate artists on similar ideologies to that of the Bauhaus. Pushing individual creativity by unifying creatives in exercises and nonconstructive means of teaching. They should help each artist gain an understanding of what artistic endeavor fits them the best and how to expand on their field of art in much grander ways. They should also incorporate ways to approach advanced techniques in modern forms of artistry with experimental practices. The Bauhaus ideas should be updated in a sense of bringing their teachings to the masses and not just selective artists who have a distinct calling to art and its education. I believe Bauhaus teachings should also be mandated as an educational standard in the 21st century.

Author Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, El Lissitzky, Aleksandr Rodchenko, and colleagues envision their immediate futures as a hypothesis. Each gathering much observation with imagination in theory to their present-day failures and successes. Marinetti’s Idea of the future should be one filled with rebellion against everything that seemed to be vintage or outdated. He idealized a futuristic way of living with commandments that would be in favor of poetic justice and laws that have a deep disdain for feminism. Lissitzky idealizes a future connected through international technology based on photographs, designs, language, and symbolic meanings. Rodchenko, Varvara Stepanova, and Aleksei Gan wanted a future that wasn’t primarily technology-based. They wanted art to be creative with fewer limitations and more emphasis on the process and steps of creating constructively.

They believed technology is the cause of the lack of inventiveness concepts yet seemingly organizes and makes design/art functional for technical constructions. How technology is used for mass production and how something as simple designed as a book has stagnated in terms of today’s world. I believe that these artists and writers would have anticipated that design and art could take a preliminary approach in modernistic ways. That the future is what is happening now in the present time that would eventually influence modern artists and designers to invent new concepts to deal with outdated art and design.

Some common views these artists may share is the outlook on the future and how many forms of art can transcend into something much greater than we imagine it to be today and in past terms outlining the change. On the contrary, these authors did have ideas that were uniquely different from each other. Lissitzky, propositioned “Every invention in art is a single event in time, has no evolution.”  Marinetti made the notion that his Manifesto Of Futurism is an artistic war, with futuristic cars driven by aggression and words of devotion as weapons against the old. Rodchenko and his colleagues viewed artists as modern-day constructors whose roles are to process, organize, discover, propagate. clean out and merge.