Month: October 2020 (Page 4 of 5)

This assignment was actually fun to me. Even though using the grid has been something I hate using, I understand why using a grid for my designs is important.

I have two versions for this weeks assignment. The only difference within the designs is the typography. The first version I used two san serif typefaces (Helvetica for subtext and Futura for Title). But then I thought about our readings from last week more specifically “The Crystal Goblet” by Beatrice Warde and her creation of Gill Sans. So combining the theories of this weeks readings and Beatrice Warde’s take on typography, I used one font for the second version which is Helvetica.

       The New Typography by Jan Tschichold has been recognized as the definitive treatise on the book and graphic design, Tschichold thought that design needs clarity to see how communication is being achieved in designing. Tschichold wants designers to take a fresh and intelligent approach, instead of doing their original way, when they do their designs as he thinks that their work will come out better than before. Any kind of old way of designs should be forgotten and discarded and new ideas should be created and Tschichold believes that if designers keep following the old ways of design and for many centuries to come, the art world may never move forward with the times of technological and mental advancements.

       Artists, graphic designer and typographer, Karl Gerstner is as critical for his innovation as for his innovation as for his thoughts about innovation as the process. He formulated ideas of the versatile network with computational systems in mind. He also developed this concepts of integral typography, where the communication and its structure are indivisible and dependent, the mind being inseparable from typography. Karl Gerstner thought that designing in programmes should apply to a person actually feeling the intelligence in making a decision on how they design programmes and not just making them so ideas and creativity come more easy. The gride Gerstner digram, shown in the text, is his idea of how Fritz Zwicky, an astronomer , Zwicky did his terminology to prove his point on his meaning of design, “to pick out determining elements and combine them.”, and called the digram  “the morphological box of the typogram.” Gerstner followed the method on how the digram goes and was able to create his own solutions, this type of design thinking, which is intended to promote more creative innovation among nondesigners, is based on the different stages of the design process these programmes generally distinguish as define, ideate, prototype, test and evaluate.

       A grid system is a rigid framework that is supposed to help graphic designers in the meaningful, logical and consistent organization of information on a page. Rudimentary versions of grid systems existed since the medieval times, but a group of graphic designers, mostly in spired in ideas from typographical literature started building a more rigid and coherent system for page layout. The core of these ideas were first presented in the book that Josef Müller-Brockmann wrote, titled Grid Systems in Graphic Design, which helped to spread the knowledge about grides through the world. 

In all three readings it seems like the authors envision technology in the coming decades will change the world as they see it. Lissitzky mentions a number of possibilities that relate to current technologies whether he intended to or not. He mentions sound recordings and moving pictures replacing books. While some can argue that books can never be replaced, audible and movie adaptations of books can be seen as replacements. Lissitzky also mentions the next book form will be plastic representational and functional of time and space; which makes me think of e-readers and iPads that are widely used today that are light weight and can hold numerous books on a single device.

In Who We Are, the authors wrote “BUT WE, Artists yesterday CONSTRUCTORS today” reminds me todays designers. It lists what constructers do, including processing humans, organizing technology, discovering and merging. Designers today are constructors they use technology and their vast knowledge of how things work to construct their ideas into reality. While at the time they saw technology as the mortal enemy of art, technology has helped art evolve from what it once was. Technology has brought new forms of art to life.   

Marinetti’s Manifesto is intense; he believes in the future of transportation, mentioning at times the power of trains, cars and airplanes. Unfortunately reading his manifesto today highlights many problematic elements. He glorifies war and violence, and shows to be against women, people over 40 and history in general. He appears to be a fascist which doesn’t work in the modern day.

            Design today have become a boundless market that is always changing. With the changes going on in the world today, design keeps evolving to keep up with the times. The design of everyday objects has become an art form, items that are aesthetically pleasing draw consumers in. Consumers these days want beautiful designs with function that can also be affordable, making a designer work harder to please consumers.

            Designers in the world today play many roles. They are artist and manufactures, having a wide range of knowledge to help better communicate their message with consumers. Designers today know about techniques, forms, colors printing and psychological function. They concern themselves with function which helps communicate and bridge the between products and consumers.

            Having an understanding of both the creative and manufacturing process, helps them go beyond other creative occupations. A sculptor can sculpt but cannot always tell you how their work will be consumed, while designers concern themselves with how consumers will take in their work. Designers have to think about unsolvable theoretical questions because these questions many times lead to the future of design. Design has changed immensely over the last 100 years; designers create change by solving the unsolvable.

            Technology has made changes to a designer’s job, by allowing designers to better understand the process of how things are created. Instead of drawing or writing something and sending it to a printing press to create it, they can now use technology like computers, tablets, scanners, and printers to bring their designs to life by themselves. They are more involved in the presses instead of waiting for results from a printing press. Designers today can catch mistakes along their creative process and fix them right away unlike in the times before technology when a designer relayed on a team of people to create.

            An urgent problem designer face today is social responsibility. Designers want to design things that they believe in and want to show their self-expression in their work but they must find a way to do it responsibly. They must be able to create content ethically while maintaining their personal political and cultural beliefs untarnished. It is up to the designer to accept or reject projects that can be associated to them especially in today’s world where people are very divided.

The designed object I am going to talk about was created in 1973, is the mobile phone that was created by Martin Cooper, who was the executive of the telecommunications company Motorola, which was where the first mobile phone was produced. After researching, the first phone was pretty bulky and consisted the shape of a brick and weighed around two pounds and the first phone call was made on April 3 of 1973 by Cooper to his rival, Dr. Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs, the call was said to of lasted about 30 minutes after the phones battery had been charged for over 10 hours. Ten years later in 1983, the mobile phone was finally ready to be announced to the public and for the world to see the power of sound wave technology in the palm of their hands and around 1989 mobile phones where starting to be designed smaller for easier carrying and use. Martin Cooper was born Marty Cooper on December 26, 1928 in Chicago, Illinois. He had a mother, father and brother named Mary, Arthur and Will. His family immigrated to the U.S from Ukraine Russia and his parents made a living by selling merchandise door to door. Cooper’s mother and father, Mary & Authur Cooper cared and wanted the best education they could provide for their kids. Cooper described his father to be a wonderful guy and is lucky and thankful to have a father like him. When Martin was a young boy he had a curiosity on how things worked and as his parent’s notice this they decided to wait and let their son figure it out on his own. As time went on, Cooper attended the Illinois Institute of Technology to earn his bachelors in electrical engineering, and graduated in 1950, he then joined the U.S Navy and fought in the Korean War and after the war he began working at Motorola after joining the Teletype Corporation in 1954, and earned his masters in electrical engineering from IIT in 1957. Cooper worked on many projects involving wireless communication, like the first radio controlled traffic light in 1960 and police radios in 1967. The first mobile phone that was available to be purchased by consumers as a handheld device was the DynaTac 8000x on March 6, 1983. Ameritech supplied the first U.S network (1G) andit took over a decade for it to reach the market. The phone was sold for around $4,000 and it only lasted around 30 to 35 minutes of talk time usage and it took over ten hours for the device to fully charge. With this consumers demanded for the phone to have longer battery life, lighter weight and smaller size for easy carry around. In 2002, technology made another huge change in the history of mobile phones buy putting color and adding a camera creating the worlds first camera cell phone, which where the Nokia 7650 and the Sanyo SPC-5300. Designers as Artists are assumed to know things and have contagious, profitable personalities tied to their stardom. No matter how cool your interface, Beatrice Warde’s famous Crystal Goblet metaphor asserts the design, the glass, should be a transparent vessel for content, the wine, stating typography should  be a perfectly transparent vessel for content. Over that past decade we have seen magnificent convergence of media. Mobile phones can now play music and display webpages and present high quality videos, sometimes, and clear text. The invention of the mobile phone was just for long distance talking, but as time moves forwards, the structure of the phone kept on being updated as well to keep up with the times.  New advancements for phones since the 1970s are now being built smaller with a touch screen and containing applications like app games, calender, camera, text messaging and emailing. From the time until now cellphone or mobile play a really significant part of people’s life. We would not deny that cellular phone has altered people’s time style. This history of the mobile phone has been evolving since the early innovation by Martin Cooper. There are some advantages from the design that reason most people are now getting cell phones. Cell phones increase the rate of communication and people get connected around the world even when they are really far apart at the same time. 

Works Cited:

britannica.com/biography “Martin-Cooper American Engineer”

insider.com the history of the cellphone

simplyknowledge.com biography martin-cooper

Fragment Air Jordan is a product that came into existence after collaboration took place between Jordan Brand and Hiroshi Fujiwara. Fujiwara is the designer who labeled the fragment design. Fujiwara gave the Air Jordan 1 its fresh color. The original Air Jordan remains, but it was a tweak in the sneaker color with the previous color schemes to give it the classic retro vibe as noted by Deleon (2020). The Jordan shoes released in the past were known as “Broyal” with black and blue color, but the name change to “Black Toes” after Fujiwara added a white base now resembling white, blue, and red. Fujiwara’s signature branding is in the form of jumpan motis on the tongue under the ankle discrete tooling coding and fragment thunderbolt logos found on the heel tabs. The shoe connects Japanese figure love, where it features stability at the midfoot and leather overlays. The making of Fragmented Air Jordan by Fujiwara was culminated by the “The Ten” brand’s failure. The brand was scrapped without even being released, and Fujiwara wanted to improve on his designs. Fujiwara was passionate about fashion, which encouraged him to produce more products relating to Nike Air Max. Upcoming artists tested several of these products during their performance.
Semiotic Theory
Semiotics is basically founded on semiosis, of which in its essence is more about relationships between a sign, as well as an object, and the respective meaning. In semiotics, Hervey (2016) says the sign is a representation of the object that is in the interpreter’s mind. Signs can be verbal or nonverbal. The semiotic theory is also



referred to as sign theory, and it was put across by Peirce’s. The theory by Peirce is distinctive and innovative, following its breadth and complexity (Crow 31). This theory captures the importance of interpretation of significance. This theory’s development is central in logic works as a means of discovery to prove pragmatism. Fujiwara has applied this theory to a wide extent of his work by introducing Nike’s signs in the designs (Hervey 29). Likewise, changing the color from black and blue and introducing the new white changed brand perceptions. The previous had not passed even the display stage. Hence Fujiwara was focused on proving the pragmatism that his products can also be within the Nike markets.
Under the semiotic theory, signs and values have connections to each. The signs and values include detachment in which a person of a system preserves is independence. Dominance, in this situation, the person or system takes control over the other. The third-party controls dependence in this area of focus he needs or the person or system (Hervey 38). This theory was applied in creating the Air Jordan, where the Nike Company had to depend on Fujiwara to provide them with a new design that they could compliment in their older designs. Nike remained dominant
Gestalt Psychology Theory
Gestalt psychological theory is also a theory known as the principle of groupings. The view was put forth by Gestalt psychologists purposely to observe how humans perceive objects naturally as patterns that are well arranged and objects (Koffka 10). According to the Gestalt psychologists’ primary reason for this principle’s existence, innate disposition patterns are perceived simultaneously on specific rules with the mind. There



are five categories used in organizing this principle. They include Proximity, Similarity, Continuity, Closure, and Connectedness.
Proximity involves grouping elements that are closer to each other to keep them from further apart. Thus clustering of items in one group will make it more conspicuous, and people will recognize it more (Wong 863). Fujiwara employed this idea and employed different colors like black, blue, and white in one product of Nike Air Jordan and gained more attention from Nike users. The principle of similarity postulates that perception leads to an individual’s stimuli looking similar to each other under the same object. Fujiwara employed this idea by adding another color to the product, which made the product look the same but very attractive.
The closure principle holds that individuals can see items to be complete even though they are incomplete. The picture might have other hidden objects that make it stand out even when they are hidden (Gavrilova et al. 420). Fujiwara has effectively employed the principle in the products. They failed o reach the display stage, but just a twist in color made the product gain market value. In the continuity principle, individuals look at two or more objects and see a continuation without interruption. Gestalt’s theorist looks at the product and saw that is continuity was never interfered with and asked for its continuity. Connectedness implies having products that are closely connected and following a similar direction (Gavrilova et al. 426) This perception was employed by Fujiwara to ensure that all Air Max produced by Nike followed a particular pattern even though there was a distinction in colors because of its brand image, but Fujiwara



became more dominant since his plan helped develop new shoe designs.
Embodiment of the Theory in Various Perspectives
The product has embodied the theories from various perspectives. First, in the semiotic theory, the approach has employed signs that entail Nike during its production. Nike signs are critical, following their market share and brand image. Products produced with Nike signs are likely to sell faster than those claiming to be Nike affiliates. The principles of Gestalt have also been embodied in this product by looking at various impacts of the product. The work ought to have promoted Nike products’ continuity, which is embraced in all sectors of producing the product. The coloring of the product was unique, but it never deviated from Nikes color, a blend of white and black.


Works Cited
Crow, David. Visible signs: an introduction to semiotics in the visual arts. Vol. 40. ava publishing, 2010..
Deleon, Jian. “Hiroshi Fujiwara Details His Ambitious Jordan Brand Collaboration. Air.jordan.com.” Air.Jordan, 10 Oct. 2020, air.jordan.com/card/hiroshi-fujiwara-details-his-ambitious-jordan-brand-collaboration/.
Gavrilova, T., et al. “Gestalt principles of creating learning business ontologies for knowledge codification.” Knowledge Management Research & Practice, vol. 13, no. 4, 2015, pp. 418-428, doi:10.1057/kmrp.2013.60.
Hervey, Sándor. Semiotic perspectives. Routledge, 2016.
Koffka, Kurt. Principles of Gestalt psychology. Vol. 44. Routledge, 2013..
Wong, Bang. “Gestalt principles (part 1).” Nature methods 7.11 (2010): 863-864.