Author: Alexis Vega Velez

Alexis_ DesignTheory_Bibliography

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Adaskina, Natalia. “Constructivist Fabrics and Dress Design.” The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, vol. 5, 1987, pp. 144–159. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1503941. Accessed 5 May 2020.

“The Gender—Neutral Society.” Manliness, by Harvey C. Mansfield, Yale University Press, New Haven; London, 2006, pp. 1–21. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1npj79.4. Accessed 5 May 2020.

Lawler, Kelly. “Why Billy Porter Doesn’t Care What You Think If He Wears a Dress on the Red Carpet.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 11 June 2019, www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/2019/06/10/billy-porter-pose-rocking-red-carpet-dresses-and-masculinity/1379171001/.

Chizitere. “Is Jaden Smith Transgender or Gay? Here Are The Facts.” Answers Africa, 3 Apr. 2020, answersafrica.com/jaden-smith-facts.html.

Kirrin Finch. “Menswear-Inspired, Androgynous & Tomboy Style.” Kirrin Finch, kirrinfinch.com/.

“Lookbooks.” Olderbrother, olderbrother.us/blogs/lookbooks.

“Varvara Stepanova.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 21 Apr. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varvara_Stepanova.

Leconte, Justine. Why Men Wear Pants and Women Wear Skirts. 1 Apr. 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsQTTfoOQ6Y.

Mandeville, Amelia and Grace Mandeville. WEARING MENS CLOTHES FOR A WEEK. 1 Nov. 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUAkEUbHW-4.

Mattila, Kalle Oskari. “Letter of Recommendation: Womens Clothing.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 6 Nov. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/magazine/letter-of-recommendation-womens-clothing.html.

RhetoricalPaper_Theory_VegaVelez

This is an image of a billboard I saw located on Houston street between Lafayette and Crosby streets. It is Indya Moore’s Calvin Klein shoot. I picked this because the model you see in this advertisement is actually transgender and non-bionary. They stared in a series called “Pose” which helped give a voice to transgenders. Back in the day, movies use to place actual women to play transgender roles instead of transgenders themselves. I appreciate the fact that the world is finally noticing the different people in the world.

This is a screenshot of the official dove website present today. The majority of the website pictures feature women of color. Just one question: Is this towards more of a diversity aspect or is it more of a racial profiling aspect?

This is a screenshot of the Secret Deodorant commercial featured during the 2020 Super bowl. It displayed women equality in a scenerio where a game of football was taking place. After getting a touchdown two players took their helmets off to reveal a Caucasian woman and a African American woman. It is not only addressing gender equality, it is also addressing racial equality.

I believe that media extends human being or humanity in general in a few ways but also takes away from human being and their humanity. Media extends human beings by giving them a way of communicating and creating without a typical pen and paper but I agree when they state that “We are too prone to make technological instruments the scapegoats for the sins of those who wield them.” Ever since technology has presented itself in our world, we have taken it with open arms and accepted it as a way to get everything faster and more efficient but what it is actually doing is limiting our creativity and our judgement on what works within the graphic design world and what doesn’t. Media extends humans in the sense that the medium they use is not the only medium they are using. For example, the written word is the content of print and the content of written word is speaking.

The hazards that technological progress bring to individuals and society in the “electric age” is the idea that structure and configuration are the two main ideas for creating that this is all they teach students in class. Which was point in our Bauhaus reading when they stated that going to school doesn’t make you an artist. “If it works its obsolete,” this is the idea that is being placed into the minds of the current age but this is not true. In another article that was read in class, it stated that even though a solution works, doesn’t mean it is the right one. Technology itself is growth and change but what they don’t understand is the extend of the growth and the understanding of change.

Artists, in creating new ideas, can take on technology and utilize it in a way to stay afloat in the design world. It is our duty to adapt to the new things in life especially if it impacts our profession. “The artist is the man in any field, scientific or humanistic, who grasps the implications of his actions and of new knowledge in his own time. He is the man of integral awareness.” This means the person, no matter what field they are in, understanding who they are and what the world is giving them is a true artist.

In comparing Jan Tschichold, Karl Gerstner and Josef Muller- Brockmann, we realize that all have a different way of believing the way one should design. Jan Tschichold compares in his writing, The New Technology, old typography to new typography. He touches upon how new typography has a need to be clear because of the amount of print being put out to communicate to others. He says in his writing that they believe it is wrong to arrange a text as if there were some focal point in the center of a line. For example, justified arrangement, of a block of text or short paragraph, each line would have different tracking depending on the amount of words on the line. He also goes on to say that Form must be created out of the function. We must have a reason to make something come to life for the people.

Karl Gerstner expressed something called Designing Programmes in his writing. This is a way of problem solving which is what us as designers do. We are problem solvers no matter what field within graphic design we decide to embrace. “The creative process is to be reduced to an act of selection”, he states and I agree. I relate it to my copywriting class, where we begin with strategy which determines our problem, then to find out the best solution to then come up with headlines and taglines to combine together and create a solution in disguise. The initial point of the program is to make the bad difficult and the good easy.

Josef Muller-Brockmann talks about grids and how grids show an expression of order at which the designer composes work in terms that are constructive. Grids are an excellent tool to use when trying to be precise. Grids are another way of designing in a matter that allows you to think of what is aesthetically pleasing for the viewer.

1. The people of today are lacking the love for the past. “With nostalgia we hear of times when literate people had knowledge, respect and understanding of the subject. Common man today has no opinion at all in such matters… typesetter, original typographer, as well as the printer, has lost this culture.” This quote explains that back then people were passionate to consume the knowledge of typography. They were able to understand the idea, the process and much more about type. Whereas today, man has set aside the fact that type is relevant in our lives. All of these beautiful machineries that was created for us is losing their importance within history. All because we lack passion for the past.

2. When making art in the future, it is necessary to understand that technology is advancing every day and us as designers need to keep up with what is new. In Laszlo Moholy-Nagy “Typophoto” it states “One man invents printing with movable type, another photography, a third screen printing and stereotype, the next electrotype, phototype, the celluloid plate hardened by light.” Everything is going to influence something or someone and that something or someone is going to make it even better for others to improve after that.

3. According to Walter Gropius artist have been misled in thinking that art could be mastered by study. I agree with him in the sense that not everyone is made to be an artist. It starts from within and works its way through your brain, through your bones, through your finger and to the tip of your material. Within “the academy” they teach them about the past and what has been done already. This still happens today where the idea of art history is scheduled for students to understand what they are getting into.

In the reading about Aleksandr Rodchenko, he envisions the world as technologically advanced. The quote, “Previously- Engineers relaxed with art; Now- Artists relax with technology,” means before engineers relied on art work to define their next move, whereas now Artists rely on software to predict the future. Lissitzky envisions that new century should go above and beyond what has already been made. “Yet in this present day and age we still have no new shape for the book as a body.” This quote has an impatient tone as if he is telling us to not sit on our asses and actually use our brains to work. From the Futuristic Manifesto we see that they have envisioned a more industrial and more modernized approach for the new century. Not to focus on the past but to focus on the future inventions because they felt they were encapsulated by the baroque period. “we want to demolish museums and libraries, fight mortality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice.”

Rodchenko hoped that the process of announcing would continue and that constructions would not stop. Lissitzky says, “the expressive power of every invention in art is an isolated phenomenon and has no evolution,” but this has changed. They want us now to break through limitations and progress what has been done already. So that the idea of it does not fade into the background. The Futurist Manifesto states they want to take the dangerous route of rebellion.

The idea of Lissitzky seems to be that when one thing ends or advances, something else begins to be advanced. This is closely related to Rodchenko’s idea on art evolving us to be able to take on the future. Futurist Manifesto goes against the other readings but not entirely. Compared to Rodchenko, I expressed that the art was evolving us to be able to take on the future. Futurism makes us take on the future entirely in one hit. Thinking beyond what has been already expressed within the art movements. The same thing with Lissitzky, they are willing to start somewhere to end with progress that can be continued. Futurism takes a stronger approach by diving into it head on and don’t look back.

Semiology is distinguished from linguistics because linguistics is a sub-category of semiology that is able to be studied in itself due to the fact that it is not connected to any other sciences. It is only compared to general sciences when related to semiology. Semiology, on the other hand, is a science that studies life of signs within society in conceivable. Semiology is the task of the psychologist to determine its exact place.

Signs are used in everyday life once you leave the house. The control of society like the red hand that appears red but then switches to a walking person to indicate you have the right of way. In mathematics, we have signs that tell us when something must be added, subtracted, divided, multiplied, and so on. We use signs to communicate a meaning that is not the sign itself to people.

Sign designates the whole. The signified would replace the concept within the diagram of communication. Signifier replaces sound-image respectively within the diagram of communication.

Language, as we read in the reading Course in General Linguistics, “It is both a social product of the faculty of speech and a collection of necessary conventions that have been adopted by a social body to permit individuals to exercise that faculty” which means it is a speaking and writing ability inherited to be able to communicate with others. This is related to graphic communication because it communicates ideas to others with hopes that the people will engage and communicate what they learned with others. Graphic communication is composed of synergy, which is the combination of text and image working together to convey an idea. Visual art is a general topic meaning any art work composed of any medium. The visual within graphic communication or the image in your head when you speak could be visual art.