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A N M 2 4 5 | H I S TO RY O F G R A P H I C A N D W E B D E S I G N

A New Language of Form

C H A P T E R 1 5

A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM

William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.

P O S T E R D E S I G N

Constructivism

• Russian artists in the late 18 and early 1900s used Cubist and Futurist influences in their poster designs.

• Rejected the idea of “art for art’s sake,” adopting a more socially conscious expression of their ideas.

• WWI and the Russian Revolutios were the subject of much of the work.

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A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM

William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.

P O S T E R D E S I G N

El Lissitzky

• Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, 1919

• Space is divided into white and black areas and elements have political symbolism

• Strong use of diagonal elements, typography and imagery.

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A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM

William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.

B O O K C O V E R D E S I G N

El Lissitzky

• cover of For the Voice, by Mayakovsky, 1923

• a rigid right angle is animated by the counterbalance of the M and circles

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A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM

William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.

B O O K D E S I G N

El Lissitzky

• pages from For the Voice, by Mayakovsky, 1923

• the poem “Our March” begins, “Beat your drums on the squares of the riots, turned red with the blood of revolution.”

• title type has staccato cadences of a drumbeat; the red square signifies the blood-stained town squares

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A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM

William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.

B O O K D E S I G N

El Lissitzky

• pages from For the Voice, by Mayakovsky, 1923

• the poem title “Order for the Army of the Arts” appears on the right page opposite a dynamic constructivist design

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A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM

William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.

B O O K D E S I G N

El Lissitzky

• book cover for The Isms of Art, 1924

• format greatly influenced a visual program of informational organization for future books.

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A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM

William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.

B O O K D E S I G N

El Lissitzky

• title page for The Isms of Art, 1924

• graphic spirit achieved by medium-weight sans-serif type, mathematical division of the space, white areas, and bold rules established a typographic standard for the modern movement

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A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM

William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.

B O O K D E S I G N

El Lissitzky

• text format for The Isms of Art, 1924

• rigorous verticals separate German, French, and English texts, and horizontal bars emphasize an important introductory quotation.

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A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM

William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.

P O S T E R D E S I G N

El Lissitzky

• exhibition poster, 1929

• stark, powerful image, showing equal positioning of the male and female faces—a symbolic communication in a traditionally male-dominated society.

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A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM

William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.

P O S T E R D E S I G N

Alexander Rodchenko

• Russian artist and ardent communist who experimented with photography, typography, and montage.

• Most known for his photography and use of heavy sans serif hand-drawn lettering.

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A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM

William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.

P O S T E R D E S I G N

Constructivist Poster Style

• Elements were primarily geometric—squares, rectangles, circles and triangles.

• Used a variety of materials like wood, nylon, tin, cardboard, etc., and glued them together to create their montages or collages.

• Many layouts had a strong diagonal force with “in-your-face” typography.

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A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM

William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.

P O S T E R D E S I G N

Shephard Fairey

• Graphic designer, illustrator, and modern “street artist” known for his constructivist-style poster work.

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A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM

William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.

P O S T E R D E S I G N

Shephard Fairey

• But known even more for the Obama poster that generated tremendous publicity and controversy about copyright and “referencing” others work.

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• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/04/ap-accuses-shepard-fairey_n_164045.html

• http://boingboing.net/2009/02/09/milton-glaser-weighs.html

A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM

William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.

B O O K D E S I G N

De Stijl

• Founded in the Netherlands by Théo Van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian.

• Sought universal laws of equilibrium and harmony.

• Reduced elements to the 3 primary colors and eliminated curved or diagonal lines.

• Sans serif letterforms based on a square.

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A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM

William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.

PA I N T I N G

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Piet Mondrian

• Dutch painter who eventually eliminated all representational elements and moved toward a pure, geometric abstraction which was the foundation for the DeStijl movement.

A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM

William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.

B O O K D E S I G N

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Théo Van Doesburg

• Founder of the DeStijl movement.

• Like Mondrian, reduced visual imagery to basic shapes and colors.

• Designed typography based on tight rectangular blocks.

A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM

William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.

B O O K D E S I G N

Théo van Doesburg

• cover for De Stijl, 1922

• type is asymmetrically balanced in the four corners of an implied rectangle

• De Stijl is combined with the letters N and B, which indicated Nieuwe Beelden (New Images).

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A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM

William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.

B O O K D E S I G N

Vilmos Huszár

• cover design for De Stijl, 1917

• Huszár combined his composition with type and Van Doesburg’s logo to create a concise rectangle in the center of the page

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A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM

William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.

M O D E R N A P P L I C AT I O N

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DeStijl

• Mondrian’s style has been widely used by today’s designers.

A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM

William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.

P O S T E R D E S I G N

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Bart Van der Leck

• Poster showing an open composition of visual horizontal and implied vertical lines

• Again, used only the primary colors—red, blue, and yellow

A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM

William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.

Henryk Berlewi, exhibition poster, 1925. This early application of Mechano-faktura principles to graphic design is for an exhibition held in a Warsaw automobile showroom.

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A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM

William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.

Henryk Berlewi

• Putos Chocolates brochure, page 6, 1925

• copywriter Aleksander Wat closely collaborated with Berlewi to integrate text and form

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A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM

William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.

B O O K D E S I G N

Ladislav Sutnar

• cover of Nejmensi dum (Minimum Housing), 1931

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A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM

William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.

B O O K D E S I G N

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

• title page spread for i10, 1927

• printer was deeply disturbed by this design, with its words running vertically, bold sans-serif type placed into serif text for emphasis, bullets separating paragraphs, and bold bars by page numbers

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A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM

William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.

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K E Y T E R M S

Constructivism

Ed Lissitzky

Alexander Rodchenko

De Stijl

Piet Mondrian

Théo Van Doesburg

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A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM

William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.

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K E Y T E R M S

Cubo-futurism

The Russian avant-garde saw common traits in cubism and futurism and coined this term. Experimentation in typography and design characterized their futurist publications, which presented work by the visual and literary art communities.

Suprematisma painting style of basic forms and pure color founded by Kasimir Malevich. Rejecting both utilitarian function and pictorial representation, this nonobjective geometric abstraction was meant to express pure feeling through visual form.

Constructivistsa group of twenty-five artists led by Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko, who renounced “art for art’s sake” to devote themselves to industrial design, visual communications, and applied arts serving the new communist society. This group called on artists to stop producing useless things such as paintings and turn to the poster, for “such work now belongs to the duty of the artist as a citizen of the community who is clearing the field of the old rubbish in preparation for the new life.” The three principles of this group’s work were tectonics, texture, and construction.

Tectonicsthe principle of constructivism that represented the unification of communist ideology with visual form.

Texture the principle of constructivism that dealt with the nature of materials and how they are used in industrial production

Continues…

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A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM

William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.

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K E Y T E R M S

Construction

the principle of constructivism that symbolized the creative process and the search for laws of visual organization.

PROUNSan acronym for “projects for the establishment [affirmation] of a new art,” coined by El Lissitzky to name his own painting style. He introduced three-dimensional illusions that both receded (negative depth) behind the picture plane (naught depth) and projected forward (positive depth) from the picture plane. Lissitzky called this “an interchange station between painting and architecture”

Novyi lef (Left Front of the Arts)

a magazine for all fields of the creative arts designed by Alexander Rodchenko. Overprinting, precise registration, and photomontage were regularly employed.

Serial paintinga series or sequence of independent works unified by common elements or an underlying structure

Infantilismthe fresh, spontaneous, naive techniques of children’s art seen in Vladimir Vasilevich Lebedev’s work.

De Stijlthis movement sought universal laws of equilibrium and harmony for art, which could then be a prototype for a new social order. Its artists worked in an abstract, geometric style. Its founder and guiding spirit, Théo van Doesburg, was joined by painters Piet Mondrian, Bart Anthony van der Leck, and Vilmos Huszár, the architect Jacobus Johannes Pieter Oud, and others. With their proscribed visual vocabulary, these artists sought an expression of the mathematical structure of the universe and the universal harmony of nature. They believed the war was expunging an obsolete age, and science, technology, and political developments would usher in a new era of objectivity and collectivism. Continues…

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A NEW LANGUAGE OF FORM

William Pickering, title page for the Book of Common Prayer, 1844.

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K E Y T E R M S

De Stijl [journal]

Edited and published by Théo van Doesburg, this publication spread the de Stijl movement’s theory and philosophy to a larger audience. It advocated the absorption of pure art by applied art.

ElementarismThéo van Doesburg’s theory that declared the diagonal to be a more dynamic compositional principle than horizontal and vertical construction.

Mechano-Faktura theorydeveloped by Henryk Berlewi, it mechanized painting and graphic design into a constructed abstraction that abolished any illusion of three dimensions. This was accomplished by mathematical placement of simple geometric forms on a background. The mechanization of art was seen as an expression of industrial society.

Roklama MechanoIn 1924, Henryk Berlewi joined the futurist poets Aleksander Wat and Stanley Brucz in opening this Warsaw advertising firm. It introduced modern art forms to Polish society through industrial and commercial advertisements.

Devětsil (Nine Forces)

a group of avant-garde poets, designers, architects, performance artists, and musicians who designed many of their publications using what was available in the letterpress printer’s type case.

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