Massimo Vignelli’s use of the very neutral and boring Helveteica is a very modernist thing to do: Straight to the Point

However, despite the blandness of Helvetica, the American Airlines logo he designed remained  unchanged for 50 years. Why? I could only point out some aspects that made sense to me:

• simple, clean
• straight to the point
• can see when it is very enlarged, and is not cluttered with ornamental information.

In another world where Helvetica is not boring…

For me, even though Helvetica is a super boring font, the use of colour value adds to the designs, making it appear more fun and approachable while remaining neutral.

But again, I still don’t understand why it has to remain neutral in a brand identity though. Maybe because in this new generation of millennials, businesses and organisations have to try and become people; have to stand for something, be it advocating for the LGBT or endorsing a celebrity athlete like Colin Kaepernick:

for the above poster, i find it interesting that there is a use of serif here even though the Nike branding is you know…. FUTURA.

okay not to stray too far off from graphic design, having Kaepernick’s face right there, huge and in yo face, is a very bold choice, a very risky move to take in the political climate in the USA. And then right below his chin is the Nike logo and slogan. (BAM!) If this isn’t brand identity in the 21st century I don’t know what is!!

From the video, I learned that the Bauhaus was the flashpoint of “modern design”. The principles of form following function and simplicity influences most of today’s designs.

It was interesting for me to learnt that the Bauhaus was created in the 1990s, during a very tense period with new technology popping out, which transformed the way people did business and how artists and designers operated.

In terms of Graphic Design, it has moved from the victorian, ornamental design to m a cleaner modern design movement, which we still use today.

Modernism as defined by the reading and the dictionary is the reducing to it’s most expressive form. However, the author goes on to write that there is never really just a single truth, as modernism is not applicable for every single situation.

For me, i’ve also agree that there “is certain arrogance in the idea that one can develop a universal methodology that works in every problem”. It sounds very inquisition-y to me hehe. For instance, reduction and simplicity may not be able to solve all problems. Like, for instance, the De Stijl Chair.

However, there are some parts of modernism that i also believe in. And one of it is the aspect of accomplishing the intended task. For me, i feel that this is where designing with a purpose comes in, which brings me back to my Design Thinking class. Could that be an aspect of Modernism being magnified so that we can study design problems in depth? V interesting.

Another one is not to imitate reality. For me, i can agree to this to a certain extent. Because i am also tired of seeing designers trying to create images of things that are close to reality, which at the end of the day is very pointless because it is not interesting and doesn’t. In the article, it says “Life is erotic; Modernism doesn’t carry that.” That is true in the article’s definition of modernism, which basically says that modernism is “all work no play makes jack a dull boy”. Basic shapes can only last for a period before the graphics become very exhausted and played out.

However, for me, while i agree that you’re not trying to imitate reality here, making the familiar unfamiliar is what makes your designs unique in a way. For example, the Japanese design movement Wabi Sabi works with object we are familiar with and embraces it’s imperfection. It’s very minimalist, but very organic.

This, compared to the De Stijl chair, feels more homely and human like, instead of having a “fake human” design.

Being a digital age baby and post-post modernism (?) adult, I find that the philosophy behind modernism is still very strong and timeless: to design with a purpose, to accomplish the task at hand. But I think it’s time to start looking at more human-like elements in our designs.

 

Readings:

Bierut, Michael. Looking Closer. Allworth, 1997

P43-49 Some thoughts on modernism: Past Present and Future by Milton Glaser, Ivan Chermayeff and Rudolf deHarak

 

I really like Art Nouveau (it took me 4 tries to get the spelling right) because of it’s very ethereal, goddess-like, very calm and ideal perception of life. Though, i’ve never been one to aim to become an arts and crafts designer myself, sometimes when I calm down and go into a fantasy world, I do think of dragons and magic and beautiful women too :’) I went home for the weekend, and in my house, we have lots of plants. My mom LOVES them: both fake and real plants. She kind of has this Moroccan aesthetic thing going on, which is very tropical but still decorative at the same time:

 

 

I used the Philodendron plant as the centre of my abstract pattern because it is the most iconic tropical plant. Also, i used a bluish turquoise kind of colour because of the Moroccan aesthetic. I kind of kept it simple (even though that’s not very art nouveau of me) because i kind of wanted to get the round corners in to create an organic square shape, which is one of the characteristics I find in late Art Nouveau styles, mostly inspired by the likes of:

 

My tropical take on Art Nouveau:

 

 

Also because I was in the mood for it:

 

 

Even though it should be more detailed and done with more care, I found it fun to do this tropical take on the Art Nouveau style!

 

Art Nouveau in Singapore culture? More likely than you think!!

For me, learning about the arts and crafts movement was um….interesting. I feel like we’ve been doing this for the longest time though coughcough

but other than the normal everyday things that i own in my house, the Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts movement is still prevalent in Singapore’s design landscape, example the gate at the Singapore Botanic Gardens.

 

In conclusion, Art Nouveau and the Arts and Crafts Movement are not dead! but please keep that far away from me, it’s so gaudy and i’ll use it only when i want no one to see me! or maybe if i’m feeling more southeast asian than normal. or pretending to be a witch in lord of the rings.

I’ve been interested in Dadaism and it’s aesthetic because of how edgy, purposeful, and funny it is. I first learned about Dadaism when I was exploring surrealism and post-modernism, and what other art movements would come up next in my time and in the future. Dadaism was not made to be pleasing or beautiful, which to me is a very bold and courageous move outside of my comfort zone.

 

From one of the books I’ve read, 101 Things to learn in Art School by Kit White, she writes that “24: All Art is Political”. To me, the Dadaism movement really exemplifies this as all the choices in the mediums and subjects all return to the fact that art created during the time was a reflection of the negative reactions to the First World War in the 1910s. Often times, we hear that Dadaism is about being anti-war. But the one below might be difficult to understand it as such:

 

The one work that I feel is very iconic of the Dadaism movement is Fountain by Marcel Duchamp, 1917. I think the fantastic thing about this was that he forced people into questioning what art meant. Using a readymade object of a urinal and presenting it in a gallery is very controversial and risky of him especially at a more conservative time, and there were more rigid rules about who and what could qualify as art.

 

“How is this a piece about anti-war?” One might ask. Me too, until I started learning that Dadaism was also about mocking the materialistic and nationalistic attitudes of people during the war years. To be honest, I would be pretty annoyed too if everything I saw was propaganda and support for the government who was responsible of screwing the people over in the first place. This artwork represented the amount of spite I’d have on the “pretentiousness” of people who felt that they were of higher class just because they could “get” abstract art (how bourgeois of you to be able to understand a urinal sitting on a pedestal, care to tell me more about it?). What I understood from “Fountain” was that Dadaism is a form of dark comedy and should be enjoyed as such.

 

I guess you could say he was just taking a piss *ba dum tsssss*

 

All pictures by @TJCruda

If I could point to one contemporary example of Dadaism, it would be that kid who put his glasses on the floor at the MoMA and people looking at it as if it was an artwork. This form of “Neo-Dadaism” really magnifies the lengths people would go to put a line between art and life, but in reality, the boundary is very thin. I feel like the same audience wouldn’t have acted as such if those glasses were next to a trash bin right outside the MoMA though. I wouldn’t go so far as to calling that kid a Dadaist, but he definitely did act like one in the moment.

 

Regarding the video, I did not understand anything. However, I feel that even if you could speak the language, you still would not be able to understand it because of how “loony” it is. There actually is a level of coordination and choreography, so to an extent, it is not that random. However, after having read an explanation of the video, I found it interesting that….I still could not understand. To me, I think this is the cause of me having never experienced the horrors of war myself. I feel like I can understand the sentiment, and it would have made a huge difference if I was a woman living in 1927 and watching this performance.

What I did understand, however, is that the performance was a huge success, and the halls were so overcrowded that many could not find a seat to watch it at all. It was something that people of the time really identified with and really enjoyed, which further goes in line with blurring the lines of the art and life. It was a type of “art for the people”.

When I first started the video, I think the one thing that kind of stood out was that most of  the names being said belonged to men. Why were there so many men? Was it because men were the ones who suffered the most in times of war because of facing their enemies head to head in the time of battle? While that may not have been the main point of the video, I felt that it was an interesting observation as to why many Dada practitioners were men.

 

Sources:

https://www.theartstory.org/movement-dada-artworks.htm#pnt_4

http://www.cabaretvoltaire.ch/en/history.html

Guy Puts His Glasses on the Museum Floor and People Thought It Was Art