Art Deco

Art Deco 

              As exemplified by the geometric shapes and designs of various famous buildings in New York like the Chrysler Building and the Rockefeller Centre, the Art Deco Movement was one of the most fashionable and international design movements in modern art starting from the 1925’s till the          1940s.

            Much like the earlier Arts and Crafts Movement and as the curvilinear and organic style of design known as the Art Nouveau accompanied by the German movement known as the Bauhaus design school concept, Art Deco sought to embrace all types of the arts, including crafts as well as fine arts. It was being applied to a lot of the decorative arts such as interior design, furniture, jewellery, textiles, fashion and industrial design; it was even being applied to the art of architecture and in painting and graphics.

            Art Deco was influenced by a lot of the major art styles that occurred during the early 20th century. These influences contain a lot of the geometric forms which are also found in the Cubism, the machine-like- forms of the Constructivism and the Futurism movements and the unifying approaches of the Art Nouveau movement. Its highly intensive colours may have been inspired from the Parisian Fauvism. Art Deco also borrowed some of its designs from the Aztec and Egyptian art and as well from the Classical Antiquity. Unlike its predecessor movement Art Nouveau, however, the meaning of Art Deco was purely decorative and aesthetically pleasing.

              The Art Deco movement which was adopted by architects and designers all around the globe which gave life to a series of “events” such as the "Roaring Twenties",  the Great Depression which occurred in the early 1930’s, and the years which lead up to World War II. It suffered a great blow in its fame during the period of the late 1930’s and early 1940’s when the movement  was starting to be seen as too extravagant and showy for its surroundings which contained a war-like atmosphere. After that it quickly fell out of fashion. Later on there was a revival of the interest in Art Deco which occurred during the 1960s which coincidently occured with the movement's effect on a more recent art movement called Pop Art  and later on in the 1980s which was in line with the growing interest in graphic design.

Bigman, A. (2012). Art Deco: A strong, striking style for graphic design - Designer Blog. [online] The Creative Edge. Available at: http://99designs.com/designer-blog/2012/06/05/art-deco-a-strong-striking-style-for-graphic-design/ [Accessed 23 Dec. 2014].

Visual-arts-cork.com, (2014). Art Deco Design Style: Origins, History, Characteristics. [online] Available at: http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/history-of-art/art-deco.htm [Accessed 23 Dec. 2014].

Modernism

Modernism

            Together with the great advances of technology, the Modernism movement started to breakthrough during the 19^th Century and in to the 20^th. The Western society began to find new ways of how to improve the environment and its constructions and to shape the human culture. Modernism is also considered one of the “abstract movements” in graphic design because it was mainly influenced by some of the fine-art movements such as Cubism and Fauvism and even by other movements such as the Dada and the Bauhaus.

          The Modernism movement influenced and was influence a lot by the creative disciplines such as the arts, architecture, music and even literature. It was the time that machines were in vogue and the artists of that time had to learn to adapt with their surroundings and with the technology that was available which made it easier to mass reproduce certain types of objects. With that said the machines became a source of inspiration for the artists to use during the Modernism Movement.

            Modernism changed and restructured the thinking processes for graphic design, typography and the communications sector because the style of the design changed a lot from the earlier phase of its stages during the 19^th century. During the 19^th century, the whole concept of Modernism was filled with a lot of graphic design and typography that was overly decorated and intricate in every possible manner which led to posters to be packed with a lot of images and fancy text. The designers of the Modernist era stuck to the severely, structured grid system which emphasized a lot on the negative space. They also emphasized the usage of the clean sans-serif type. The whole idea was to create a great usage of strong graphics that were heavily against the commercialism of that time and the greediness and cheapness. The typefaces which were commonly used during the Modernism movement included Franklin Gothic, Monotype Grotesque, Futura and Helvetica Neue.

Citrinitas.com, (2014). The History of Visual Communication - The Modernists. [online] Available at: http://www.citrinitas.com/history_of_viscom/modernists.html [Accessed 23 Dec. 2014].

Modernism, T. (2013). The easy guide to design movements: Modernism | Graphic design | Creative Bloq. [online] Creativebloq.com. Available at: http://www.creativebloq.com/graphic-design/easy-guide-design-movements-modernism-10134971 [Accessed 23 Dec. 2014].

New York School Movement

New York School Movement:

During and after World War 2, a lot of talented artists from Europe migrated to America from Europe and from its countries. The artists at that time were escaping the political instability which was occurring throughout all of Europe and when they migrated to America they took their design styles with them and influenced the American Design which was “pragmatic, intuitive and less formal in its approach to organized space”. Another factor that helped to boost this movement was the fact that at that time New York was bustling and booming with life which led for that city to let this movement flow freely. The movement in general consisted in not only artists but also poets, musicians and painters. When it comes to graphic design, the New York School it is split into two different categories: The elder generations which where the teachers and were the ones who fled the political chaos and the other category were the students that were being taught about design by these same people. The students were being taught at a lot of institutions which specialized in graphic design such as the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

The aim of the New York School Movement was to emphasize the way how the designers expressed their ideas with a very open and perfect direction of information. Many artists were influenced by the New York School Movement; a particular artist which was greatly influenced by it was Paul Rand.  He started his career of a graphic designer by working as a promotional and editorial designer for diverse companies such as Apparel Arts, Coronet and Esquire. In his career he also worked hand-in-hand with the copy-writer Bill Bernbach by becoming the example of an art/copy team to work with each other. Rand also created a lot of famous logos that are very familiar with use and are still being used to this day. His style usually contained a lot of puns and manipulation with the typography; it also contained a lot of contrasting colours such as blue vs orange, yellow vs purple etc.  His work also featured a lot of geometrical shapes and cut edges against sharp forms and textured backgrounds with white text to oppose them to create interesting effects. 

Ahistoryofgraphicdesign.blogspot.com, (2011). The History of Graphic Design: The New York School. [online] Available at: http://ahistoryofgraphicdesign.blogspot.com/2011/04/new-york-school.html [Accessed 23 Dec. 2014].

Citrinitas.com, (2014). The History of Visual Communication - The Modernists. [online] Available at: http://www.citrinitas.com/history_of_viscom/modernists.html [Accessed 23 Dec. 2014].