History of Graphic Design

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The Lines Behind Us

Above is a poster I created with Adobe Illustrator that follows the De Stijl art style. Since I have been researching about Theo Van Doesburg and the style that he helped create and establish for the past couple weeks, I thought it would be fun to have my own take on the art style myself. As defined, De Stijl consists of straight compositions, so squares and lines are mostly what I used here. Even the text about the course number and the name of the professor were made with straight lines. As the De Stijl artwork contains mostly only black, white, and the primary colors, I decided to use, obviously, black, white, red, blue, and yellow. During my research paper about Theo Van Doesburg, I found this page in one of his De Stijl magazines, and discovered it was a guide for this art style.

Following this guide, I used a picture and produced this poster which I shall call “The Lines Behind Us.”

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Simple, PM, and Devtsil

For this blog post, I shall be writing about three chapters from the book “Design Literacy” that I found pretty interesting.

The first one is on page 53, chapter titled Jugend and Simplicissimus, and the reason this chapter interested me was because it had to do with the Simplicissimus magazine whose one of the front covers was something I blogged about a couple weeks ago. According to the chapter, Simplicissimus was edited by two men, Albert Langen and Thomas Theodore Heine (poster artist and cartoonist), where they managed to combine and use graphic design and humor to their advantage. Most of their images, like the bulldog cover that I showed in a previous blog post (and party this one), consisted only of a large image with a caption and headline. These images would be created by Heine and by other numerous contributors. The magazine, along with Jugend, were excellent examples of the Jugendstil movement, which is also known as the art nouveau movement.

The next one that got my attention is actually the next chapter after the last one I mentioned, found in page 55, chapter titled PM and AD. The chapter tells us that PM (which stands for Production manager), which is then later called AD (Art Director), was a graphic art periodical created by The Composing Room of New York, a typesetting shop. The periodical was found in 1934 by Dr. Robert Lincoln Leslie, and it mostly consisted of print media, industry news, and basically the vision of modern design and typography. In 1939 it was sold and renamed to AD, which eventually stopped running in 1942, beginning with an announcement of suspension, and then never coming back from the suspension. I found most of the chapter interesting, and the cover reminded me both of the Simplicissimus magazine, and of the designs of Theo Doesburg because of its simplicity.

The last chapter I’m gonna look at is found in page 195, with the name translated to With the Ship that Carries Tea and Coffee, and I chose it for the same reason because of the last chapter (reminds me of Doesburg and Simplicissimus). The chapter focuses on a group of artists from Czechoslovakia named Devetsil. The leader of the group was named Karel Teige, and Teige would promote the combination of his strict typography standards with European avant garde art. One of him most complicated and abstract piece of work is a black circle, shown above. Its attention grabbing, thought provoking, mind numbing, dedicated appearance would forever contain infinite interpretations.

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Theo Van Doesburg, founder of De Stijl

I am currently writing a paper about a Dutch artist named Theo Van Doesburg, who, as the title already states, found the De Stijl movement in about 1917. To quickly explain what the movement is about, here's one of his pieces of work:

Basically, it's abstract art, where the only elements are straight compositions, primary colors, and black and white colors. There's nothing round, there's nothing too detailed, just squares, lines, and basic colors. It's simple. Yet, it works. Theo's, as well as the rest of the followers of the De Stijl movement, main motive was to create paintings and architects using these simple elements. It was like the Cubism art movement that was also happening arount that time, only with stricter elements.

Notice that the exact same elements are in this chair created by Gerrit Rietveld, who contributed much to the movement. We only see blue, yellow, red, and black. There's only squares and rectangles in this chair. Yet, it's still a chair, despite its uncomfortable appearance

My paper will focus mostly on the founder of the De Stijl movement, and the impact he has done.The main reason I chose this topic to write an essay about is because of the simplicity of his designs. He proves that you can still create an effective message and a purpose using only lines and primary colors. 

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Simplicissimus

Thomas Theodor Heine, 1896, Source

Here we have a poster of an adorable bulldog designed for a late nineteenth hundred century magazine named "Simplicissimus." Why would this cover be important? For several reasons, but mostly because of its colors and its structure.

There's only three colors in this poster: red, black, and gray (or perhaps white). Compare it to other designs, like this one or this, where obviously more than three colors were used. These two posters mentioned were made around the same time that this bulldog poster was. Although the bulldog poster is simpler, it's actually more effective as a graphic design than the two posters mentioned. The red and white colors easily catch the attention of the viewer, causing them to immediately look at either the title or the bulldog.

Also notice that unlike many posters and designs of around the same time, there are no women. This poster looks very simple and modern compared to others, yet it's still effective as a graphic design.

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Eggscellent.

George Tscherny, 1960's, Source

"For every wall, there is a door" is a quote from Emerson. What this quote could be interpreted as is the significance of being creative and finding new paths for the problem at hand. What the designer did was provide an image of an egg with a cracked hole, implying that whoever was stuck inside the shell found a way to escape and be free. This could mean creative freedom, as whoever was stuck in the shell is no longer bound by restrictions.

So basically, it’s trying to convince people to consider becoming creative, to forget about the limits and think outside the box. This is obviously an ad for a Visual Arts school, so this poster must be valuable to anyone interested in art, as this poster claims that whoever attends this institute will have the creative freedom that they've always desired.