Semiotics is a thematic coherence (subject field) and has been created by a bunch of mythologies and theorist ideas on that we can decode people in a matter of different ways. These can include body language and signifiers such as their clothes that can tell us a lot about a persons background wealth or social status all down to even a colour. Semiotics is a study of signs and sign systems within society and we can encode and decode which are often signs that are grouped together. Clothing is a cultural sign system as well as posing, body language and facial expressions are things were can decode from and define people. Semiotics is a critical methodology and provides us with a useful framework. Advertising is something that picks up and is a clear representation of social constructs as well as historical context; trends being a refection of what is current in that time period which is extremely crucial and relevant part in design and the industry. Ferdinand Saussure a linguist academic as well as Charles Pierce had an ideology or passive and constructive ideologies. a quote from Johnathan Bignall is crucial as he says 'signs and media are expressing signs'. Communication through language is all about exchange of minds. words are extremely symbolic and signifiers and signified concludes often to a sign. Often signifiers are physical representations that we perceive . Signified constructs are mental concepts. Parole is a partial example of speech writing. syntagm is a sentence that we notice as a sentence of signs for example when witnessing the word 'dog' a syntagm is when we recognise things in association to them 'my dog smells terrible' A paradigm is similar but is as point of substitution such as my dog smells eats and barks. Mythologies are aspects of culture and applying a frame work to certain behaviours and Roland Barthes is s theorist who' is particularly fasciated by it. Cultural texts carry meanings or cultural norms in the time period. in society we have many 'ideologies'. Ideology is a ruling material force of society is also its ruling intellectual force (who has control of the meaning?). Dominant ideologies can only operate through general consensus. Alain De Botton described ideology as 'released into society like an odourless, colourless gass'
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In the 80's there were a lot of dominant ideologies and cultural texts that carry ideology an these can change over time. However, there was something abut the 80's that left a mark on our society and is reflected in our work today. Theorist Pierre Bourdiev quoted that 'culture is effected by power structures within society' as he also talks about within the 1980's structured spaces like universities allowed the 80's to be a transformative period in time for art history and the economy. This was a time of De-Industrillisation and as a broadly right wing society at the time with 'Thatcherism' this then reflected a right wing bias in the popular press. This was an era with new technology and the doctoring of newspapers and because of the media convergence people now consumed things differently and in a variety of different ways as you saw them polarised viewpoints. Although there were things such as the Hillsborough Disaster and the Miners Strike in 1984/85 there was this merging of male and female roles and a raise of Graphic Designers like Barbra Krugar and this 'official' and 'unofficial' culture starting to emerge. Official culture reflected mainstream views, it is commercially concious and widely popular and this 'idealised' world. Unofficial is inspired by repelling against the Zeigiest, they work on a smaller scale and can be seen as a 'niche' market and presented this counter myth such as being sexy, violent and articulate. The 80's were a time of this cult of 'technology', things such as soap operas were a vibrant reflection on English culture and subject matters and the rise of the music video. Here on the slideshow are ex
Fashion Photography has a unique and effectuve way of displaying a narrative that can convey a message or a meaning through the uses of graphical codes, mise en scene, choice of location, angles and many more. Photographers like Rankin use icnoic photos from the fashion industry and recreates or gives he unique spin off to it as well as creating a more up to date and modernistic element to his photographs. Often to create appeal photographers create a fashion narrative with their photographs to convey meaning as a way of story telling through their photographs. Here we have a four page spread of a very aspirational and dreamy location of a forrest. Almost Fantasy like the first picture cascaded across two pages is empty and has no animals nor people filming up the empt space. We open up the pages to unvail the four page spread of this location but elongated and filled with models blending in to the scenary almost as though they were made for this specific location. Some models are using the scenery to create a narrative, however some are placed there and posing in a typical model fashion which makes it look quite obleak in contrast to their location and fellow peers. This could reflect the discourse between society and that some people are willing to corperate and be at one with nature and some stand out in a place and environment like this due to their understanding of it all. The way the new layer filled with people is revealed is in a way that invites into this now totally transformed environment de to all the models coming in and bringing a different vibe and atmosphere to the forrest and this could reveal or more deep and sinful message. These set of images play around with the ideas of surrealism and the modern and urban environment. Rankin and his understanding of fashion photography and it's purpose, will be deemed to have a lot of knowledge about the urban environment around us and how modern day society and the whole idea of this 'acid' culture can be reflected through surrealism and trippy illusions through the camera lense. This fashion narrative explores the ideas of the urban life lifestyle and what that entails. These pictures reflect our youth culture and explores the freakishly weird ideas and obsessions of our society today, sown by using surrealism to give the effect of acid trips and washes. Midcentury American IllustrationLeif Peng is one of many people that created great illustrations in America in the Mid-century alongside Norman Blackwell and many others that told stories through their work. Peng is a Canadian Cartoonist and Illustrator who has created artwork such as book covers and logos designs for many corporate clients including big names like Nintendo. He started his career maing illustrations for The Saturday Evening Post and Esquire and other well known magazines at the time. He very quickly became short of ideas however, after creating his blog 'Today's Inspiration' this allowed him to engage with his audience as well as producing new stuff. He was very much interested still on the business and learning about classic magazine images from the mid-20th century and how they were so great and rememberble. He has now dedicated his life to interviewing and researching artists and illustrators from that time period to create interesting contewnt as well as inspiring to create his own. Often illustrators of the mid-20th century depicted and drew people that often were seen in a normal or mundane scenario. I wanted to capture photos that showed people in their true light and unveiled a natural but yet something exciting in the picture that made it pop and a little over the average. these pictures are filled with happiness and are taken at unique perspectives and viewpoints to capture a different insight and view to the picture. these are some pictures i take of people caught of guard and in the moment to create that very organic and capture the raw emotion of people in the moment of doing things that they really love. Revolution In The HeadThis rock and roll era was reflected in design and art by the influence of the societal and culture coventions and events happening in that period of time. There were Liberal values & affluent rich youth and conservatives politics and protests. There were plenty of civil rights movements that stood up for injustice like Martin Luther King. The 60's had a lot of nuclear conflict as Vietnam war began and disrupted a generation. They started to produce a lot of 'modern' posters and substantial packaging due to their crash and desperaty at the time. There began this counter culture, whole new artists flooded the industry such as We Wilson a major figure. He used a lot of complimentary colours and were very organic in taste. Victor Moscoso did very lucid work and was inspired by Wes Wilson. He introduced imagery to his work which was seen as very innovative yet unusual in the 60's. Artist Bonnie McLearn did similar things with more subdued colour. The magazine 'Oz' began to transform in this era because of the influence of the 'hippy' culture. In Britain we were a lot more slower to catch on to this wave of art because of our own experiances in life at the time. There were a lot more freedom and creative as well as showing Sexual liberation and being Arug fueled.
With their bold colours, perfect geometric shapes and distinctive typography constructivist film posters become the 'new art' form in the young soviet country shaken up as a society and subsequent civil-war. The leader of the Russian Revolution, Vladimir Lenin 'of all arts cinema is the most important', this led poster designers and film producers to be constantly on the search for new and innovative content that would captivate the nation in a informative yet artistic way. in the 1920's and the beginnings of the 1930's was the most important period in Soviet film poster history. 'Sovkino' a government owned production company had an entire department dedicated to film poster design and employed many famous artists from the Straganov school of applied arts. Stenberg brothers were probably the most famous designer duo in Soviet Russia as they designed over 300 movie posters together, many of which are now considered classics. They were so captivated by Russia because they were seen to be 'ahead of their time'. these designers used their knowledge of lithographic painting and their individual knowledge to mitigate the poor quality of early 20th-centuary painting. These two posters are similar in the way the typography is cascaded and displayed on the page. The projectory of the words on each of the posters appear slightly different as the first is more relaxed and subtle in contrast to the other that appears urgent and abrupt, however the way the typography is displayed in this very innovative and creative way, shows the impact and important of these words. The girl is smoking a pipe, embellished in the smoke are pictures of serious issues that were going on is Soviet Russia at the time. This could reflect maybe the class or desensitisation of many people of the subjects as she is unphased to be causing a lot of damage. This could also be a reflection of the industrial state too that is effecting the way the lives of the Russians have changed which had then affected the content of film and early forms of television. In the second the words are projected out of the speaker to show the movement and force of the words as well as create the sense of yelling. This is directed too at workers and possibly the lower class. The sense of red on both of these stand out in amongst the white/cream background and is an effective colour to get attention and spark interest to the poster. This colour could also signify danger and closely link to the danger of the issues raised from these Russian film posters. Overall I think designers like the Stenberg brothers had the perfect oppurtunity to create art that people had never seen before and captivate a new audience with even a new style. Because film was also such an important aspect as it still is today, it is important that designers like the Stenberg brothers were creating stuff that were ahead of their time in order to be a success. Herbet BeyerHerbet Beyer is a celebrated twentieth century Austrian American versatile artist. he went down many paths such as graphic design, sculpture, architect and painting. He was considered the last living member of the Bauhaus and caused a lot of seminal development of the Atlantic Richfield Company's corperate art collection.In Linz he was apprenticed to the artist Georg Schmidthammer. He withdrew from the apprenticeship in favor of studying at the Darmstadt Artists’ Colony. He was fascinated by the Bauhaus manifesto by Walter Gropius.Later he was appointed the director of printing and advertising by Walter Gropius.He also tried to design typeface based on simplified phonetic alphabets.Herbert Bayer skills thrived under the supervision of some of the Bayer adopted the reductive minimalism method for the most Bauhaus publications, employing all-lowercase, sans serif typefaces. Similar to the other typographers of his time, Kurt Schwitters and Jan Tschicold , he also tried to design typeface based on simplified phonetic alphabets. Otl Aicher Otl Aicher were a German Grapic designer and typographer. He was most ronouned fr his pictograms and famous and extremely iconic designs for the 1972 Olympics held in Munich. His designs had a major influence on Graphic design at the time and has made such and impact that it even is reflected in the work graphic designers do today. Besides this he was also the co-founder of the Ulm school of design. Born on May 22, 1922 Aicher grew up in Ulm and worked alongside Werner Scholl who later on became the Werner Siblings who were executed by guillotine for being a part/members of the White Rose. The Werner family let Aicher hide in their residence and after the war came to a halt in 1946 the following year Aicher launched his own studio and in collaboration with his wife and Max Bill he established the The Ulm School Of Design. Aicher had a keen interest in Corperate branding and identity. He was often requested to design things such as airline logos and his most famous was the lead design role in promotion of the 1972 summer Olympics. Reviewing the '64 Games Design he based his work partially on previously employed iconography and created a set of pictograms. These pictograms were developed with an intention of presenting a visual interpretation of the stadium featured in Munich. These pictograms were designed to help athletes and the publics identify which sport they were watching and have becae ever since the go to symbols for identifying and signifying their chosen sports, as well as making a universal typeface for the Olympics. In his later career, Aicher ocnsulted the kitchen company Bulthaup and developed Rotis Font Family. He also continued to show his passion for design and typography and wrote a series of books on his discoveries of being in the industry that was heavily evolving. His well known works include, The world as design, inside the war, the kitchen is for cooking and critique of the automobile. A Reflection On Modern DayRichard Hamilton was an English painter and collage artist. His early works and projects such as this collage of his 1956 collage 'Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?' were considered by many people to be among the earliest works of pop art. He wanted to make sure that in his collage he reflected all the social, political and historical contexts that was happening during this time period to be portrayed in a bold and comedic manner through his work. imagery that fitted into Hamilton's categories were sourced and found from a a stash of American magazines that a fellow friend and artist McHale had brought back from the United States. These things he specifically chose to feature in his collage reflected Hamilton's ironic interest in popular culture and modern technology. The collage includes early inventions such as theadapting the look and feel of Tv's and tape recorders that would of been considered state of the art in the 1950s in contrast to now that would probably appear out dated. Framed comic strips put in between a traditional nineteenth century portrait and a window looking into a movie theatre shows it belonged to a past era. The representation of women and men are vastly different to what they could be seen as now, as the 'pin up' woman is placed and shows women still in this objectified and sexualised light as women were very much part of a male gaze. However men, this aspiration and dream to be a hypermasculine with a heavily toned physique has still remained a trend even now, despite people becoming more accepting of other looks and frames. I wanted to create a collage of my own where i reflected the views, idealisations and contexts of todays society in a modern and digital collage. The depiction of men and women have slightly changed due to the changing in equality and the values of men and women becoming more on par with each other. However there is still this expectation to look, dress and act a certain way to be 'liked' I wanted to remain that a obvious aspect within this piece. Although England has been going through a massive political and environmental struggle and I could of made it a little louder and obvious about the brexit crisis, I wanted to subtly make hints around the room and England and how this has been an extremely tough time as well as America. Other aspects such as social media and memes i wanted to incorperate so I livened up the collage. The rise of the app 'tictok' has become a viral hit across the globe helping us during these hard political stuggles as well as the great sun with Kylie Jenner in the middle was a well circulated meme of her singing to her child Stormi. This was seen as hillarious across the world as Kylie Jenner being a part of the Kardashians (a very idealised and famous family who people often aspire and compare themselves too) was very much 'out of the ordinary' for someone of that status to be showed up that much on social media platforms. Iconic pig symbols cascaded across the collage as this were the symbol and logo for the collaboration of Shane Dawson and Jeffree Star's make up launch that record breakingly 'broke the internet' for days on end and showed it's most highest sales in the makeup industry yet which is a big renouned achievement. Lastly i wanted to loosely add things such as instagram likes in to this collage to show this obsession for status and this hierarchy that comes with social media and this desire to be the 'perfect' person and have this lavish lifestyle which still today is very much a high topic on everyones brains in this youth culture.
Here I have chosen the classic leather jacket. This is a staple piece that has been apart of many people's wardrobes for years and years. The versatility of the leather jacket has only become as of recently, as leather jackets were a piece of clothing to show your status and reflection of your self identity, as the classic leather jacket were usually worn by the particular sub group the 'punk rockers'. Although they were known as 'bomber jackets' during WW2, the leather motorcycle jackets reached it's iconic status after Marlon Brando wore it in the movie 'The Wild One'. The leather jacket began to make it's ultimate symbol of being 'cool' that's when it got to the 80's where it became the punk rock look with Blondie and Billy Idol decorating them often with studs and safety pins. I picked this item as it holds a special place in my heart. In this case, I have the timeless black leather jacket and because of it being black, allows me to get a lot of wear out of this item. Leather jackets could smarten as well as allow an outfit to be more of a casual attire too which i think is very interesting. Like jeans, leather jackets can become a personalised piece. This could be because of the style being long, short or tailored or it could be the pattern, the colour and like a lot of people, personalising it with badges of your style and interest is something people have done for centuries with leather jackets to reflect their identity through their clothing. Mine simply is to rock up an outfit; could go with any outfit and that is why it is a dearly loved piece in my wardrobe. Leather Jackets range in price due to quality, brand and material. 'Real leather' leather jackets can be highly priced due to the material and manufacturing, however the longevity of one is priceless and something you can easily invest your cash into for one of these. Leather jackets are a piece that has come back into fashion many times and is something that is classic and never goes out of date, something that goes with everything, can be tailored and unique to people who own them and this is why it is such a great piece for me and many others. Japonism - Early Japan ObsessionFrench artist Gustave Dore began a collaboration to show the account of deprivation, Ruskin an art critic was very into new artists and there Pre-Raphalite work. Very sentimental paintings were common in the victorian era. This is where the Bohemian and romantic Italian Painter Dante Rosseti. With Pre-Raphalite paintings in the early westernised art society, common women figures like Elizabeth Siddal to paint and draw. These sort of paintings were where new money was draw too as they were classic and were new of age. The Pull of Camelot and Sokoku was the isolationist foreign policy of the Japanese.Manga artist Hokusai was very famous Japanese artist influenced the western art culture after Japan had become more accepting to experiance the European art industry and this is where Japonism were now the latest craze. This later then influenced artists like van gogh and Edgar Degas. Whistler who was an American artist that came to Europe to discover art and was spellbound Japonese. The Fin De SiecleThe Arts and crafts movement were new and started in amongst the 1870's. In that time Art schools were very new and often studied the human form. Women were excluded from the art schools as well as art were usually associated and reflected the wealthy families. Japan caused a monumental shift to the art culture. This allowed a lot of pattern and designers to be bringing a lot of new designs and perspectives to the art movement. Christopher Dresser an ornament creator and designer of the time period who was heavily influenced by the western European art like Islamic varses. This later allowed the start of the artworkers guild in 1884. William Morris were the inspiration for the arts and crafts movement in 1881. CFA Voyessey set the tone of suburban architecture. Ashbee a member of the art workers guild he was named the 'guild of handicraft'. People were deserving the countryside to get work in facilities, a major inspiration to art nouveau (the new art). People like Ruskin hated new art, as it were very out there and abstract. AH Mackmurdo was a major influence from the arts and crafts movement. Art Nouveau was inspired by the laws and principles of nature. France were very well known for fancy craftsmanship. As well as nature, New art were very much constructed and were formed around geometry. Peter Behrens the man who invented corperate identity. symbolism depicted an 'inner world'
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Cloe MorrellA goofy and fun Graphic Design student playing and messing around with art and design. Archives
May 2021
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