Polish School of Poster
Polish school of poster brought a new excitement to the field of graphic design in 1950s. It combined painting and the simple metaphor of poster works together and painterly gestures, linear quality, colors and sense of individual persoanlity and humor became more important. The success of the school at that time could depend on the new life style of the society and the rise of the need for posters too, because cultural events like cinema, theater, opera or music concerts needed to have posters. Therefore poster artists did a lot of work for that events and it made the field a more excited one. At that time, the painter, drawer and graphic artist, Henryk Tomaszewski was very effective on developing the polish poster school with the help of other young artists such as Jozef Mroszczak, Wojciech Zamecznik, Jan Mlodozeniec, Waldemar Swierzy, Jan Lenica and Franciszek Starowieyski.
Josef Müller-Brockman
Josef Müller-Brockmann was a swiss graphic designer, who is considered as one of the most important key figures of the swiss style, which is mostly known with the rise of the importance of typography in graphic design. He is mostly influenced by Constructivism, De Still, Suprematism and the Bauhaus, which directed graphic designers in a new way of communicating with graphic design. He mostly used and developed the grid system in his works. Grid was there to make the arrangement of typography and other visual elements. It has a a mathematical harmony. With the help of these system he successfully made music posters, which reflects the instinct and harmony of that specific music genre. After WW2 he got influenced by the ideas of Jan Tschichold’s The New Typography and he began to develop a flexible grid system which is useful to make designs with typography and at the end the modern typographic grid was invented. After that the grid system used widely first in Europe and later in America.
Alexander Rodchenko was a Russian Constructivist versatile artist, who produced artworks in 20s and 30s as a sculptor, painter, graphic artist, photographer ( and photomontage ), poster designer for movie theaters, businesses and factories, book covers and furniture designer. After he moved to Moscow in 1914, he met Malevich and Vladimir Tatlin and became one of the leading artists of the avant-garde movement. In 1921 his triptych Pure Colors: Red, Yellow, Blue became very popular and a masterpiece of painting.
Alexander Rodchenko was a revolutionary photographer, since he succesfully changed the angle of the camera and took photographs with odd angles. His photography was socially engaged and he used his extra ordinary photographic approach to provoke people and took their attention to what he tries to explain with his photographs. He once mentioned that “there is no revolution if…photographers…are still using the same photographic approach that was employed under the old regime or under the influence of Western art”.
He got influenced from German Dadaists and he began to make dadaist photomontage using both from his own photographs and existing photographic originals. His famous photomontage posters are which he visualizes the works of Mayakovski. In his posters he made a connection between constructivistic form and photography. His most famous photomontage is the one made for the visualiztion of Mayakovski’s poem ‘About This’ in 1923.
John Baskerville
John Baskerville was a printer in England and the member of Royal Society of Art. He began to design his mostly known typeface Baskerville in 1752 and his aim was to improve the old style typeface Caslon. His succesfully created typeface is named as a transitional typeface from old style to modern. Thats why at first its fame did not last very long time because of the spread of modern typefaces, but in the early 20th at the time when people began to get interested in old style typefaces, it was clear that Baskerville’s typeface was a very special and original one, since it is transitional.
Baskerville has printed a lot of books and interested in quality printing. He printed large vesions of classical books and try to make his typeface seem more attractive. In his prints the type was crisp, the paper smooth and pale.
At the end I want to share an animated film about Baskerville. I hope you enjoy…
The invention of printing with movable types
In 1450s Johannes Gutenberg, who was a German goldsmith invented the printing technology with movable types. It was known that the history of printing began ca. 800 A.D in China, but it didn’t used so commonly and it was not as practical as Gutenberg’s invention. Furthermore it is not known if Gutenberg was informed about the invention in China. According to some sources Gutenberg’s invention was the biggest happening of the milenium, because it make the book to be read by masses and that way a lot of scientists and skillful people could developed themselves. It made the industrial revolution to happen.
Before Gutenberg it was not possible to make a mass production of a book, because it was very hard and took very long time to produce one book and it was made by wooden types, which could not create permanent prints. Gutenberg used in his invention metal types rather than wooden types to create more durable prints. The main idea was that he produces metal moulds and he pour liquid metal into that moulds to create movable types, which were all similar and more readable.
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Gutenberg’s Bible is known as the first printed book with movable type in the world. It was in 1454 ready to use with its ca. 180 copies. It is another name is 42 line bible, because it has 42 line in every pages.
While I was making my research on Gutenberg’s Bible, I found out about a claim that Gutenberg did not use movable types, rather he used another method, similar to keys on a typewriter, which could have slipped. Click on the image for more information.
The r's are different which means it could have not been made by movable types
As I was making my research on manuscripts, I found out that the most amazing images were out of the book of kells and therefore I decided to write about it. Book of Kells is sometimes called Book of Columba too and it is a illuminated Gospel Manuscript in Latin. It is produced ca. 800 years A.D in İreland. Its name comes from the abbey of kells, which is located in Ireland and was the place where the book of kells was protected since 1500s. The book of Kells is consists of four gospels of the New Testament and a lot of illustrations, ornaments and western calligraphy.
Phoenician Alphabet
Phoenician alphabet is an alphabet invented and used in ca. 1500 BC by the Phoenician civilization. Instead of pictographs it consists of more abstract forms then other alphabets invented before and it is not a variation of Egyptian hieroglyphs. So the signs are symbolizing a single spoken sound as it is now. There are 22 letters, which is named by using acrophony ( the name of the letter begins with the sound of the letter ) and with the name of its Egyptian analogous. It is written on a horizontal line from right to left and there are mostly no space between words. It is known that the bible was translated with the use of Phoenician alphabet.
The Terracotta Army
The Terracotta Army aka ‘Terracotta Warriors and Horses’ is one of the biggest collection of sculptures in the world. It is made by the first Emperor of the China Qin Shi Huang, who was very successful and strong in his mortal life and wanted to be strong enough too when he died (or maybe belived to be immortal when he created such a huge army by sculpture). It is discovered in 1974 by local farmers and it fascinated the archaeologists. It consists of ceramic and bronze sculptures, including cranes, horses, chariots, stone carved armor for humans and horses. In the army no sculpture of a soldier is similar to one another. It differs from their facial expressions, hair styles or figurative features ,which is interpreted as the Emperor would like to emphasize the individuality. The heights of the soldiers’ sculptures are changing between 5 foot 8 inches to 6 foot 2 inches. Archaeologists say that there were approximately 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses, when it was built. Nowadays it is the one of the famous museums in China and it is open to public.
For the museum: http://www.bmy.com.cn/
Islamic Calligraphy
While I was making my research about Japanese calligraphy, I realized that I am very familiar with that type of artistic writing since my childhood. Every time when I go to our living room in my families house I was seeing the very popular works of Islamic calligraphy, because they were hanged on the walls. For me they were just some quotes from Qur’an, but substantially they are works of Islamic calligraphy and it is very famous in Turkey. It is called ‘Hat Sanatı’ (Hüsnühat in arabic which means calligraphy in English).
Islamic calligraphy is called Arabic calligraphy too, but it is most common to call it Islamic, because its content is generally from Qur’an and it is mostly hanged on the walls of the mosques. Islamic calligraohy has developed itself during the Ottoman era and maybe this could be the reason that Calligraphy-Hat Sanatı is still a very popular and beloved type of art in Turkey.
I guess this looks like very similar to the one we have in our living room:
Here are some other examples of Islamic calligraphy, which I appreciated during my research
