Lecture 5: Print culture and distribution- part 1

'Late age of print' Comes from Media theorist Marshall Mcluhan. 

The age of print began in 1450, it primarily began due to Gutenberg's printing press.

The industrial revolution happened from 1760-1840, through this the 'working class' were able to use mechanised production. The clear and noticeable classes began to emerge during this time and there was a clear class antagonism and segregation. The working class commerce together and create new forms of popular entertainment and art, using the machines of mass production. 

This created an identity struggle, chartistic and political (working class and women had no vote). John Martin (1820) Belshazzar's Feast. Rather than work for long and bypassed circuits of production and put it in exhibition and pay to see it (entrance fee), he made a fortune and the paintings then sell for thousands. This allowed people to be artists without funding and an elitist background. There then became an increase in mass image culture because people were realising they could make a living out of this. 

Culture is ‘the best that has been thought & said in the world’, Study of perfection, attained through, disinterested reading, diseased spirit of our time. Working class culture is not art it has political function to keep them in place. 
Leavism- F.R Leavis & Q.D. Leavis:

• Still forms a kind of repressed, common sense attitude to popular culture in this country.
• For Leavis- C20th sees a cultural decline
• Standardisation and levelling down
• Culture has always been in minority keeping
• The minority, who had hitherto set the standard of taste without any serious challenge have experienced  'coppice of authority'     

The Royal Academy of Arts was the first governmental school of design and was created out of political divide.

Walter Benjamin 'The Work Of Art In The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction' 1936. There began an aura of art- Mona Lisa rejected, threatens and commercialised the auratic status and becomes less special. New printing technologies are de-stablising art- newspapers can use their images in publications, with the invention of photography, didn't need portrait painters. 

1842- PRINT CAPITALISM

Images for the purpose of profit- London Illustrated News February 28th 1855- own culture writes its own rules and replaces culture for pop culture.

A great nation does not ‘send its poor little boys to jail for stealing six walnuts; and allow its bankrupts to steal their hundreds of thousands with a bow; and its bankers, rich with poor men’s savings, to close their doors ‘under circumstances over which they have no control’, with a ‘by your leave’; and large landed estates to be bought by men who have made their money going armed with steamers up and down the China Seas, selling Opium at the cannon’s mouth, and altering, for the benefit of the foreign nation, the common highwayman’s demand of ‘your money or your life’, into that of ‘ your money and your life’. 
-Ruskin, 1903, 'Of Kings Tresuries'

Lecture 4: Type- Production and distribution part 2

In order to move forward, we need to understand the discipline of all practices and all other cultures that impact type.

Type is physical production of printed matter and this has impacted on how they are used. Type is words turned into physical form, then letterform is given a sound which means there is a common understanding of agreed communication as type is embedded in to how we see the world.

We are currently in a 'post-digital' age of type,

Bauhaus was the joining together of all disciplines, local industries were new technologies and it was the first time all disciplines were all working alongside each other. FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION- is the key principle of what we look at in terms of modernism. This was the first time promotion was used as visual communication and the first time the industrial age had a visual outcome. There had to be a common ground and it was available through type communicating out to industry for the first time- this led to graphic design. 

PRE-MODERN= the way it's always been

MODERN= post war, why does it have to be disturbed?

POST-MODERN= systematic and pragmatic development

1957 was the next point in when something significant happened, Max Medinger created Helvetica, "Miedinger set out to design a new sans-serif typeface that could compete with the successful Akzidenz-Grotesk in the Swiss market. Originally called Neue Haas Grotesk, its design was based on Schelter-Grotesk and Haas' Normal Grotesk. The aim of the new design was to create a neutral typeface that had great clarity, no intrinsic meaning in its form, and could be used on a wide variety of signage." Helvetica was designed for mass communication, mass delivery and production. Function drives the form and this was the benchmark of modernist type. However, 25 years later Microsoft released Arial because it is the maximum time that a design is protected by intellectual property before it lapses and Microsoft did the bare minimum to modify Helvetica. 

In 1990, there was a seminal shift in what we know today about type. Steve Jobs created the first Mac classic, which gave designers the opportunity to produce their work on something, it freed up the individual. Also in 1990, Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web, for free. To this day, he does not want to profit from this and turns down any money he may get including his profit for his London 2012 appearance.

The relationship between spoken and type is in a flux, this is due to the development of the digital age. Letters are now being replaced with emojis which is taking us back to the ancient letterforms, this works because it is understood by everyone and there is a common understanding of it. ANYTHING can be a typeface, language is fluid and in a state of flux. Community is now online, global and multi-cultural.

POSTMODERNISM- type has rules but we can change and develop them, it is complexity, contradiction, dystopian/non utopian/deals with the world on its own terms and appropriation.

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Lecture 3: The History of Type- production and distribution

The aim of this lecture is to understand where the now has come from and the chronologies of what has happened.

This lecture will cover from 3000BC to 1919

Any language to exist has to be an agreement that one thing will stand for another, it is social not purely individual therefore the sender and receiver must both understand if it is going to be successful. Type is a visualisation of language and the relationship between the type of language is its interpretation to visual communication. The interpretation with something as simple as 'type' is so vast. 

Type and typography is used interchangingly:
- Art and technique of printing with movable type
- The composition of printed material from movable type
- The arrangement and appearance of printed matter

TYPOGRAPHY:
- Craft of endowing human language with a durable visual form
- Type is a modernist obsession 
- "The written word endures... the spoken word disappears"
- The moment we identified visual communication was between 3000 and 7000BC
- In 7000BC stuff was beginning to be wrote down as trade was the primary source of putting spoken language into visual language.

TYPE is speech made visible 
Language itself isn't a linear process, its very complex and multi-dimensional, it is the basis of type

All that is necessary for any language to exist is an arrangement amongst a group of people. We can take our learnt understanding of language and interpret other languages, there can be remakes of letterforms and they can still maintain meaning. 

The Rosetta Stone was discovered in 1799 and represented 3 different languages: Egyptian; Democratic and Greek 

1450- Johannes Gutenberg began work in printing
Block and movable type had been around 600 years in China and he capitalised it in Europe- the first movable machine that made type.

1450-1700- Classical oldstyle type.
Type was designed for specific uses and in 1870, William Foster introduced the elementary education act and it became mandatory to learn how to read. It provided the basis for modern education. This then encouraged the mass production through print because the demand for newspapers increased and there was the introduction of ink, the typewriter and printing presses. 

1919- Walter Gropius
The Bauhaus from 1919-1933 was created on the back of the first world war. This lead to the industrialisation of design and it became an artisan craft based on rural economy- brought together by the Bauhaus.

Triangulation and Harvard Referencing

Lecture 2: A 20,000 Year Non-Linear History Of The Image

Aims of the lecture: 

- Give a range of visual communication from different cultures and contexts
- Demonstrate how creative and tangential connections can be taught by diverse examples

Visual communication and images provide us with lots of creative juxtapositions.

I am hoping this lecture can provide me with visual resources that may help when solving briefs- give me a creative outlook on how to approach the brief and what to research into. It will also provide some political and philosophical approaches that may be useful again to give me a different outlook on a brief but also help with the COP essays.

The power of the image is very primal, it can be immensely persuasive and powerful. As a graphic designer I am well aware of this which means it heavily influences my practise.

Cy Twombly

Cy Twombly's work is very expressive which creates a powerful and spiritual feeling when looking at his work. The work may appear to have no meaning but it can be interpreted in many different ways meaning the image becomes incredibly powerful and emotive.

Rothko Chapel, Houston, Texas

The experience of going to an art gallery now can be very emotional, this idea is shown through the above image, Rothko's Chapel in Texas. Rothko was an artist who sadly committed suicide so the chapel was created showing this particular work where the canvas' are incredibly dark and dull. When looking at these images, some people began to cry finding the experience of looking at the images emotional knowing about the tragic end to his life. 

In the 21st Century it could be argued that nothing every really happens unless it is recorded, taking a photo and putting it on to social media. This is the platform that creates power and impact through the image and the power of the image making itself. This could be by-products of capitalism- for example the 'Mona- Lisa collectables'. 

Mona Lisa in the Louvre gallery

Again going back to the idea nothing happens unless it is recorded. 

The far distance from the people and the painting creates an aura of greatness, making it more powerful. However, is it only powerful because we are told it is? Degrading the authority of the art-world.

Banksy, Mona Lisa (2013) 

This artwork was produced in the street for free but because the art world decide Banksy is worth attention people now knock down walls and place this work in a gallery meaning it is no longer viewed as graffiti.

COP- Finding research sources

BA (hons) Graphic Design

Context of Practice 1

Finding research sources

•   CoP Theme: Society

'Although on the surface the nature of design may appear to be relatively inconsequential, it might well be said to play a formative role in the history of capitalism and, in turn, in the social expression of capitalist practices.' Miles, S. (1998) Consumerism: As a way of life. London: SAGE Publishing.

Search terms/key words: Consumerism, branding, capitalism, consumer society, brand value, brand loyalty, design and capitalism

LCA Library	1: The consumer society reader Schor, Juliet & Holt, Douglas  (2000) 2: This changes everything: capitalism vs. the climate Klein, Naomi (2014) 3: Design thinking: integrating innovation, consumer experience and brand value Lockwood, Thomas (2010)
Google Books (preview)	1: Work, consumption and capitalism, Lynne Pettinger 2: Marketing, William Pride, Ferrell   3: Marketing Semiotics: Signs, Strategies, and Brand Value, By Laura R. Oswald
Google Scholar	1: Branding, celebritization and the lifestyle expert, Tania Lewis 2: Why Do Brands Cause Trouble? A Dialectical Theory of Consumer Culture and Branding, Douglas B. Holt 3: Becoming a Consumer Society: A Longitudinal and Cross-Cultural Content Analysis of Print Ads from Hong Kong, the People's Republic of China, and Taiwan, David K. Tse, Russell W. Belk, Nan Zhou
Websites	1: http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/news-opinion/power-branding 2: http://money.howstuffworks.com/capitalism.htm 3: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveolenski/2015/09/15/brand-value-what-it-means-finally-and-how-to-control-it/&refURL=https://www.google.co.uk/&referrer=https://www.google.co.uk/
JStor	1: Pesticides in Coca-Cola and Pepsi: Consumerism, Brand Image, and Public Interest in a Globalizing India, Neeraj Vedwan (2007) 2: The death of a consumer society, Matthew Hilton (2007) 3: Brand Value in social interaction, Dmitri Kukso (2007)

Lecture 1: Visual Literacy- The Language Of Design

This lecture is about both visual communication and visual literacy.

Visual Communication is the process of sending and receiving messages using type and images, a level of understanding of signs, symbols, gestures and objects and it is affected by the audience and media.

Visual Literacy is the ability to construct meaning from image and type, interpreting images from various cultures past and present and most importantly producing images that effectively communicate a message to the audience. 

Visual literacy is the ability to interpret, negotiate and make meaning from information presented in the form of an image. 

For example: 

From looking at each image you can immediately tell that these signs are for the correct toilet to enter into without needing the word toilet on the sign. This links with the idea that visual literacy is based on the idea that pictures can be read.

Example of the idea images can be read

Visual communication is made up of presentational symbols whose meaning results from their existence in particular contexts. The conventions of visual communication are a combination of universal and cultural symbols. For example the + and x symbol are the same but rotated and the = and divide symbol are similar also.

Visual Syntax: the syntax of an image refers to the pictorial structure and visual organisation of elements. it represents the basic building blocks of an image and that effects the way we read it.

The Semantics of an image refers way an image fits into a cultural process of communication. It includes the relationship between form and meaning and the way meaning is created.

Semiotics is the study of signs and sign processes (semiosis), indication, designation, likeness, analogy metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication. 

Semiotics is closely related to the field of linguistics, which studies the structure and meaning of language. Semiotics also studies non-linguistic sign systems, visual language and visual literacy.