Vision + Value Series Edited by Gyorgy Kepes (1965-6)
28/03/10 – Between 1965 and 1966, New York book publisher George Braziller published a six volume series under the title Vision + Value. (more…)
Excerpts from The New Vision by Moholy-Nagy (1938)
15/01/10 – A selection of excerpts from Moholy-Nagy’s The New Vision (1938).
Foreword
The New Vision was written to inform laymen and artists about the basic elements of the Bauhaus education: the merging of theory and practice in design. (5) (more…)
A New History of Canada Vol. 1
25/10/09 – Volume one, New Worlds to Find 1000-1600, in the fifteen volume series: A New History of Canada. Educational textbook for children. Published by Editions Format in 1972 in Montreal. (more…)
Le Corbusier: Towards a New Architecture (1923)
16/09/09 – Excerpts from Le Corbusier’s Vers Une Architecture (1923), first English translation (Towards a New Architecture) 1927. (more…)
Air Made Visible: A Visual Reader on Bruno Munari
20/08/09 – Far vedere l’aria / Air Made Visible: A Visual Reader on Bruno Munari (2000) edited by Claude Lichtenstein and Alfredo W. Haberli. A catalogue for the exhibition at the Museum fur Gestaltung Zurich. Printed in Switzerland by Lars Muller Publishers//.
Design and Paper: Number 13 by Ladislav Sutnar (1943)
17/07/09 – Selections from Design and Paper (13): Controlled Visual Flow by Ladislav Sutnar, New York (1943). (more…)
Design and Paper: Number 19 by Ladislav Sutnar (1945)
16/07/09 – Selections from Design and Paper (19): Shape, line and color by Ladislav Sutnar, New York (1945). (more…)
Karel Teige a typographie: Asymetricka harmonie (2009)
28/06/09 – Monograph for Czech artist and designer, Karel Teige (1900-1951): Karel Teige a typographie: Asymetricka harmonie (2009) by Karel Srp, Polana Bregantova and Lenka Bydzovska. Text in Czech. (more…)
J. Hochuli: Detail in Typography
18/05/09 – Excerpts from Jost Hochuli’s Detail in Typography: Letters, letterspacing, words, wordspacing, lines, linespacing, columns (2008): (more…)
Tenugui: Designs & Patterns Japan
26/04/09 – Excerpts from Tenugui, Pie Books (2007), Japan. Tenugui are traditional Japanese cotton hand-towels featuring a wide range of designs and motifs. (more…)
Bruno Munari’s Design as Art (1966)
01/04/09 – Excerpts from Bruno Munari’s Design as Art first published in 1966. Images on flickr//
Preface to the English Edition
They [artists] have realized that at the present time subjective values are losing their importance in favour of objective values that can be understood by a great number of people.And if the aim is to mass-produce objects for sale to a wide public at low price, then it becomes a problem of method and design. The artist has to regain the modesty he had when art was just a trade, and instead of despising the very public he is trying to interest he must discover its needs and make contact with it again. This is the reason why the traditional artist is being transformed into the designer, and as I myself have undergone this transformation in the course of my working career I can say that this book of mine is also a kind of diary in which I try to see the why and wherefore of this metamorphosis. (13)
(more…)
Excerpts from The Vignelli Canon
24/03/09 – Excerpts from Massimo Vignelli’s The Vignelli Canon (2008):
This little book reveals our guidelines – those set by ourselves for ourselves. (6)
Creativity needs the support of knowledge to be able to perform at its best. (ibid.)
It is not the formula that prevents good design from happening but lack of knowledge of the complexity of the Design profession. (ibid.) (more…)
Graphic Design Manual: Principles and Practice
18/02/09 – Excerpts from Armin Hofmann’s Graphic Design Manual: Principles and Practice published in 1965.
Introduction
“What is lacking is a creative focus which would be the source of every new insight into the nature of art and would foster every kind of talent.” (37)
“It is only in in drawing, which occupies an isolated and underprivileged position in the curriculum, that thinking, inventing, representing, transposing and abstracting can be correlated.” (ibid.)
“It is a fairly general assumption that art training is autonomous and subject only to its own laws. It is precisely this error which has induced me to preface my consideration of the problems of art education with some thoughts on education in general with a view to showing the close interdependence of the various aims of education.” (ibid.) (more…)
Czech and Japanese Matchbox Labels
29/01/09 – PIE books, Japan: Cesky Filumenisticky Design (2005) and Japanese Matchbox Label Collection 1920s-40s (2004). Text in Japanese. Maraid’s matchbox labels on flickr//
Ubu’s Almanac: Alfred Jarry and the Graphic Arts
22/12/08 – Ubu’s Almanac: Alfred Jarry and the Graphic Arts exhibition catalog and essays from the Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas. Select bibliography of works in English//
Letter by Letter: An Alphabetical Miscellany
24/06/08 – Select excerpts and notes from Laurent Pflughaupt’s Letter by Letter:
Introduction
“Tracing back through the history of these abstract signs, which we manipulate and decipher unconsciously on a daily basis, is often like discovering their hidden or forgotten meanings. We find that today we still use capital letters whose structures are identical to the engraved capitals that date from the beginning of this era. We also discover that the design of our printed letters is based on Carolingian lowercase letters, which were rehabilitated and perfected seven centuries later by Florentine humanists.” (9) (more…)
The Elements of Typographic Style – Part 1
18/05/08 – A selection of excerpts and principles from Robert Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style [Part 1 of 2]:
Foreword
“But when I set myself to compile a simple list of working principles, one of the benchmarks I first thought of was William Strunk and E.B. White’s small masterpiece, The Elements of Style.” (9)
“But the underlying principles of typography are, at any rate, stable enough to weather any number of human fashions and fads.” (10)
“The essential elements of style have more to do with the goals typographers set for themselves than with the mutable eccentricities of their tools.” (ibid.)
I THE GRAND DESIGN
1.1 First Principles
1.1.1 Typography exists to honor content.
“Typography with anything to say therefore aspires to a kind of statuesque transparency. Its other traditional goal is durability: not immunity to change, but a clear superiority to fashion.” (17) (more…)
John Maeda’s The Laws of Simplicity
28/04/08 – Excerpts from, and notes on, John Maeda’s The Laws of Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life (2006). For more information visit the website.
Simplicity = Sanity
Technology has made our lives more full, yet at the same time we’ve become uncomfortably “full.”
“[...] to understand the meaning of life as a humanist technologist.” (iii)
-simplicity is a growth industry (pp. iv, 11, and 45)
“I originally conceived of this book as a sort of simplicity 101, to give readers an understanding of the foundation of simplicity as it relates to design, technology, business, and life. But now I see that a foundation can wait [...], and [...] a framework will suffice [...].” (v)
“There are three flavors of simplicity discussed here, where the successive set of three Laws (1 to 3, 4 to 6, 7 to 9) correspond to increasingly complicated conditions of simplicity: basic, intermediate, and deep.” (vi) (more…)
Futurist Typography and the Liberated Text
13/04/08 – Excerpts from Alan Bartram’s Futurist Typography and the Liberated Text published 2005 by Yale University Press:
Introduction
“The Italian Futurist poet-typographers were literary people, as were the very different Russian artists; and, just as for the 1960s protest designers, content came first and created form. Aesthetics merely refined the design.” (7)
“An ability to use a computer makes no one a typographer, and provides no substitute for the fiery imagination adn visual sensibility possessed by Marinetti. His ‘new array of type’ transformed the very grammar and syntax of the sentence, created a unique poetry, a new mode of communication.” (8)
“[...]at least one noteable precendent, the original 1897 version of Stephane Mallarme’s Un Coup de des. And, about the same time Marinetti’s work was published, Apollinaire was experimenting with his calligrammes.” (ibid.) (more…)
Grid Systems in Graphic Design
Excerpts from Josef Muller-Brockmann’s Grid Systems in Graphic Design: A Visual Communication Manual for Graphic Designers, Typographers and Three Dimensional Designers originally published in 1961:
Foreword
Modern typography is based primarily on the theories and principles of design evolved in the 20’s and 30’s of our century. It was Mallarmé and Rimbaud in the 19th century and Apollinaire in the early 20th century who paved the way to a new understanding of the possibilities inherent in typography and who, released from conventional prejudices and fetters, created through their experiments the basis for the pioneer achievements of the theoreticians and practitioners that followed. (7)
The principle of the grid system presented in this book was developed and used in Switzerland after World War II. (ibid.)
But there was no publication that showed how the grid was constructed and applied, let alone how the design of the grid system was to be learned. This book is an attempt to close the gap. (8) (more…)