Bauhaus

Ah designers in hats, takes you back doesn't it. These lads and lady are masters and students of the highly influential Bauhaus school of design in Weimar in Germany. The school operated between the first and second world wars but was closed by the Nazis. You can see the influence they have had as a group on typography and furniture design if you have a look at their original designs below.

Peter Saville Designer

So I seem to be covering most of the ground so far with 2d designers, the masters of print and digital media.
Lets have one more post on a man who has designed everything from album artwork to gravestones. Peter Saville was the principal designer used by Manchester's Factory Records. Factory are probably best known for being the record label that Joy Division and New Order were signed to.

http://www.clashmusic.com, (2011), Peter Saville [ONLINE]. 

Available at:http://www.clashmusic.com/feature/the-modern-fabric-of-england-peter-saville

 [Accessed 13 June 12].

Peter Saville, above, and would you expect a designer to look any different.

Suede by Saville

Joy Division 

Gravestone of Factory Records Founder Tony Wilson designed by Peter Saville.

Dave Davidson, (2011), Peter Saville - Commercialism + Design [ONLINE]. Available at:http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=b4j_bRiZ_nU#! [Accessed 13 June 12].

Tomato

Who or what is Tomato. Tomato is a collective of artists, designers, musicians and writers. On the musician end you may recognise Underworld. Tomato was founded in 1991 to work on commercial and research based multi media projects  and they work in advertising, architecture, fashion, public installations, music, television, film and graphic design. I have given a little sample of their film video work below.

water ink rorschach from TomatoMultiMedia Productions2076 on Vimeo.

OK with the piece above, tell me what you see.




tomato graphics from tomato on Vimeo.

The piece above Tomato graphics reminds me of the title sequence for Se7en which we had a look at earlier

Film Title Design

Film title Design follows on well from Typography, Layout and Film Set Design.
Film title designers can, and do play an essential part in setting the tone of a film and two of the masters in this area are Thomas Cobbs and Saul Bass. Bass is perhaps best known for his work in the 1950's and 1960's on the films of Alfred Hitchcock. He used a cut out animation technique for the opening sequence of Anatomy of a Murder.




Have a look at the typograpy here in Thomas Cobbs opening sequence for the film Se7en. The script design works as a strong contributing element to what is a very sinister opening sequence. This piece sparked a new interest in film title sequence design. Both pieces, here and below are prime examples of film titles that could stand as films in their own right.




Saul Bass

 For a great film title resource have a look at Art of the Title

Neville Brody

OK catch up time, what have I covered so far. Film set design, signage design, Cold War Modern and what makes for good design. So its Tuesday and this naturally means we need to go 2D and talk about layout and typography and for me the most natural place to start is with Neville Brody. Brody was art director at The Face magazine from 1981 to 1986. He studied at the London College of Printing during the mid to late 70's punk era in London and his work still exhibits some of the iconoclastic energy of the time. Pick up nearly any magazine these days and it is bound to have some echo of Brody's radical approach to layout and typography. He also worked with Arena magazine and designed a new Typeface for the London Times newspaper. I think Brody still likes to see himself as a radical. He is not afraid to criticise the design establishment.

magazine type layout

type 

Typography

In the video below speaks  about design and culture with particular reference to digital culture.



Neville Brody by Etapes. (2009). Neville Brody. [Online Video]. 2009. Available from: https://vimeo.com/7538439. [Accessed: 29 May 2012].


Images Neville Brody, (2010), various [ONLINE]. Available at: http://benstanley00.blogspot.com/p/neville-brody.html[Accessed 29 May 12].