Style splitting for the Final Exam part 2

NEW YORK SCHOOL

Mixing New York school up with conceptual image is easy to do. Look for the importance of shape as in 19-19, 19-5, 19-6, 19-20 in your bookplates in chapter 19. Search for that unexpected surprise such as the barbed wire in Paul Rand's Direction cover 19-1 or the flames in Saul Bass's 19-22. Content is American here unlike the conceptual image that could be American,

Polish, German or Cuban. If it is Polish, German or Cuban it is conceptual art.

Uniquely American approach with origins in European modernism

Playful, visually dynamic and unexpected

Analyze communications content-reduce to symbolic essence

Use of shape

Asymmetrical balance

CORPORATE IDENTIY

This style is easy...is it a logotype or pictograph...olympic signage then you are in the right category. 20-14 and 20-46 are examples of the logo and pictograph.

Corporate identity

Logotypes and identities

Pictograph signage for Olympics and transportation

CONCEPTUAL IMAGE

This category is most often confused with the New York School. A way to differentiate the two is that conceptual images are closer to surrealism with the familiar in an unfamiliar setting. New York school relies more on shape and unexpected surprises. Splitting these two styles is most likely your biggest challenge. American, Polish, German and Cuban based these can help you split hairs. Study 21-26, 21-42 and 21-58 and see how they all put the familiar in an unfamiliar setting.

Conceptual Image

Narrative information communicated with ideas and concepts

Familiar in an unfamiliar setting

Scale changes/substitution/visual puns and play

POSTMODERN DESIGN/DIGITAL REVOLUTION

The larger category Postmodern Design/Digital Revolution will be used to describe visual images that include deconstruction,

new wave, retro/vernacular and digital era. If the image looks like it was created on a computer then you are looking at this period. The only subcategory of visuals that might fool you is retro [as it is meant to reference past styles]. Check out these images on 481-7 and look carefully at them. For example 23-40 where Paula Scher re-invents a famous Herbert Matter poster to sell swatch watches.

For the written part of the exam you should print out these characteristics.

Post Modern Design/Deconstruction

Broke with international typographic style communications

Intuitive

Communicated emotional qualities with expressive typography

Layering/overlapping

Uses computers to generate layouts/typography

New Wave Typography

Stair stepped rules

Some evidence of grid underlying organization

Layering, overlapping [simultaneity]

Retro/Vernacular

Eclectic modernist European design of first half of century

Disrespect for proper rules of typography-placed in new ways

Kinky mannered type of 20s/30s