Roland Barthes by Paul Slocombe

“Barthes’ purpose is to tear away masks and demystify the signs, signals and symbols of the language of mass culture.”

-Dennis Potter and The Times

Just as Visual Communication doesn’t have a language of its own, Barthes explains how signs are used to portray a vague example of a visually perceived thing for example in advertising. It is a world of signs and gestures everywhere that communicate to us but all of them are completely meaningless if it is not seen in a context. A sign could mean nothing at all or multiple things. Culture plays a very important part in our understanding and interpreting them. This is what the lecture was based on today, on Roland Barthes who believed in ‘tearing away the masks’.

Barthes talks about the myths in society and how they have gone unnoticed for such a long time. They were made to appear so natural to us, and the ideas are packaged as such to appeal us that we have gotten used to them manipulating us. Barthes talks about how language plays such an important part as it could be used to change the meaning. He noticed that some people control the language, which could be completely harmless but it gets ‘sinister’ when it is used for political purposes. An example of this is the poster of the boy saluting in a French military uniform on the cover of the Paris Match magazine. On the surface it is a poster glorifying the republican us, but on digging deeper one realizes that the poster operates as a legitimizing force for colonialism and imperialism.

He deconstructs these myths, that society provides which are then reinforced by social beliefs and systems. We have gotten so used to them that we do not even realize how they have been integrated in our lives. Some of the mythologies were very interesting and eye-opening using the example of soap and how it is advertised even though it contains the same ingrediants.

 One was the myth of cleanliness. Soaps such as lifebuoy and Dettol advertise how it kills “99.9% bacteria”. It promotes the idea of such an unhealthy clean environment as germs are good for us to boost our immune system. This is one of the main causes of hypersensitivity in kids because they are not exposed to bacteria. Looking at the poster for the safeguard advert we see uses signs and signifiers such as the use of two innocent look children, that have the connotations of love, innocence and vulnerability. It would probably trigger parental concern and would make them feel irresponsible if they did not use the product to protect their children.

Let us look at Asepso; A soap claiming to antibacterial which links in with the idea of the myth of cleanliness. Another myth that it brings to light is the myth of magical plants. It shows the fruit extracts that is somehow important. We do not stop and see why it is, what the link is between apple and moisturizing and antibacterial qualities it is advertising. It is because it gives an ambiance of something organic and pure and healthy that we buy into these things without thinking. A number of signs portrayed on the bottle that show us and sort of make us believe what the bottle contains.

There is an entire book written by Barthes on mythologies which would be an intriguing read, delving into a mind to uncover how the others think.

Vernacular Typography: SO-ME by David Osbaldestan

Vernacular typography, or in more simple terms everyday typography such as street art and hand rendered text, is what inspired the hero of today’s lecture SO-ME. A Parisian graphic designer/animator who is now the art director of Ed Banger records was greatly influenced by this sort of typography being a graffiti artist back in Paris.

Handwritten text always has a personality that computer-generated texts lack which is why he gets his inspiration from the most artistic form of typography that is graffiti. The album covers he has done for Ed Banger are different but at the same time united by a particular aesthetic which he explains as being “so me”.

When asked what he was influenced by, he replied, “The awkwardness of non-designers who happen to design at some point for some reason. Like a restaurant sign made by a cook. Its like a child’s drawing. Someone who doesn’t ‘know’ the rules usually creates something beautiful, almost perfect.”

Just like his influences, he has created a different style for himself and Ed Banger records, which is quite unique and individual. He has worked with some of the big names such as Kanye West and MGMT and is sought after by many others. As the example shows, his work reflects influences of Andy Warhol and pop art, using the same idea of limited colour palette red, blue and white creates a strong message. It also has the reference to prison tattoos, creating a strong visual image with the clean text, colour palette and image.

Even in the graphic toolkit, we were told of the importance of handwritten text as opposed to computer generated ones that have no life and personality whereas that created has far more depth in its unfinished state. Vernacular typography gives one the flexibility to play around with different styles without being restricted to one as well as creates a beautiful and unique piece of art on its own. Here are some other examples of work by So-Me who has succeeded in creating his own iconic style which has made his very famous and sought-after. 

Vince Cross on Jenny Holzer

Jenny Holzer, famous for her large-scale public displays, include billboard advertisements, projection on buildings and other architectural structures and illuminated electronic displays.  Other mediums include on street posters, bronze plaques, painted signs, stone benches and footstools. She was constantly looking at new ways to make narrative or commentary an implicit part of visual objects. She is well known for her work, Truisms which is a compiled series of statements and aphorisms which have been publicised in a variety of ways and forms, some of which have been mentioned. As a feminist herself, her work speaks of violence, oppression, sexuality, feminism, power, war and death. Her main concern is to enlighten, bringing to light something thought in silence and meant to remain hidden.  Since the 90s, she has been using light projections as a medium.

“…overwhelmed to a point where we don’t know who or what to believe.”

Her styles functions the same way as advertising does. It is about having access and knowledge about the tools that advertisers have and using it in a different way. The message she portrays and the way she does it is lot less confrontational and lot less judgemental. She uses such large scale public displays to reach as many people as possible.

“She writes from different, opposing perspectives, working in direct contrast to advertising.”

- Vince Cross

This greatly influences people who read her work or those like us who are told about her. What I learned from this was that we don’t have to be restrained by how we can show our creativity and ideas. Every surface is a canvas if we just open our minds and see the possibilities. Like the previous lectures, this lecture also teaches us that nothing should stop us from doing something big and different.

Another example that I found is an artist by the name of Micah Lexier, who makes art combining the traditions of conceptual art with sculpture. Conceptualism, an idea in Lexiers work precedes the means used to express it. He has the same sort of approach as Holzer, using the environment and big spaces for his art and like Holzer, his work is also text based. Here is an example of a collaborative work between Lexier and poet Christian Bok.

Typography: Raghunath Krishna Joshi by Balvir Nandra

Today we looked at typography in relation to Balvir Nandra’s hero Ragunath Krishna Joshi, who was also a friend and colleague, because of which he was able to witness the creation and evolution of this deshanagari font. Typography professor R. K. Joshi, born in 1939, was a poet, calligrapher, designer, researcher, teacher and type specialist. His best years were from 1983-1996 when he was the professor of visual communications at the Industrial Design Centre of IIT, Mumbai, India. He was also a part of the FCB Advertising agency in the USA which was classed as the top three advertising agencies.

He made many contributions to the type world. Quoting CDAC (the company he used to work for in Mumbai):

“He made pioneering efforts to establish aesthetics of Indian letterforms through workshops and seminars, international conferences, exhibitions and demonstrations. He revived academic, professional and research interest in Indian calligraphy, typography and computer-aided type design.” 

He created Vinyas, a digital type font design environment providing a comprehensive set of interactive tools for the generation of calligraphic fonts (callifonts) using a skeletal approach. His creation of typecases included Vishakha (Devanagri), Vibhusha (Oriya), and Viloma (Tamil). He made his first OpenType font for Hindi (Mangal) and Tamil (Latha) and Mangal became a Microsoft face. He is the developer of Deshanagari, a common script for all Indian languages. He was also involved in the standardization of codes for Marathi and has worked exhaustingly to implement Vedic Sanskrit codes for Unicode.

“Advanced typography is about looking at how language came about and how we use it today.”

Throughout his, Balvir talked of how long a time and research it took to create a new typeface, Deshanagari and the persistent effort it took. Being in contact with him, Balvir told us how he used to get postcards from him with examples of his work so that he could have opinions on how to improve them. This portrays someone who is passionate about his works and wants to create something unique and new and educate people about it. It also made me realize the beauty and elegance of something handwritten, looking at R. K. Joshi’s clean crisp script which is done by hand in times when computers were not available, to the most common typefaces available on the computer. I started seeing the importance of typography in society.

I looked at some scripts from other languages such as Urdu and Arabic as I understand them more than gujarati. I would like to try my hand at it, maybe starting with calligraphy.

The Creative Revolution in Advertising: Doyle Dane Bernbach

According to the lecture series in which our tutors were discussing their heroes and why they looked up to them as such, Clive presented his hero, the highly prestigious company Doyle Dane Bernbach and its creators that were responsible for revolutionizing advertising in the 50s and 60s.

This ad agency based in New York that brought about the creative revolution in art direction and advertising. One of the founders was Bill Bernbach, an American advertising executive and copywriter, a pioneer of the subtle, low pressure advertising that became the hallmark of the agency he helped found. He was the genius behind the development of a team of the “art directors/ copywriter team as the key creators”.

 Through the example of the Volkswagon ads that he used as examples were we able to truly understand and appreciate the revolutionary work.

In those days it was all about the ‘big American Dream’. Bigger was better, in a time of big cars with huge tail fins. America was prospering it was all about having to show their big lifestyles through it. That’s what impressed the ladies and gave them a certain status (said the ads of that time). Enter the Volkswagon. A German car which was seen to be ‘ugly, noisy, underpowered, uncomfortable’ and the worst part was it was a small car in the time of ‘Big’. As I understand many Americans were fighting their way to Germany and so it was an even worse time for the Beetle.

This was the format of the ads that were produced to campaign these big cars. In those times they followed a particular format that was typical and out dated.

“Working in advertising before the creative revolution was like being in an episode of Madmen. Art directors and copywriters worked to a formula and didn’t meet up. In fact art directors and designers were called commercial artists.”

The ‘Old JWT No. 1:’ formula that was followed before the revolution that had to include:

A squared up image at the top.

A headline describing what was already seen in the image.

Three columns of text below that described already what the headline had already said.

A big logo at bottom of the page.

And finally, a line at the bottom following the theme of the ‘American dream’.

These old ads not only followed a typical format, but what they said was also a sort of lie. The cars were not affordable as more than half of America was working class people who could not possible afford the car. It was big, in a negative way as there was always an issue with parking and caused problems in traffic and expensive to upkeep. In reality, only a small group of financially sound people could actually afford it.

On the other hand, Volkswagon told the truth, plain and simple. That is what revolutionized it as it was not at all the expected thing by people so used to the ‘big American dream’ to the ad suggesting the complete opposite focusing on its compact size and affordability. It sold to people the idea of the affordable car, which was easy to keep, cheap to maintain, easy for parking, and impressively good in adverse weather something that working class people could afford.

Not only the message it portrayed, but the way it was done was also quite different. They chucked the old format out and brought in a new one. For example the volkwagon ‘think small’ ad used lots of white space, the product advertised was miniscule; the headline lacked news value and worse of all, it was black and white. However the ad created favourable publicity because of its witty headlines and brilliantly written text underneath.

“You can say the right thing about the product and no one will listen. You’ve got to say it in such a way that people will feel it in their gut. Because if they don’t feel it, nothing will happen.”

Bernbach’s witty, charming and intelligent approach which was to use simplicity before complexity made him the man who changed a way we make ads. 

Great Art Direction by Ross Sinclair

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”

-Leonardo da Vinci

In this lecture by Ross she explained to us the meaning and importance of Simplicity where the best work is where less is more. How we can understand simplicity and work accordingly to make the message stand out. By “subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful” is one able to create a true piece of art.  Students do not know when to stop and just let the work be as it is. We keep on piling on our work which just becomes too overwhelming and loses its message.

Differentiating between the good-simple and the bad-simple could be a bit difficult and that is what we as students have to learn. Maintain a balance between something that is too simple or bad simple to something that has been piled on and just looks like over-kill. It has the ability to grab and keep the audience’s attention due to its uniqueness.

“Simplicity is the key to creating successful work. However there is Good-simple and there is Bad-simple. A great ad has to have something clever and unexpected.” Pete Barry, 2008

In her lecture Ross gave us an example of simplicity in the advert for Harley Davidson by Vineet Raheja. A young rebellious teen is shown sitting outside the principal’s office, which is actually the target audience for this commercial. It is a powerful ad because it targets by appealing the ideal audience for Harley Davidson. In another example from the same series he shows a boy who is punished and stands in the corner of the class.

ITAP 2: Design Canons by Colette Jeffrey

Today’s lecture by Colette Jeffrey was on the Design Canons in which she talked about her area of expertise that is Information Design more particularly Way-finding. She talked about how important it is to make the way people see and interpret information could be changed by changing the design to make it more appealing. Just because it is a map, for instance, doesn’t mean it has to be something boring.

I was interested in Way-finding design and Information typography. I started finding out how important it is for the designers to create a helpful way to clearly and effectively guide people to their destination wherever it maybe. During her lecture Collette talked about finding information to design signs for a hospital which made me realize the importance of these designers as without the clear and effective sign system we would have great difficulty navigating.

 I looked at some of the example of how way finding system can be made visually interesting while at the same time helping people. This is a design by Alex Peemoeller for the Eureka Tower car park. He has used the method of optical illusion by distorting and elongating the words on the wall which when seen from a perfect angle can be seen to make a sign. It serves as a brilliant and useful implementation to the use of clever graphics as a tool for way finding.  With the very interesting colour scheme the designer has given a new meaning to effective and fun way finding and no way that anyone could lose their way.

Another example that I found in this category was the approach used by Ralston and Bau to design the signage for Storehagen Atrim in Norway. Using visual vocabulary to link the building inspired by railway/metro map signs to create a way finding sign that links the entire building. Looking at these examples I feel that way finding is a possible area of interest as it evolves into a definite art form.

My second area of interest as I mentioned earlier is in Information Typography.  As I was browsing through the internet I happened to come across the use of Arabic text used for way finding designed by Luigi Farrauto. It was something quite different and unique being used as it, giving me an insight into how language and type can be manipulated and used in the most simplest but at the same time unique form.