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Ray Gun

Emily Sampson s3401713 Ray Gun magazine proved to be an exploration of typography, layout and visual storytelling that would shift the approach of many graphic designers. The magazine was founded in 1992 and led by the work of David Carson, who served as its art director for the first three years of its career, which lasted 7 years and over 70 issues. The experiments by Carson and other Ray Gun designers were chaotic, abstract and distinctive, but sometimes illegible. The magazine's radical subject matter often related to music and pop culture icons and the magazine became a reliable source for the prediction of up-and-coming stars. The magazine had a dirty style and Carson made it deliberately hard to read, the magazine also showed that how you read it is how you felt about it. Carson was a very arrogant person which showed throughout his work. He had no formal training, he simply just experimented with everything, he was basically throwing structure around. 

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Neville Brody

Emily Sampson s3401713

Brody tried to challenge the conventions of graphic design to such great depth, that it nearly destroyed his opportunity to attend London College of Printing. Brody was heavily inspired by ‘Dadaism’ - the punk scene and pop art during his early teenage years. He challenges graphic design by playing with scale of type (vertical and upside down type), layering text and placing it at different angles. The 1980′s period was most influential to his work, including his passion for punk music, The Face and the introduction to the computer and technology era. 

Neville Brody creates new typeface for England’s 2014 World Cup shirt

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Pre-macintosh

Emily Sampson s3401713

The invention of the macintosh shook the entire world, providing a new platform for design and advertising. Pre-macintosh meant that designers had to manually create there work, using tools that we now have digital versions of. While the computer has allowed for infinitely new developments of design techniques and mediums as well as increased efficiency of both the conception and production phases of design.

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Postmodernism

Emily Sampson s3401713

Postmodernism was a movement in architecture that rejected the modernist, avant garde, passion for the new. Modernism is here understood in art and architecture as the project of rejecting tradition in favour of going "where no man has gone before" or better: to create forms for no other purpose than novelty. Modernism was an exploration of possibilities and a everlasting search for uniqueness and its cognate individuality. The style was defeating purity and simplicity in favour of boisterous colour, bold patterns, artificial looking surfaces, historical quotation, parody and wit, and above all, a newfound freedom in design. To postmodernists it was a time when style was not just a look, but an attitude.  

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Ray Gun

Maddie Williams - s3541041

Ray Gun magazine was founded in 1992 and involved the work of David Carson. Carson served as the magazine’s art director for the first three years of the magazine, which lasted seven years and seventy issues. The magazine’s radical subject matter often involved music and pop culture icons, which allowed the magazine to become a prediction of up-and-coming stars, Ray Gun was an exploration of typography, layout and visual storytelling, although it’s contents did not relate to graphic design. Ray Gun shifted the approach of graphic design that no one else has yet explored, leaving it to be believed that it was nothing to do with graphic design, which was hope to shift the approach of many graphic designers. 

Carson’s style was typographic experimentation. Ray Gun designers were chaotic, abstract and distinctive but a lot of the time was very illegible. This is what made Ray Gun so distinctive from previous magazine design and publication design in general. 

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Neville Brody

Maddie Williams - s3541041

Neville Brody is a London born designer who studied design in Britain during the 1970′s. Brody gained a lot of attention as the art director for ‘The Face’ magazine publication, in which he worked from 1980-1993. In the 1980′s, the magazine was called “the fashion bible” and set numerous trends during that period. 

In 1994, Neville Brody Studio was formed, now including offices in London, Paris, Berlin and Barcelona. Neville Brody was so influential through his designs of over 20 different typefaces, contributor to FUSE publication and was an avid user of the computer, which he used as a design tool during his developmental stages. 

The 1980′s period was most influential to his work, including his passion for punk music, The Face and the introduction to the computer and technology era. 

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Design Pre-Macintosh

Maddie Williams - s3541041

Design pre-Macintosh did not necessarily disadvantage designers creativity, but were forced to think of ways to be creative by hand and other sources of technology. Although, people of that era would not know the difference between manual and technology created design. The original Macintosh desktop computers were no as near technical, like  the design applications that are now available on the current desktop and laptops. Resulting in a different array of design outcomes being created. Pre-Macintosh, resulted in designers creating everything manually, which would of taken a lot longer to create beautiful pieces of design through manual tools and labor. In a world in which music videos can be shot on an iPhone, the world has changed significantly since the launch of Apple Macintosh 30 years ago. 

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Pre-Macintosh whaaaat

Rianna Maloney s3546213

January 24, 1984.

This date drastically changed the design world. It was the birth of Macintosh and before this time designers relied on their hand skills and their abilities to produce their works. Now we use the computer as our instrument, allowing us to have as much, if not more freedom and endless possibilities to discover new techniques and produce fresh designs. All computers were 'text-based’, operating them by typing words onto the 'keyboard'. The Macintosh is run by triggering icons/pictures on the screen with a hand-operated device called the a “mouse”.

Prior macintosh designers would have to depend on their imagination/creativity individually compared to now where searching for a similar design is as easy as 1,2,3. Many different devices/machines were used for specific tasks such as layout boards, T-square, trianges (make ensure everything was cut just right). 

http://www.fastcodesign.com/3025606/5-ways-the-macintosh-changed-creativity-forever http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2012/02/design-before-computers-ruled-the-universe/

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Raygun Magazine

Rianna Maloney s3546213

Raygun magazine was everything not to do in graphic design. It defied all of rules of design. Raygun magazine lasted 7 years and had over 70 issues. David Carson was the founder, whom served as its art director for the first three years of its career. The magazine proved to be a exploration of a combination of layout, typography and visual storytelling. The exploration of these components shifted the approach many graphic designers had towards their work, shaping designers to experiment in an absurd, wacky style. Raygun magazine changed the perception of the 'typical' magazine, influencing the development of the 'deconstruction style' and a whole new generation of designers. The style was chaotic, confusing yet distinctive - and sometimes illegible. The magazine related to music and became a reliable source for the prediction of the newest and up and coming stars.

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Neville Brody

Rianna Maloney s3546213

Neville Brody is a world famous graphic designer, typographer, philosopher and inventor. His name is one of the most renowned in the industry due to his revolution in typeface design and experimentation with visual language. Brody tried to challenge the conventions of graphic design to such great depth, that it nearly destroyed his opportunity to attend London College of Printing. Brody was heavily inspired by 'Dadaism' - the punk scene and pop art during his early teenage years. He challenges graphic design by playing with scale of type, layering text and placing it at different angles. One of his most distiguished design additions occured in 1981 when Brody began exploring new directions for graphic design as art director for “The Face.” This revolutionary magazine spreads and covers influenced designers all around the globe, altering their designs in an uncommon and unique fashion. Brody also design popular typefaces including Arcadia, Industria, Insignia, FF Blur, FF Pop, FF Gothic, and FF Harlem.

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Raygun

Ella Fajdiga - s3539739

The magazine Raygun was ground breaking in the graphic design industry in the early 90’s. The reason for its success and popularity was the fact that the design style was so unlike any other around at the time. Every rule of thumb for typesetting was broken in the pages of this magazine. Overlapping blocks of text, light text against dark backgrounds, dark text against dark backgrounds, text running across pages, stories that are read horizontally, and upside down photos. The design of Raygun was heavily influenced by the punk rock era that it was born in. This period of time was all about rebelling against society and fighting social norms. It seems almost needless to say that the style of graphic design that David Carson was using reflected what was happening in the music industry at the time. The style is a polar-opposite to the traditional layouts and styles of previous magazine design. It embodies postmodernism in its lack of rigidity, and focus on ambiguity.

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Neville Brody

Ella Fajdiga - s3539739

Neville Brody is one of the top names in the graphic design industry due to his style of work and the impact he has on the design industry. Brody is known mostly for his typography approach, a lot of Brody’s designs consist of very creative and different pieces of typography. He grew up in an era where punk was at its peak popularity, this emerging style of punk rock music influenced Brody’s work and general aesthetic style. He bent the rules and steered away from creating work that was in any way traditional. This punk music was reflected in his work, as it was daring, type heavy and very abstract. His unusual style and lack of fear with design is what gave him the reputation he has today.

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Design pre-Macintosh

Ella Fajdiga - s3539739

The introduction of Macintosh computers had a great impact on the way designers conduct their work. It created a new platform for design and advertising to distribute messages. Pre-Macintosh saw graphic designers doing everything manually, using tools that we now have digital versions of on Photoshop or Illustrator. It would take a designer about 3 hours just to layout a page for a book design using a layout board. Other tools were used such as press type, letter matching guides, lead letters, stat pens T-squares and triangles, and Pantone colour guides just to name a few. The development of technology allowed for endless amounts of new design techniques and mediums, and also increased efficiency in all phases of the design process. This did allow designers have more options whilst designing, but whether the work is more interesting or creative is highly subjective.

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Raygun Magazine

By Jamieson Cosgriff

s3541480

Raygun magazine proved to be an exploration of typography, layout and visual story telling in its unusual composition and utter disregard of the ‘rules’ of publication design. The magazine was founded in 1992 and produced 70 copies, spanning over 7 years. The editor and chief of Raygun magazine, David Carson, was a rebel of design, who had no formal design training but instead did what he thought to make sense. Carson pushed typographic experimentation to birth a whole new generation of designers who pushed the boundaries of design. The actual publication itself more served purpose as a piece of design rather than a magazine as a result of the illegibility of most of the articles, with the magazine being completely experimental. Usually, proofs of upcoming issues were not even checked thoroughly so when printed multiple mistakes could be found, however this was part of Carson’s vision in completely rejecting all of the ‘normal’ rules of publication design.

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Neville Brody

By Jamieson Cosgriff

s3541480

Neville Brody is known as “perhaps the best known graphic designer of his generation”. He studied graphic design at London College of Printing, first becoming prominent for his work in the 1980’s for his record cover designs. He was one of the first people to experiment with the “mixture of visual and architectural elements”, which at the time had never been explored as a design concept before. Brody was heavily influenced by the music and punk era of the time which surrounded him in London, and this is what he claims to have taught him to push all of the ‘rules’ of design out the window. One of his most well known design contributions is that of his work on The Face magazine which completely changed the way that designers went about their craft, pushing them to create their own unique designs in an innovative and fresh manner. Brody was very well known for incorporating typefaces into design, which then further influenced him to create is own typefaces. He was heavily influenced by the commercial introduction of the computer in design which helped him to further explore his creative talents, and is what he is prominently known for today.

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Design Pre-Macintosh

By Jamieson Cosgriff

s3541480

Design pre-macintosh did not, in general terms, use the computer as a form of designing or creating as the technology of the time was not sophisticated enough to replicate or mirror the standards of something that was created by hand. The birth of the macintosh gave almost everyone with access to one, the ability to think in a more creative way. This was as a result of both the overall design and the ease of use that this major development in technology brought to the world. Not only this, but the actual aesthetic appeal of the macintosh also set new standards in terms how technology could look like apiece of art itself.

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Post Modernism

Rianna Maloney

s3546213

Post Modernism was a late 20th-century movement concerning concept in the arts, architecture, and criticism. The style was overthrowing purity and simplicity in favour of exuberant colour, bold patterns, artificial looking surfaces, historical quotation, parody and wit, and above all, a newfound freedom in design. To postmodernists it was a time when style was not just a look but an attitude.  

Postmodernism is going against the principles of moderns, designers had the opportunity to produce art/work that may have been too difficult to experiment with in the past. David Carson is an amazing example of this as he played a significant role in the development of the thinking in this period. The American Graphic Designer had such an unconventional style that revolutionised visual communication the 1990s.