Blog Four 23th Feb

In today's class we addressed a variety of subject matter, all that lead back to the main theme of addressing the elements and movements that brought about twentieth century graphic design. We began by addressing the Plakastil movement, whose founder was Lucian Bernhard. I found it interesting that he was a self taught graphic artist whose techniques where outrageously experimental for his time. It shows that to progress in design and innovation one has to do a variety of unique experiments whether acceptable by society or not. Bernhard single handily set out the strategy for posters of the 20th century as well as having a understanding for the essence of the 20th century communication. Graphic Design was no longer limited to one medium of work and played and important role in national identity, through the use of propaganda posters. Another aspect of this lecture that i found interesting was the difference in elements of poster design in World War One. The Allies and Central Powers design aesthetics were greatly different. The Allies were into mythological figures and confronted individuals with patriotic emotion such as the iconic Uncle Sam posters, where as the Central Powers used symbolic images to convey the essence of the events as well as continuing the traditions of abstraction laid down by Bernhard. Another important topic that was discussed was dealing with typographic materiality and answering the question of where the typographic impluse came from. The emergance of this awareness arose from Futurism and Dadaism. It amazed me how many of our typographic fundamentals came from these periods such as the dna of how we make messages or using type expressively.