Last night saw the opening of Alan Fletcher: Fifty Years of Graphic Work and Play, a touring exhibition making its latest pit-stop at Manchester’s Cube gallery (only £4 entry, get some cheap flights, or train tickets, immense amount of inspiration, well worth it).
“One day I saw him crouched over a piece of paper with a paintbrush. Trying to ignore typesetting, he was putting down a message onto the paper in his handwriting. I stood over him and asked ‘Alan, can you remember typefaces? Or are you too old now?’, to which Alan smiled and replied: ‘Yes, I remember them, they’re a crutch for designers like you.’”
piece of work with a little sketch by fletcher read:
“the sun always shines
its our fault if we dont think so!” (…handwritten of course).
Described as '
the best ever graphic designer' by the observer and '
one of the giants of 20th century design' by the guardian (both newspapers in
UK, if unknown).
Excellent show (GO see! took 2 years to get it up-north at cube) me leant over with the bag and friend/tutor (many thanks too for informing and inviting me to the show, we should cash-in on those model releases for that drink hey... even after he just got peter drinking it ;o) ). Many thanks to peter saville for indulging me by signing my Communicate: independent british
graphic design since the sixties, book. shame was too packed to have a chat with him, but for me a graphic designer, wow. dont meet many that well known.
factory records, joy division, new order, how to design without losing your soul in creative review article.
The Art of Looking sideways by Alan Fletcher is a must read for any creative, not just graphic designers. in the foreground of this pic was a glimpse of the volume thats in the book as he compiled it.
I finally got out to a gallery, only decided to go tues 19th, i think it was. very good!
fletcher, forbes & gill +
theo crosby (good work also). loved some of the letter head examples, especially the cut off edge-of-paper silhouette shaped like a face.
22 January—03 April 2010
Cube Gallery, Portland Street, Manchester, M1 6DW www.cube.org.uk
Photograph by Mat Thornton (nice guy, if it was who we chat too). check out the Corner House restaurant not far, i think it was, nice soup, i know, extravagant! photos from here: http://www.grafikmag.com/index.php?m=GR&sub=GRdetail&id=238
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Published on 2010/01/22 10:25 pm.
Filed under: beautiful, creative, Uncategorized Tags: 20th Century Design, Alan Fletcher, Arts, Cheap Flights, Crutch, Factory Records, Fifty Years, Foreground, Graphic design, Graphic Designer, Graphic Designers, Graphic Work, Inspiration, Joy Division, Losing Your Soul, Manchester, Newspapers In Uk, Paintbrush, pan am, pentagram, Peter Saville, Piece Of Paper, pirelli, Pit Stop, Portland Street, Train Tickets, Typefaces, Typesetting
There are other techniques to improve salience within the design process such as some of those mentioned by Laszlo Moholy-nagy in his essay from 1925 ‘Contemporary typography – Aims, Practice, Criticism’,
‘tension introduced into layouts by contrasting visual elements such as:
• light/dark
• empty/full
• multicoloured/grey
• vertical/horizontal
• upright/oblique’ (Blackwell, 2001, p. unknown).
An excellent visual map that beautifies, enlivens, and has an excellent salient ability is ‘Liverpool the centre of the creative universe’ designed by Burn Everything.co.uk, fig. This was exhibited at the Tate Liverpool but this certainly grabs the user/readers attention and it categorises the content into Topographic landmarks of the city, such as The Docks, The Walker Art Gallery, Tate, Bluecoat Art Gallery, Liverpool College of art & also by The Beatles. The subtle harmony with tinges of Pink Framing (arrows/lines) the main Landmarks in the foreground and the background framing of the Blue linking particular people across these Landmarks are excellent. The framing (Kress & Van Leeuwen) also has many different styles from varied iconic and well known pointing hands, to hand drawn, dashed lines, rounded edge bubbles, rectangular, organic grey shapes, speech bubbles all used in distinction to there landmarks. The use of varying saturations of black with the monochrome bubbles and introduction of illustrations of birds & eyes, some iconic others mimetic (realistic photos) create a magnificent balance of word & image.
The layering and differing tones of grey create great depth and the information value is immense because it is so visually engaging and stimulating you to read/interpret and identify The Beatles as being something you know of. You follow the linked bubbles further and may discover Brian Epstein, ‘Who is this?’ is a reponse the name might elicit. This would then hopefully inspire the map reader/user to research this name, usually via Google (preferably Kartoo.com), or ‘Who is Peter Blake?’ That would certainly inspire and stimulate creativity upon discovery.
Kress, Gunther & Theo van Leeuwen wrote three aspects of visual composition: Salience, Information Value & Framing in Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge (1996), (Chandler, 2006, p. sem_04).
Blackwell, Lewis. (1998). Twentieth-Century Type, New and Revised Edition. Lawrence King, London
Published on 2008/03/26 2:19 pm.
Filed under: contrast, engagement, harmony, topographic Tags: Amazon, Arrows, Blackwell, Bluecoat, Brian Epstein, Bubbles, contrast, creative, Creative Universe, design, designs, Different Styles, Docks, engagement, England, Foreground, Grey Shapes, harmony, image, Kress, landmarks, Laszlo Moholy Nagy, Liverpool, Liverpool College, london, map, Merseyside, mimetic, Realistic Photos, Tate Liverpool, Tinges, topographic, Van Leeuwen, Visual Elements, visual maps, visual thinking, Walker Art Gallery, words
