Beautiful Losers

I didn’t think I would like the film but it really surprised me I like the idea that they all came together through their love of art and design and making things. They believe that art is for everyone its not just for the rich and upper class people its for everyday ordinary people who are on there way to work or school who see graffiti and drawings on buildings and to them that it the best kind of art, its art that everyone will see and its not boxed up in a gallery somewhere and contained to only those who think they understand what art is and can be.
There view is similar to post modernists they take inspiration from everything and everywhere usually in the places no one else would think to go, they then turn it into something beautiful, another reason why I think they are similar to post modernists is because they believe art doesn’t depend on gender or race, I think that the constructivists where very much purists in there views and thought that’s what I don’t like about them.  These people have fun with what they do they experiment with new ways of creating beautiful new things and it looks fun.  They see graffiti as street art it’s a way of getting there names out there to people and in a way antagonizing people which makes them communicate and graffiti is communication for kids and its most likely the first kind of art form we ever see, people writing there names on walls, it’s a rebellion of what everyone assumes art to be.
“As a child your always drawing and making and its totally normal and when you become an adult you have to grow up and you lose it, you lose your creativity, artists are people who are lucky enough to never lose being a child.”  To me this is possibly the best quote I have ever come across because I can relate to it, as a child I was always drawing and makes things out of paper and bits I found around the house, and I never thought I would get the chance to do it when I got older, but I never stopped drawing in school books, or making things out of stuff I found in my school bag when I got bored during a lesson.

They understand that not everything you do is going to be perfect and its about learning from your mistakes and knowing that beauty is the imperfections you have on the page. They put themselves in there art you can see all of there personality in there work because for them it’s a way of life.

The majority of the people came from poorer families and this is why I think they like street art so much, because its where they started and that why they go back to it time and time, they feel themselves and they feel comfortable being out and meeting new people. Art has no rules and its what is so great about it, you don’t have to be smart to under stand art, and that is what brings people together, its takes down the social barriers and enables people to mix.

Watching this film has made me want to start drawing more and using my own illustrations in my work because I no they don’t have to be perfect and I want to start using photography again because I love capturing moments with my camera and I miss doing the things I love because I’m to busy thinking I must do something perfect.

Post modern

Post modern designers believe that things are subject to change and that looking back at different views from different people are important as they are the ones who will be looking at your work.

I like how post modernists embrace historical reference, this makes there work more elaborate, and I like the idea of looking back to the past and finding designs you like and putting your own twist on them. The work usually involves multiple layers and fragmented imagery (and usually mix media is involved to create this sort of look), thus making the viewer look at the work to and question what is going on and as different people can read things in different ways post modernists like to provokes reactions out of people.
The artists like to involve the viewer and makes the viewer question the narrative again this could provoke a reaction from multiple people.

Postmodern is about making something look “pretty” and uses style for styles sake, but I still really do like the art work from this period. I had heard of David Carson and Neville Brody already and really liked there work but I had never heard of Ed Fella, which I thought was surprising since his work is similar to that of the others. I really like how the main text is black with the focus on “word” and that being in colour. At the moment I have been experimenting with different type pairings and I think if I had seen the work of Ed Fella before I started my work would have looked a lot different. I like how you cant really read it and this makes you ask other people what they think it means which is what post modernists wanted.

“Anything can be made in anything, everything is possible.” I love this quote from Ed Fella, it suggests that you shouldn’t let anything get in your way and if you want something to work there is no reason why it shouldn’t and I think that lately I have started to experiment more with what I do, design and stopped thinking that I am limited in what I want to achieve because I’m not, I can make anything I want as long as I put the time and effort in.

The Bauhaus

The Bauhaus where very keen industrialists who believed that design was for everyone. However even though they wanted to bring design to the masses they still had a very sexist approach to who should be designing, for example there was only one female Bauhaus master and the rest where men and the few woman that where allowed to attend the Bauhaus school where limited to work in certain subject areas as such textiles and colour as it was deemed the “girly” thing to do.

“Let us therefore create a new guild of craftsmen without the class-distinctions that raise an arrogant barrier between craftsmen and artists”- Walter Gropius. This quote I found very interesting as Walter Gropius talks about creating a place to drop the barriers between being an artist and being a craftsman which I think is a really interesting way at looking at the problems of the time. However he fails to acknowledge that woman could being just as good a craft man as the men of that time and is therefore contradicting himself as there is now a new barrier no longer depending of if you’re a artist of a craftsman but depending on your sex which I think is a very demeaning towards women.

The Bauhaus masters believed that the building was just as important as the subject they where teaching, 

“The ultimate aim of all creative activity is a building.”And due to this they derived a system to work around the building with each student having to work on an introduction stage first where they would learn the basics and key skills, after this they would start to choose the specialized area in which to work.

Below is the crystal tower which was designed by a student from the Bauhaus in 1921, as you can see the idea was to have a building made of steal and glass which was a clash from the dust and the filth which was around at the time and the design is still very modern, as you can see parallels with the building next to it. The Urbis building is found in Manchester, again it uses glass and steel and looks like it is rising out of the ground.

Modernists

Modernists take a new fresh approach to design as they believe that the way it looks out weighs the context this can be seen in Saul basses work as the image and the colours take dominance over the text or uses the text in a way to create a image/picture.  This could be due to the fact that modernists thought that their work was ephemeral. I personally love Saul Basses work as it is simple but portrays everything you need to know. I also think that because I don’t feel text is always important in an image is anther reason as to way I’m drawn to his work. Another famous modernist who rarely uses text in his work is Milton Glaser, he was the man to design “I love NY” I didn’t realise until in lectures that the image was created in 1954, I think the fact that it still looks very modern and has clean lines is they reason why it has been such a successful image.

During a project I have been doing it has come clear to me that I need to start using type in my work more but reading an article Milton Glaser said

“ To design is to communicate clearly by what ever means you can control or master.” This made me think that just because I feel I should start using text doesn’t mean every piece of work needs typography on it. It also makes me think of David Carson and his approach to communicating his work, some would say that his text is not always clear but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t commutated his work well he has just chosen to master it in a new way.

Constructivists

Constructivists where trained in every field of art and design which I think is a good starting point as that way you are not limited in what you are doing as you has the basics learnt from photography to painting. just for the sake of it or to cause an argument, and this to me is one of the main reasons why I don’t like much of the work from constructivists with the exception of Rodchenko. I think the reason I like his work is because I like photography and I like how he has played around with the angle of his work and it is not always direct, sometimes its birds eye. I also like how he uses the strong geometric pattern to draw the eye in. I also like how the image is black and white, its looks clean and crisp, it also has a clear focal point. I don’t use photography as much as I would like to but in the future I would love to do a brief on photography and would defiantly look at Rodchenko for inspiration.

Lissitsky uses bold colours in his work which I do like however I don’t like his work, to me its confusing and has no meaning. It is very simple and has clean lines which is another thing I like but it doesn’t make up for the fact that I think its rather boring and has no appeal to me and looks like it has been created.