CTS SEMINAR 4 - an introduction to semiotics

• the science of studying signs
• SIGN = technical word for meaning in culture
• reading images in an academic process
• studying how things mean not what they mean
• born out of linguistics
• about reading culture and cultural codes - systems of signs that link together to form communication
• (slide 5) man on the right - adhering to a fashion - conforming
• man in the middle is anti-conformative
• you have to read the fashion as a code or test - what is the symbol of the mans tie? fashion? smart looking? sensible?
• sometimes these codes are only apparent when certain parts are challenged
• semiotics look at this and where they started or are from
• The word 'DOG' has nothing to do with a Dog it's just a scripted way of referencing to it
• (lides 10,11 and 12) How is a sign made up/
• type is a signal for language but it can be a signifier in its own right
• a signifier DENOTES something - basic understanding of the sign + CONNOTES something - deeper underlying or associational meanings
• (slide 18) its trying to tap into a hole history of meanings and relationships
• MYTH comes into play within the realm of connotation
• MYTH = where the connotations become signifiers themselves and therefore denote signs as well
• in society some quite 'dodgy' myths have become part of the culture e.g. black is evil, satanic and bad whereas white is pure, angelic and good
• myths are hard to spot because they seem so natural to us.
• DAILY STAR ANALYSIS EXERCISE
• designed to be aimed at tabloid readers
• the image is making katie look innocent ad everything's happy and fine portraying the 'X Factor' glamorous lifestyle of being in the limelight and on TV
• he text is doing the opposite the word 'porn' is used which is not so glamorous show theres more underneath.
• red of the text and the contrasts of black and white are dramatising the idea of shock and severity of the article. Scarlet letters in away the paint and tarnish her perfect lifestyle, an angel falling from grace in some respects
• the whole front cover is a myth of what the working class, especially men, would be interested in (football, TV, Cricket etc...)
• mythic in the sense of women being singers, porn stars, sexualisation - men as footballers, cricketers and so on
• its gossiping generally, not what you would class as news, or at least news thats on a need to know basis. It doesn't have an impact on our lives just our views of a particular celebrity or football team or manager etc...

CTS LECTURE 3 - The Document

Aims - introduce documentary photography and conflict photography - introduce the work of Mass Observation, Magnum and the FSA Photographers

• Documentary Photography as a genre dominates photography
• document signified evidence
• old photography became popular because it showed one world to the other, the darker continents to the white
• pictures separate the audience (us and them)
• Nachtweys pictures however are neutral 
• Kilburn photo - it becomes part of our history not subjective - people want to catch the world in both war and photography
• Breson - photos are composed not trying to take over the world not lazy - purposeful
• Riis - middle class photographer went around photographing workers and poverty - book 'How the Other Half Live'
• superficially photography is working to get the image sensationalising the subject
• not the invisible eye - not neutral - people are posing
• not a depiction of reality - more of themselves - or is it? - is it more how they want themselves to be seen or how they see themselves?
• battle of what the subject and photographer wants the image to look like 'this is why you never feel you like like you do in a picture
• OTHERING - two ways of image
• to stamp your claim on the world
• to get the most out of the subject

F.S.A. PHOTOGRAPHERS (1935-44)

• director Roy Stryker
• depression - 11 million unemployed
• mass migration of farm labourers 'Oakies'
• employees weren't allowed to take pictures of what they want, they were given 'shooting scripts' instructive of what to take
• documents but with an agenda - not neutral
• they were selective about their final image - a lot of struggle with what the subject, the photographer and the F.S.A wanted
• Lamprey - photography documentary in an anthropologic sense
• othering again
• photography about power and angenda
• branding the other - criticising
• photography with a colonial agenda - to mark or scrutinise

MASS OBSERVATION (1937-1960's)

• Tom Harrison (anthropologist)
• Charles Madge (poet)
• not just going into the world but people sending them information - people having an input (perhaps a more accurate and shared documentation)
• lots of stereotypes relate back to Mass Observation

WAR and CONFLICT photography

• providing horrifying images of what things were like
• unfair to question the reality of the scene
• Capa gets questioned about the blur on the photo being aestheticised
• we never got to see all the pictures he took
• when its aestheticised it becomes untrue

MAGNUM GROUP

• founded in 1947 by Cartier Bresson and Capa
• ethos - what is the photographers role in certain situations

KEY FEATURES

• they offer a humanitarian perspective
• they tend to portray social and political situations
• they purport to be objective to the facts of the situation
• people tend to form the subject matter

Portfolio Task 2- Modernist Graphic Design

Find five images of what you consider to be modernist Graphic Design. Post these to your blog, with reference to date, author and title in the following form-
Author (date) 'Title', full web URL

e.g. Miles, R (2010) 'A piece of Modernist Graphics', www.graphics.com/graphics

Also, include a couple of sentences next to each image which describe why you think each image is Modernist.

Rodchenko, A (1926) 'film poster for Battleship Potempkin', http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bronenosets_Rodchenko.jpg

Walter Allner (1953), 'Fortune magazine cover',
http://30gms.com/tags/C27/P40/

Peter Saville (), 'The Factory' promotional poster
http://blog.eyemagazine.com/?p=166

Fritz Lang (1927), 'Metropolis'
http://webexpedition18.com/articles/20-incredibly-cool-movie-posters/

Ezgi Didem Dağcı (1928), 'Die Neue Typographie'
http://ezgidagci.wordpress.com/category/typography/

El Lissitzky (1925), 'Kunstimen ("Artisms") book cover' http://www.metaphorical.org/poetics/page17.html

CTS SEMINAR 3- writing critically

• condense but keep its contents 
• MODERNISM - anything that reflects and interacts with society and the world around them
• rejection of ornament (Adolf Loos, (1908) Ornament and Crime)
• trying to attack decorative designs and fashionable style because it's superficial and when you use a fashionable style it limits it, it dates it and gives it a time period
• modernism doesn't date, its for the future forever
• form follows function (Louis Sullivan, (1896) 'The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered)
• wanted a tall office building to look like a tall office building that's meant to fit a lot of people
• Cheret, (1884) Toulouse-Lautree (1891) - posters are considered modernist because they are reacting to society
• not all modernist design will have the exact same traits e.g. form follows function and social relevance
• minimalistic work/using fonts/no decorations
• futurist designers - Marinetti (manifesto), Fortunato Depero (1927) bolted book
• aesthetic = the way something looks
• pet, Appollinaire (1918) Il pleut
• Boyne and Rattansi
• Postmodernism and society
• Aesthetic Self-Reflexivness - reflecting upon itself and the medium  they're made in e.g. Jackson Pollock (not an attempt to represent something the work is
• Montage - combining more than one media e.g. photography and print
• Paradox - ambiguity and uncertainty - multiple meanings
• loss of the integrated individual subject - losing sight of fixed identity
• optimistic - Utopian
• conclusion - no essence of modernist art and design that's shared by all - just family resemblances
• modernism moves away from illusionist 'realistic' way of depicting the world and instead relies on signs and symbols.

CTS LECTURE 2- Graphic Design: A Medium for the Masses

• Graphics through the ages - 'Bison and Horses' (15,000-10,000 BC) cave painting - communicating through visuals when people couldn't speak
• Giotto di Bondore, betrayed, (1305) Fresco, Arena Chapel, Padua Italy
• we're an illustrative society
• john Everrett Millias, Bubbles (1866) pear soup ad
• you can't just put text with a fine art image
• (1922) William Addison Dwiggins
• 'in the matter of layout forget art at the start and use HORSE SENSE'
• Herbert Spencer
• Paul rand
• Richard Hollis
• Max Bill and Josef Muller-Brockman
• Steven Heller
• Henri de Toulouse-Lantrec - artslide Bruant
• La Goulve
• Alphonse Mucha, job (1898) poster for cigarettes
• Charles Rennie Mackintosh - Scottish musical review
• Peter Behrens, AEG (1910)
• Saville Lumley, Daddy poster (1915)
• Alfred Leete, 'Britons' poster - Propaganda - affected by the era and lifestyle
• James Montgomery Flagg, 'We Want You' poster - "     "     "     "       "
• Wassily Kandinsky - Geometric representation - "   "    "    "    "
• El Lezzitsky
• Simon Patterdon (1967-), 'The Great Bear' (1992), Lithograph on paper
• Oskar Schlemmer (German), Bauhaus logo, (1992)
• Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (Russian)
• Herbert Bayer (1926 poster) Kandinsky's 60th birthday exhibition
• Herbert Matter (Swiss) (1932-34 posters) Swiss tourist board
• A.M. Cassandre (French)
• Tom Purvis (UK), LNER (1937) poster
• Ludwig Hohlwien
• Ludwig Vierthaleo
• Hans Schleger
• Josep Renau
• Pere Catala; Pic ART HOLE
• Abraham Games (1942)
• Paul Rand (1946)
• Neville Bordy 'The Face Magazine'
• David Carson 'Ray gun Magazine' - Don't mistake communication for legibility or the other way round
• Grunge era
• Helmit Krone for Doyle Dane Berbach, think small V Wad (1959)
• Saul Bass poster designs for Hitchcock films
• Ken Garland - first things first manifesto - basically saying there's more things to life than just advertising shit products.
• F.H.K Henrion, stop nuclear suicide posters (1960)
• Q. And Babies? A. And Babies. (does the text make it a strong image on its own or does it need context?)
• Peter Saville FAC001, the factory club night poster (Factory Records in Manchester) turned up 2 days late with the design - trying to get out of the restrictions of music
• New Order, Blue Monday sleeve design (1983) - best selling 12" record
• Peter Blake, band aid 'Do They Know Its Christmas? (1984)
• Chumba wumba, pictures of starving children sell records
• always question if it's good graphic design or bad graphic design
• Julian House
• Mark Forrow
• style over function?
• innovation over practicality?
• Johnathan Barnbrook, bastard typeface and plympukes
• Naomi Klien, truth in advertising, 2000
• Oliviero Toscani, Benetton adverts (1990-1992) clothing ads
• Barbara Kruger ' I Shop Therefore I Am' (1987)

CTS SEMINAR 2

Last week was looking at modernism in a eurocentric focal point. This week is REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIAN DESIGN.

• (slide 2) revolutionary armed workers
• Bolsheviks - lived in ARISTOCRACY
• the worlds first communist country - workers country (USSR)
• COMMUNIST = wealth of a country is owned by everyone
• (slide 4) Russian Revolution (1917) - Led by Lenin
• 1917 - 1921 - Russian civil war
• 1927 director: Serge Eisenstein
• THE VIDEO
• siege of the palace, all shots are showing workers overwhelming the palace - strength in numbers
• destroying all luxuries (wine, pillows, curtains) - getting rid of the decadent lifestyle - everything shared - looting
• kid on the throne - symbolic of the birth of a new era - ideology that the monarchy was chosen by God to rule
• clocks - symbolise that it's felt all over the world - no longer separatists from the world more international. Definitely propaganda
• PROPAGANDA - propagate
• subjective, deceptive, manipulation of the audience to show superiority 
• public was uneducated - had to be visually educated
• The BOLSHEVIK - oil paintings (slide 5) dressed like a worker, towers over the city, leader of the people - red representing the blood of the Martyrs and the workers connoting revolutionary struggle (red army vs white)
• (slide6) 1917 - mid 1920's: intense artistic experimentation's - scraped the old style
• from here they jumped about 5 cultural stages to become the new largest aesthetic in the world (industrial aesthetic) 
• the workers main experience was industrial - faith in technology as apposed to religion and religious experience
• late 1920's onwards: SOCIALISTS REALISM (slide 7)
• Lenin dies STALIN comes to power - bans the artwork, says they don't understand the work and visuals it's too much like the Capitalists in the West
• (slides 8 and) encouraged people to look at European artworks e.g. Picasso and Matisse
• (slide 10) El Lissitzky - 'Beat the White Circle with the Red Wedge' - very famous - depicting the red army invading the white army's palace gates
• avangaurde - leaders - the 'elite' of the group
• circle shape - closed off, exclusive
• wedge shape - started out as a small group and got bigger - wedging the door open - doors of privilege - penetrating the circle
• (slides 11 and 12) - pastiche
• 'books' poster by Rodchenko - commissioned to be put outside libraries and reading rooms to encourage people to come and educate themselves
• peasant woman - implies books/education is meant for all - availability
• women gain a higher status on the back of revolution - you see women having the same status as men - the same wedge motif penetrating the circle is used
• woman is photographed - shows reality  - turning to new ways of showing imagery
• (slide 13) Photo montage experiments were pioneered in this era
• Lenin mucking in as one of the people - building the new future
• print media became more popular apposed to printing and sculpture - also it's modern it's new in method - re printable
• (slide 16) Designers calling themselves CONSTRUCTIVIST - they had a role, a purpose
• constructing things between 2D and 3D - the idea of just making an aesthetic of a structure of design jettisons the idea of work being able to finish and building in progress
• (slide 17) Tatlin's model of the monument to the third international
• bottom layer full of theatres to lecture and educate (it had a purpose as well as an aesthetic)
• on an axis (and extension of the earth through Russia) it was never built
• epitomised the zeitgeist of freedom to experiment
• the 3 floors would revolve
• (slide 18) The Constructivist: AIM = '...achieving the communistic expression of material structures'
• STEPANOVA & POPOVA (slide 19 - 21)
• constructivist drapery, clothes, wallpaper using generic vectors to connote revolution - new scientific modern colours
• (slide 22) interdisciplinary to their practice  - they would spread their work over photo montage/posters/constructivist patterns
• (slide 24) radical architecture for the working men not the elite ad not from the bankers
• (slide 25) Vkhutemas (ve-who-ti-mas) Russian art school - interdisciplinary - radical - modernist (check library for Bauhaus, there will be nothing on Vkhutemas - due to politics, it was an insular society, didn't want to admit that someone from a different social system had a better institution)
• (slide 26) architecture is till male dominated but there was a breakdown in the gap of men and women's role in construction, women were as much a part of it
• (slide 27) clothing designed to be almost unisex - levelling down on men and women so they were no longer objectified - men and women wearing the same clothing
• A message and fear of variety in the textiles and fashion actually aiming for EQUALITY (it seems to be a denial of originality and individuality it became a problem in the communist project)
• (slide 29) flying 'sky-bike' eutopic dream of being able to fly
• hammer and sickle (hammer from the factory - men. sickle agricultural labour - women.)
• russia realises they have no good designers because they been chased out of the country. all good design and culture has been crushed by politics
• the Russian example design - that design is subject to politics - we're limited - you can only create as modernist society will let you.

CTS LECTURE 1- Modernity and Modernism

• William Hilman Hunt (1851) The Hirding Shepard
• connotations of progress and prosperity
• people think the modern is better than the old
• URBANISATION Trottoir Roullant (electric moving walkway Paris good example)
• Urban and the rural based on a different foundation
• world time was standardised
• life was regulated by this established agreement of time
• process of rationality and reason 
• enlightenment = period in late 18th century when scientific/philosophy
• SECULARISM
• Caillebotte 'Paris on a Rainy Day'
• Paris 1850's onwards = new Paris
• old architecture of narrow streets and run down housing is ripped out
• Haussan, (city architect) redesigns Paris
• large boulevards instead of the narrow streets
• working class pushed outwards
• higher class citizens brought inwards making it more socially desirable
• PSYCHOLOGY comes into it as a discipline - people were worried about the affects of life on a human modernism making them mad or distracting them
• Degas (1876) L'absinthe
• things can be fundamentally modern
• KAISERPANORAMA 1883 - people preferred to see the world through new technologies apposed the experiencing it - allowing new ways to see the world
• subjective experience - experience of modernity
• Modernism - emerges out of the subjective responses of artists/designers to; MODERNITY
• Monnet Garsan La'sar - Impressionist - influenced by the photography of the period as in the fuzziness - not the case today - photographs are crisp and clean so we don't need painting to capture the image properly
• Modernism in design
• anti-historicism
• truth materials - shouldn't disguise materials, no need
• form should follow function - old architecture built to express (about beauty) - new architecture built to work and function (the beauty is the functionality and simplicity)
• Technology - new materials - concrete, leather, metals, woods
• Harry beck London Underground Map (1933)
• Hernert Bayer's San-serif typeface argued that we should ditch capitol letters
• Anti-historicism - no need to look backward to older styles
• "Ornament is evidence" - Adolf Loos (1908)
• The BAUHAUS - most influential art school of the 20th century
• very modern building - teaches modern art - lives modernist design
• all modern items became almost as elitist as old designs
• "Feeling using the new denies the human" (Richard Miles)
• Internationalism
• A language of design that could be recognised and understood on an international basis
• CONCLUSION
• the term modernism is not a neutral term - it suggests and conotes novelty and improvement
• (1750 - 1960) social and cultural experience
• importance of modernity 1. vocabulary of styles 2. art and design education 3. idea of form follows function.

CTS SEMINAR 1

Picture 1 - Uncle Sam Range

• American superiority - 100 year celebration - lots has changed, the food seems more nutritious than the food on the menu held by the globe e.g the turkey apposed to the birds nest.
• selling a lifestyle - aspirational lifestyle - perspiration - buying into the dream - wanting to believe that America's greater than everyone else - America has surpassed all the other countries despite the fact they have a longer heritage and bigger culture. 
• New England, Dixie West - represents the idea of prosperity and wealth - land getting rich quick
• font designed to make you think of old western typeface, relates to the mythology of cowboys, even for that time. No accident that Uncle Sam is above the centre piece.
• Servile doting wife and slave - tapping into the societies traits of the era
• New England personified as a girl as a symbol of weakness and softness as it was populated mostly by immigrants.

Picture 2 - "What did YOU do in the war daddy?"

• during the first world war
• people had to sign up to the army - aiming to emotionally manipulate the audience - guilt tripping them effectively
• about being able to have something to tell your kids
• saying your going to go to war and everything will still be OK afterwards your going to make it and have a future because Briton will win - patriotic
• books and toys are symbolic for the economy not going into decline after the war which was  asap on the countries funds and they would still be a wealthy thriving country
• font in italics making it softer
• "YOU" capitalised to stand out and talk to the audience engaging them into the question and inadvertently speaking to them
• colours are patriotic to the Queen being royal colours
• Nationalistic symbolism

Portfolio Task 1 - Image Analyse Exercise

The Uncle Sam Range' (1876) advertising image by Shumacher &Ettlinger, New york

Poster by Saville Lumley (1915)

Looking at both images there is definitely a sense of patriotic and nationalistic symbolism. This is evident strongly in the first image with the use of the American flag consistently and the golden eagle in the background. Every aspect of the image connotes the idea of Americas superiority to the rest of the world for example the menu that the globe is reading has dishes from other longer established cultures such as Italy, France and China, the symbolic meaning for this is to undermine there culture by example of how much better American cuisine is apposed to theirs.

Primarily this image is trying to sell the idea of the perfect or ideal family lifestyle of prosperity and wealth that America was working towards at the time, with the doting wife on her feet at the table, the smartly dressed happy children and the African servant working at the stove. The significance of the children and the words 'Dixie West' and ' New England' written on their clothes is that these provinces may be young but they have so far to go, they are youthful and growing and will become stronger even though the land is already rich and bountiful.

At the time of the second image Britain was in the middle of what was to become World War 1, however the image depicts, similarly to the first image, a cosy family scene post war. The idea of this advertisement is to pose a question as to whether this situation will occur in the future because of the uncertainty around the outcome of the war. Equally there is a slight reassurance in the positivity of the concept that life will go on after the war and that the war itself will in fact end.

The choice of the scripted italic font pushes the element of elegance and beauty about the scene and furthermore it enhances the impact on the word 'YOU' written in bold to really engage the audience as though its speaking to them. Ultimately the purpose of the image was to encourage young men to help with the war effort through this almost emotional manipulation of the question thats being posed which, therein makes the viewer question themselves and their future.

The font used in the first image however doesn't serve as an end-line or slogan, instead it bluntly presents the brand name which people would recognise clearly at the time. There are subtleties in the way that the worlds incline towards the centre drawing the eye to Uncle Sam and whats happening around the table. The font itself was, even at the time, considered old fashion and is glorified by the richness and prosperity happening in the picture which forwards the idea of cultural development over the past 100 years.

Ultimately both images are selling the idea that if they buy a certain product or do a certain thing they will be enhancing and protecting their future, this concept is evident even today in product advertisement and campaigns.