bau8: interpreting type thru cerulean eyes

‘Well, I met with the stu­dent, he has a long list of things. Wrote a lot down.’

The de­part­ment chair called me in. On his desk is a pa­per clipped pile of notes in a manil­la fold­er. Manil­la fold­ers are se­ri­ous. I’ll De­cide What Home­work I’ll Do was in to complain.

‘I don’t think it’s any­thing to wor­ry about. He start­ed with you didn’t have a syl­labus and then had a long list of things. Doesn’t like what you’re teach­ing at all. Wants to con­cen­trate on some­thing else, re­al­ly hates his­to­ry. His biggest com­plaint is that he saw his midterm grade and it’s an F. And he thought he had an A.’

‘An A -? He hasn’t done most of the work!’ Big flaw in my teach­ing tech­nique: If stu­dents don’t do the as­signed work they don’t learn any­thing, and I have noth­ing to grade.

The chair con­tin­ues, ‘He is very or­ga­nized in his note­tak­ing …’ he reads thru, flip­ping pages. ‘He’d also would like a few of the stu­dents re­moved from the class­room. A girl in there was rude to him – ab­solute­ly no re­spect for him or his work – so he wants her gone. An­oth­er he feels just doesn’t have the tal­ent to be a de­sign­er. Should be gone.’

Get­ting used to my jaw to drop­ping on the floor is a big part of my job. I have a signed syl­labus legale­sus from every stu­dent. And I haven’t seen a rude per­son in this class – well, be­yond this stu­dent. I can be in­ter­pret­ed as rude, I’m the teacher. Trick is to be blunt, but stop at that. Then any in­ter­pre­ta­tions are on the stu­dent. And I talk about prob­lems as I see them, i.e. my con­ver­sa­tion with Star Wars last ses­sion.

The chair’s con­clu­sion, ‘I re­mind­ed him that he’s in col­lege and there was a syl­labus, I showed him my own copy right here.’

Or­ga­nized chair.

‘And re­mov­ing oth­er stu­dents from the class­room is not some­thing we do. I asked him to talk to you about the grades. And see what you can work out. We’re sev­en class­es in: This is about the time that our in­vin­ci­ble stu­dents start to re­al­ize they may not be as in­vin­ci­ble as they thought they were. See what you can do.’

Well, things are get­ting interesting.

back to class
‘We all have a dif­fer­ent take on the as­sign­ment and this is awesome!’

Home­work was to cre­ate a Mo­holy-Nagy-in­spired CON­STRUCT in­cor­po­rat­ing ty­pog­ra­phy (while look­ing at the geom­e­try of letterforms).

These kids pick some in­ter­est­ing words: OOZE, ACA­CIA, GAR­NET, among oth­ers. Above, lines and planes as a 3D cor­ru­gat­ed card­board recre­ation of cap­i­tal let­ter­forms. The stu­dent spent a long time plan­ning and struc­tur­ing these sculp­tures. His notes:

Wal­dorf’s work is sim­ple, in­ter­est­ing – but she’s fall­en into a trap I’ve seen with a lot of artists: Where do I put the typography?

In her case, she’s snuck it onto the back of her form, just stacked. There. No real integration.

I men­tion that I see this a lot. Some­how type be­comes this thing that is of­ten seen as an ex­tra, an add on. Like the 1970s al­bum cov­ers where they just threw the type in the cor­ner, up top. And that’s that.

I start talk­ing about de­sign trends. Since Wal­dorf is a fash­ion mar­ket­ing ma­jor, I men­tion how trends are tied to sea­sons in the fash­ion in­dus­try. I also men­tion graph­ic design’s un­of­fi­cial sea­sons used to be around three years, or­ga­nized by decade – though with so­cial me­dia, trends are dis­till­ing down to one year or so.

How do trends start? It’s a loaded ques­tion – with no sim­ple an­swer. Some­body does some­thing cool, oth­ers see it and a lot of copy­ing goes on. And it works its way through the population.

My fa­vorite ex­am­ple of this is ex­plained in the cerulean blue sweater scene from Dev­il Wears Pra­da (2006):

(With a nice counter here – show­ing that trends re­al­ly can come from anywhere)

I add that I think good de­sign­ers watch trends re­li­gious­ly just to see what is go­ing on around them – and as a stu­dent one should watch EVERYTHING.

So I have to ask the point­ed ques­tion, ‘Why do I end up with so many stu­dents who just don’t look at oth­er people’s work? They just start projects and don’t pay at­ten­tion to any­thing else out there?’

There’s no straight re­ply. Jeal­ousy comes up – which I do end up bring­ing in my own take on be­ing jeal­ous: ‘Every time I’ve ever act­ed on jeal­ousy, It’s blown up in my face. So I don’t do it. And I’ve gone so far to re­move it from my life, to the point I of­ten don’t see it in oth­ers when it is go­ing on.’

(spite, how­ev­er, is a whole oth­er thing)

We talk a bit. I re­veal, ‘Ever date some­one who’s cheat­ing on you – and it turns out that you’re the one she’s cheat­ing with on some­one else? Some­thing like that is a big enough mind fuck – only thing one can do is learn to not be jealous.’

Turn jeal­ousy into in­spi­ra­tion. Aim for some­one pos­i­tive. So there’s no down­ward spiral.

Sites to con­stant­ly mon­i­tor: Pin­ter­est, for fash­ion Look­book, and Be­hance. ’Cause that’s where you’ll see what you’re re­al­ly up against.

Back on topic:

If type can be in­ter­pret­ed as geom­e­try, it be­comes its own form. Might as well use it in your work as such. Not just as an add on.

Some re­al­ly in­ter­est­ing forms here, even though the stu­dent has re­turned to stack­ing his work; play­ing it safe. We talk about how he has to work on get­ting past this.

I throw in some talk about how type is read (from my be­gin­ning type class­es) – type is shapes, and when put to­geth­er, words are read as a whole:

(and note that low­er­case reads faster than all caps – even though the let­ters are not there.)

While I’m at it, I give them a lit­tle bit more of my own de­sign process – based on a three pronged approach:

Which I note can be bro­ken into 90 min­utes, because …

one more challenge!
‘Please hand off your home­work to the per­son sit­ting on your RIGHT. You have 90 min­utes to re­design your classmate’s home­work. Please ren­der it as an 8x8 inch square. Break out your tasks into 30 minute chunks, sim­i­lar to the process chart.

‘And if your new in­ter­pre­ta­tion looks too much like their piece – you haven’t gone far enough.’

To push them a bit more – I as­sign each of them a Bauhaus mas­ter to re­search and draw in­spi­ra­tion from (based on el­e­ments I see in their home­work). They include:

Josef Al­bers (1888–1976)

Her­bert Bay­er (1900–85)

Paul Klee (1879–1940)

Joost Schmidt (1893–1948)

Gun­ta Stöl­zl (1897–1983)

(and yes, we have three ab­sent to­day. In­clud­ing Star Wars and I’ll De­cide What Home­work. Not hap­py about this at all, be­cause we’ve cov­ered even more ter­ri­to­ry in this morning’s discussion.)

Mood mu­sic: 

FLOM­MIS­CHEN número 53
« avant shoes à san francisco »
25 tracks [1hr 31 min]

90 min­utes later
New forms do emerge. And this sud­den jump into timed work (again) does throw them.

Wal­dorf is stuck. Her­bert Bay­er can be over­whelm­ing, though we dis­cov­er the 30/30/30 time man­age­ment thing didn’t quite happen.

Else­where, work in­spired by a corn maze re­sults in a Gun­ta Stol­zl-in­spired study. Me call­ing ‘Time!’ at the 90 minute mark re­sults in a nice un­fin­ished WHITE sec­tion in the piece – very pow­er­ful – re­minds me a bit of the work of flom­mist Mark Emer­son.

And over at the far end of the room, THUMB­NAIL sketch­es pro­pel a cir­cum­lo­cu­tion piece into some­thing to­tal­ly new, abstract:

We talk about the pow­er of THUMB­NAILS, idea gen­er­a­tion, form, lay­out, ex­per­i­men­ta­tion, ab­strac­tion …

 

De Sti­jl by Paul Overy
Thames & Hud­son, ©1991, ISBN 978–0500202401

de sti­jl
And move into the in­flu­ence a small de­sign move­ment from Hol­land end­ed up hav­ing on the Bauhaus, mod­ernism and the world (check out the book above for a quick read). De Sti­jl was run by one guy – a skilled pro­pa­gan­dist named Theo van Does­burg – armed with a mag­a­zine and a big mouth.

I go over how ab­strac­tion was ex­plained in De Sti­jl mag­a­zine – and how mem­bers would crit­i­cize el­e­ments if they weren’t ab­stract enough.

Be­low, Bart van der Leck ab­stracts Leav­ing the Fac­to­ry 1910 into Com­po­si­tion 3, 1917

And I men­tion what Piet Mon­dri­an’s work looked like be­fore his con­tact with De Stijl:

And af­ter:

And I talk about Van Does­burg show­ing up on the doorstep of the Bauhaus – an­gry that no staff mem­ber was Dutch– and how he end­ed up tu­tor­ing stu­dents nearby …

And how this hap­pened at time when the Bauhaus was mov­ing away from be­ing a me­dieval crafts school into a ful­ly-fledged in­sti­tute for design …

… I go on to cov­er Bauhaus his­to­ry up to 1933, when Ger­man chan­cel­lor Adolph Hitler comes to pow­er and very quick­ly de­cides to shut the school. Then no more Bauhaus, no more non-Ger­man­ic low­er­case ty­pog­ra­phy (sor­ta), no more mod­ernism. If only Max Roth­man had had his way …

Iwao Ya­mawa­ki, The At­tack on the Bauhaus, 1932

Home­work:

I in­tro­duce the two ma­jor projects that will be due as part of the fi­nal – in class 11:

9 Bauhaus PLAYLIST STUDIES
De­vel­op 9 squares. Each square should re­flect a dif­fer­ent genre of mu­sic. What are you lis­ten­ing to while working?

9 Bauhaus MAS­TERS STUDIES
De­vel­op 9 squares. Each square should rep­re­sent a dif­fer­ent Bauhaus mas­ter. For a list, hit up wiki.

FOR BOTH PROJECTS, each square should rep­re­sent what you’ve learned from each reading.

9 read­ings = 9 squares x 2 projects = 18, to­tal squares due on the final

Start sketch­ing!

Plus, for next class:

Mies van der Rohe FORM ASSIGNMENT
In one square, in­ter­pret the phrase ‘Less is more’ from Lud­wig Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969).

And, READ De­sign Ba­sics Chap­ter 11, pages 230–241

—steve mehal­lo

Last year, FLOMM founder Steve Mehal­lo re­built a de­sign fun­da­men­tals course into a five week study of the­o­ries and work done at The Bauhaus (1919–33). This BAU blog se­ries will doc­u­ment the lat­est teach­ing of the course – with les­son plan – Sum­mer 2015 to a group of 8 col­lege stu­dents. What’ll hap­pen, who’ll shine, who’ll drop. Names (and some sit­u­a­tions) have been changed to pro­tect the in­no­cent as well as the guilty.

 
co
nti
nue
read
ing —

                    forward to BAU9  • • •
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