08.20.09
Lecture
What is Graphic Design?
Books
Grandmother asks her grandson:
- Did you take these photographs? No.
- Did you write this essay? No.
- Well then what did you do?
* He is a designer. He compiled all of the sources.

Many Areas of Graphic Design:
- Photography
- Illustration
- Text
- Typography

• We integrate these materials:
- Image and Type

Gestalt: The Laws of Closure
- 12 dots in the shape of an H
• Implied line connects the dots

The shape creates a symbol:
- Typical STOP sign (octagonal shape) will make us stop
- Heart-shape with curly “stop” wouldn’t work

El Lissitzky- Russian Contructualist

- Wrote a Russian poem about the sun
• Red dot represents sun
- Designed the red dot on left and poem on right

There is a process to how we perceive things:
- Information source
• Color
• Shape
- Encoder
- Signal (in channel)
- Noise Source
- Decoder

Signs fall into 4 categories:
- Icon: resembles the thing it represents. A pictoral representation.
- Index: has a factual or casual connection that points toward its object. Smoke signifies a fire.
- Symbol: has an arbitrary relationship between the signifier and the thing signified. The interpreter understands the symbol through previous knowledge and experience. Spoken and written words are symbols.
- Meta Symbol: a symbol whose meaning transcend the tangible realm of simple one to one relationship. History, culture and tradition all play role in creating metasymbol, such as the dove with olive branch as a symbol for peace.

Image:
Notation



Pictograph



Silhouette


Contour drawing



Line as tone


Representation


Typography:
- Letter, Number, and Sign
- Typeface
• Light
• Regular
• Bold
• Extrabold

- Title
- Headline
- Subtitle
- Body Text
- Line

*Size is important in the hierarchy of design

GRAPHIC DESIGN is a type of language used for communicating with people: Audiences, viewers, readers, users, receivers, visitors, participants, interacters, players, passers-by, experiences, members of the public, communities, subscribers, inhabitants…

How to integrate type and image?
1. Juxtaposition
• Giacometti: tall man and tall, vertical letters
• Spread of a fashion magazine: Glasses look like the “B;” colors are similar
2. Words within images
• “O” with middle being pulled back like a page to reveal the ceiling of the Guggenheim
3. Fusion of type and image
• Image as letter
o The head of a shovel can be a “u”
o IBM
• Letter as image
o “K” has feet- it’s a shoe company’s logo
o Fingerprint with “Chicago” in the font
• Word as image
• Text type as image
o The whole essay/text resembles an image/shape
4. Type as environmental image
• Macy’s sign
• 3D letters on wall
o War Monument in DC

Design Process:
- Problem definition
• Define what you are going to research, what the program is
- Information Gathering
• Research
- Idea Finding
- Synthesizing solutions
- Implementation

Media:
- Poster, Book, Magazine, Advertisement
- Sign, C.I.P, Newspaper, Stationary
- Sound, Manual
- Film, Ticket, Light, Smell, Food

Practice:
Pick any object around you,
1) Draw four kinds of sign of the object
2) Draw six different images: notation, pictogram, contour drawing, silhouette, line as a tone, representation of the object
• Size: 8.5 x 11 inches
• Supplies: Sketchbook, pencils or pens
• Due: Tue.

Practice:
This practice will help you understand the nature of paints and a way of painting gouache with brush. All projects should be painted by hand.
• Size: 5.5 x 7.75 in

* Both Practices are due Sept. 1

Start Reading p. 14-39 and p. 235-257
Start researching “Victorian and Digital style”
Scan the interesting image on your text book blogging images strikes you.

The purpose of blogging is to understand and get familiar with style.
After lecture you will keep researching and sketching two styles in class.