For my final blog post, I decided to research Marian Bantjes. As a student who is more passionate about illustration, yet still enjoys graphic design, seeing examples of Bantjes’ work was delightful.
An example of a typical Bantjes piece https://loisgordon.github.io/design-essay/design-essay.html
Despite leaving book typesetting earlier in her career, Bantjes’s work often includes type in one form or another, although she prefers to call it graphic art. She has successfully co-founded and run a design studio and currently works as a freelance artist and designer. Alongside visual art, she also loves writing, often sharing her strong opinions through her written work.
“Want It!” for a campaign, featuring her trademark flowing lines http://nubbytwiglet.com/2010/03/31/the-typofiles-56-marian-bantjes-for-saks/
Her art and her approach to it are quite all-encompassing and power-driven. She likes to be tasked with doing every aspect of a piece, is quite happy doing as much work as possible, and never shying away from a big project. If anything, she faces it heads on.
Her hand-drawn Valentine’s day project, where she drew over 100 hearts https://bantjes.com/work/valentines-2007/
As someone who loves multiple facets of art, often torn between what to actually pursue in her career and always trying to think of a way to combine illustration and graphic design, reading about Bantjes was quite reassuring and personally, I found her inspirational. If she wants the job done, she’ll do all of it herself and be at peace with it.
“The party in the Garden” designed as an invitation https://bantjes.com/work/party-in-the-garden/A spread based on “Community” https://bantjes.com/work/community/
Once more, my blog post is not about an artist, but instead about Émigré magazine. If I’m being completely honest, that’s because a lot of the designers we’re going over at the moment are being presented in Pecha Kuchas and my brain is flooded with information.
A couple of issues of Émigré https://www.pbagalleries.com/view-auctions/catalog/id/428/lot/137326/Emigre-A-Magazine-for-Exiles-The-Magazine-That-Ignores-Boundaries-issues-1-8
With 69 issues that were published between 1984 and 2005, Émigré was a huge well of visual knowledge of typefaces. No doubt, Emigre magazine is to thank for an easier, smoother transition into the digital age. By assembling, using, and experimenting with digital fonts, let these new forms of type join the ranks of traditional typefaces that had been around for years. Alongside this, it allowed, via experimentation, for contemporary fonts to be made rapidly.
The inside of Émigré #19 https://fontsinuse.com/uses/16582/emigre-19-starting-from-zero
What drew me into researching more about Emigré was not only the concept of normalizing new, perhaps scary fonts into the general consciousness but also the idea of allowing equal access to information, especially in the digital age.
A cover, of issue 11 https://blogs.reading.ac.uk/typography-at-reading/2017/06/07/emigre-magazine-design-discourse-and-authorship/
Now, I’m not claiming that Émigre is a groundbreaking magazine that broke down the weird culture of gatekeeping surrounding fonts and their usage. But researching for this blog post led me to believe that creating spaces where artists and designers can experiment freely and without a sort of “preciousness” surrounding their work could be beneficial to art as a whole. To both spread information on art, share resources, and close the gap between the art world and the regular world – which has been expanding for centuries.
Another Cover, #15 https://www.amazon.com/Emigre-Magazine-Kisman-Zuzana-Jeffrey/dp/B08DP1KK7ZYet another cover, #9 https://www.abebooks.de/erstausgabe/EMIGRE-ESSAYS-TEXTS-WRITINGS-GRAPHIC-DESIGN/30719414967/bd
For my final blog post, I researched…drum roll please…you guessed it! A female artist. In a similar fashion to Sonia Delauney, I stumbled across the artist I researched this week through her husband, much to my own displeasure.
Elaine de Kooning was a skilled and proficient American painter and wife of Willem de Kooning. She was skilled across the board, from figurative art, abstract art, writing, art criticism, and proto-feminist. She had entrepreneurial skills from a young age, selling portraits of her classmates at the age of 8 and a special fearlessness, garnering her a reputation as a daredevil.
a young Elaine De Kooning painting
Elaine De Kooning specialized in portraits. This figurative approach was unusual at the time of Abstract Expressionism but is a breath of fresh air with the power of her strokes and use of color. She loved to paint portraits of her friends and was even commissioned for a portrait by John F. Kennedy
Tina Singer, 1963John F. Kennedy #10, 1980
Influenced by cave paintings, her paintings possess a raw quality.
Home, 1953Bull, 1983
Willem de Kooning used to be her old teacher, who she married after being his student. Their relationship was hard due to Willem’s own psychological issues facing abuse and the hyper-sexualization of his mother from a young age.
Unfortunately, she also sacrificed her career for her husband. She believed he was a genius and gave up everything to help convince the world of it. For the promotion of art, she even went so far as to sleep with people who could help Willem be successful. I admire that she did this and believed in him so, but it’s sad that she had to put her paintbrush down to achieve this. When has there ever been a female artist whose husband gave up his craft for her? I’m afraid this is only ever expected of women, leading me to believe there must have been countless other female artists who were lost to time, willfully so as to support the men in their life. I hope one day that women will be recognized, not only for their skill and talent, but their sacrifices made for art history. The lost mothers, sisters, daughters, and wives of our heroes deserve a place beside them in the canon of art history.
For the third blog post for Jeff’s 131 Survey class, I chose Eva Gonzales as my main subject. I decided upon writing about her after discovering that she was more well known for her connection to her teacher than her own art. Furthermore, she was an artist who knew the limitations she faced as a female artist and worked around them, excelling despite her disadvantage.
a photograph of Eva Gonzales
Gonzales was a French painter of the impressionist movement. Although she couldn’t attend the “Ecole des Beaux-Arts” in Paris, she was able to get artistic training due to the high “bourgeois” status of her family, her father being a writer and mother a musician. She was Edouard Manet’s sole student.
“Une loge aux italiens”
She is well known, as many enjoy comparing her pieces to Manets as a point of criticism.
On a boat
Gonzales painted portraits, still lives and a central theme of her pieces are women and children. She was also interested, as other impressionist painters were, in the contemporary life of working-class people in France. Unfortunately, she was limited in what she could depict, not possessing the same ability as male artists to wander around Paris at different times to capture the way the light interacted with the world.
on the toilet
She died at the age of 34 due to childbirth, with an impressive 90 paintings and pastel drawings in her repertoire. She lived a short, but successful life, one defined by her womanhood.
I was inspired to base my second blog post for Judy’s Survey 141 class on Gutenberg after finding out he was put on trial and lost his invention. I think the theme of geniuses being lost to time due to unfortunate circumstances is tragic and very prominent in our history. It is an interesting experience to relearn what one knows or what one has been taught. Thus, I found myself researching more about Gutenberg and the situation that got him written out of history for a considerable amount of time.
The man himself: Johannes Gutenberg
History’s acclaimed hustler
Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg was a German craftsman and inventor, born in Mainz. He is most well known as the “inventor” of movable type. I use the word inventor lightly, as printing and movable type existed in many other places beforehand. Gutenberg was infamous for entering into contracts with partners and keeping his process secret from them. This led many of his partners to second guess and suspect Gutenberg of crookedness. Often, partners would request to become a partner after such stunts. This supposed genius was considered by many to be a con man, requesting an insane amount of money and shutting his investors out when he received it.
The very invention that garnered him immortality was born from an intricate web of loans. The actual reason why anyone even knew of this creation was due to another partner suing him – legal documents revealed his recent financial proceedings. For his printing press, Gutenberg borrowed materials from a goldsmith, a carpenter, and had been requesting money for his secret project.
his secret invention: the printing press
The trial of trials
As was typical for the time, artists often needed either a commission or a patron who would support them financially to produce their craft. Back then, writers were considered craftsmen and thus needed a source of money. Johannes Gutenberg was no exception, especially with his invention of the printing machine. To create his 42-line bible, he approached the rich financier Johann Fust to borrow money. Fust agreed, lending Gutenberg 1550 guilders, a modern equivalent of about 1,066 CAD.
Gutenberg caught up in a quest for perfection, didn’t pay Fust back promptly enough. This led Fust to sue him.
the printing machine in action!
Justice is served?
The treacherous outcome of the trial was the switch of ownership of Gutenberg’s printing machine. The invention which Gutenberg had spent many years of his life developing now lay in the hands of Fust.
In his last years of life, Gutenberg was provided with food and clothing by the Archbishop of Mainz. He was also exempt from select taxes, meaning he most likely died impoverished.
For Judy’s 141 Survey class we had to prepare a mood board in Invision. At first, this assignment confused me and I lost a lot of time trying to figure out where to start. But then I decided that I wanted to research more about something I already knew about. That I how I ended up choosing three monuments that I had already known. But what was new to me was their connection. In choosing the three of them I had a cool moment of realization: “wow, everything had to do with death!”
At that moment, I had a concept that interested me and I rolled with it.
Then, it was a fun task of digging deeper into certain aspects. Design was an obvious one, as the three monuments had interesting design features. Then, objects were truly intriguing because they usually tied back into the obsession with death that the ancients had. Lastly, science was also an “oh yeah” moment, where I noticed all three monuments were tied to religious practice, belief, or just an ancient idea.
I spent close to 5 hours on this and would give myself a 6/10. I’m not quite happy with the details I had to leave out and think I was too superficial with certain bits of information.
I learned a lot about the intention of these ancient civilizations and just why it was so important for them to erect buildings such as the pyramids. Being constantly confronted with death changes the way you look at the world and this project brought that to my attention
My favorite part of my moldboard is a pretty basic part: the header! I think it looks quite pretty
Cuneiform was one of the earliest and first forms of writing to exist. Created by the Sumerians, it was used in the middle east, specifically the fertile crescent for nearly three millennia. Derived from Latin, the word cuneiform means “wedge-shaped” which is an illusion to the forms of the symbols, which were carved into wet clay with reeds. Cuneiform was used to record transactions, establish laws, and perhaps most interestingly note myths that had previously only been passed from generation to generation verbally.
Akkadian
Cuneiform was used to record many languages throughout its existence, from Sumerian to Persian. One of the most prominent was Akkadian. Akkadian was the language spoken by the people of the Akkadian empire, which spread all across the middle east and was one of the first ancient empires to exist. Unfortunately, the Akkadian language died out with the fall of Nineveh in 627 BCE.
Sumer
Before there was Akkadian Empire, there was Sumer. Sumer was an ancient Mesopotamian civilization that is credited with the invention of cuneiform. Nowadays, it is considered the origin of modern culture as we know it, consisting of many city-states, one of which was the legendary Uruk.
Uruk
Some of the first recorded forms of Cuneiform found were from the ancient city of Uruk, populated by the Sumerians. This city was the very first true city, with somewhere between 40.000 and 80.000 inhabitants.
Epic of Gilgamesh:
The Sumerians of Uruk had an especially important connection with cuneiform. One of the most pertinent pieces of cuneiform storytelling was linked to the ancient metropole. This story was the “Epic of Gilgamesh”. It is probably one of, if not the most famous pieces of cuneiform literature. The Epic of Gilgamesh is a Mesopotamian Odyssey that recounts the story of Gilgamesh, an old king of Uruk, who was tyrannical and menaced the people of his kingdom. To bring Gilgamesh to his senses, the gods create Enkidu, who is half animal, to battle him. Despite their start as divine enemies, the two of them become friends and go on adventures together. Unfortunately, they offend the gods on one of their quests and the gods decide to kill Enkidu to punish them. After his death, sorrowful Gilgamesh journeys to find immortality and decides that being a fair and just ruler over a successful city that would outlive him was the secret to never being forgotten.
Symbolically, Gilgamesh did find this immortality, as his story has been written down and recounted for millennia.
Gilgamesh was truly once the ruler of Uruk in 2800 BCE. Only 200 years after that he became deified and started showing up in writing as a mythological figure. The Epic is an enormous piece of writing, one of the longest ever written in Cuneiform, spreading across 11 clay tablets. The oldest known copy of the poem dates from 2100, nearly 700 hundred years after the real Gilgamesh was king.
Hi! This is a post for Paul Brokenshire’s Design 121 class, where we were asked to find 3 examples of an illustration or design piece and elaborate which element, from the ones we had gone over together in class, each piece relied on the most.
Space
My first example for this blog entry is this illustrated movie poster for the 2019 Jordan Peele movie “Us”.
The main element that this poster relies on is space, specifically white space. Here, the illustrator Cealin White fills the centre of the piece with two black mirrored profiles of a head. It imitates an ink blot, with the emptiness of the white background forcing the viewer to focus on the centrepiece and realize that the right head is slightly altered.
Line
For my second example, I chose an illustrated book cover of novel “the night ocean” by Paul La Farge.
Will Steahle’s illustration relies heavily on line, using wavy, repetitive and horizontal lines to represent the water on the bottom half of the cover, from which an outstretched hand emerges. Similar lines, although arranged in a spiral, converge to the centre of the cover, filling the rest of the illustration. They simultaneously create a sky and a celestial body, by reducing in size before coming to a stop completely.
Scale
In my final example, I chose another book cover. This time it is an illustration by Edel Rodriguez for “The Man in the Woods” by Shirley Jackson.
Contrasting scales is the element that this example relies the heaviest on. Here, the geometric trees lining the outside of the cover, create with their outline the shape of an enormous man, that towers over them. Without their explicit lines, the man would be invisible to the viewer’s eye.
For my yearbook spread, I knew right off the bat that it would be inspired by Ancient Greek art. In class, we discussed heritage, and so I wanted to dive into my own for this project.
I used mainly black fine liners for the art and text on my spread, because ever since I was young, I’ve loved comic books, specifically black and white ones with strong, expressive and intricate black outlines. I tried to capture my love for design in this spread, specifically the balancing act of placing elements in a harmonic arrangement to one another. I tried to stay visual with the prompts, as in Ancient Greek art even the most complicated of battles were depicted on vases, often with minimal text.
References to the things I love, like my cat, clouds, the sun and Greek architecture are peppered on the left half of the spread. The temple pillar on the left is specifically a Corinthian style pillar – this style represents young women, so I chose it as a reflection of me at this point in my life.
The different elements on my spread are often very carefully drawn and well separated from one another. The colors are flat and strong. This is a good introduction to my style as an artist, as I love to incorporate white space, many details and an overload of information into my pieces, all while trying to keep each element unique.
I would give myself an 8/10. Unfortunately, the illustrations on the right get lost in the background, especially with the bright white vase pulling all the attention to it. That right there cost me a point. Then, I would take a point off for messiness of the spread. Although I intentionally roughened up the paper to make it seem older and give it a bit of depth (it was supposed to imitate the values of an old Greek vase) it just looks…dirty. That effect doesn’t land well, and I find myself being pulled to the edges of the piece in a distracting manner due to their prominence.
All in all, I still put a lot of work into this and am quite happy with the outcome.
