Helvetica: David Carson

From Wikipedia:

"David Carson is an American graphic designer. He is best known for his innovative magazine design, and use of experimental typography. He was the art director for the magazine Ray Gun. Carson was perhaps the most influential graphic designer of the nineties. In particular, his widely-imitated aesthetic defined the so-called "grunge" era."

These images were taken from his website, and he doesn't include any information about them. 

1. Suicide Girls Brochure

2. Mastercard Advertisement

This work is brilliant (duh). The Suicide Girls is like an alternative nudie site that stressed the alt-look, but I get that they pride themselves on not being smutty, but classy. This brochure emphasizes both the alt look of the girl and the sites classy-ness. There's a brilliant tease with the small window showing the girl, with a nice victorian-looking wallpaper design covering the rest. It's both intriguing and interesting. 

I can imagine the marketing department of Mastercard wanting to target young people that like to travel and do awesome stuff where they go. So they went to Carson and gave him that spiel, which he then nails perfectly. I don't know travelers that like to max out their credit cards, but I know the type, and this seems like its aimed right at them. The layout as snazzy, but it's really all about the off color choices and the hand written text, which looks like it was written in a "fuck yeah! this is where we're going and this is what we're doing" sort of way. Very animated and exciting. 

Marcel Janco

1. Untitled (Mask, Portrait of Tzara), 1919

2. Don Quihote and Sancho Pansha, year unknown

3. Nude, Ink and Panda, year unknown

Marcel Janco was a prominent Dada-ist at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich. Throughout his life he was an architect and painter. 

I've always liked the Dada aesthetic. Mostly chaotic, sometimes minimal, sometimes completely absurd, but always with utmost taste and skill. The mask of Tristan Tzara looks to me like a Dada-Cubist mix. That is, the angular, multi-angle look of cubism with the absurd humor of Dada. 

Don Quihote and Sancho Pansha looks like where Ralph Steadman drew inspiration. Very quick, loose ink/brushwork, light use of color washes, dark, kind of brooding, but you can still make out the artist's humor. 

Nudes, a to an extent the Don Quihote piece, remind me again of Ralph Steadman's ink work (albeit much simpler, less worked), but also some Sunday Cartoons like Marmaduke or Dennis the Menace. Here though he is displaying a minimum of information, but you get a solid feel for the moment of the piece, when it was actually drawn. You get a feel for the personality of the models, and the air about the place being depicted. Lightheard, humorous. 

Helvetica: Neville Brody

1. Depeche Mode "Just Can't Get Enough" Album Cover 1982

2. The Bongos, "Zebra Club" Album Cover 1981

3. Cabaret Voltaire "Red Mecca" Album Cover 1981

4. Nike Ad, year unknown

Ahhh, a good album cover designer. Granted, I was born in 1982, but the following 8 years is definitely visually imprinted on my memory, and these all have an underground-ish 80's look to them. All three do what album covers should do: describe the music visually and provide an image that is striking, that'll stick with you. The Depeche Mode and The Bongos definitely score in the latter, and the Cabaret Voltaire leans more to the former.  I like how these three images are very different, but Brody's calling card in this instance is the rectangles around the text, which is a good unifying factor in these three examples.  He plays much more with this technique in The Bongos cover, using the rectangles more as a balancing element. 

I included the Nike ad because it seemed a thorough example of the type exercise we had where the text had to characterize what the words meant. Obviously if you use Nike products you have a variety of ways to "Just Do It", and each example is a simple, straightforward expression of the word's meaning. 

Ah Pook Is Here

William S. Burroughs and Malcom McNeill

Granted, this isn't from the list, but I came across it and couldn't resist. It's a never-realized graphic novel from the combined forces of two super geniuses. Apparently McNeill produced a lot of art for this project, and it's now touring the country. 

Absolutely face-melting stuff. 

William Morris

1. Snakeshead, 1876. 

2. Brer Rabbit, 1882

3. Tree of Life tapestry

William Morris was a real heavy hitter. He wrote poetry, prose,  tranlated medieval texts, did embroidery, textile design (and emphasized hand-craftsmanship), and later on, was into calligraphy and illuminated manuscript. 

I'm a huge sucker for good textile/tapestry/wallpaper designs (I think my next post will be on CFA Voysey), and Morris is the real deal. I like that he thought hand-craftsmanship was important. All the stuff you see is hand block-printed. In today's terms, it'd be the difference between say, a mass-produced, off-set litho of some image, and a lovingly printed silk screen print. They may be the same image, but one will breathe, and the other won't. 

And the designs themselves set themselves apart from the mass-appeal Victorian wallpaper I'm generally familiar with. The focus on direct observation from nature combined with a patient, dilligent hand really make for striking decorative art. 

Hannah Hoch

1. Cut with the Dada Kitchen knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany, 1919, collage 

2. The Beautiful Girl, 1919, collage

3. Grotesque, 1963, Collage

Hoch was one of the only female members of the Dada movement, working with collage/photomontage as her medium. As with the Dadaists, she used a lot of absurd collaged images collaged together to promote various ideas, like anti-war, feminism, and racial discrimination. 

Her eye for collage is of the highest order, and her use of absurd imagery really emphasizes the absurdity of war, or the subdued, faceless role of women in Germany at the time.  The first two images are pretty busy, and lead you around the page quite a bit, giving you lots of information to take in, making the images real knockouts visually. The third she manages to give the same visual punch but with much less information. Same drama, but she is much more succinct.