Quentin Delobel

Josef Müller-Brockmann was a Swiss graphic designer and teacher, mostly recognised for his simple designs and his clean use of typography, notably Helvetica. His shapes and colours have inspired many graphic designers in the 21st century, and made him one of the main precursors of the International Typographic Style, also known as Swiss Style. This visualization is the result of a personal web research about Josef Müller-Brockmann and the international typographical style. It contains 3 key elements: (1) the research of information on the web, (2) chronological information on Josef Muller-Brockmann's life and links to the last part, and finally the last part (3) is composed of a critical article based on information found online. The project is in french.

http://www.quentindelobel.com/

Wednesday Nov 11 6pm Infographics Presentation

We're going to have an information designer come in to give a presentation next Wednesday. Danielle has worked in the graphics departments of Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, and Condé Nast Portfolio. She'll come in to talk about the process of turning data into visually interesting communication pieces. She'll only be able to come to the 6pm class, but everyone is welcome to attend.

A few information graphics

Infographic inspiration

Here are the blog sites that I showed in class today. Look through them to garner some inspiration for your infographics

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/

http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/

http://flowingdata.com/

http://blogof.francescomugnai.com/2009/04/50-great-examples-of-infographics/

REMINDER "Lubalin Now" Exhibition starts THIS WEEK, 11/5

***All students are required to go***

The inaugural exhibition in the newly re-located Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography.

Herb Lubalin (1918–1981) is best known for his wildly illustrative typography and his groundbreaking work for the magazines Avant Garde, Eros, and Fact.

On view in Cooper Union’s new gallery, the installation includes recent posters, publications, and motion graphics by internationally recognized graphic designers that spotlight an emerging trend toward expressive lettering and typography.

Original sketches, magazines, logotypes, and posters selected from the Lubalin Center Archive will illuminate Lubalin’s influence on contemporary graphic design.

Opening Reception

Thursday, November 5, 2009, 6 – 8pm
The Cooper Union
41 Cooper Square Gallery [ MAP ]
This event is free and open to the public.

Exhibition On View

November 5, 2009 – December 8, 2009

Gallery Hours

Monday–Thursdays 12–7 pm, Saturday 12–5 pm

Closed Fridays and Sundays
Closed November 26, 2009–November 29, 2009

Since all of you are making posters, this is the perfect place for you to see and examine type in real life, up close and personal finally, not on a computer screen. This will show you what real graphic designers can do, not the work of hacks you see on most of the subways, buses and billboards! It's not for another 3 and 1/2 weeks, but please remember to go. The exhibit is held at the Lubalin Center. The center also showcases several other amazing designers such as Marian Bantjes, Non-Format, Matt Owens, and HunterGatherer.

We have been posting a few resources about Herb Lubalin throughout typoblogger. Take a look at some of his work at http://paris.blog.lemonde.fr/paris/2005/10/2_herb_lubalin_.html

SURVEY

Homework Assignment for this week.

create a survey for an information graphic about your topic.

design and print your survey.

bring enough for everyone + to fill out.

make sure you think hard about how you formulate the questions so that they can be charted.

ie. open ended questions are difficult to chart.

but, you don't want to direct folks too much or you skew the data.

so, create questions that are as objective as possible, but directed according to your needs.

at least 10-15 questions.

design a questionnaire in the format of your topic thus far.

if you choose to use survey monkey, that's fine, but also print out and bring to class so that your classmates can fill out your survey.

any questions?

Dummy Text Generator

Ever at a loss for words? Or are you just too lazy to fill that empty text box with anything of your own creation?

Don't worry because the dummy text generator can do it for you. Just insert type, number and voila. Insta-text.

Below is an example taken from Kafka.

One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin. He lay on his armour-like back, and if he lifted his head a little he could see his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff sections. The bedding was hardly able to cover it and seemed ready to slide off any moment. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, waved about helplessly as he looked. "What's happened to me? " he thought. It wasn't a dream. His room, a proper human room although a little too small, lay peacefully between its four familiar walls. A collection of textile samples lay spread out on the table - Samsa was a travelling salesman - and above it there hung a picture that he had recently cut out of an illustrated magazine and housed in a nice, gilded frame. It showed a lady fitted out with a fur hat and fur boa who sat upright, raising a heavy fur muff that covered the whole of her lower arm towards the viewer. Gregor then turned to look out the window at the dull weather. Drops of rain could be heard hitting the pane, which made him feel quite sad. "How about if I sleep a little bit longer and forget all this nonsense", he thought, but that was something he was unable to do because he was used to sleeping on his right, and in his present state couldn't get into that position. However hard he threw himself onto his right, he always rolled back to where he was. He must have tried it a hundred times, shut his eyes so that he wouldn't have to look at the floundering legs, and only stopped when

Grid Layout

To help with the explanation of a grid layout we have some visuals from a student, Joana Koiller, who makes use of grid work in all her layouts and spreads.

She had 12 columns that she aligns all of her text boxes, visuals and titles to.
But she has fun with the grid and does not get mired by it.

Take a look.




EDIT: OKAY, I realized it is very hard to see the lines, Until i can remedy this just click on the image to enlarge it and you will be able to see faint blue guide lines. Never the less, one can see the pattern that emerges from keeping the text and image uniform on grids. Well Done.

Non-Format

Kjell Ekhorn (Norwegian) and Jon Forss (British) have worked together as the creative direction & design
team Non-Format since 2000. They work on a range of projects including art direction, design, illustration and custom typography for arts & culture, music industry, fashion and advertising clients. They have art directed the independent music monthly The Wire and also Varoom: the journal of illustration and made images.

Go to Non-Format

Looking for script fonts?

Dafont.com has plenty of free fonts. This specific hyperlink takes you straight to the free script fonts. They're not all good, so use discretion. Also, if you don't have a font management program you can use your computer to search through the font library. Type "script" in the seach bar and you can view all fonts with script in the title. There are plenty to choose from. Some good ones that don't have script in the title are :

Fling, Affair, LaPortenia.

Priest and Grace, Magazine Layouts

Priest and Grace

Priest and Grace