Grand theft auto

Grand theft auto is a video game that began in 1997 and has been an on-going award winning series since. Grand theft auto is an adventurous game based on adult nature and violent themes created by David Jones, Mike daily, then later by the Houser brothers. The game was then developed by Rockstar games who are a multinational video game developing and publishing company based in New York. The main game designer is Zachary Clark.

The games allow individuals to take on the part of being a criminal in a city. The player is given various missions by gang bosses in the city underworld which must be completed to progress through the storyline. Assassinations, and other crimes feature regularly, but occasionally taxi driving, fire fighting, pimping, street racing, bus driving or learning to fly aircrafts are also involved throughout the game.

Since a young age playing video games this is probably one of the best gaming experiences I have had and felt. Each encounter has felt so real, from driving the different cars to all the different sequences which have got even more lifelike. You can now even go and get your character tattooed as well as get his haircut in different styles.

I think this is one of the most amazing games designed and hope to see many more series designed and developed from the latest one out.

http://www.rockstargames.com/newswire/article/49811/new-gtav-screens-motorbike-action-heists-highspeed-chases-and-mo.html

http://www.rockstargames.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_(series)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rockstar_Games_logo.svg

William Moris

William Morris was the nineteenth century’s most influential designer. Morris was a great artist and was well known for his typefaces and unique designs, he was also well known for his textile designing, architectecture and his wallpaper designs. William Morris created some of the most unique wallpaper designs which are really natural and were very specific with his fine patterns. Morris’s wallpapers have a mixture of historic and modern patterns mixed together. He repeated his patterns and used different colours which made his work a lot more attractive.  William Morris’s wallpaper patterns are some of his best-known pieces of art which were inspired by the natural world. William Morris also specializes in poetry writing and fiction translation of ancient and medieval texts, which made him from other artist's.  Above is William Morris’s first wallpaper design which is called the ‘Trellis woodblock’. This was inspired by the rose trellis in his garden. I really admire this first piece that he’s designed as it shows reality using rose plants and birds on wood. William Morris’s main source to wallpaper design was plants and gardens which he observed in his garden or the country walks he went on.

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/w/william-morris-and-wallpaper-design/

http://www.william-morris.co.uk/

http://www.vam.ac.uk/page/w/william-morris/

Peter Saville

Peter Saville is an art director and a graphic designer who was well known for designing record sleeves in the 1980’s. Peter Saville was widely recognised for designing album sleeves for factory record’s which is a British independent record label. The main artists he designed for were joy division and new order.

Saville was mainly inspired by Jan Tschichold who was a typographer, book designer, teacher and a writer. Saville also designed for many other artists such as King Crimson and Roxy Music. He built his career with his interest in modernism. Saville also worked for the famous design group Pentagram and was involved in the fashion sector where he worked with known clients such as Selfridges, John Galliano, and Christian Dior. Saville also had a passion in different areas of design. In 2010 he also designed the Home shirt for the England football team.

Above is one of Saville’s well-known record cover’s which he designed for Joy Division’s album called ‘Unknown pleasure’s. The design on this cover is based on a frequency of a signal from the first ever observed pulsar.

Saville inspires me within my work as I also have a big interest in designing album covers. I really admire how he uses simple and complicated designs and techniques with his personal twist to create such effective covers.

http://designmuseum.org/design/peter-saville

http://www.hardformat.org/designers/peter-saville-designer/

http://www.uproxx.com/music/2012/10/peter-saville-joy-division/

http://www.avocadosweet.com/joy-divisions-unknown-pleasures-album-cover-designer/

Alexey Brodovitch

Alexey Brodovitch was a Russian photographer, designer and instructor. Brodovitch was well known for taking part in the art direction of the fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar.

After assisting in the World War 1, Alexey began his journey as a young painter which was influenced by Artist’s and movements that he had come across after moving to Paris. Brodovitch was intrigued by movements such as Dadaism, suprematism, constructivism, cubism and many more which then lead Brodovitch to finding himself as a designer.

Brodovitch was given the advantage and rare opportunity of designing his covers and layouts. He fitted type, photographs and illustration together with no art director. This gave him the opportunity to go that mile extra and be very original.

Above is one of the layouts which Brodovitch designed for the Bazaar magazine. From this cover you can see that Brodovitch’s layouts are very interesting and different to others from the simplicity of how he has fitted together type and image.  I think this gives the whole layout a completely different mood compared to other magazine layouts as they are all relatively similar. For example the writing is all in columns and straight. Whereas Brodovitch works around imagery, different shapes and direction types which makes the layout a whole lot more interesting.  Brodovitch also had a passion in photography which he used for most of his magazine design.

http://vbutka.studentsofdesign.com/2013/01/21/alexi-brodovitch-bal-banal/

http://www.behance.net/gallery/A-Tribute-to-Alexey-Brodovitch-/2653289

http://www.aiga.org/medalist-alexeybrodovitch/

Paul Rand

Paul Rand born in 1914 was an influential American designer who was best known and respected for his corporate logo designs. Rand has designed many posters and identities but is well known for the logos IBM, UPS, and ABC. Paul Rand’s logos clearly show that they are well designed with simplicity and they clearly represent the company and what they do. Rand’s logos are a big influence towards corporate design because they are so original which makes them difficult to forget. I think this shows that logos don’t need to be very complicated and stylized to be successful. Two of Paul Rand’s inspiritations who lead him to his beautiful creations and design history are Wassily Kandinsky, who is one of the 20^th century’s most famous artist and Walter Gropius, who is an architect and founded the Bauhaus School of design. The following is a really good direct quote that Paul Rand mentioned in his corporate identity article which I think is brilliant as it sums up  what a logo is and a really good definition of the logo’s he designs.

If, in the business of communications, “image is king,” the essence of this image, the logo, is a jewel in its crown.

http://www.paul-rand.com/foundation/thoughts_logosflags/#.UV31wqITJIE

http://artcontrarian.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/paul-rand-graphic-designer.html

http://www.paul-rand.com/foundation/biography/#.UV35PKITJIE

http://www.iconofgraphics.com/Paul-Rand/

Michael Bieriut

Michael Bierut is one of today’s well known graphic designers, design critic and educator. Bierut specializes in all areas of graphic design but one really interesting fact is Bierut doesn’t see himself as creative which every other designer does , but is a problem solver and advises designers to remember who they are creating for. Bierut has been really successful in his career where he was once the national president for the American Institute of Graphic Arts. Since 1990 he joined a company called pentagram where then he lead a team who specialize in creating identity design, environmental design and editorial design. During his career he has won many design awards and his work has been shown at many museum collections around the world. Beriut’s work shows simplicity and clearness which plays a big part in design, as a good piece should always be visual. The image shown above is one of his book design’s which he produced for ‘Design research’, I think the cover itself is  very simple yet unique because although it just uses three simple colours with a simple pattern is very attractive to the human eye. In my opinion I really like his work as it shows simplicity and shows that you don’t always need a large amount of work to get your message across as a designer.

http://www.designindaba.com/profiles/michael-bierut

http://www.logosdesigners.com/#michael-bierut

http://www.pentagram.com/en/YSOA_Fall2010_800.php

http://www.pentagram.com/partners/#/20/

Janathan Ive

Janathan Ive born in 1967 is a successful designer who has worked his way up in the design industry, now being the senior vice president of industrial design for Apple products.  Janathan Ive is best known as one of the world’s best leaders in design and has been involved in the design of many apple products such as the Apple iMac, mini iPad, iPods, iPhone etc. Janathon Ive has also won many awards such as ‘Designer of the year award’ which was awarded by the design museum and was the first ever given, he is also recognised for the fifth generation iPod which is one of his most recognised industrial designs. In Janathan Ive’s early years he was influenced by a German industrial designer called Dieter Rams who is well known for coming up with the ten principles of ‘good design’, which he then used to design many pleasing, sharp looking and beautiful products. Overall it goes to show that behind every successful brand there are designers who are innovative and creative. Janathan is a great example of this hence his creativity has ensured that Apple remain ahead of competition due to their slick,fun and intresting technology.

https://www.apple.com/pr/bios/jonathan-ive.html

http://www.tuaw.com/2013/02/20/jonathan-ive-on-apples-design-philosophy/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Ive

http://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/online/jonathan-ive-on-apple/jonathan-ives-biography