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

Adrian Fruitiger

Adrian Frutiger born 1928 is a well known Swiss Typeface designer who has designed between 100-200 typefaces .Frutiger has designed some well known typefaces which have become standard and are widely used today on a daily basis. Fruitiger is best known for his typeface’s Univers and Fruitiger, but also has a range wide range of classical and modern typefaces which are used today. Fruitiger is also the designer who influenced the development of digital typography in the 20^th century. Fruitiger also designed many great Logo’s and books which shows he was also passionate about designing various products. Fruitiger says “when I put my pen to a blank sheet is deprived of light, […] Thus I also grasped that the empty spaces are the most important aspect of a typeface.” I personally think that Fruitiger Typefaces are really good for this reason as the space around the typefaces make it really clear to read. One of Fruitiger’s great achievements was when he was recruited by a typeface foundry in paris called Charles Pegnot where he  designed one of his most notable  typeface’s for ‘Paris Charles de Gaulle airport’ called ‘Fuitiger’in 1970s which he then released in 1977. In 1986 Fruitiger was also awarded the Gutenberg prize and achievement in typography.

. http://www.myfonts.com/person/Adrian_Frutiger/

http://www.art-directory.info/design/adrian-frutiger-1928/index.shtml

http://www.thinkingform.com/2012/05/24/thinking-adrian-frutiger-05-24-1928/

http://www.identifont.com/show?110

Banksy

Name: “Shop till you drop”

Banksy is well known mainly for his street art combined with graffiti but is also a political activist, film director and a painter. He was born in 1974 and raised in England.  Banksy has been extremely influential to me over the years as I have a great appreciation not only for his simple stencilling technique but also the way in which he expresses himself through street art. This most interesting thing about Banksy’s work is the fact that is a political activist and this comes across in his work. Most people think that his work improves the asthetic quality of surroundings whereas many others believe that it is criminal damage or Vandalism. I personally think that Banksy’s work is amazing because it’s simple and interesting to look at with a clear background. Also the fact that his work is featured on street walls and cities throughout the world makes the world a more exciting and colourful place consisting talented artists. I think Banksy’s work stands out in comparison to other street art as most of his pieces are 3D black and white.  Banksy style is also similar to Blek Le Rat who also works with stencils which Banksy claims to have got his inspiration from which he then changed to his own. 

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2612991/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Shop_Until_You_Drop_by_Banksy.JPG

http://www.briansewell.com/artist/b-artist/banksy/banksy-biography.html

http://www.banksy.co.uk/outdoors/index1.html

Semiotics

Semiotics

Semiotics is the study of signs which is based on looking at symbols and signification which in other words is all based on the purpose of communication throughout the world between people. Semiotics was first developed by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and the American scientist Charles Sanders Pierce whose idea’s laid the foundation of semiotics. Semiotics is signage that should spring to someone’s mind immediately; I think anything and everything in this world can be communicated in the smallest way with the relationship between signs and the meaning.  This is symbols and how meaning is created but the most important fact of semiotics I think is simplicity of communication which is visual to everyone as everybody is constantly surrounded by signs around them. There are many signs also that don’t need to be visual such as an ambulance as you can hear it before you see the ambulance... For example one brilliant example of semiotics I think is different countries and their flags to represent them, not only do they represent the countries but now are also used to show their different cultures. 

http://www.jfsowa.com/figs/yojo.gif

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEgxTKUP_WI

http://www.signsalad.com/semiotics-explained/

Identity

Identity can be or is many different things looked at from angle, it can be your gender or your race, it could even be your religion or your family, overall it equals to the character and the personality of any individual but also can be as a group. Identity is also something that can be used for a group, e.g. a business is identified mainly their name and logo and also by the products or services that they provide. I think identity plays a big part in all of our lives and the whole modern society as without identity we wouldn’t know people as individuals and also the world would be a less interesting place. Identity is not just built from personality, gender, race or religion but can also be affected by various things such as how much jewellery you wear, how much colour you wear, whether you have any tattoos or piercing or even by how loud or quite you are. Identity could also be based on something you’ve done that makes you individualistic, as an example, Janathan Ive designed many products for Apple which now identifies him as the designer for Apple. One really good site that is used worldwide based on identity is face book as we can search and find individual people or groups by names or images.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/identity

http://preciousadornment.wordpress.com/2010/06/15/the-ideal-identity/

http://www.interactiveinsightsgroup.com/blog1/how-to-build-and-manage-your-social-media-brand-identity/

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/identity

Modernism and Postmodernism

Modernism is based on and consists of movements from the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, most people believe the 20^th century was divided into two periods as following; movements Modernism and Post modernism. Modernism consists of art, architecture, literature and music. Many people say it was not a style but was a loose collection of ideas. People also say that Modernism and post modernism have a big relationship and can be categorized as the same sector alongside with modern, modernist and contemporary.  Modernism began around the 1980s until around 1945 and Postmodernism began after the Second World War. Modernist work was known as serious and unique art where as postmodernism is when technology came in and allowed artists to produce and create art with their own meaning to their work instead of basing it on one meaning. One of the differences between the two is that Modernism was based on logical meaning to gain knowledge and postmodernism was against logical thinking. The Modernism movement thinking was the search towards the truth of life, where again postmodernists believe there is no truth in this universe. So overall both movements just have different approaches to life.  In other words I think post modernism was like an upgrade to make the world a better place like the poet Ezra pounds says “make it new”.

http://www.vam.ac.uk/page/m/modernism/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/modernism

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5664

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1077292/postmodernism

http://www.realmagick.com/african-influenced-period/

http://churchandpomo.typepad.com/conversation/2009/07/derrida-and-the-force-of-art.html