ART DECO ARCHITECTURE

Art Deco style made its debut at the 1925 World’s Fair in Paris, but the name was not coined until 1966. The style was developed by a group of French architects and interior designers who banded together to form the Societe des Artistes Decorateurs. Art Deco style was designed to incorporate elements of style from diverse artworks and current fashion trends. Influence from Cubism and Surrealism, Egyptian and African folk art are evident in the lines and embellishments, and Asian influences contribute symbolism, grace and detail.

Sleek Lines

• Art Deco furniture introduced sleek, rounded corners, streamlined designs and futuristic styling. Seating often curved slightly inward, suggesting intimacy and sensuousness. Stylized human forms with elongated shapes were iconic decorative art deco influences used in statues, lighting and artworks.

Geometric Patterns

• Geometric designs often provided design counterpoint to the soft rounded lines of classic Art Deco furniture. Fan designs were often incorporated using layered triangles, and circular designs were common.

Industrial Materials and Finish

• Industrial materials were often incorporated in Art Deco furniture design or finish. Metals, chrome, plastics and glass were often combined with wood to add textural elements and reflective embellishments. Finishes were shiny or glossy. Wood was heavily lacquered or enameled and polished to a high sheen.

Fabrics

• Fabric choices enhanced the feeling of luxury and opulence in Art Deco furniture. Bold geometric, animal or exaggerated floral prints in soft, sumptuous materials were used to contrast and compliment the sleek styling. Trim details such as tassels and edging were common finishing touches for overstuffed cushions.

Optimism

• Art Deco reflected the general optimism and carefree mood that swept Europe and the United States following World War I. Hope and prosperity are represented in sunburst designs, chevrons and references to the good life in the elegant figures depicted in casual, sensual poses, often dancing or sipping cocktails. The modern influences heralded a bright and shining future outlook that found its way to architecture, jewelry, automobile design and even extended to ordinary things such as refrigerators and trash cans.

Modular Design

• Modular furniture made its first appearance with Art Deco design. Separate pieces with curve edges that fit together became popular. The style was bold and innovative, but also inviting and comfortable, which is why modular furniture and other Art Deco influences remain on the market today. The pop culture of the 1960s was heavily influenced by Art Deco style. Today, Art Deco furniture manages to r

  etain a look both retro and refreshingly modern.

BAUHAUS WITH POSTERS

Moholy Nagy

Cubierta del decimosegundo libro de la Bauhaus

 

Walter Allner

 

Herbert Bayer

 

Moholy Nagy was mainly responsible for the new elements in Bauhaus typography and advertising techniques from 1923 until the beginning of the Dessau period (1925), when the Bauhaus had to move from its original home in Weimar. Development of a specific Bauhaus type began in about 1923. It was derived in part from the work of Schwitters and also of Van Doesburg – thus bringing together ideas from Dada and De Stijl. Moholy Nagy initiated the idea of type without capitals, which was implemented by Herbert Bayer (1924).

In 1929 and 1930 the influence of Joost Schmidt on Bauhaus poster design led to a development of posters into three dimensions as exhibition structures. The development of a combined commercial art and photographic department in Berlin under Peterhans stressed the exhibition-stand photographic poster in Bauhaus design (1932). The Bauhaus existed at Weimar from 1919 until 1925, at Dessau from 1925 to 1932 and in Berlin during 1933, when the Nazis insisted that changes should be made in the staff and programme so that it would conform to the ideals of National Socialism. The Bauhaus was then re-established in the United States. The formal art movements which had started in Europe had a direct influence, through the teaching of the Bauhaus, throughout the world. Walter Allner and Herbert Bayer, among others, continued the work of the Bauhaus in America after its ‘expulsion’ from Europe. The Bauhaus signalled not only a change in design, but of the place of design within society and so ultimately of society itself.

HOUSE FOR BUILDING

Buildings without ornamentation of any kind.

Bauhaus architects rejected “bourgeois” details such as cornices, eaves, and decorative details. They wanted to use principles of Classical architecture in their most pure form. Bauhaus buildings have flat roofs, smooth facades, and cubic shapes. Colors are white, gray, beige, or black. Floor plans are open and furniture is functional.

Examples of Bauhaus buildings and architecture:

Seagram Building

A classic example of the International Style, the Seagram Building was designed by Mies Van der Rohe. Mies believed that a skyscraper’s structure should be visible, so the architects used decorative bronze beams to accentuate the structure and to emphasize the height of the Seagram Building.

Gropius House

Walter Gropius, the renowned architect who founded the German movement known as Bauhaus, came to Massachusetts in 1937. The modest home he built in Lincoln, Massachusetts combined New England details with Bauhaus ideas.

Philip Johnson’s Glass House

The basic concept for Johnson’s glass house was borrowed from Mies van der Rohe, who was designing the glass-and-steel Farnsworth House during the same period. Unlike the Farnsworth House, however, Philip Johnson’s home is symmetrical and sits solidly on the ground. The quarter-inch thick glass walls are supported by black steel pillars. The interior space is divided by low walnut cabinets and a brick cylinder that contains the bathroom. The cylinder and the brick floors are a polished purple hue.

Farnsworth House

Hovering in a green landscape, the transparent glass Farnsworth House by Mies Van der Roheis often celebrated as his most perfect expression of the International Style. The house is rectangular with eight steel columns set in two parallel rows. Suspended between columns are two steel-framed slabs (the ceiling and the roof) and a simple, glass-enclosed living space and porch. All the exterior walls are glass, and the interior is entirely open except for a wood paneled area containing two bathrooms, a kitchen and service facilities. The floors and exterior decks are Italian travertine limestone. The steel is sanded smooth and painted a gleaming white.

ART NOUVEAU

You can identify Art Nouveau style art and architecture by looking for some specific elements.

Flowing Lines

Art Nouveau is characterized by graceful, sinuous lines. The lines are rarely angular.

Violent Curves

Some artists referred to the curves in Art Nouveau works as whiplash curves. Rhythmic patterns of curvy lines are characteristic of this art style. These curvy lines connect the images in the art and can even be found in beautified plain items, such as dishes, eating utensils, hardware and furniture.

Organic Subject Matter

You’ll find plenty of flowers, leaves, vines, grass, seaweed, insects and other organic images in Art Nouveau jewelry, hardware, windows and architecture. Examples include images of birds etched into window frames or curled around each other on fabric for upholstery, or abstract lilies drifting around and connecting to each other on dinnerware.

New Materials

Instead of classic gemstones, Art Nouveau jewelers opted to work with opals and semiprecious stones. Glass art reached a new level of popularity as Louis Comfort Tiffany and Charles Rennie Mackintosh took interest in the new art style. Molded glass, animal horns and ivory tusks became commonly used materials.

Resistance of Classical Restrictions

Instead of limiting art to painting on a canvas or sculpting out of marble, Art Nouveau artists and architects looked for ways to make everyday objects into pieces of art. A doorknocker might be molded to look like a dragonfly; an entranceway might be graced by vine-like lines in the molding. You can find a classic example of this by studying the entrances designed for the Paris Metro by Hector Guimard.

Here are some examples of Art Nouveau Architecture

PACKAGE DESIGN

Nelson Beer

This Nelson beer brings with it a real unique label design with a mix of modernism with indigenous Indian design aesthetics.

Cute Coco Package

This recycled cardboard package is a modern interpretation of Japanese animation and art nouveau. Yet it also falls into an emerging graphical genre of alternative design featuring childish fonts and simple vectors.

Pretty Soap – Savannah

A very home-crafted styled soap packaging.

For more cool and sexy package design click here

HISTORY OF TYPES

Blackletter type sample from Gutenberg Bible, 1454

(first Western book printed from movable type)

Later Blackletter type sample by William Caxton, ca. 1480-90

Renaissance type characteristics, ca 1500-1550

Sample of mixed Renaissance roman and italic typefaces by Aldus Manutius, ca. 1500

Baroque type characteristics, 1600s

Neoclassical type characteristics, 1700s

Verses of the Aeneid set in Baskerville, a Neoclassical type, ca. 1770s

Romantic type characteristics, early 1800s

Sample of one of Giambattista Bodoni’s Romantic typefaces, ca. 1800

Samples of slab serif and sans serif typefaces

Lyrical Modernist type characteristics, cas 1900-1920

Typefaces hearkening back to Renaissance forms are known under various names:

Renaissance Revival, Neohumanist, Lyrical Modernist, and Old Style.

Geometric Modernist type characteristics, ca 1910-1930

Bauhaus poster featuring Geometric Modernist sans serif fonts, ca. 1925

GOLDEN PAGE

“The canons of page construction are a set of principles in the field of book design  used to describe the ways that page proportions, margins and type areas of books are constructed.”

The notion of canons, or laws of form, of book page construction was popularized by Jan Tschichold in the mid to late twentieth century, based on the work of J. A. van de Graaf, Raúl M. Rosarivo, Hans Kayser, and others. Tschichold wrote: Though largely forgotten today, methods and rules upon which it is impossible to improve have been developed for centuries. To produce perfect books these rules have to be brought to life and applied. Kayser’s 1946 Ein harmonikaler Teilungskanon had earlier used the term canon in this context.”The secret canon. Van de Graaf canon, a reconstruction of a method that may have been used to divide a page in pleasing proportions within book design.

Tschichold’s “golden canon of page construction” is based on simple integer ratios, equivalent to Rosarivo’s “typographical divine proportion.” the page is devided into ninths and the height of the text box is the same as the page width.

Historian John Man suggests that Gutenberg’s Bible page was based on the “golden ratio” (commonly approximated as the ratio 5:8).

GRID CALCULATOR

As designing with grids is an important issue on page design, this calculator allows you to choose the font size you are going to use, and then select the number of columns, column width, and gutter width based on that base font size. As you fiddle with the dimensions, the total width is dynamically updated, so you can check that you haven’t gone over that magic 1024px! Such a great work and makes you gain a lot of time during the realisation of your sketches on the internet page.

 

You can click on the image below to reach the calculator. Enjoy!

The SYMBOLISM of CELTIC DESIGN

Some of the Celtic design’s symbols can be found in my entry..

Knots and Interlaces

It is knows that each knot has a specific meaning but this idea has no facts to back it up or there no such thing called knot dictionary. The Celtic interlace in general symbolises the repeated crossings of the spiritual and physical paths in our lives. The never ending path can be expressed as “permanence and the continuum of life, love and faith”.

-Eternity Knot:  Any knot that has a closed path, with no beginning or end may be symbolic of eternity or continuum. So there no such thing called ‘the’ Eternity Knot. 

-Lover’s knot:  Most commonly knots that link separate path’s are used as lover’s knots. The “Josephine Knot” or “Granny knot” is a linking knot that is frequently called a lover’s knot.

-Heart knots: They are the recent addition to Celtic symbolism. Hearts as symbols of “love” date from the later medieval period but have become an established part of the contemporary Celtic repertoire in the last decade of the 20th century.

Celtic Cross

Celtic Cross is the most known Celtic symbol. Large stone crosses, known as “High Crosses” emerged as a major sculptural tradition in Ireland, Scotland and other Celtic lands from the 9th century or earlier. During the Celtic Revival new monuments in this style were crafted that added a self-conscious message of Celtic heritage to the widely recognized emblem of the Christian  faith. The circle is often described as an halo or an eternity symbol. Much has been made of the similarity between the Celtic Cross and pagan sun symbols. There is a mystic tradition among Celtic Christians of interpreting this as a clairvoyant anticipation of the coming Gospel by the pre-Christian Druids.

 

Symbols of the Evangelists

The four winged creatures of the prophesies of Ezekiel and The Revelations of St. John came to be identified with the four Evangelists in early Christian symbolism as early as the 2nd century. The Man symbolized St. Mathew, the Lion St. Mark, the Calf St. Luke and the Eagle St. John.  In the 4th century, St. Gregory wrote a commentary on Ezekiel identifying the four symbols as t

he stages of Christ’s life. Christ was born a man, in his death he was sacrificed as a calf, a lion in his resurrection and an eagle in his ascension to heaven.

In early Gospel books, including the great Celtic Gospel manuscripts of Kells and Durrow, the symbols of the Evangelists were represented arrayed around the cross and also individually at the beginning each Gospel.

 

The EVOLUTION of the ALPHABETS

Letters in Semitic languages such as Phoenician, Hebrew, Arabic, and Egyptian, were all constants. But Greek -same as most of other languages- as they needed vowels, took some of unfunctional constants and put the vowels instead. The Phoenicians -as Arabs and Hebrews do today- wrote from right to left. Greeks, who also used to have the same way, changed their system, direction of each line. Finally they had the present system which is left to right, as today used by every modern European alphabets.

Also can be seen from the table above, Latin Alphabet, the ancestor of most western European Alphabets, is derived not only from the Greek but also nearby Etruscan version of the alphabet. As years passed by, extra letters were invented by varying older ones, or reintroducing Greek letters such as K and Y.  It wasn’t until the middle ages that small letters came into being, usually based on more cursive versions of the capital letters.