Futura

    Today I wanted to talk a bit about my favorite typeface, Futura. I've always had an affinity for geometric sans-serif typefaces, but I think it was the immense popularity of Helvetica that ultimately led me to Futura. I was tired of the over saturation of Helvetica in the design world, and so I found myself subbing in Futura whenever I had the urge to put Helvetica in a design. When it came time to design some spreads based on a font for my typography course, I instantly knew which one I would choose. I wanted to emphasize the geometry and modern nature of Futura while simultaneously capitalizing on the 50s vibe (thats when Futura was most popular in America) and Futura's place as the first typeface on the moon. It was difficult because while Futura is great for headlines, it does not work as well for body text. Serif type faces allow the eye to rack lines better than sans serif. Futura also requires a lot more leading in order to read well in paragraphs. There were also certain strange things that the assignment required we include (such as the addition to demonstrate decimals), but overall, I love how it turned out even three years later. Here is just a brief history of the font that I wrote for the assignment:

   Futura is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed in 1927 by Paul Renner.  It was commissioned by the Bauer Type Foundry, in reaction to Ludwig & Mayer’s seminal Erbar of 1922,and released commercially in 1936. The typeface is based on geometric shapes that became representative of visual elements of the Bauhaus design style of 1919–33. The family was originally cast in Light, Medium, Bold, and Bold Oblique fonts in 1928. Light Oblique, Medium Oblique, Demibold, and Demibold Oblique fonts were later released in 1930. Book font was released in 1932. Book Oblique font was released in 1939. Edwin W. Shaar designed the extra Bold font in 1952. Edwin W. Shaar and Tommy Thompson designed extra Bold Italic font in 1955. Matrices for machine composition were made by Intertype. 

    Futura has an appearance of efficiency and forwardness. Renner aimed for pure functionality with his design, with no ornamentation or individual characteristics. The typeface is based on the circle, the most fundamental of all typographic components. Its design is derived from simple geometric forms (near-perfect circles, triangles and squares) and is based on strokes of near-even weight, which are low in contrast. 

    This is most visible in the almost perfectly round stroke of the o, which is nonetheless slightly ovoid. The lowercase has tall ascenders, which rise above the cap line. The uppercase characters present proportions similar to those of classical Roman capitals. Another recognizable characteristic is the pointed triangular apexes that rise above the cap height and fall below the base line. These overshoots, like those on the uppercase a and m, intensify the typeface and give futura an energy that makes it striking. 

    Futura was the first geometric sans serif typeface to become widely popular. While it was conceived for use as body text in books it became popular for headlines in advertising in the 50s.Futura was used on the plaque left by Apollo Eleven astronauts. This means that Futura was the first font on the moon! The typeface was director Stanley Kubrick’s favorite and he used it in many of his movies. The director Wes Anderson also lists futura as his favorite typeface, however Anderson's love of futura borders on obsession. He squeezed it into The Royal Tenenbaums at nearly every opportunity (check out this blog post counting them all http://www.marksimonson.com/notebook/view/RoyalTenenbaumsWorldofFutura)  Futura is also used in advertisements and logos, notably by IKEA (until 2010), Volkswagen,Royal Dutch Shell, Crayola and HP in their print ads. It remains one of the most popular sans-serif typefaces today.

NYC Armory Show 1913

    I finally got around to taking a course in American art history this semester. While American art is technically a sophomore level course here at Bradley, probably 80% of the students in my class are seniors. With so many upperclassmen in the course, it is interesting to see how many misconceptions we still have this far into our college careers. I feel as if a large number of students, myself included, were under the false impression that America has been an important center for art for a long time. In reality, America has really only grown to prominence within the art world during the last century. From the country's inception until the mid 1900s, American art existed in the shadow of Europe. If an artist wanted to learn the craft they went to Europe and American trends followed those generated overseas. When the art world shifted its focus from Italy to Paris in the late 1800s, America was slow to adopt to the burgeoning modern art scene that was taking hold. Impressionism and post impressionism, were born in France, but the modern art of Europe took quite a few years to cross the Atlantic. The New York City Armory show of 1913, and the traveling pieces within that show, really brought avant-garde painting to the American public.
    The Association of American Painters and Sculptors, were an American group of artists that had become dissatisfied with the outdated academies and felt that the only way for Americans to adopt modern sensibilities was for as many people to be exposed to it as possible. The group, put together a massive show of 1,400 works; mainly focusing on European artists such as George Braque, Paul Cezanne, Edgar Degas, Vincent Van Gogh, and Henri Matisse. However American artists such as the impressionist Mary Cassatt and the abstract painter Albert Pinkham Ryder also saw inclusion in the show. This was the largest exhibition New York had ever seen and the Regiment Armory on East 25th Street was a venue big enough to hold it all.
    Modern painting presented a completely different mode of thinking than the work that the American public was used to and it did not go over well with some people. While impressionism was in many ways old news by 1913 (many American artists ,such as members of the ashcan school, were already working in this style), the post impressionistic, cubist, and futurist works were very controversial. One painting that caused an uproar was Matisses's  Blue Nude (pictured below).

    It is easy to see why this work was so controversial;this was not the beautiful illusionistic female nude that Americans were used to seeing in works like Titian's Venus of Urbino. To the American public this was perverse and grotesque. Students at the Art Institute protested and burned the work in effigy when it traveled to Chicago. The students were fearful of what the work represented; an entire shift in the way artists thought about painting. The whole idea behind many of the avant-garde works in the show involved being true to the act of painting. Artists like Matisse, did not bother with illusionism, they acknowledged that they were painting on a canvas. The modern artist demonstrated the inherent flatness of painting on the canvas and allowed their brush strokes to remain visible. Color became a another way in which to display emotion. The works in the Armory show did not tell a story or attempt to render in a three dimensional manner. By their nature, the works in the Armory show forced the viewer to talk about the act of painting itself. Unless the viewer was well versed int he history of painting and understood what the artists were trying to accomplish, the work often went over their heads.

    The most abstract paintings int he show, the cubist and futurist works, were thereby the ones that caused the biggest stir.  The painting that everyone was talking about was Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2. Duchamp's work is really a futurist piece which borrows the flattening and abstracting of cubism, but adds sequential movement. Journalists simply didn't know what to say about the work. Writers attempted to describe it by its appearance labeling it, "an academic painting of an artichoe" or, "an explosion in a shingle factory." President Theodore Roosevelt even compared it to a Navajo rug he had in his bathroom. Roosevelt is on record stating that while he believed it important for Americans to see what was going on across the sea he viewed the artists in the show as European extremists.  A large portion of the American public simply did not care for the abstract works and they were lampooned in cartoons like the ones below. 

   Nevertheless, the influence of the NYC Armory Show on American artists is undeniable. Post 1913, we can see a movement away from impressionism and a trending towards the more abstract styles. Marsden Hartley is an example of one such American artist whose worked dramatically shifted in the years following the armory show. Hartley's Still Life No. 1 (1912) ,pictured below, already resembles Matisse in its flatness and approach to shadow. Still, there is an attempt at rendering an illusion of depth. Post 1913, we see Hartley abandon this completely in works such as Indian Fantasy and Portrait of a German Officer.

Still Life No. 1 1912

Indian Fantasy 1914

Portrait of a German Officer 1914

    In just two years, the artist has begun rendering with a decorative surface quality with no regard for depth. He is growing increasingly abstract, electing to create a portrait with just symbols. The use of floating numbers and text on the surface of his paintings comes directly from cubism. This floating text approach was also adopted by American Joseph Stella in the years following the show. Notice how, again, the depth and illusionism gives way to abstraction and vivid color. With Stella's Coney Island there is no real attempt to convey a real image of what is going on. It is all light, color, emotion. It is impossible to discuss the work without acknowledging how it was painted.

Still Life 1912

Battle of Lights, Coney Island, Mardi Gras 1914

    From these examples, I hope that it is clear how influential the NYC Armory show of 1913 was. I think it's clear to see how works like Stella's will eventually give rise to Jackson Pollock and the eventual growth of America and NYC into the art center of the world.

Peoria Playhouse Children's Museum

   Last week I posted a set of icons I was working on for Peoria's children's museum. I just wanted to make this post to share the final set with everyone and talk a bit about the wayfinding app that I am working on using these icons. The brief for this project involved created a wayfinding app for the children's museum that was functional for both children and adults. I chose to go with a more complex, vectorized look, for the exhibit icons as opposed to the standard one or two color icon. I wanted the icons to be clear, but also colorful and playful. I think I was fairly successful in crafting a unified set, but I might need to make a second icon set with reduced detail  so that they can function better at smaller sizes. These icons would look great on wayfinding signs and physical maps, but maybe not so much on an iPhone5 screen. 

   With the actual app itself, I decided to focus on a paper airplane as a recurring motif.  The Peoria Playhouse logo features an airplane flying from the house and their website features the image of the airplane heavily. I was attracted to the plane's resemblance to an arrow and the way that the trail lines could be used to guide the user. The splash page could feature the airplane flying around before finally coming to rest beside the Peoria Playhouse text. The header typeface I chose (Bebas) is big and bold and in all caps. I went with this font because I thought it would be appealing to both kids and adults without appearing too childlike. 

Another aspect of the brief involved creating engagement for users when they leave the museum. This is the part of the assignment that I am still working on. Right now, I've only designed a page that details the museums current exhibits. I extended the  vectorized look/incorporated the airplane in the exhibit info pages. I also designed the apps navigation (search, explore, and home) in the same vector style as the rest of the icons. 

When it came to the actual on site way finding, I wanted the maps to contrast the complexity of the icons. I went with a very simple, one color, line based look on the maps. This allowed the maps to fit in better with the type and highlight in the same manner. I also wanted to incorporate a swipe down menu of the exhibits into the map, but I'm not sure if I illustrated that well.

Finally, I am working on a geolocation feature where the airplane can guide the user in real time to exhibits. Again I am making heavy use of the vectorized look and simple typography. This app is still a work in progress, but I like how it is turning out so far.

Icon Sets

My WIP icon set for the museum 

    Our current infographic project involves creating an entire wayfinding system for Peoria's children's museum. One of the key elements of any good wayfinding system is the icon set. While some icons, like restroom and coatrooms are universal, others are open to interpretation. I just wanted to take a moment to discuss what goes into to creating a cohesive and clear set of visual icons.
    First of all, icons need to be universal. Don't try to get metaphorical or complex, with pictograms the first thing that comes to mind is often the best choice. Sites like iconfinder.com and thenounproject.com can also be great for determining what the universal symbols for ideas are. A pictogram should be able to clearly communicate an idea visually , without the need for language. Some of the best examples of of icon sets come from wayfinding systems for the olympic games. The designers of these sets are forced to create images that cross both language and cultural barriers. My favorite example of these has always been Lance Wyman's work for the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. They were colorful and simple, but also integrated a lot of pattern that helped to unify the work.

That's really the second most important aspect of crafting a set of pictograms, they need to feel like a unified set. It is essential to maintain a unified line weight and level of complexity across the board. Notice how Wyman's graphics all maintain the aesthetic of white on a bright color with very simple shapes. Another thing that unifies the pictograms is there consistent visual weight. Although the images might have varying amounts of negative and positive space, they are all sized to pack the same visual punch. It is always a good idea to design all of your icons on a grid in order to make sure that they are proportional to each other. Ultimately however, it is up to the artist's eye to determine whether something should be scaled to equalize visual weight. 

   The final factor to consider is scalability. Icons should be able to function at a variety of sizes, from a phone screen to signage. It is a good idea to work small and then scale up later. Another popular option is to create two sets; a simpler one for extremely small sizes and a more complex set for larger sizes. Just because something looks fantastic on your screen doesn't mean it will be legible on someone's old iPhone 4. 

   Although my designs above are a work in progress, I attempted to maintain a consistent level of complexity and visual weight across them. I'm liking how they are turning out so far, but they could certainly use more work.