Surface pattern design

Fabric design

For a shop visual merchandising project I am creating 4 elements, one of which is a fabric panel. The fabric can also be used for furoshiki (fabric wrapping) and making a Japanese inspired origami bag. I designed lots of fabric tiles within an orange and teal colour scheme, below. I think the orange ones are more successful, and the first couple in the teal panel are the least (these are the first ones I created).

Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau was prevalent from 1890-1914 and developed from Arts and Crafts to focus on looking forward with excitement and optimism, and as the first truly modern style which did not rely on the past for its influences.

Works included female figures with long flowing hair, and flowing sensual lines. It feature the natural world with flowers and buds. Female nudes feature heavily and in a sexualised way for the first time. Influences were from outside the UK - worldwide communication was becoming easier and shrinking the world, and Japanese influences, brought to the UK by Liberties of London, were introduced to the masses. As well as Japanese influences, the earlier Arts and Crafts, also featured. Gustav Klimt, Lautrec, Munch, Beardsley, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Horta, Lalique, Mucha, Behrens and Gaudi all worked in the Art Nouveau style. Art Nouveau work included jewellery, painting, print design, and architecture. Advertising and marketing was becoming more popular as commercialism expanded. It spread across the world and was embraced by the Americans (the east coast, mid-west, and California) as it embodied their whole forward thinking modern culture. They had a much more commercial approach and were materialists. They did not have the socialist ethical views of their English counterparts.

Art Nouveau work was very diverse and the artists were prolific producing work in many disciplines.

Mackintosh worked with stylised florals, stained glass and furniture, and his work often featured heavily stylised females in soft muted colours. He was a member of the Glasgow School and produced this piece for The Scottish Musical Review. He worked with his wife and 2 others as the Glasgow Four who were very influential in the movement (Eskilsson, 2012).

Beardsley worked with high contrast black and white imagery, nudes, sweeping curves, metaphorical images and myth, and was heavily influenced by the Japanese style. He worked primarily in woodcut. This is The Dancer's Reward.

Gustav Klimt's work was very different - opulent, sensual and passionate. The work on the left is The Kiss.

Toulouse-Lautrec was an artist and graphic designer focused on poster design. Moulin Rouge: Le Goulue. He was renown for his advertising and marketing work with designs such as Le Chat Noir.




















Unlike Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau embraced mass production and new technology, and reflected that in its designs with swooping lines and whiplash curves. Mostly the work was in flat colours (sometimes with texture, but not with depth), with solid outlines and often included flowers, buds and seeds. They liked pre-raphaelite nudes with long flowing hair, exotic woods, opulent glass, and silver and semi-precious stones

Consumers of these products could present themselves as wealthy and well travelled, as reflected in the subjects and influences of the works.

The Paris Metro signs were designed by Hector Guimard. Hill House in Helensburgh near Glasgow was an example of the architecture, along with the Glasgow School of Art and the V&A have a huge collection of their art. Art Nouveau artists were prolific and produced varied bodies of work - Mackintosh produced furniture, glass, print and paintings.

Artists such as Monet, Gaugin, Van Gogh, Ensor, Munch and Lautrec where influenced by Art Nouveau.

Arts and Crafts

The Arts and Crafts movement took place in the UK in 1860 until 1910, when it evolved into Art Nouveau. It was a socialist and design movement, and the first style to incorporate design and art, and not just focus on art.

John Ruskin and Williams Morris were the main proponents of Arts and Crafts. Ruskin was primarily concerned with the social and theoretical aspects of Arts and Crafts and was not an artist or designer and an idealised view of the life of medieval craftsmen. Morris was a designer, a poet and an architect who also commissioned others to design work.

Ruskin and Morris focused on the plight of the lives of those working in the factories in the "dark Satanic mills" (Eskilson, 2012) . They wanted to improve the quality and artistic merit of utilitarian objects, and by also focusing on the social aspect of the craftspeople, they could improve the lives of their countrymen in both ways. Williams Morris said "have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.

It was a rebellion against the dawning of the industrial age in Britain, where commercialism was at the fore. Morris saw that workers were being exploited to produce cheap mass produced goods, and wanted to his idealised version of the past. This was the naive idea of someone who considered that factory workers had a much better life in rural communities before industrialisation, and he came from a wealthy family himself (Eskilsson, 2012). Morris wanted to produced functional objects that were pleasing to use. However, with handcrafted items, there was an increased cost associated with them, which meant the products were out of the reach of the people Morris wanted them to be for. This was something that troubled Morris but there was little he could do about it. The people who bought his products did not understand that wanting to return to a simpler time, when workers lived in the green and pleasant land, was actually a very idealised view of the working classes. Those who bought these products had little insight in the lives of workers, and whether what would make their lives better or worse, as they were so far removed from the manufacturing classes. In fact there lives had always been hard before and after the industrial revolution.

It was primarily a British movement, but had a global impact, spreading to the US and becoming popular from 1890-1916. The American constitution and politics meant that they didn't have the same scruples about poor working conditions as the (slightly) more socialist Britain.

Arts and Crafts was strongly influenced by Mediaeval and Gothic design. Its imagery was plant based, and of stylised florals, and mostly in muted colours. The block repeats were organic and integrated, compared the more gappy ones from their competitors, who also used the newly invented chemical dyes. They only produced function items, and not art or paintings for display. It was a design movement, not art. Examples of their products included stained glass, furniture, wallpaper, and architecture. He owned Kelmscott Press, making books and designing type.

The Arts and Crafts exhibition of 1888 cited itself as being "for the homes of simple and gentle folk". The Art Workers Guild wanted to raise the standards of decorative arts and the craftsmen, and they wanted to work with the commercial word. The products were designed and made in cities, for city dwellers.

In 1993, Morris was critisized as being "the work of a few, for the few", which was something that Morris was never able to overcome.

This movement has much in common with today - a desire to look back to traditional methods of the past, when the world around us is changing at an exponential rate. We now see the rise of websites such as Etsy, Folksy, Not on the High Street, etc, who champion the handmade and the individual, just like Ruskin and Morris. Sections of modern day British society put high values on unique handcrafted items and are willing to pay for them, and the availability of such products is huge. There has been a huge backlash from the public against companies who have been found to exploit there workers, and there in an increase in wanting to understand the provenance of the products we consume - whether they are food, clothing, electronics, or any other products. The the idea of social utility of good design is also relevant to graphic design today.

Eskilson, S (2012) Graphic Design A History.

Gordon's Gin research

Ghost typography

I have found some imagery of ghost typography on the internet. I am considering using this style of photography/illustration for my bottle packaging. I have taken photos previously, around London, of ghost typography, although I didn't know what it was called!

These are images from Google:

These are some images of peeling paint and other textures, found on Google, that I may incorporate into my design.  

I'm thinking that I might use film to photograph interesting textures, around the Southwark and Clerkenwell areas of London where the distillery was originally located. I will redesign the logo as the script style of font does not reflect the style I want to create. I want the product to reflect it's historical provenance, but also to be more modern and edgy.  I plan to hand drawn the typography to go on the label. 

Some examples of hand drawn typography I have created, based on letterpress type, that I may use:

Juxtaposition

Juxtaposition, in this context, is the idea of creating an image which challenges the word being represented. The imagery and text must have opposing and supporting connotations, depending on your viewpoint.

For the first poster, for the National Portrait Gallery's exhibition on beauty, entitled Ugly, I chose to use a picture of a beautiful woman, with underarm hair, as many people in western society would find this unattractive and even repulsive. However, in some cultures, and certainly in recent British history, it was considered attractive. The image represents the ambiguous nature of beauty and ugliness.

The image below is of artist and sculpturer, Alison Lapper. She stands out because she was not afraid to portray her disability, and an installation piece of her was exhibited in Trafalgar Square. To some people a naked person with a disability might not be typically beautiful, however, the poster tries to illustrate that beauty means different things to different people, through a controversial piece.