Reviewing workshop experience – week 9, NTU

Monday 2.3.09

Experiencing the workshop with Jonathan Barnbrook and being part of group work activities on Friday 27th February was very challenging and I am still processing what I have learned.

Barnbrook’s lecture
The discussion about work, ethics and the role of graphic design was particularly helpful and informative. Barnbrook has 18 years experience as a visual communicator in his own rights and is a trend-setter and rule breaker rather than a follower. Ex Central St Martins and RCA post graduate, very concerned with mass consumerism. Dislikes include, D&AD (why pay to enter a competition, is this inclusive?) “soul-less corporate identities”, the blandness of modernism “I find it depressing and capitalistic”.

Work shown:
University work –
The perimeters of design should be created by your tool (Morris) source the original quote. During RCA training, Barnbrook studied 3,000 years of classical typography. His advice is to ‘have strong knowledge of your typefaces, learn or subvert what has gone before.’

Manson Mas( )on typeface: Derivations are gothic architecture and insects (m).
The nuances of stone carving are acknowledged within the letterforms.
Bastarde – typeface was created out of necessity, RCA wouldn’t pay for thus Blackletter, so Barnbrook, created his own. The font is a reference to Bartarda 15th Century font and is a visual reference also to Nazi regimes and comments about fascism. The capital R in the typeface Bastarde represents a goose-stepping soldier, these sorts of observations (obviously not about ww2!) were also captured by Durer as early as 1532.

Gulf war posters begin to show a voice, a way of working that includes political comment, imagination, humour but also challenges the ‘norm’.
‘There is no point creating work if it stays in your portfolio, we put our posters on the streets of London. Be part of a voice. Political work has to go out there, otherwise it’s pointless.’ JB 27.2.09

‘You must be imaginative in your work, be brave. Do work you are obsessional about and find out where you fit.’

‘Graphic design is not soulless. It’s about people pressuring politician, look at history. Fly-posting is how graphics came about, it was a very persuasive media in its day.’

Exocet font – typeface based on early Greek typeface, with a modern twist, creating the zeitgeist.
Aryan nations – Corporate identity, has been used by Nazi supporters (not the original plan) You have a responsibility as a designer, what you produce has a global and local impact, you cab decide whether your work is going to be positive or negative.

Virus – Own company, small independent creative jobs, not a huge profit driven corporate machine.

Type face designs include:
Prozac – typeface based on repeated forms (6 lettershapes reflecting and repeating). Different weights include lite and max (reflecting Pepsi/coca cola mass consumption of our times)

Regime – typeface released when President Bush came into power (reflecting the sign of the times)

Prozac – typeface based on repeated forms (6 lettershapes reflecting and repeating)

Infidel – typeface representing early Christian manuscripts (anti modernist values)

Tourette – exploring the perimeters of being outside the norm

Melancholia – references calligraphic swashes, creating an atmospheric font, evoking the emotion.

Tourette – exploring the perimeters of being outside the norm (off the baseline)
Expletive Script – How to go beyond civilisation (to go above and below the baseline)
Shock and Awe – exploring the impact of Enola gay and the first atomic bomb through typography