Blog Investigation 10/2/22

 An Investigation on Graphic Design

    This week I looked at a book that dived into groundbreaking ideas in graphic design. This book by Steven Heller and Veronique Vienne titled 100 Ideas that Changed Graphic Design, gave details about important concepts in graphic design that were influential and are still used today. While I was going through this book, a few things stood out/intrigued me, and this is an overview of those things.

Calligrams (pgs. 62-63):

One of the pages that interested me was on calligrams. Normally, text is pretty straight forward and linear; Its change in appearance is minimal throughout design. However, a calligram bends and manipulates text into  an image. One example shown to the left is a design for the history of Coca-Cola, and the words are bent and enlarged to represent a bottle.

Found Typography (pgs. 82-83):

Another section that fascinated me was on found typography. This is the idea that you can take everyday objects and arrange them in such a way that they create letters. This idea could be used in a title for example to illustrate something about the content or overall theme of the book or movie or art composition.

Shadow Play (pgs. 113-114):

Shadow play is something that can be used to add 3D detention and/or reveal meaning to the art work. It plays with lighting to create a shadow behind words, objects, or people. In one of the examples shown, the "T" in Tannhäuser has a shadow that is manipulated to look like a cross, even though that shadow would not realistically be made from a "T."