Robert Zimmerman

Score!!!!

This is the score for my music concrete performance.

Alan Fletcher

Today I visited the Cube Gallery in Manchester to see an exhibition on 50 years of graphic work by Alan Fletcher. I can truthfully say that this visit has changed the way I think about graphic design. I thought the point was to design work that suits its purpose and is visually appealing. Fletchers work has shown me that it is more about the ideas. You have to make your audience think. A poster which is aesthetically pleasing and contains all the information, with an appropriate hierarchy, following all the rules of graphic design, will never engage its audience as much as a poster with well thought out underpinning ideas. This point is shown well in Fletchers calendars. For each month he has created a new image to represent it. For December he has a Santa Clause figure made from basic geometric shape, and November fireworks made from similar shapes. At first it is hard to make out what these images are of, but this was an intentional decision intended to make the audience think and work out what the month is. In my opinion this gets the message across a lot better than just having the word ‘December’ in a nice looking typeface.

Music Concrete

Sorry about the mistake at the end. Plectrums are hard to pick up on a flat table.

Elastic Bands

Teddy's bungee rope


C.D. keeper togetherer


Pencil grip



Secure bin bags


Makeshift wallet


Wire tidy


Bookmark


Childproof cabinets


Keeps containers closed

Hybrid

Juxtaposition in photographs is something we see a lot nowadays but man ray was one of the first to introduce this art form with his photograph called "gift";



and "Le violon d'Ingres",



Both of these images play with your perceptions.




Here is a modern example of juxtaposition. This image has been made to play with your perceptions and desires. The bottom half shows a row of quite nice houses. It seems like a very nice place to be. whereas the top half counters this with the the smoking towers which repel you and make this place a lot less desirable.

Chindogu

"Chindōgu is the Japanese art of inventing ingenious everyday gadgets that, on the face of it, seem like an ideal solution to a particular problem. However, chindōgu has a distinctive feature: anyone actually attempting to use one of these inventions would find that it causes so many new problems, or such significant social embarrassment, that effectively it has no utility whatsoever. Thus, chindōgu are sometimes described as "unuseless" – that is, they cannot be regarded as 'useless' in an absolute sense, since they do actually solve a problem; however, in practical terms, they cannot positively be called "useful.""

Music Posters pt.2

In the 70s the punk scene exploded and it became more about rebelling against conformity. Punk was also about the idea that anybody can do it. This is represented in the advertising posters, in the typography mainly. The posters have a really hand made feel about them.

Music poster typography

These posters for Jefferson airplane and Jimi Hendrix have really abstract and psychedelic typography. This shows how you can take an element from the subject matter and incorporate it into the type. In this case psychedelic drugs were a big influence on both of these artists music and the designers have used this in the typography.
While this does create a visually appealing poster (in my opinion) the abstract typefaces do hamper legibility.