How do we think about Modernism?
During this lecture we started to understand modernism and how the movement started and evolved. It was driven by technological change in the 18th and 19th century; it was part of the technological industrial revolution. Whereas film was in the 19th and 20th century (the new language) and internet was in the 21st century.
As part of this movement and style, as an artist/designer it would appear that the old style of designing based around natural form and materials had been rejected in order to make way for new design. The movement celebrated the use of technology over hand made items. Designers preferred geometrical forms in comparison to the decorative motifs and surface 'art'. There modernist principles spread through Europe to groups such as the Bauhaus, De Stijl, Constructivism and Futurism. Modernism was the era of the 'ism' movements such as surrealism, dadaism, cubism, expressionism, impressionism and more. Their work made use of a grid system to organise the layout of a page and keep its simplicity throughout; although they stayed away from being decorative, they used diagonal lines in pieces.
A motto that has stuck with me is from Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe who said 'less is more'; I think this phrase is a good summary of the modernism movement. This motto also relates to their belief that function should always be the made focus over form. They believed that design doesn't have personality, the main focus was the purpose of the design.
Looking at modernist pieces you can see that they only use a few colours in one piece; using a simple colour palette so that the colours didn't overpower the information being put across. They tended to mainly use sans-serif as it is a clean type that is legible. Another element of their practice was space awareness; space was a main element to their design.
Modernists: Armin Hofmann, Joost Schmidt, Josef Muller Brockmann, Jan Tschichold
Looking at modernist pieces you can see that they only use a few colours in one piece; using a simple colour palette so that the colours didn't overpower the information being put across. They tended to mainly use sans-serif as it is a clean type that is legible. Another element of their practice was space awareness; space was a main element to their design.
Modernists: Armin Hofmann, Joost Schmidt, Josef Muller Brockmann, Jan Tschichold
My Opinion
The modernism era is a personal favourite of my as I love how clean the designs look due to the consideration of space within their work. Also I think that the idea of using a grid system is useful in designing a book, magazine or a series of work etc as it allows you to have a consistent layout. As I have said earlier, 'less is more' is something that I think design should be like; if the design doesn't fulfil its purpose/function, it has failed in my opinion. Although I think that practice works well within design, I also feel that design should be expressive as well, as long as it doesn't distract from the message that is trying to come through. Overall I think that the modernism era was needed in order to push design and push the boundaries; from this period of time design has developed and progressed which wouldn't have happened if modernism hadn't have been formed.
