March 8, 2011
Graphic design is the art of communication, stylizing, and problem-solving through the use of type, space, and image. Graphic design often refers to both the process (designing) by which the communication is created and the products (designs) which are generated.
Common uses of graphic design include identity (logos and branding), publications (magazines, newspapers and books), print advertisements, posters, billboards, website graphics and elements, signs and product packaging. For example, a product package might include a logo or other artwork, organized text and pure design elements such as images, shapes and color which unify the piece. Composition is one of the most important features of graphic design, especially when using pre-existing materials or diverse elements.
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March 8, 2011
Saul Bass (1920 – 1996) was an American graphic designer and filmmaker, best known for his design on animated motion picture title sequences. During his 40-year career he worked for some of Hollywood’s greatest filmmakers, including most notably Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Stanley Kubrick, and Martin Scorsese. His most famous title sequences are the animated paper cut-out of a heroin addict’s arm for Preminger’s ‘The Man with the Golden Arm,’ the text racing up and down what eventually becomes a high-angle shot of the UN building in Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘North by Northwest,’ and the disjointed text that races together and apart in ‘Psycho’ (1960).
Saul Bass designed the sixth AT&T Bell System logo. He also designed AT&T’s ‘globe’ logo after the breakup of the Bell System. Bass also designed Continental Airlines’ 1968 ‘jetstream’ logo which became the most recognized airline industry logo of the 1970s, and several other major corporate logos.
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March 8, 2011
Alex Ross (b. 1970) is an American comic book artist. He is praised for his realistic, human depictions of classic comic book characters. Since the 1990s he has done work for Marvel Comics and DC Comics (e.g. Marvels and Kingdom Come, respectively), as well as being involved in creating independent works featuring superheroes (e.g. Astro City and Project Superpowers).
Because his painting style is time-consuming, he primarily serves as a plotter and/or cover artist. Ross’ rendering style, his attention to detail, and the perceived tendency of his characters to be depicted staring off into the distance has been satirized in Mad magazine.
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March 8, 2011
Chip Kidd (b. 1964) is an American author and graphic designer, known for his innovative book covers. He is currently associate art director at Knopf, an imprint of Random House. He first joined the Knopf design team in 1986, as a junior assistant. Kidd also supervises graphic novels at Pantheon.
His output includes cover concepts for books by Bret Easton Ellis, Haruki Murakami, Dean Koontz, Cormac McCarthy, Frank Miller, Alex Ross, David Sedaris, John Updike and others. His design for Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park novel was carried over into marketing for the film adaptation. Oliver Sacks and other authors have contract clauses stating that Kidd design their books. Kidd is currently working with writer Lisa Birnbach on True Prep, a follow-up to her 1980 book The Official Preppy Handbook.
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March 8, 2011
Kwaito is a music genre that emerged in Johannesburg, South Africa, during the late 1990s. It is house music combined with local African sounds. Typically at a slower tempo, Kwaito often contains catchy melodic and percussive loop samples, deep bass lines, and vocals. Although bearing similarities to hip hop music, a distinctive feature of Kwaito is the manner in which the lyrics are often shouted, ‘blabbered,’ and chanted. American music producer, Diplo described Kwaito as ‘slowed-down garage music,’ popular among the black youth of South Africa.
The word kwaito riginates from the Afrikaans word kwaai, which traditionally means strict or angry, although in its more common and contemporary use, the word is a translation of the loose English term ‘cool.’ Despite the fact that the Afrikaans language is associated with the apartheid regime and racial oppression, Afrikaans words are often drawn into the indigenous vocabulary, typically reshaped and used in a related or new context.
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March 8, 2011
Oz was first published as a satirical humor magazine between 1963 and 1969 in Sydney, Australia and, in its second and better known incarnation, became a ‘psychedelic hippy’ magazine from 1967 to 1973 in London.
Strongly identified as part of the underground press, it was the subject of two celebrated obscenity trials, one in Australia in 1964 and the other in the UK in 1971. On both occasions the magazine’s editors were acquitted on appeal after initially being found guilty and sentenced to harsh jail terms. The central editor throughout the magazine’s life was Richard Neville.
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March 7, 2011
Hapshash and the Coloured Coat is the name of an influential British graphic design and avant-garde musical partnership between Michael English and Nigel Waymouth, producing psychedelic posters and two albums of underground music. The silkscreen printed posters they created, advertising underground ‘happenings,’ clubs and concerts in London, became so popular at the time that they helped launch the commercial sale of posters as art, initially in fashionable stores such as the Indica Bookshop and Carnaby Street boutiques.
Their posters remain highly sought after: a poster advertising Jimi Hendrix’s 1967 concert at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco, depicting the guitarist as a psychedelic Native American chief with a hunting bow in one hand and a peace pipe in the other, was valued in 2008 at $125,000. Their first album of psychedelic music, produced by a collective in early 1967 and including many famous names, is now seen as being influential on the early works of Amon Düül and other pioneers of German Krautrock, as well as inspiring sections of the Rolling Stones’ Their Satanic Majesties Request album.
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March 7, 2011
Alfons Mucha [moo-kah] (1860 – 1939) was a Czech Art Nouveau painter and decorative artist, best known for his distinct style and his images of women. He produced many paintings, illustrations, advertisements, and postcards. At the time of his death, Mucha’s style was considered outdated. Only recently has a Mucha museum appeared in Prague, run by his grandson, John Mucha.
Mucha’s work has continued to experience periodic revivals of interest for illustrators and artists. Interest in Mucha’s distinctive style experienced a strong revival in the 1960s (with a general interest in Art Nouveau) and is particularly evident in the psychedelic posters of ‘Hapshash and the Coloured Coat,’ the collective name for two British artists, Michael English and Nigel Waymouth.
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March 7, 2011
Twin Peaks is an American TV drama created by David Lynch and Mark Frost. The series follows the investigation of the brutal murder of a popular teenager and homecoming queen, Laura Palmer, by FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper. The pilot episode was broadcast in April 1990 on ABC, which led to another seven episodes being produced and a second season, which aired until June 1991.
As with much of Lynch’s other work (notably ‘Blue Velvet’), ‘Twin Peaks’ explores the gulf between the veneer of small-town respectability and the seedier layers of life lurking beneath it. Each character from the town leads a double life that is slowly uncovered as the series progresses.
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March 7, 2011
Arzell ‘Z. Z.’ Hill (1935 – 1984) was an American blues singer, in the soul blues tradition, known for his 1970s and 1980s recordings for Malaco. His 1982 album, Down Home, stayed on the Billboard soul album chart for nearly two years. The track ‘Down Home Blues’ has been called the best-known blues song of the 1980s. This track plus the songs ‘Taxi,’ ‘Someone Else Is Steppin’ In,’ and ‘Open House’ have become R&B/Southern soul standards
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March 7, 2011
ZZ Top is an American rock band, sometimes referred to as ‘That Little Ol’ Band from Texas.’ Their style, which is rooted in the blues, has come to incorporate elements of arena, Southern, and boogie rock. The band is from Houston, Texas, formed in 1969. Musician Billy Gibbons and drummer Dan Mitchell, originally in a band called the ‘Moving Sidewalks,’ got together with bassist Lanier Greig, forming ZZ Top. In 1969, Greig and Mitchell were replaced by Dusty Hill and Frank Beard from the band ‘American Blues.’
They were signed to London Records in 1970 and released several albums. After years of touring, the band went on a two-year break in 1977, which resulted in Gibbons and Hill growing chest-length beards. The band’s name was rumored to have derived from Zig-Zag and TOP rolling papers. Gibbons, however it actually refers to an apartment Gibbons lived in, with a row of flyers on a wall, including Z. Z. Hill and B.B. King posters. Coming to the conclusion that B.B. King was on the ‘top,’ Gibbons settled with the name ‘ZZ Top.’
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March 7, 2011
Gil Scott-Heron (b. 1949) is an American poet, musician, and author known primarily for his late 1970s and early 1980s work as a spoken word performer and his collaborative soul works with musician Brian Jackson, which featured a musical fusion of jazz, blues and soul music, as well as lyrical content concerning social and political issues of the time, delivered in both rapping and melismatic vocal styles by Scott-Heron.
The music of these albums, most notably ‘Pieces of a Man’ and ‘Winter in America’ in the early 1970s, influenced and helped engender later African-American music genres such as hip hop and neo soul. Scott-Heron’s recording work is often associated with black militant activism and has received much critical acclaim for one of his most well-known compositions ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.’
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