NON-FORMAT

Non-Format is a creative team who work on a range of projects including art direction, design and illustration for music industry, arts & culture, fashion and advertising clients. They also art directed the monthly music magazine The Wire between 2001 and 2005

Summary Of Research

Whilst looking into Neville Brodys work I came accross an image involving a lot of text typed very densely on a page. There was very small text and within it a larger word. I really liked the dark text and the sheer amount that was on the page and I liked the fact it was on a light background. I decided to try something similar using the words from the songs I had heard so put large volumes of words on the page and recreated the one word in a larger size. I did like this layout so decided to add images. After a few trials I decided to keep this layout in mind and I moved onto looking at Edward Gorey.
I found the books of Edward Gorey very fascinating. I debated whether I should write my own story in a similar theme but instead opted to just look at his visual style. The dark spooky shapes have influenced some of my pages quite heavily as has the work of film director Tim Burton.
The dark spooky trees that feature in the Burton films have surfaced in some of my work. I really like the spindly shapes of the plants.
I also came accross Non-Format, on the internet and I really did like their work. It seems a lot of the work is playing around with text. Swirly spindly shapes feature a lot in the designs and this was something I spent a great deal of time playing around with.

Futurist Typography

In 1909, Filippo Tomasso Marinetti's Futurist Manifeso demanded new artistic forms, in all media.
Painting, theatre, sculpture, music, architecture, cinema and literature were targetted by this manifesto and typography also played a major role. Marinetti's manifesto called for the destruction of outdated theories and assumptions about vision and language, demanding new ideas and forms.
As opposed to Cubism the major artistic movement at the time, Futurist typography found it's roots in poetry and language rather than Cubism's visual basis. The manifesto called for a breaking of the main rules of conventional writing. Marinetti himself is quoted as saying,
"banish punctuation, as well as adjectives, adverbs and conjunctions".
In 1914 the book Zang Tumb Tumb was published and is seen as a futurist masterpiece.
Futurism went on to influence such writers/illustrators as El Lissitzky.


http://colophon.com/gallery/futurism/

Us And Them by Paul Davis

Paul Davis' book is a collection of humerous caricatures from two different perspectives.
On one side you have the American's view of the British, where the American Illustrator shows his observations on the British way of life. Flip the book over and you have the opposite view, that of British observations of American society.
Davis shows the inanity of the human condition in his well observed cartoonlike pictures.

Us and Them by Paul Davis

The Comic Strips Of Posy Simmonds

Posy Simmonds draws with great detail and acuracy. In Gemma Bovery Simmonds has a blend of text, illustrations and comics. She has some of the story telling in the text and some in the illustration. Panels and balloon bubbles are used for speech and the page seems to be designed as a whole.
The drawings have a very smooth flowing feel to them and the gray scale makes it look like a newspaper comic strip.

Gemma Bovery by Posy Simmonds
Indy Magazine
Artists and Illustrators
http://www.randomhouse.com/pantheon/graphicnovels/gemma1.html

El Lissitzky's 2 Squares

2 Squares is a book that opens with "To all children". It is a large book that for the English version uses tracing paper over the underlying pages to allow the images to show through and keeping the Russian words still on the page as part of the design. The tracing paper has the English words laid over the Russian words and they are written in exactly the same style and angle.
Lissitzky does not use a lot of text on the page but the words he does have there are normally at an odd angle and on some pages the letters are even placed the wrong way round.
The two colours used are black and red and these colours along with the story about two squares crashing to earth is how Lissitzky communicates his ideas.
The slanted letters emphasise the idea that the words are part of a tv or radio announcement. The images are also quite angular yet still very simple. They have been drawn in such a way that they convey the action and drama, for example on the "cRash all scattered" page. The words hardly seem necessary yet all seem to be designed carefully to give the full effect.

El Lissitzky About 2 Squares
http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/el/pro.html

Neville Brody's Stupid Face

Neville Brody was the Art Director for "The Face" magazine, a UK fashion magazine he helped to revamp. It was through "The Face" magazine that Brody made his name in the world of Graphic Design.
He experimented widely and so pushed the boundaries of design to extend visual languages. In the August 1984 issue of "The Face" Brody expressed that one did not have to be inhibited by the page and he challenged why the page had to end just because the lines said so. He strived to show how the minimalist style could create great pieces of work and he used a colour theme that was continuous and a simple lettering form.
When Brody began at "The Face" magazine he did not really know about typography and it is said it was this that made him so successful as he would combine existing type faces. He seemed to revolutionise magazine design and "The Face" was seen as the "style bible" due to his input.
Brodie experimented with trying to guide others on how to work and did not simply present them with a solution.

www.bbc.co.uk
The Graphic Language of Neville Brody 2

The Books Of Edward Tufte

Edward Tufte's books get you thinking about the meaning of the words and images. He has written several books including "The Visual Dispay Of Quantitative Information" in which he discusses the use of overhead projectors, computers and videos to give presentations.
The book takes you through some of the best and a few worst graphics and charts ever printed and had over 200 illustrations of statistical graphics. Tufte gives advice for presenting information in a clear and easy to understand way. He shows how to design and edit displays and improve on the graphics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_tufte
https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/

Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan The Smartest Kid On Earth

Jimmy Corrigan The Smartest Kid On Earth is a graphic novel. It is visually stunning with simply drawn characters juxtaposed with highly detailed backgrounds, compared with other comics which use more character based drawings. In some other comics the charcaters are the more fantastical elements with their super powers whereas Jimmy Corrigan is a normal person.
The colours used are pale and tend to be blocks of colour rather than shading, this adds a dull element to the storyline about the everyday and patheticness of Jimmy Corrigan.
In places a traditional comic book layout is used with squares and panels showing each scene. However this is not always the case as full page pictures are also used.
The book uses these illustrations rather than text to tell its story.

Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware

David Carson's Raygun Magazine

The key visual attributes of David Carson's "Raygun Magazine" was the fact that it abandoned the usual conventions of magazine design. Headlines, columns and page numbers were not used as standard resulting in a more chaotic style than that of its contemporaries.
Carson questioned the role of type in modern design, and his abstract style was admired by others and often copied by the advertising industry. Carson played with the theory that type should go unnoticed and often experimented with multiple fonts.
The layouts featured fonts and images so distorted they were sometimes impossible to see.
Carson communicated his ideas by using devises such as light text against dark background, dark text against dark background, text running accross pages and horizonally printing accross all coloumns. Even photographs would sometimes be placed upside down on purpose. He seemed to like experimenting with alternative layouts.

http://joeclark.org/davidcarson.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Carson_%28graphic_designer%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Gun_%28magazine%29
http://www.benitabrewer.com/class/history/images12/raygun3.jpg

The Title Sequences Of Saul Bass

Saul Bass was the motion picture industry's pioneer as far as title sequences were concerned. He was probably best known for his collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock.
The title sequence for Hitchcock's "Psycho" showed how Bass' simple techniques could be used to maximise desired effect. The combination of Bernard Hermann's dramatic score and Bass's moving lines and simple block text give a frenetic almost psychotic feel setting the scene for the events to come.
The lines appear in time with the intense music bringing the words onto the screen and in turn pushing them off from all angles which is a very dramatic effect. This is complemented by the block text which distorts and fragments perfectly in synchronisation with the music.
Bass used the same techniques for the title sequence of "The Man With The Golden Arm" but this time the lines are used in a more laid back manner in sympathy of the films content but still paying attention to the rhythms and pace of the jazz soundtrack. He only uses what he needs rather than overwhelming the screen with unnecessary images.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Bass
YouTube.com (for the film clips)

The Books Of Edward Gorey

Edward Gorey has written and illustrated many books. Despite not having a fondness for children his books were very popular with the little ones.
An example of his work is the book "The Insect God" which is about a little girl named Millicent Frastley who goes missing. It is a very dark morbid book with no happy ending. At one point the parents ask "Is there any hope she is still alive?"
As with other Gorey illustrations the pictures are in black and white and are line drawings. They make the already depressing story seem all the more bleak and dismal. The illustrations are so vivid that even without the words the reader can gain a sense of what is happening in the story. The use of black in this makes the images and stories seem dark and sinister.
The Insect God displayed on the front cover is drawn with a skull as its face like the Death's Head Hawk-moth which has a clear skull shaped pattern on its head. He has his wings stretched out giving an air of superiority. It is a creepy image setting the tone for what is to come within the book.
The dark subject matter and illustrations is the same for Gorey's story "The Gashlycrumb Tinies". Here as in "The Insect God" the children perish in various strange macabre ways.
Gorey's work is highly experimental. He tested producing books that were pop up and wordless and even matchbox size. He also used pseudonyms that were usually anagrams of his name, for example Ogdren Weary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Gorey
The World Of Edward Gorey
The Insect God
The Possums Book Of Practical Cats

The Designers Republic

The Designers republic was founded in Sheffield by Ian Anderson. They are well known for designing CD covers for the likes of Aphex Twin, Pulp and Supergrass. The Designers Republic seem to have a close relationship with the music industry as they also have designed flyers for the club Gatecrasher and Warp Records. They were originally created to design flyers for the band Person to Person and have grown from there.
The Supergrass CD cover for "Life On Other Planets" is a little playful as there are lots of sections to the design. It uses symmetrical imges of the band members faces showing different emmotions. These are all in black and white and appear to all come from one source. There is one face at the top of the image that is not symmetrical. It is a stern looking image and seems to be looking down upon the rest of the images.
The only colour on the CD cover is a rainbow which sits above the stern face. The Designers Republic are interested in the effect their design has upon the audience. Perhaps by including a rainbow on the CD cover as the only bit of colour they are using a visual language not only to catch the eye of the consumer but also to show the two sides of life on this planet and presumably LIFE ON OTHER PLANETS too.
This CD cover is quite straightforward compared to others they have done. For example the Aphex Twin cover for "Windowlicker" seems more daring and bizzare and catches the eye in a far more effective way. The Supergrass CD does not seem as experimental as this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Designers_Republic
http://www.thedesignersrepublic.com/
www.fusedmagazine.com
www.littledetroit.net