Chrisse Macdonald // Paper artist //

http://www.chrissiemacdonald.co.uk/

Emigre

Emigré is a graphics company, founded by Rudy Vanderlans and Zuzana Licko.  They are possibly best known for their magazine publication (Emigre), in which they played around heavily with typography in order to show its true potential within design.  With the introduction of the Macintosh Emigré found great success if designing digital fonts instead of having to use more conventional methods to achieve their goals. As you can see form the examples, they were not just bound to one singular style of typography, and experimented wildly within their magazine.

Having taken a look at their website, and some of their poster designs, it seems that within this area at least they headed towards a more retro, 70’s feeling. They have very simplistic layout techniques, and colour pallette, often opting for this beige background. The typographic design within these pieces is very simple, but prominent.

Emigre really took advantage of the Mactintosh and designed around its low level bit map resolution. Although initial feedback on the magazine was skeptical, it has become a must read for any graphic designer today.
Rudy Vanderlans, creator and editor of the magazine would often feature guest publications from the likes of Jeffery Keedy and David Carson.
However, this company also owns the rights for over 300 more civil, traditional fonts, including "Mrs.Eaves","Vista" and "Matrix".

David Carson

Having know about David Carson for a good few years I decided to look at him for this research brief. He is an American graphic designer / typographer who is probably most famous for his experimental typographical magazine Ray Gun. This magazine was all about alternative American Rock & Roll.

Here is just one example of the cover of RayGun and how Carson works. He uses multi layered typography, of all differing fonts and plays around with their positioning on the page. Often the text will become illegible or very difficult to follow. This comes down to one famous quote from Carson which states "Don't mistake legibility for communication". This basically describes his views on design.

For example, this piece was an interview that Carson did with Bryan Ferry for the magazine, that he found so dull that he set the entire thing in Zapf Dingbats. You may have had to decode it to understand any of it but his message reads loud and clear.

This poster for example has around 8 different fonts, all of differing weights and point sizes present in a very abstract manner, with disregard to a grid. Although this piece is slightly different to the main body of his work, as he often combines the experimental type with background images, a lot of which were very hard to decipher what exactly they were. This style was known as the "grunge typography" of which he was at the forefront.

El Lissitzky

Lazar Markovich Lissitzky was a Russian artist, designer, typographer, photographer and architect. He was one of the
leading Russian avante garde designers, helping to develop Suprematism (An art movement based around geometric shapes and patterns). His work is mainly based around propaganda for the Soviet Union and is heavily laced with simple colour and geometric patterns.

The reason for choosing to look at El Lissitzky is because of the constructionist nature of his work. Although not actually 3D as Julien Valle's work is, it does hold a very constructed feel. The geometric shapes, and the energy put throughout his work really works against the typography he has chosen.  He generally chose to use a very Russian looking typeface (as most of his work was propaganda posters) and this sat next to the edgy, sharp movement of the triangles works very well.

The piece pictured above is quite different from his usual work, but just demonstrates his ability to play around with a more experimental typography. Again, a prominent use of geometric shapes, overlaying typography and even combining the two, look at the 4. I suppose it is the constructed element that i feel links Vallee and Lissitzky's work together. Whereas Vallee 'builds' his pieces, El Lissitzky's work just seems so well composed and layed out that it does feel like it has been built and constructed.

Julien Vallee

Although quite different in their techniques for reproducing their ideas, I can see links between Julien Vallee’s work and that of A&M and Kate Moross.  They both use very similar friendly, almost childish shapes and colours within their work.  Vallee tends to produce his wok in the 3D, mainly constructed from cardboard and coloured paper.

Looking at these images there is almost a randomness to the shapes used, some very fluid and others very angular. Again, these designs give me, personally, a very playful feeling whilst still providing me with the information needed to work out why or what they are for.

They almost have an explosive nature about them to me, like they have just erupted from some unbeknown place. They provide a very modern feeling, the geometric patterns helping with this, along with the experimental typography a companioning it. The simplistic shapes along with the very colourful nature only helps to strengthen the childish nature of the designs.

Personally I believe that Vallee’s ability to read the negative space is brilliant. Take for example the MTV one design, without that extra grey space surrounding the design, it would have much less impact and would be overcrowded. However, the addition of his figure at the edge of this piece manages to balance the image beautifully.

Kate Moross

Kate Moross is a designer and illustrator who is based in London. She is only 24 but has already worked with the likes of Cadburys on a nationwide billboard campaign, and had her own signature clothes line in Topshop. She is quoted on her website as saying " I have a fascination with three sided shapes, illegible typography, and freeform lettering". 
Looking at some examples of her work i would have to agree. As you can see it has a very fun, young and modern feel to it, stemming from the extremely vibrant colour scheme. This, to an extent, is very similar to the two previous deigners as i get a similar feel from the pieces Kate produces.

As you can see from the examples, she uses a lot of geometric shapes used mainly as a backing for some twisted, distroted, hand drawn typography. She generally uses flat plains of block colour.
She was named in NME's list of the 50 future innovators pushing music forward, and had collaborated with artist such as Simian Mobile Disco and Mystery Jets.
The way she plays with the typographic elements of her designs is very interesting. Often twisted or warped, she regularly uses a very thick black outline or border to maintain that childish feel.

Antoine et Manuel

Antoine & Manuel are a multi-talented graphic design duo. They have a very distinctive, individual style, not only within the graphic design field but also in furniture design, and everything between.

This example is a great representation of their work, very colourful and illustrative. Their style is very funky and unorthodox, and this is continued through the range of their work. To me, this work almost has a mischievous element that strikes me as slightly childish in a way.  In this piece they have set their brightly coloured lettering against tonal shapes giving them a very playful presence. 

With their style they are able to lift ‘classic’ design to new heights, looking at their re design of the Paris underground system. They managed to take the train line design into a whole new area. (http://www.antoineetmanuel.com/Div-pages/integrale.jpg)
They have an ability to switch between very abstract, funky pieces towards more typography driven pieces as shown. They use this very distinctive typography in many of their designs, often times matched up with simplistic shapes scattered in between and overlapping the letterforms.
They tend to work in a particular way, Antoine being the colourist and Manuel being the layout artist. Their pieces always involve a lot of vibrant colour, often symmetrical and offset by some very delicate detailing within the shapes. 
        Antoine & Manuel have an ability to make even a completely white object seem funky and interesting. They have designed a cabinate, known as Cabinet Tout Va Bien, that has all the detailing of one of their prints. This just shows the ability of this duo.

http://testroete.com/index.php?location=head

Ahh, the thought behind paper choice

http://illusion.scene360.com/design/12958/interactive-sound-posters/