Eye Magazine Post

I have to say I agree with LH, until this semester I did not think much about typography either. I actually thought it was boring, but I have found out that it is more fun than I anticipated it to be. The Eye Magazine article “The Meaning of Type” made me think about the logos I see around me everyday. I use to never pay any attention to the font they were made with or whether it is a serif or san serif font. Now I do. I decided to look up the use of Furtura in logos today. I found the HP Invent uses it and the it is even on the moon. The Apollo 11 plaque that was put on the moon was written in Futura. It is also used by Union Pacific and it was IKEA's old logo.

RG

http://pimpslapofknowledge.wordpress.com/

http://worksonpaper.ca/blog/?p=818

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/0f/Union_Pacific_Logo.svg/487px-Union_Pacific_Logo.svg.png

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Apollo11Plaque.jpg

http://new.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/forum/case/160531/

Toys from the 1960s

During the 1960s the psychedelic era was in full swing. Psychedelic posters were very popular during the 60s. I was curious about what else was popular during that time period. In 1963, the Easy Bake Oven was released. It was an extension of the 1950s image of the “homebody” woman who was portrayed so often on TV. Operation, Etch-a-sketch, and Twister were also introduced in the 60s. I didn’t realize how old these games were, but since they are still around that means they've been very successful.

GI Joe was released in 1964. This military doll formula was created to reach out to the imagination of young boys.

This doll was very successful because the Vietnam War was taking place during that era. This just goes to show that what is going on politically, socially, and economically effects what is designed and created during an era. The pale and less muscular doll is from the 60s, while the tan and very buff doll is the current GI Joe.

Husband of famed Barbie creator, Elliot Handler, invented Hot Wheels in 1968. Hot Wheels is still a hit today. LEGOS were invented in Denmark, and made it over to the U.S. by 1962. Ole Kirk Christiansen named his company LEGO from the letters in the Danish word “leggodt,” which means “play well.”

It's very interesting to see how much toys have changed and evolved over the years.

EV

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/461495/top_ten_toys_of_yesterday_1960s.html?cat=25

http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/toys.html

West Side Story

The first idea of this musical version of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet came from Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Laurents. They had planned to call it East Side Story and "center it around a star-crossed romance between a Jewish boy and an ItalianCatholic girl. But each of these men were so busy with other things that this musical was put on hold for six years. Once they returned to work on this project, they decided that this "idea had lost its social relevancy". They decided to do a story of a Polish boy and a Puerto Rican girl that had just arrived in America. They would "set it against the backdrop of clashing street gangs on the city's West side. The play was set in the mid-1950's in New York.

"The play reworked the traditional love story material and translated it, in a radical, novel and revolutionary style for a musical, to include racial strife between rival New York street gangs, juvenile delinquency and inner-city problems of the mid-twentieth century - in exhilarating musical and dane form." West Side Story opened on Broadway in 1957. The film version came out in 1961 and won 10 Academy Awards.

DH

www.imagi-nation.com

www.filmsite.org

The Meanings of Type: Eye Magazine

The article outlines the history of typography and focuses on how typography is influenced by what is going on in the world. It says that typography will always be intertwined with politics, society, and historival events. It serves whatever purpose people need it to, and therefore is in a constant state of change.

A large part of the article was devoted to the development of typography throughout the 20th century, and specifically during World War II. Blackletter was used by the Nazis, and then they abruptly banned it in 1941, saying that it actually had Jewish origins. This is a prime example of typography reflecting the world at large. The fact that the Third Reich could ban anything, let alone a typeface that had held such meaning for Germany, just because it might have been Jewish really shows the attitude at the time.

Another part of the article talks about the commercial purpose of typography in the early part of the century. The screamers were fonts that literally screamed. They were used in advertising and in newspapers to catch attention and inform. The slab serifs were similarly used, and were even brought back in other parts of the century.

The end of the article talks about the neutral typography that came out of the Swiss style. These include Helvetica, Univers and Meta, all of which are still used today. What's interesting is that these typefaces, especially Helvetica, were meant to be very orderly, apolitical and neutral, but they have come to cause so much tension among designers. Designers either gravitate to Helvetica or really hate it.

http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature.php?id=98&fid=485

JH

The Atomic Bomb

On August 9, 1945, the U.S. dropped a second atomic bomb on Japan, this time it was Nagasaki, which brought World War II to an end. The development of the atomic bomb started six years earlier when Nazi Germany started to purify uranium-235 in hopes of making an weapon. After the U.S. entered the war, the Manhattan Project was established under the leadership of Col. James Marshall to develop the weapon before Germany. In September 1942 General Leslie R. Groves was charged with constructing an industrial-size plant for manufacturing plutonium and uranium. Hanford, Washington was picked for the location, because it was far away from uranium production facility in Oak Ridge, TN that already existed. The Hanford sit encompassed an area of 586 square miles, which is equal to a third of Rhode Island. Hanford is the home of the B Reactor, which was the first large-scale plutonium production reactor in the world. Here the atomic bombs that would be dropped on Japan were constructed and perfected. Hanford has since been decommissioned as a nuclear weapon site, but what it once was still has a lasting

affects. The Hanford site is uninhabitable due to radiation. Today, Hanford is the leading employer of the small Eastern Washington towns around it.

RG

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Med/Med.html

http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/nwp/hanford.htm

http://inventors.about.com/od/astartinventions/a/atomic_bomb.htm

The Wizard of Oz

On August 15, 1939, one of the world's best loved films was released. “The Wizard of Oz” starring Judy Garland, was based on L. Frank Baum's 1900 children's novel “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz." At its release, “The wizard of Oz” was not considered a commercial success even though it did make a small profit. Its songs, thought, became widely popular. The song "Over the

Rainbow" was almost left out of the movie to help cut down time, in the end it was left in. It ended up receiving an Academy Award for Best Original Song and the film its self received several Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture. It is one of the most famous films ever made. Due to the fact that most of the movie was filmed in Technicolor Dorthy's shoes were changed to ruby slippers, because the silver slippers that Baum's had in his novel did not show up against the yellow brick road.

RG

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wizard_of_Oz_(1939_film)

http://saythefword.wordpress.com/2009/05/25/melbourne-ruby-slipper-collection/

http://www.costumzee.com/view/2009/03/

Response to Meanings of Type Article

Until this year, I hadn't really given much thought to typography. I usually just picked one I liked to go along with whatever project I was working on at the time. Lately, I'm beginning to learn that typefaces all have histories and they look a certain way for specific reasons. This is what Eye Magazine's article "The Meanings of Type" is about. It goes through typographic history and provides background on some of the most well known typefaces. 

In the past couple of months, I've learned a lot about Helvetica, so I decided to focus on that part of the article. If you would have asked me about Helvetica a few years ago I probably would be indifferent to the whole thing. Now, I have a deeper understanding of why it looks the way it does. Helvetica is purely neutral, and it is either loved or hated. Eye Magazine's article states that it was designed in 1957 by Max Meldinger to represent a Platonic ideal and a generic sterility; it embodied the Modern mission to democratize visual communication.  It is modest and reaches a diverse audience.  I never before realized how much it was and still is used. I discovered a blog which listed 40 logos that use Helvetica. Below are some pictures of those logos. Others on the list included: American Airlines, Staples, American Apparel, Nestle, Toyota, BMW, Sears, Microsoft, Panasonic, Scotch, 3M, Evian, Energizer, Harley-Davidson, and JCPenny.

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/03/40-excellent-logos-created-with-helvetica/

http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature.php?id=98&fid=485

LH