Sunday, September 27, 2009

Plakastil used today


Lucian Bernhard was a poster designer in Germany during and after WWI. He style used the ideas of addition equals subtraction and monumentalize the mundane. Is style was known as Plakastil (or Object Posters). This style is used a lot today in advertisements.I decided to show some ads from today that use this concept.
RG

http://www.carolinashoe.com/news-press/?cat=1

http://bestdesignoptions.com/?p=235

http://www.omega-fanatic.com/pages/advertisements-downloads/classic-print-advertisements.php

Saturday, September 26, 2009

Hair Dryers


In class this week one of the presentations was on hair styles around the 1920s. Well doing some research on what was

happening at that time I found out that the first handheld hair dryer was invented in the 20s. The very first hair dryer was invented in the 1800s. It was pretty much just a large fan that women sat in front of and eventually women were able to dry their hair at home by using a hose that hooked up to the exhaust of a vacuum cleaner. Finally in 1920 that handheld hair dryer came out. The first one was made out of nickel and zinc and weighed about a pound. I can't imagine using a hair dryer that weighed a pound to dry my


RG


hair.http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/hairdryer.html
http://hubpages.com/hub/The-History-of-the-Blow-Dryer
http://www.myhairstylingtools.com/blog/434/

Friday, September 25, 2009

Rise and Fall of Vaudeville

Live theatre was the one of the most popular forms of entertainment before, during and after World War I. Variety entertainment had been around for a long time, but after the industrial revolution, the growing middle class had more money and more leisure time allowing the entertainment industry to flourish. The 1920s, a time of overall prosperity and fun, were the hey day of Vaudeville.

Vaudeville theatre in the United States consisted of a single show which encompassed multiple separate acts. The acts could be anything: singers, musicians, comedians, acrobats and circus-type pieces, magicians, ventriloquists, etc. Shows lasted for hours, and going to the show became a main part of social life. There were approximately 1,000 venues throught the U.S. that hosted Vaudeville shows. The entertainers would travel circuits between these theatres, often performing the same acts hundreds of times. Vaudeville was the first form of entertainment to expose people to the diversity of the U.S. at the beginning of the century, both in terms of race and class. Many immigrants and families of immigrants found a place to belong on Vaudeville, performing dances, songs, and other traditions of their country. Vaudeville's main element was comedy, and it actually had roots in the live shows of bars, which were meant for men.


New York's Palace Theatre was the main Vaudeville theatre in the country, and it was the dream of any Vaudevillian to perform there. The French actress Sarah Bernhardt gained fame at the theatre, and after that, everyone thought they could make their career by being in a show at the Palace.
Vaudeville swiflty died out when film and radio came on the scene in the 1930s. The Great Depression also contributed to its downfall because people didn't have money to spend on entertainment. Many people who appeared on Vaudeville stages went on to have successful careers in movies and television in later decades. These include Will Rogers, Bob Hope, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton to name a few.

JH

Norman Rockwell (1894-1978)

As we learned in class, Norman Rockwell was an American Painter and Illustrator. In my opinion, Rockwell was an amazing artist. His paintings are so naturalistic and realistic. I say that beause his paintings look very life like, and they depicted what was going on during the time period.

He was successful early on in life. He was only 16 when he was commissioned to paint four Christmas cards. In 1916, he painted his first of many covers for The Saturday Evening Post. He painted a grand total of 321 covers for the Post. That's a lot of paintings!

Rockwell was very interested in what was going on in every day life. Quite often he took very common things and used them to create a meaningful message for the public. Sounds like something we have to do as graphic designers. He received the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 1977. I think he greatly impacted how the public viewed life. He made them aware of what was going on around them.

"Without thinking too much about it in specific terms, I was showing the America I knew and observed to others who might not have noticed." -Norman Rockwell


EV

http://www.nrm.org/
http://www.art.com
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/506383/Norman-Rockwell


Thursday, September 24, 2009

Band-aids




As I was searching for a topic to talk about, I ended up finding information on the invention of the band-aid in 1920. Earle Dickson was the American inventor of the band-aid and worked for Johnson & Johnson in New Jersey at the time as a cotton buyer. As the story goes, his wife would cut herself when doing housework. Earle noticed that when he used gauze and taped it to the cut, it wouldn’t stay on throughout the day. He ended up placing the gauze in the center of a piece of tape and covered it with crinoline (“a stiff fabric with a weft of horse-hair and a warp of cotton or linen thread) to keep it safe and sterile”. This would end up staying in place for a long period of time. Earle’s boss got wind of his invention and “decided to manufacture band-aids to the public and make Earle Dickson vice-president of Johnson and Johnson.” The company started making the band-aids by hand. Each band-aid took about 30 seconds. They were made in sections 2 1/2 inches wide and 18 inches long so that you would just cut off the size you needed because they were not made pre-cut until 1924. This is when they started machine making them.

I thought this was an interesting story of the band-aid which I hadn’t heard about until now. Its amazing that this product is still around today and is such sought after product. It really makes you think about how the small things we have around were first invented.






DH


http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/dickson.html

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

http://images.google.com/


Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Pain to My Ears


Probably the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard comes in the form of Dada sound poems. I knew that I listened to music that was considered less than impressive, but I cannot believe that this...noise ever had any audiences. 

Developed by Kurt Schwitters, he called them sound poems. These poems would be performed at Dada gatherings. These poems had no words, they were merely syllables and individual letters that formed meaningless sounds. This was supposed to be a metaphor for the destruction that war caused as well as how language can be used to deceive. I fully understand the metaphors, I just cannot understand how there weren't any other better ideas to achieve this. 

I think back in the day I would have a  hard time listening to the views or beliefs of anyone that dressed like this. This is a photograph of Hugo Ball performing one of his sound poems. Below I have put a link to Kurt's "Ursonate" for you to listen to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55Bi1VxtC4g


So all in all, I don't believe that Dadaist were insane, I understand the desire for a peaceful world, but there had to have been a better way. On a positive note, this is definitely a group of independent individuals who created something new that will probably remain all their own. 


http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2006/dada/techniques/sound.shtm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dada
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/BFda_HugoBallLG%20.jpg

LH

The 19th Amendment


It is hard to believe today that nearly 100 years ago women did not have the right to vote. The views of women generally were not considered. In the mid 19th century, women had had enough. They began lecturing, marching, writing, lobbing, and held silent vigils and hunger strikes all for the act of voting. 

In July of 1848 Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton gathered people for the first women's rights convention in Seneca Fal
ls, New York. Here they began the woman suffrage movement. Many attendees had a goal of universal suffrage and in 1870, this goal was partially realized with the 15th amendment which gave black men the right to vote. 



The following year, 1871, the Senate and the House of Representatives received a petition which asked that women now be given the right to vote and that they would be allowed to speak on the floor of Congress. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were among the suffragists that signed this petition. In 1869, Anthony and Stanton began the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA).


As of 1872, women still could not vote. Susan B. Anthony registered and voted anyway this year in Rochester, New York. As expected, she was arrested for "knowingly, wrongfully, and unlawfully voting for a representative to the Congress of the United States," convicted by the State of New York, and had to pay $100, which she refused to pay. On January 12, 1874, Susan petitioned that her fine be taken away because it was unjust. 


By 1917,  almost every major suffrage organization was behind this cause. In this year, New York adopted woman suffrage and President Woodrow Wilson changed his position and supported the amendment in 1918. It seemed like the the majority was coming to support women voting. However, this year also saw a petition from the Woman Voters Anti-Suffrage Party asking that women not be granted this right. 

The photograph to the left shows a suffragist with a banner comparing the President to Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany before he had changed his position. Acts like this were often met with hostility and sometimes violence. 


In 1919, The House of Representatives passed the 19th amendment by 304 votes to 90 votes. The Senate also passed it with a vote of 56 to 25. Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan ratified the amendment first. On August 18, 1920, Tennessee also ratified it (Apparently this came from the changing of a single vote by 24 year old Harry Burn because his mother insisted it). This made Tennessee the 36th ratification that was necessary for the final adoption of the amendment. 


Surprisingly, (or maybe not so surprisingly), some states did not endorse as quickly. For example, Maryland did not ratify the amendment until 1941, and did not give the ratification document to its State Department until the year 1958.


http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/woman-suffrage/

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


LH