Graphic Design in the 1950s - Assignment Example

Graphic Design in the 1950s To follow warlhols passage from commercial artist to the world star is to chart an intriguing transition in the twenth century commercial art. The term printing refers to image consisting of pure black and white with no tonal gradation. For an image to be reproduced through letter press printing, it must meet or condition of line art. An ink drawing is camera ready the both is economically expedient and visually direct, closely resembles the original. A typical illustration of shoe by Andy, he demonstrate how a color image is produced from line art.

Base layer carries an ink drawing of a patterned shoe, and a second layer on a transparent overlay elaborates the pattern. Most of dramatic events in the history of graphics art were the invention of photography, whose impact was immediate. Before the introduction of the half tone process in the 18th century, wood engravers reproduced photographs by translating them by hand into patterns of black marks. The process of photographic was widely used in printing of line drawing; illustration could prepare drawing of arbitrary dimension, which could be then photographically reduced.

Some illustration continued to approximate the realism of photography and photographs remained the routine source material throughout the industry, many commercial artists worked to define the products of the hand against those of the camera, marketing drawing that were totally different. During the 1950s, drawing becomes an aesthetically and technically economical solution to the twin’s demands of reproduction and artistic singular. Illustration for advertising and editorial design enjoyed of influence and affluence during the period, cultivating artfulness not associated with photography.

Some products however required more interpretive fashion and merchandising were among those that preferred to use in illustration. In the case, medical products, drawing was considered more appropriate than photography for it offered a veiled rather than a literal depiction of illness. Andy produced illustration for several pharmaceutical companies during the fifties, including CIBA and up john, they were known for their progress size design. The fashion industry exploited the stylishness of illustration and its ability to bring drama to small objects such as shoes, which were difficult to photograph and benefited from being depicted by exaggerated, elongated lines.

On stylistic category emerged out of the forty to distinguish illustration from photography. Series of small commercial drawings, he depicted sewing machines as drawing tools each with a distinct signature, the most characteristic of which was his blotted line made by drawing in on an absorbent paper and then pressing the wet image onto a fresh sheet. The critic Rainer has compared Warhol’s lines to offset the printing, in this process sensitized areas of a plate accept ink and the linked image offsets onto a rubber surface and then onto the sheet.

In such ways, line drawing affords a schematic notation unrelated to the range and inclusiveness of continuous tone photography. Another signature line marketed by him was the handwriting of his mother Julia, which combined a genuinely naive awkwardness with the traditional association of cursive script. American Bauhaus inspired typography commonly juxtaposed refined round hand scripts with modern sans serif and slab serif faces, and the designer Herb Lublin created polished logos and headlines during the fitness which modernized calligraphy.

Work cited Eskilson, Stephen J. Graphic Design, a New History. London: Laurence King, 2007. Print.