Graphics and Illustrations as an Artwork - Essay Example

Graphics and Illustrations and Section # of Graphics and illustrations is a type of artwork that is one of the most famous works in today's world. With the immense growth of print and electronic media, advertising gets famous day by day. And advertising cannot be thought without graphics and illustrations. These graphics and illustrations attract customers to the particular product and plays an important role in marketing of the product. Different companies hire different graphic designers and ask them to create or develop something new and attractive for them. Below, two graphic designers are discussed and both of them belong to totally different times. The first graphic designer discussed is Robert Brownjohn. He was one of the famous graphic designers in 1950's and 1960's. He designed the title of James Bond movies and did a lot of other remarkable work. The second graphic designer discussed is David Carson. He is one of the most famous graphic designers of today's world. He worked with the famous brands of today's world. The brands he worked with include Pepsi Cola, Nike, Armani etc. The similarity between the both designers is that they both experimented with the typography and both of them are considered to be the first one in this regard. Graphics and Illustrations Graphic designer is a person who is expert in graphic designing and art. His job is to work in graphics professionally and give illustrations to his customers according to their need. They deal with the images, typography and videos. They put them together and create a piece of graphics or illustrations. Their job is to develop graphics and illustrations for advertising purpose mostly. Their work is published and printed in newspapers and magazines and also is displayed on the electronic media. People expect the work of graphic designer to be perfect and aesthetic. The aesthetic sense of the designer plays an important role in this process. People pay him for not only his skills but his aesthetic sense. With the rise of twentieth century, world saw the rise of graphic design as well. As the print media started to flourish, the advertising agency also formed with it. Advertising involves the use of graphics and illustrations to attract people and to look different. So it could be said that print media played and important role in developing the graphics and illustrations. The electronic media played very important role in development of graphics and illustrations. Televisions and cinema gave a bigger platform to the advancement of graphics and illustrations. And then comes the computer graphics and internet. It could be said that internet provided a bigger canvas to the designers. They can improve their work and can also share it with other designers. This helps them in improving and polishing their talents. Graphics designers can display their work all over the world through internet. And it is a great development for them. While taking a look at the history of the graphics and illustrations, it becomes clear that the start of graphics took place in 1820 with the industrial revolution. Though at that time, they were called the pattern makers. In US, it starts in 1920, when consumer society emerged. Different commercial artists, advertisers and illustrators came up with their ideas and started graphics and illustrations as their profession and sooner it became an important industry. Robert Brownjohn Robert Brownjohn was a famous graphic designer of his time. He was born in 1925 and died in 1970. Most of his work is in typography and graphics. He was an initiator of computer graphics in New York during 1950's and in London during 1960's. So his contribution to computer graphics cannot be ignored. His work includes the designing of the title of James Bond's movies. He developed the graphics of Robert Fraser Gallery. Another work that increased his fame was the artwork that he designed for Rolling Stone musical group. He got a great affection with music and it is obvious from his work. He showed this by transforming the blocks of disused wooden type and bricks. These bricks were being used by his daughter Eliza in her play box. They type on the block run from left to right. And he reversed the photographic images. It made it more legible. This is one of his famous art works and is still remembered by the world. This shows that he was sensitive enough to use and think about the everyday objects that we usually don't pay much attention to. He gave an idea of using these kinds of objects and things and save these resources to get wasted. He was famous for his lurid fashions and styles and this made him different from the other people. This uniqueness was obvious in his art work and designs. He was considered to be an important and essential figure of graphic design in New York as well as London. This popularity is still here even after his death. He died in 1970 due to heart attack. It was few days before his 45th birthday. He died in such a young age. Experimentation is a key word in his work. He experimented with the ideas that other people can never even think about. Bare Breast image on a poster and gold painted female on goldfinger title, clearly shows how experimental he was and how courageous and adventurous nature he got. A peace card designed by Robert Brownjohn, which shows how creative he was and he worked with white color and made it beautiful and popular. It is placed on the design museum London. This is a beautiful example of math typography. How beautiful he shows the typography of mathematics and made it popular. Typography was his famous field and he did a lot in this field. The above image gave a clear view of how he used the typographies along with the graphics and made them beautiful and famous. Another example of the famous typography of Robert Brownjohn. He tried to explain his point by using the typography and the best thing is that he combined it with the graphics, which gave a new trend to the graphic designers. 'in the last 15 years, in typography the real advance has been the use of type not as an adjunct to an illustration or photo, but in its use as the image itself.' (Robert Brownjohn, 1963) He believes that the words carry emotions and intelligence together and these both things are considered to be very important in advertising. 'for some reason (probably clear to a psychiatrist) four design projects in which I have recently been involved have all had a strong emphasis on sex in the form of the female anatomy.' (Robert Brownjohn, 1963) His sex related typography was used in few very big budget advertisements, the examples are the 'goldfinger' and 'from Russia with love'. Another one of his famous work is given below, which shows another of his sex and typography work. David Carson David Carson is a famous graphic designer nowadays. He is an American graphic designer. He is famous for his illustrations published in different magazines and like Robert Brownjohn, he is busy in doing experimental work with typography. He worked as an art director for a magazine 'Ray Gun'. Like Robert Brownjohn, he is known to be an influential graphic designer of the century. He was boron on eight of September, 1952 in Texas. After four years, his family moved to New York. And since then he consider himself a pure New York citizen. He is still living in New York, and also he own two studios, one is in New York and the other one is in South Carolina. He traveled all over America during his childhood and this is considered to be a vital reason that actually polishes his skills as the graphic designer. His aesthetic sense is said to be the best among all the graphic designers and it helps him a lot in this business. He studies Graphics course in San Diego St. university and started his career in 1982. His first job was a teacher in Terry Pines High School San Diego. By late eighties, he developed his own signature work and started emerging on the scene of graphic designers. He became the art director of the Transworld Skateboarding magazine. New York Times and Newsweek did features on David Carson and this helped him in boosting his popularity which was already increasing day by day. His admirers were increasing all over the world. In 1995, he founded his own studio, David Carson Design in New York City. He worked with the major brands and had shown the world that how talented he is. The brands he worked with include Pepsi Cola, Nike, Armani and Levi jeans. All of the mentioned names are the famous brands all over the world and just by their names it could be sensed that how famous the designer is. David Carson published his first book, named 'End of Print' in 1995. 200, 000 copies were sold for this book and they were sold in five different languages. It is considered to be the best seller graphic book in the world. His second book is '2nd Sight', it was published in 1997. This book is considered to be a milestone in the graphic world. The third book, named 'Fotografiks' was published in 1999, was considered to be a great success. This book won him the Award of Best Use of Photography in Graphic Design. His fourth book is 'Treck', which was published in 2000. He won number of awards in his career. These include Best Overall Design, Society of Publication Designers in New York., Cover of the Year, Society of Publication Designers in New York, Designer of the Year 1998, International Center of Photography, Master of Typography, Graphics magazine (NY) and The most famous graphic designer on the planet, April 2004 - London Creative Review magazine (London). The above illustration shows how simple and beautiful his work is. Just like Robert Brownjohn, David Carson is also interested in typography and he too worked with white and black. The beauty of black and white is unbeatable. The combination of graphics and typography is one of the most beautiful combinations that could be seen in the media and the advertising world. When both, graphics and typography combines, they create an image or illustration that speaks itself. Image or a picture speaks a thousand words and the typography shows the words with variety of styles and looks very pretty when comes as a piece of advertisement. David Carson got a cutting edge style which is admired all over the world. His illustrations got a beautiful contrast of colors and these colors are bold and different. It shows that he is experimenting with the colors and graphics. A designer cannot be a good designer unless and until he starts experimenting and let his imagination flow without any limit. The same thing can be seen in the illustrations of David Carson. If we compare the work of both of the designers, David Carson and Robert Brownjohn, it becomes clear that both of them works with typography, their work was considered to be the best in their times but the difference that we see is the use of modern technology in the work of both artists. Half a century back, Robert Brownjohn was not able to use the sophisticated software and high resolution graphics in his work. He did the work with his own efforts and with his own way. But still his work is considered to be one of the best in today's world as well. David Carson is a graphic designer of today's world, who got all the software package, high-fi computers and the cyber world. His work is marvelous in this regard. Robert Brownjohn studied graphics as his subject, on the other side; David Carson only did a short course of Graphics from the institute. So it is obvious that both of them did a magnificent job and are no doubt the best graphic designers that the world can ever have. Word Count: 2008 Bibliography Alex Seago, (1995) Burning the Box of Beautiful Things: The Development of a Postmodern, Oxfor University Press. 1. Chermayeff, Ivan and Geismar, Tom (2006), watching words move, Chronicle Books, 2. King, Emily (2005), Robert Brownjohn: Sex and Typography, Laurence King Publishing, 3. Interview with David Carson, Imagine, BBC Television, Broadcast 2007-11-06 R. Roger Remington (2003) American Modernism: Graphic Design, 1920 to 1960, Yale University Press Read More