Art nouveau and the influence of Japanese Ukiyo-e prints

     The topic about Art nouveau, an international decorative style, thrived during the two decades from 1890 to 1910 was really interesting for me.
     As you've already learnt from the previous chapters in Meggs' History of Graphic design, Europe has developed their own art style and manufactures in their early times. However as the time goes by, the international trading across continents and countries became more active and that influenced artists and their works each other. Also people became more interested in amusement and art, and needless to say, the demands of such as printing, advertisement, art books, graphics, and posters has increased from  mid 19th century. Moreover influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement leaded by William Morris, artists became more concentrated on not only surface appearance of the manufactures but also its materials, the making process, and value. Thus, I think each art works in this era classified such as art nouveau, modernism, and impressionism are sophisticated in many ways. One of the possible reason is the influence of Japanese Ukiyo-e.
     According to the Meggs' History of Graphic Design, it states that "Ukiyo-e means "pictures of the floating world" and defines an art movement of Japan's Tokugawa period (1603-1867)" (196.)

Since Japan was under the national seclusion, there were no influence from the outside countries except for approved Holland and China, thus they have developed their original and traditional art style. Ukiyo-e are made by the woodblock print and most of them are published with the style of emaki, which is the traditional picture scrolls, thus it has a realistic narrative tones. Hishikawa Moronobu, Katsushika Hokusai, and Ando Hiroshige are the famous Japanese Ukiyo-e artists still acknowledged up to today. Their use of colors, lines, texture and density in Ukiyo-e prints are highly evaluated by European artists such as Pierre Bonnard, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Paul Gauguin and brought in their art works. It was Felix Bracquemond (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A9lix_Bracquemond), a French impressionist painter and etcher, who discovered the Hokusai's Ukiyo-e prints in Paris around 1856 and familiarized its traditional techniques. 

     Although it's good to have their own traditional art techniques and charm points, the influence from the other countries tradition give a birth to a new style of arts and I think this influence is really positive perspective for both of them. Today I really appreciate that we have such a great opportunity to be able to encounter the mixture of traditional arts. 

Industrial Revolution VS Arts and Crafts Movement

It is obvious that Industrial Revolution has a lot to do with the development of Graphic Design, began with the invention of the steam-powered letter press printing machine, and importantly the invention of photography which made it possible to print photographic images.

I was really excited while reading Chapter 9, because it seems like everything is getting close to the standard of our urban life which are all familiar to us, for example, the invention of camera, magazine, product advertisement, and letterforms which we uses for our daily digital demand. Industrial Revolution made "labors" work much easier, less time consuming, enable to produce a lot of products in short time, and therefore their work got steady. I thought those development are all towards positive direction for the first time. Here, I emphasized the word "labor" not the "artist."

On the other hand, there were also a reversed movement which is called Arts and Crafts Movement leaded by William Morris and John Ruskin. Their belief as artists is to make one and the only things, which is handicrafts.  Artists who didn't appreciate the benefit of Industrial Revolution were followed Morris' idea towards what is it to be as an artist. It is also obvious that after the Industrial Revolution, a lot of artists lost their job and their hard work didn't meet the demand anymore. But I was really impressed by their passionate art works and letterforms made by their own hands. Ironically part of their hard work was absorbed into digital and mechanical design however.

I think it can't be defined whether mechanically made products are better or hand made products are. But sadly, even today I feel like designs, products, or advertisement made by machine meets more demands than those made by artificially human hands. I think we need to look closely how beautiful and sensitive handicrafts are and we should not forget that all of the privileges are originally made by human hands. Graphic Designers have to think about merits of both handicrafts and digital designs.

Innovation and Decay

This week, I've learned how printing techniques and, accordingly, Typography has developed through 15th to 17th Century. There are a lot of people related to the innovation of new calligraphy, printing technology, illustration and typography during that era, which surprised me.

As you all see that according to the Meggs' History of Graphic Design Chapter 5, since the appearance of movable type machine which was invented by Johann Gutenberg, the demands of books had shifted from manuscript books to mechanically-produced books, because it took a lot of times and effort to make even one manuscript books.
However, what I though good about this era is that there are a great amount of beautiful books or bibles which are made of the collaboration of typography by machine and human-hand-drawn illustration or manuscript such as Copperplate engraving, woodcuts printing, and other techniques.
I think people in that era were really concerned for beauty and art. They were concerning about how to use the empty space of typographic page effectively, how to get people's attention, and how to make it looks interesting or beautiful.  I think this is what we call "Design" further than "Art." So I think that is one of the reason why there was the Graphic Design evolution in Renaissance.

Mostly in our current time, when the new technology has invented and became main stream, the demands for old fashioned things are decreased and decay. For example, how many people still write letters instead of texting to someone? I think sometimes it's good to be back on good old style, and I'm sure it will improve your sense of art or creativity. It can be writing letters, drawing without using pen-tablet (I guess it's not yet familiarized that much) or taking photographs using film camera, moreover it'll be more unique and creative if you can collaborate old and new technology like they've used to do.

Field Journal #2

In this week, I've read Meggs' History of Graphic Design Chapter 1 to 4. It took me a while to go through every pages, however it was exciting because I felt like I was studying a world history. Then I realized that world history and the history of graphic design, art, and our writing styles are strongly related each other. 

The book begins with the Innovation of writing, which was found over 200,000 years ago in Africa. 

Yet there was no way to represent oral words, they were painting pictures or figures on the wall of cave or rocks for visual communications, rituals and recording stuffs. 

I can't even think about the time there was no writing language but to draw pictures to communicate with people. 

As time goes by, there is a need to keep records for religious need and dominating or governing their own countries or colonies. So the writing style changed its form little by little, such as Cuneiform, Sumerian writing, and finally Hieroglyphics of Egypt.

The story of Rosetta Stone is well know by many people, which is that Napoleon send expeditors to Egypt and they found a stone with 2 languages and 3 scripts, then in 1822 they finally succeeded to read the sentences.

Not only the writing system but also the things to be written are innovated at that time.

There was a tablet, made out of mud, and in Egypt they made paper-like substrate for manuscript called papyrus. 

Then, there came a time of invention of Alphabet. It took some centuries for the original alphabet to became the one we are using now. But finally after Roman conquered Greek in 2nd Century CE and they replaced Greek alphabet to Latin alphabet which is the most similar style of the modern English. 

Chinese calligraphy is totally different from Alphabet system, because it is visual language and there are more than 40 thousand characters. Here is a my favorite quote from the book; Chinese calligraphy was said to have bones(authority and size), meat(proportion of the characters), blood(the texture of the fluid ink), and muscle(sprit and vital force) (Meggs' History of Graphic Design p.37.) As a Japanese, whose language is similar to Chinese ones, I can really understand what this quote honestly means. 

Printing technique was first invented in China, which really surprised me. But I think it was only possible because they have also succeeded to make papers out of pulps.

The evolution of writing system and calligraphies made people possible to publish illuminated manuscripts which is really important for their religious briefs. I can't believe that people around that era could make such a perfect hand-writing manuscripts by taking much time and effort. It can be evaluated as a whole art.

In our society, written language is really important for our daily life, but it was the same in the very beginning of human beings dawn for almost the same purpose. But it is really interesting to know how our writing style has developed due to the environment and needs for each time of history. 

Field Journal #1

For a long time, I'd been thinking that Graphic Design is pretty much about "art." However, as I turning over the page of "Meggs' History of Graphic Design," I started to think that my definition of Graphic Design was wrong. Probably it was not just wrong, but I thought that it cannot be said or explained by one word; art. It is obvious by looking at each pictures on the pages.

This book begins with the invention of writing. At this moment, I stopped and started thinking that "wait, is this also a kind of Graphic Design?" But as I think deeply, I became to think that whatever the form is, if that things are to communicate to people or have meanings it is a kind of art.

It is really interesting for me to see the developing of "typography" as time goes on. Obviously it is because of the invention of tools and machines but also because of each publishers met needs which is to outshine what they really want people to know within the environment where there is a lot of information, and
also to give audience a strong impact in order to prevail expansive competition.

As the time goes on, I noticed that Graphic Design became the combination of original typography and drawing, painting, and photography. In this way, Graphic Design can have more strong impression and uniqueness. However, I was really surprised and also wondered that each designs never be the same. Which made me thought that imagination can be infinity and beyond.

Since I was grown up in the digital and information age, I came across a lot of Graphic Designs around me without truly knowing it. However I'm sure this book will lead me to the further understanding of Graphic Design, let me notice the importance of Graphic Design, and help me cultivate a sense of uniqueness and creativity.