The second half of this section caught my attention in terms of how text and shapes relate to graphic design. The author that resonated with me is Arnheim’s theories on visual perception. He claims that text is useful in design, but is really playing a role of assigning roles to the shapes and visuals within the design. In his sombrero hat mexican example, without the text explaining that the two circles were a depiction of a sombrero hat viewed from above, we would have had no contextual information to piece that together. Outside the design world, shapes are interpreted through the lens of culture. Our society has ascribed meaning to specific shapes and how those shapes are placed. When the triangle is put upside down, it can look unbalanced or unstable. When an upside down triangle is placed in a geometry book, that triangle can be understood through the means of mathematics.
In relation to the first half of the reading, I chose to display a list of company logos to look at the font’s and text they use and how people will instantly recognize a company by their font. Most companies use basic lettering, and shortened their names in their logos. McDonalds became a giant M, Burger King is BK, Baskin Robbins is BR. But once companies choose their font, it is difficult to change branding. Pepsi has struggled many times with rebranding and Coca Cola got in a lot of hot water when they tried to change their classic cans.
The Medium is the Message
I found most of this section to be interesting and it was also quite humorous. The fact that McLuhan and Fiore were on such a tight time frame and it became their most popular publication would probably anger me as well. But as an artist I don’t think it’s fair to judge it by how long it takes to create something. But as graphic designers that pay such close attention to detail I can see the frustration. I also took a lot away from the last paragraph in this section. Lupton addresses that the book was so popular not only for its interesting layout and structure, but simply by how it documented the style of the time, “...the late 1960’s have emerged as a period of re-evaluation and re-invention in American history, an era whose momentous wave of cultural change carried deign along with it” (Lupton 101). The fact that the book is still being talked about today in our class says a lot about what it stood for. It not only was revolutionary for its emerging design principles, but the contents were equally integral.
The image I chose was Richard Hamilton’s most famous piece, Just what is that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing? Even though it doesn’t have much text in it, I feel that it encompasses a lot of the same design aesthetics that are described in this chapter. Theres overlapping, repetition, pieces that don’t seem to fit with the context, color on top of black and white images, and a playfulness with perspective. It is regarded as one of the early pop art images and Lupton alludes to the idea that many of Fiore’s and McLuhan’s ideas stemmed from the pop art of the time.
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