Field Journal

It is always good to learn from different design in the entire world. Nowadays, due to the information flow, we are able to look at whatever we want to look easily. However, people in the past barely had chance to look at foreign painting. Yet, if we look at history carefully, we would always find something we don’t expect. There are some influences between two strange countries.

At the beginning of the chapter of this week, I saw the Japanese Ukiyo-e. Ukiyo-e is such a wonderful art which is from Japan. Ukiyo-e means the picture of the floating world. Most of them present the daily lives of ordinary people. They were popular within the society of Japan, as they are affordable. Let’s see how far the influence of Ukiyo-e has gone!

From the masterpiece of Vincent van Gogh, which is "Portrait of Père Tanguy," audiences could all see the Ukiyo-e as wallpaper.

Can you believe that? The two upper pictures were truly drawn by van Gogh. He even copied a few Ukiyo-e within his lifetime. Yes, Vincent van Gogh loved Ukiyo-e. Vincent found the Ukiyo-e really inspiring. Japanese Ukiyo-e influenced him a lot. Some people would say that the some of the unique characters of his art were from the Ukiyo-e.

Some people claim that “The Starry Night” of van Gogh is inspired by the “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” of Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai. “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” is the first Ukiyo-e in the series 36 Views of Mount Fuji. The unique points are pretty similar, but who really knows?

The most interesting part of reading history is that readers could always find the relationship between histories of different country. The artists of those countries don’t even know each other, then how? How could one affect other one?

Image

1.Vincent van Gogh, Portrait of Père Tanguy, 1887, Musée Robin

2.Vincent van Gogh, The Blooming Plumtree (after Hiroshige), 1887, Van Gogh Museum

3.Vincent van Gogh, Courtesan (after Eisen), 1887, Van Gogh Museum

4.Katsushika Hokusai, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, 1829-32

5.Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night, June 1889, The Museum of Modern Art

Field Journal

Within this week, we know how the designs grow. The factor is nothing but the sky-high demand of design. I was told about the Industrial Revolution while reading Chapter 9 by the textbook. This is the time when cameras were born. The urban was filled by different kinds of products. Information flowed by a huge amount of magazines and books. The city was growing so fast following the inventions.

Products needed to be sold, isn’t it? The businessmen tried so try to cover their own product by eye-catching design. Businessmen hate recycling old ones. Thus, they could raise the desire of audiences. Sell, sell, and sell. Also, the audiences were spoiled. They wanted everything new and sharp. Seeing something new was already the norm of society.

The growing of urban supported the growing of design fully. Yes, design is exactly the thing that could meet sky-high demand of that time. Designers got much more resources than before, as the bosses were willing to spend more to earn good design, putting into advertisements. That’s why so many typography came to world, and so many technologies were born. Supply follows demand.

It brings us to another point. What’s the difference between ‘designer’ and ‘artist’? I am now learning design history, but not art history.

Surely, design is all about meeting the requirements. Beyond see whether this is beautiful, designers always spend more time to think about whether this could raise the desire of audiences. Or, whether this could be accepted by the one who pay them to design. In other word, artists present what they want, and designers put forward what people want. Some people might say that designer is a type of artist, yes, we could say so. Designers and Artists both work on pretty things, but there is something more in design.

Again, I am now learning design history, but not art history. Moreover, this is the bitters of designers. Designers could never be self-willed. All designers do is fulfilling the need of people, including the audiences or bosses. The artists could always have full freedom, doing whatever they want to do. However, designers give up or modify their work again and again, in order to make all the people happy.

Works Cited

Meggs, Philip B., Purvis, Alston W., Meggs History of Graphic Design: Fifth Edition. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2012. Print.

Field Journal

During the renaissance, people could write down every single letter in form of calligraphy. When we look at calligraphy, we realize that people used to add some more lines in order to produce beautiful out looking beyond the writing.

From the history, we could know that the books were becoming common during the renaissance. However, books were still luxury goods. Fitting in with the image of luxury goods, people dropped down the beautiful calligraphy instead of just writing. Nowadays, we could get any information we want from so many sources, such as websites and books. Books are most likely being the sources of information, rather than the things pleasing to the eye. Most of the books nowadays are filled of typed letters.

We would argue that the beautiful calligraphy is useless now. People nowadays would only simply write down or type down an A if they want to write down an A. No matter how beautiful the calligraphy is, it would never be in common use. Isn’t it?

Sorry, I have to say that the calligraphy is now in common use. We all use it and read it all the time. In fact, here it is.

When I was young, I felt so happy when I wrote down the Treble clef on the staff. It is the first calligraphy I ever met. It seems to be the modified version of G. I thought that Treble clef is really beautiful. After a long period of time, I finally know that is really a Latin letter G. The Bass clef is also the Latin letter F. It means that the calligraphy is turned into common use. There is no one who writes down a straight F on staff. We all use the calligraphy, rather than the formal one.

People in the past used to make the letters more beautiful, including musicians surely. They did not want just writing down the letter G or F. They tried to make the letter G and F more beautiful on the staff. The most funny thing is, people nowadays still use it, rather than just writing down the G and F.

Some time, people claim that the greatest designs are EVERLASTING. Seeing the Treble clef and Bass clef, I believe that they are right.

Works Cited

Meggs, Philip B., Purvis, Alston W., Meggs History of Graphic Design: Fifth Edition. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2012. Print.

Field Journal

The history of design always starts from the old world, which are the earliest civilization in the world. Reading the book, we would know that the earliest graphic designs are a lot of pieces of writing or drawing inscribed on the stones. In the very beginning, people drew down what the have seen. The inscriptions then became the words and languages. I watched different kind of words of different earliest countries. They are so beautiful and amazing. People used the simplest lines to show others the things or even emotions we meant.

We have to connect the past with the current, right? Let’s compare both the past and the current.

Civilizations, including graphic designs, are evolving from the so-called “Cradle of Civilization”. As we know, the four earliest civilizations in the world are Egypt, Mesopotamia (Babylon), India and China. Within all of the “Cradles”, China is the only one that citizens there are still using the old graphic characters, including read, write and speak.

Yes, those are the words of Egypt. However, we all know that only anthropologists know what those graphic characters are meaning. Even the Egyptians nowadays don’t know what those graphic words mean currently. The case is the same of Babylon, only a handful of people are able to read or even speak the words of Egypt or Babylon in the whole world. Because no one uses those words for communication currently, the earliest graphic designs are not passing from generation to generation.

The words you see here is Hindi of Indian. The official language of the India is “Hindi”, but Hindi is not common in India at all. There are only about 40% of people speak in Hindi. English is the secondary official language in India. Sometime, when we appreciate a type of beautiful graphic characters, saying how beautiful it is, we would also say that the language is already dead. A language would not be officially dead, but we call it “dead” while no body in the world is using it.

Here come the Chinese characters. Hey! Can you believe that? We are still using those characters. Chinese are the only “Cradle of Civilization” who is able to read, write and speak the graphic characters in the whole world currently. Even a Chinese kid could read the above graphic characters. Being a Chinese boy, I was really excited while seeing our own characters shown in the foreign. This is my responsibility to pass these wonderful characters to my next generation.

Fine, I am proud of being Chinese. What else could I say?

Work Cited

Megg, Philip B., Purvis, Alston W., Meggs History of Graphic Design: Fifth Edition. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2012. Print.