GRAPHIC DESIGN: Critical Study

Avant garde

The avant-gardes are the most genuine expression of the new in dustrial society of the twentieth century and of the crisis of rationalism and more exactly of the nineteenth-century philosophy of progress. It is due to this that since their very first manifestations some of the most significant ingredients of modern civilization. This is why the formed a new theory of art(a sort of anti-art)which,in the name of madernity.

Constructivism

Constructivists was an artistic and architectural movement in Russia from 1914 onward, and a term often used in modern art today, which dismissed "pure" art in favour of art used as an instrument for social purposes, namely, the construction of the socialist system. The term Construction Art was first used as a derisive term by Kazimir Malevich to describe the work of Alexander Rodchenko in 1917. Constructivism first appears as a positive term in Naum Gabo's Realistic Manifesto of 1920. The movement was an important influence on new graphic design techniques championed by El Lissitzky.

Paintings by Constructivism Kazimir Malevich (1878 - 1935)

El Lissitzky: Self Portrait

Alexander Rodchenko's graphic design

Futurism

The Futurists was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasized and glorified themes associated with contemporary concepts of the future, including speed, technology, youth and violence, and objects such as the car, the aeroplane and the industrial city. It was largely an Italian phenomenon, though there were parallel movements in Russia

Futurist book design and typography

Bauhaus

Art and architecture school in Germany that operated from 1919 to 1933 and briefly in the United States from 1937-1938 and for the approach to design that it developed and taught. The most natural meaning for its name (related to the German verb for "build") is Architecture House. Bauhaus style became one of the most influential currents in Modernist architecture. Nonetheless, the movement had opened up a language of abstraction which was to have a profound importance during the 20th century. One of the main objectives of the Bauhaus was to unify art, craft, and technology. The machine was considered a positive element, and therefore industrial and product design were important components.

Graphic Design and Typography of the Bauhaus school.

De Stijl

De Stijl , Dutch for " The Style " , also known as neoplasticism , was a Dutch artistic movement Founded in 1917 in Amsterdam . In a narrower sense , the term De Stijl is used to refer to a body of work from 1917 to 1931 Founded in the Netherlands . De Stijl is also the name of a journal that's was published by the Dutch painter , designer, writer , and critic Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931) that's served to propagate the group 's Theories . Next to van Doesburg , the group 's principal members were the Painters Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) , Vilmos Huszar (1884-1960) , and Bart van der Leck (1876-1958) , and the architects Gerrit Rietveld (1888-1964) , Robert van ' t Hoff (1887-1979) , and JJP Oud ( 1890-1963 ) . Proponents of De Stijl sought to express a new utopian ideal of spiritual harmony and order . They advocated pure abstraction and universality by a reduction to the essentials of form and color - Sonny simplified visual compositions to the vertical and horizontal directions , and used only primary colors along with black and white .

Posters and flyers by Paul Schuitema, 1920's

DADA

Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century. Many claim Dada began in Zurich, Switzerland in 1916, spreading to Berlin shortly thereafter but the height of New York Dada was the year before in 1915.To quote Dona Budd's The Language of Art Knowledge.
Dada was born out of negative reaction to the horrors of World War I. This international movement was begun by a group of artists and poets associated with the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich. Dada rejected reason and logic, prizing nonsense, irrationality, intuition and "anti-art". The origin of the name Dada is unclear; some believe that it is a nonsensical word.
The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature, poetry, art manifestoes, art theory, theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a rejection of the prevailing standards in art through anti-art cultural works. In addition to being anti-war, Dada was also anti-bourgeois and had political affinities with the radical left.