For my final piece, I was inspired by the Bauhaus movement of 1919 to 1933 that we studied in class as part of the history of design movements lecture. After some personal research, I began the creation of a graphic that would symbolise the gallery from a front forward perspective using geometric shapes, lines and a Bauhaus inspired colour scheme. I first began by downloading a few Bauhaus inspired fonts via the website dafont.com that I felt I could incorporate into the design by creating a motif with an accompanying text that promotes the history of the gallery. I then set about finding an appropriate colour scheme, I found a couple of images of Bauhaus exhibition posters which used a traditional colour scheme that consisted of dark tones in beige, red, yellow and blue to base my first design on. I decided on creating the graphics in illustrator in which I am most comfortable now after considerable practise in my own time and in class, I have even started a personal project outside of class to continue to practice my newfound knowledge of design which I will include as part of my online portfolio. Please note research images can be found at the bottom of this tab for reference when applicable.
Rejected Piece:
I set about creating my first design by opening a new document in the size of 210x210mm, importing the saved jpegs of the exhibition posters into illustrator and saving the colours as new swatches, in which I can later refer to during the creative process. With these new swatches, I was able to create the geometric shapes in the shades that worked best in contrast, to create the basic outline of the building; with the yellow as the backdrop against the beige background and the 8 columns highlighted as large white boxes with large black strokes. I wanted to highlight the details of the building that stood out most to me; which included the 8 large columns with the 2 red flags either side and the 3 intricately designed lampposts that stand outside. I then went about creating the motif that sits in the top left corner that promotes the history of the gallery itself on Trafalgar Square having been a national artistic landmark since 1824. I chose one of my Bauhaus inspired fonts and created the line and dots to offer a kind of alignment and allows the text to stand out against the background in a contrast of red and blue.
After this, I created the 3 lampposts that sit at the bottom of the page on a series of lines that stretch off the page on both sides that I processed was a design aspect of Bauhaus due to my assessment of the posters and decided to run with this principle across the design. I created black boxes with large white strokes to act as the base of the lampposts, that extend upwards at different heights which is true to the size of them in real life. I then created black triangles to act as the lamp itself and highlighted the light coming from inside as stars in 2 shades of red and yellow. Overall, I worked on my layering technique to feature the lines and shapes in a way that lends itself to the architecture of the building, with the 3 boxes behind the columns acting as the 3 entrances into the gallery as blue rectangles and the lines that represent the large steps leading up.
There are a few issues with my final piece I want to address in evaluation, that lead me to conducting further research into the Bauhaus design principles. First, I struggled to come up with a design for the dome that sits above the peak and therefore I feel the top half of the design lets itself down, as I purely created geometric shapes as white triangles and rectangles that does not lend itself well, are poorly spaced and uninspired, in retrospect I wanted to portray the dome in my design as it is an important feature, however I did not utilise the space I had appropriately to be able to fit this in. Upon near completion of my final piece and further self-analysis and critique, I decided that my design decisions in retrospect to incorporate dots, the colour white and how compact I had created the design, lead me to the movement of Russian Experimentism and not Bauhaus as I had intended and therefore, created a new design that I chose for my final piece to submit.
Final Piece:
I began conducting more research into the principles of design of Bauhaus and the difference between that movement and more Russian influenced design. I found the following couple of images that inspired me in the creation of my second final piece, which more accurately presents the movement faithfully and promotes the gallery itself more effectively. The first image is that of a face at a side angle using black geometric shapes and circles, I decided to incorporate this design of a face that I wanted to be looking at a famous piece of art from the gallery. I then found the second design, which is that of a Bauhaus museum promotional piece with an image of the museum in black and white, in contrast with over lined text and text that has be aligned vertically. I chose both designs as inspiration for a second try at a piece that represents Bauhaus more appropriately. My last piece of research leads me to find an image of Russian expressionism that I felt was very effective, appealing to the eye and thus, loved the contrast of colour and the arrangement of the circles, in retrospect I would have liked to have included more circles that changed size towards the middle piece of art, I think could have been more attractive, but was wary of overdoing it and overshadowing the central image of the national gallery that I wanted to promote.
In creating my second final piece, I included an image of the gallery I imported in as sized down, I changed the colour to black and white with a slight grain, true to the Bauhaus style. I then chose a colour scheme that would work well in contrast and went about creating the man’s face using red geometric shapes on top of the image of the gallery. I created 2 dark circles with no fill and large strokes to act as a border that would look towards a piece of art that only the gallery exhibited. For this, I looked through the gallery’s archive on their website and settled on the first portrait of a Venetian doge ‘duke’ of ‘Leonardo Loredan’ by Giovanni Bellini in 1501. I imported an official copy from their website into my design to act as the centrepiece. I then thought of a statement that would promote my place of interest and settled on the phase ‘there is one place to view art’ as bold and effective in highlighting the prestigious importance of the gallery. I created the text using a Bauhaus inspired font and spaced the 2 parts of the sentence in alignment, with one half straddling the background image and face with the other hanging from the image. To finish the design, I wanted to recreate my initial motif advertising the history of the gallery and settled on red text that can be read vertically, which sits left of the image, this reads ‘since 1824’, the date the gallery opened to the public with free admission.
In evaluation, I am proud of my second attempt and believe it is more effective in representing the gallery in the design style that I wanted to pursue. I incorporated a face that seems to be looking towards a painting that only the gallery exhibits, behind that of a portrait in classic b&w that promotes the place of interest to its target audience with an effective tagline to enforce this. I went with this design rather than that of my first attempt as I decided I wanted to tackle the design with a ‘less is more’ philosophy in mind, with a focus on minimalism, but maintaining its effectiveness in representing the place, rather than a design that is overcomplicated; less focused with surrealist elements in which could be harder for the audience to decipher what the subject is specifically and its purpose. By conducting further research, I began to understand the principles of Bauhaus more clearly and decided to attempt my final piece from a fresh perspective, this assignment has allowed me to try out different techniques, expand my understanding of design, at the same time practising my working knowledge and addressing the importance of layering, alignment, colour contrast and spacial awareness.
Research Images:
Jake Roberts - Portfolio 