Sructuralism

Lecture notes:

Philosophy movement across Europe from the late 1800s - 1960s

Focuses on a society as a system

Modernist period

Post-Structuralism

Ferdinand de Saussure
1857-1913

31 functions Russian folk tales story telling:

Narrative forms

Genres

Patterns

States the narrative structures of stories:

eg. Boy meets girl
Boy loses girl

Narrows this down to 31 functions

Josef Muller-Brockmann
1914-1996

Structure:

Worked heavily with grid System

"Working with the grid system means submitting to laws of universal validity"

Otto Neurath
1882-1945

"Words divide, images unite"

Isotype - Picotrial Language

Images/Isotypes have to be so simple that they can be put into lines like letters and words

This image shows an example of Otto Neuraths theory whereby information is gained through pictorial information

The diagram represents the number of workers compared to cars produced in North and South America and Europe and shows a far greater efficiency previous

Herbert Bayer
1900-1985

"Typography is not self-esteem with in predetermined aesthetics, but that it is conditioned by the message it visualises."

For example and "A" must look like an "A" otherwise it won't be an "A"

Below is an image of Herbert Bayer's typeface "Universal"

Vladimir Propp
1895-1970

Move from uncovering and investigating the system to looking at how the audience and users of the systems utilise, impact on and interact with these systems

Roland Barthes
1915-1980

Semiotics

Signs are complex, cultural chains of meaning

Visual and linguistic signs combine to direct meaning

"The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author"

Linguistics - The structure of language semiotics

Sign = Signifier and Signified

Jaques Derrida
1930-2004

Deconstruction techniques

Theory of deconstruction eg. We only know what light is because we know what dark is

Writing is priorities of speech eg. Verbal contract is not as strong and binding as a written contract

We prioritise the shape/form of the letters over the space around it but the letter would not be a letter without the space around it, therefore space is just as/more important than the letter itself

Post-Modernist Graphic
Designers

Ellen Lupton and
J.Abbot Miller

Form and Content

"The graphic designer could be seen as a language worker equipped to actively initiate projects"

Tomato

"We are all on a journey, all work is about experience and the mapping of that experience, and for us at tomato, it is where we go to compare these maps. In effect we bring a map from territory and overlaying one upon the other to see what happens." 1996