OUGD602: Tate Modern Visit - April 2018

Kelley Walker

Walker's exhibition focused on one of the most influential advertising campaigns of the 20th Century, The Beetle. She dissects, manipulates and covertly plays with the information, utilising shape and modern technology. The information states that this was created using digital software and is an interesting way to pastiche and draw inspiration from something which already exists.

Joseph Beuys - Information & Action

Beuys is a notable graphic communicator, art theorist and pioneer of the fluxus movement, combining former abstraction with newer technologies and ways of ideation. It was inspiring to see the tactile ways in which Beuys practice took him, experimenting with multiple medias and typographic layout. Beuys created work by the means accessible to him at the time, often focusing on the vernacular with added implications and messages. His use of layering, wether it be type or image, and decisively sporadic layout fuses modernism and postmodernism and could potentially be mistaken as contemporary works influenced by the 60's through the timeless nature of the work.

Really interesting use of typography within old protest posters and phonebooks, using often only 1 colour for ease of printing and combining multiple typefaces. The use of the hand rendered font looks similar to the identities of many contemporary fashion brands, including Stussy and Huff. It was interesting to understand that really the origin of those typefaces descends from protest, with graffiti and hand rendered street type the first means of the people having a voice. In the 1960's 'tags' started creeping onto the streets, with positive messages (often to do with the CND campaign) broke out as an alternative form of communication than widespread media; it was later popularised by Hip Hop (graffiti in NYC Suburbs) and adapted into informal mainstream fonts, making a once sign of protest another cogs in the cycle of capitalism. 

Inspiring Wayfinding at The Tate in reference to my E.P brief 'Unentitled'. The use of pastels and large-scale letter forms  give a clear legibility and formality to the space, easing directions and planning within the building. The soft terminals of the Tate's typeface contrast the brutalist concrete surroundings, showcasing the many contradictions and possibilities of work within the museum.