TAKEAWAY: The Bauhaus School was all about allowing for experimentation, inspiration that we can definitely apply to our industry today. PLUS: Pure Design’s download: to box or not to box a story, that is the question. AND: Some aggressive advertising to lure advertisers to print.
Still learning from the Bauhaus
Image shows the “African Chair” and some of Itten’s now iconic experiments with color
While spending time in Berlin often this summer, I have escaped to the Bauhaus Museum-—but also managed to attend a landmark exhibit at the Martin-Gropius-Bau—-, where the curators have rediscovered the original Bauhaus school’s 13 1/2-year history. This is the largest show of its kind ever mounted, with some 1000 objects on display.
As someone who has always admired the coolness of everything Bauhaus, the simplicity, the rebellion against anything that is gratuitously ornamented, I continue to learn everytime I visit a Bauhaus exhibit. However, in this show, the fascinating learning experience for me was to learn that the
Bauhaus existed to provide a clearing house for experimentation. And experiment its followers did.
In fact, the famous “African Chair” (1921—seen in the illustration above—-that we associate so closely with the Bauhaus, was created by a 19-year-old student ( Marcel Breuer in collaboration with the weaver Gunta Stölzl). Everyone was welcome to come in, offer ideas, and put them into practice at the Bauhaus School.
I could not help but think how handy and useful it would be to have a sort of Bauhaus School for the media today: a place where experimentation, especially by the young and smart, could be the goal. I wonder what treasures would emerge, and what solutions for an industry that is at a moment of confusion, at the crossroads of a major historical shift, with the print media trying to define its role to persevere, while the digital media develops faster than it can catch its breath and get into a retrospective of its role.
Especially, the industry needs the inspiration that Swiss artist Johannes Itten brought to the Bauhaus School. Itten is best remembered for his breakthrough approach to color analysis—-still used today. However, within the Bauhaus his contribution was the “multidisciplinary approach” to design in general.
To Itten, various disciplines shared synergies that needed to be explored. Coincidentally, that is exactly the same today.
Ironically, those of us in visual journalism have often sought inspiration from the works produced during the Bauhaus period. Today, we can be inspired not just from the works, but the obvious philosophy that was present among its most fervent practitioners: experiment, innovate, use a multidisciplinary approach to create the next new.
“Come advertise with us”
Full page ad from the Newspaper Association of America as it appeared in The New York Times this week
Go see the video, which shows many creative and effective ideas for advertisers
The New York Times carried a a full page ad in its sports section from the Newspaper Association of America.. It is all about singing the praises (and benefits) of advertising in the media, with numbers to prove that people still come to newspapers and websites for information, and advertisers should take notice.
For a video that is entertaining, informative and full of valuable statistical information (and creative ideas), go here:
http://newspapermedia.com/
To box or not to box
Large versus smaller ads
Something we have often wondered about: does the big ad on the page have the greatest impact in promoting the message? Now, online advertising research suggests that the biggest ads (skyboxes and banners) are less effective than smaller ads.
As online advertising evolved, we always liked the impact of what I call “silent ads”—-silent because they don’t promote a message, only project a brand name, to keep it in front of the users. Silent ads are strategically positioned in the middle of navigators, to the eyeballing effect is maximized. I have incorporated many silent ads into print, with success.
Also, ads with videos were found to be more successful with users.
Go here for more information:
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=111971
Ed Rondthaler and English spelling reform
Our intern Reed Reibstein (Yale University ‘11) shares this interesting link with us. The typographer Ed Rondthaler passed away, and he left this wonderful video in which he advocates English spelling reform:. It’s really a treat.
Go here for video:
http://www.houseind.com/movie/
“Incidentally, ” Reed tells us, “Rondthaler founded Photo Lettering Inc. PLINC, as it was affectionately known, is being revived by House Industries as an on-demand custom logo site.”
You can see samples of what it will be able to do here:
http://www.photolettering.com/.
The Impact of the Compact
Pure Design: Download entire section: Type
Download entire first section of Pure Design: Words
Now that I have fully presented the first of six sections of Pure Design on TheMarioBlog, I am offering the entire initial section, “Words,” available for download—all 33 pages of it. This may be useful for those of you saving or printing out Pure Design and will be done following each of the remaining sections. At the end of our journey through words, type, layout, color, pictures, and process, I will publish the entirety of Pure Design in one file.
Who is Jacky?
Jacky belongs to Frank Deville. The Luxembourg-based pooch is an “avid reader” of the German newspaper, Bild Am Sonntag. Every Sunday Jacky picks stories and interesting graphics in Bild Am Sonntag , the German newspaper.
WAN’s World Trends 2009 Report
The 2009 edition of World Press Trends from WAN/IFRA is now available. I always like to review this report for its complete information on global circulation, advertising and online trends in our industry. All countries in the world where daily newspapers are published are covered in the publication.
This year the WAN/IFRA folks have decided to publish a print version but only make the book available on pdf.
Those interested go:
http://www.wan-press.org/forms/wpt2009.html
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Follow the Marios
Two Marios. Two Views.
Follow Mario Jr. and his blog about media analysis, web design and assorted topics related to the current state of our industry.
http://garciainteractive.com/
Visit Mario Sr. daily here, or through TweetsByDesign (www.twitter.com/tweetsbydesign)
In Spanish daily: The Rodrigo Fino blog
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To read TheRodrigoFino blog, in Spanish, go:
https://garciamedia.com/latinamerica/blog/
TheMarioBlog posting #343