Locally Global

 
The second exercise in this marathon of Design analysis has us examining a local (aka South African) design magazine. Wasn't sure what I was expecting when I started looking into this months issue of One Small Seed, to my eternal shame a magazine I have neglected to get into until this point. With the title Cult of Self and then going onto quote for the opening of the abstract, I immediately thought, 'Woah, for a self proclaimed Pop culture design magazine its quite existential, Pop went and got deep.' Maybe thats not fair, Pop culture design is very different from Pop music after all. An existential/sociological theme for a single issue of a design periodical and issue that focuses on interviewing designers however does give an interesting concept when put into context of design history.

The modernists periodicals of the 20th century generally focused on one branch of philosophy, you know coz Modernists generally only thought there was only right one. Then Post modernism crept in along with its nihilism and people began to question the status quo, traditional views of truth and explored the realms of subjectivity. Now a contemporary magazine that makes an ironic statement about our cultures fetish with subjective reality. So first we were objective, then subjective now objectifying our subjectivity ironically. Arent we a funny bunch.

Anyway back to one small seed. One small seed seems aimed squarely at designers, not just graphics but music, fashion and any kind of interesting form artistic creation. Its content and execution all deal with the design community and the philosophies and movements in it. For the most part the issue consisted of interviews, as expected from the concept of the issue most of the interviews centered around the how-what-where-and-why of motivations and beliefs of the designers/artists. The magazine doesnt seem to seek to define the industry but more to illustrate the possibility of personal expression, this being quite the opposite to other a lot of other Pop culture mags that seem to try set the mold with a sort of "your life is sh*t so try be more like these people" aka things like Heat magazine aka the bloody after birth of contemporary hedonism.

I was surprised how globalized the magazine was, I dont know, was kind of expecting a more SA design focused mag but I suppose globalization and Pop culture go hand in hand (and the worlds a lot bigger SA as a pool to draw content from) but OSS(one small seed) had enough SA content not to seem completely alien. Anyway, the layout, style and typography are what you'd expect from a high end design mag, each was considered in accordance to the concept of the content yet having enough visual solidarity to not seem erratic as a whole. The concept still tickles me. Irony is 'in' and concept is king Baby!

Brain on a treadmill

For the sake of time (and hopefully passing history) Im going to keep to the exercises for the blog project for the time being. So first on the agenda is ITS.

For those who arent familiar with the movement and believe my last sentence just had very bad grammer, ITS is the International Typographic Style, one of the last true Modernist movements. Back at the begining of the 20th century, Europe was quite fixed on the idea of the Perfect way of doing things, that there was some sort of adsolute truth that everyone should b trying to get to (Sounds good and noble and theory but taking all the humanity out of humanity tends to make people a little bit cruel, the Nazis for instance). So in Europe, decoration and prettiness was out, geometry and functionality were in, form following function and frankly f**k frivolous facades... and all that. Pretty much the opposite of the art Nouveau Movement of the previous century.

So ITS was born, a typographic style that focused on grids, clean/simple geometric layouts, plain bold colours, san-serif type faces that were aligned flush left and clear legibility. Heres an example:

Though Modernism had its draw backs in that it never actually found an absolute truth, it did have a few good, pioneering ideas. Some of which have permeated though to contemporary design, Eg:

And just for some context some very Not ITS contemporary design: