Thursday, 1 February 2018

OUGD501 - Jan Van Toorn Research and Ideas

Jan Van Toorn is one of the most significant and influential Dutch graphic designers to have emerged since the early 1960's. Van Toorn was a part of the 1972 debate between himself and Wim Crouwel, one of the most famous debates within graphic design history, which focused on three main areas: the social and professional role of the designer, the value of grids and typographic tradition, and the function of the graphic designer when designing for museums and art galleries. Van Toorn took the side of subjectivity, as he practices in his own design work, and supports the notion of the designer as an interventionist, in favour of criticism and intervention. In this he rejects the use of grids suggesting that this means "the country is inundated by waves of trademarks and house styles and everything looks the same", therefore do not serve any purpose in communication. Instead, Van Toorn wanted the public to measure the motives of both the client and the designer who mediates the client's message against their own experiences of the world. He hoped in this way to stimulate a more active and sceptical view of art, communication, media ownership and society.



Based on this research, ideas were brainstormed and quickly sketched out. These looked at potential ways in which information could be presented in my final outcome taking a subjective approach as Van Toorn does. Ideas include, purposefully mis-aligning printed images, stretched type which fills the page (use ideas on typesetting principles, such as the alignment of text), take a mixed media approach (use both handwritten/drawn and digital forms), use collage and experiment with the combination of text and image - how would these work together?

This brainstorming sheet was something which in itself was of particular interest, the way in which images have been drawn and written over, using quick sketches and approaches such as highlighting text/ adding notes. It was thought that this seemed quite subjective on its own, and therefore something in this format could also potentially work within my final outcome to communicate the arguments in my essay - combination of both type and image.


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