The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris in 1948. It states the fundamental human rights for all people and nations.
The Human Right I have chosen for this project is Article 3 - Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
I began this project by researching various graphic designers and styles of graphic design to see how they utilised typography.
I have already looked at Brockmanns work in both weeks 2 and 3 however I wanted to revisit his work to look at his use of typography. Brockmann’s work featured grid systems which clearly and cleanly organised his type, which was accompanied by strong colours and shapes to create stunning yet simple works, which is assisted by his use of negative space which really puts the emphasis on the type. His work commonly utilised the fibonacci sequence which he deployed to scale shapes and text to give his works balance even though his work is often asymmetrical. I really like Brockmann’s work and think his approach of only using type and simple shapes could work well at representing the human rights.
Wim Crouwell was a Dutch graphic designer and typographer best known for his typefaces such as New Alphabet and Gridnik. Similar to Brockmann’s work, Crouwell’s work features strict grid systems however they are used in a different way. Crouwell uses a grid to build type from, as is evident in his posters for the Hiroshima and Edgar Fernhout exhibitions, where each character is formed on a grid, giving the letterforms a solid, structured style. His work uses lots of negative space, giving a real emphasis of the grid structured text which takes up the most room. I find it interesting how Crouwel’s work has such a contrast between the sizes of type, with the main title being massive compared to the supporting text, it really makes it feel like the title text is more of a shape rather than type due to how geometric it is.
Theo van Doesburg was Dutch artist who was part of the “De Stijl” movement. The “De Stijl” movement focus on abstract works where complexity was stripped back and instead focussed on simple lines, shapes and colours. While Doesburg’s work is incredibly interesting, for this project I am more interested in his work for De Stijl magazine. The covers feature text wrapped around a large area of negative space, with the type forming the structure of the page by utilising the gestalt principles of closure and proximity. I really like it as it lets the type and information be the main focus of the cover, while still being faithful to the ideas of the movement. I also really like the use of colour, only using one other colour aside from black and white lets certain parts of the type be highlighted and doesn’t overpower the piece as the colour is used sparingly. I could definitely see an approach like this being effective in this project.
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy was a Norwegian painter who prominent member of Bauhaus. Moholy-Nagy produced many interesting typographical works which I think could work very well as inspiration for this project. I really like his use of lines to break up the type and the page which compliments his use of rotated type. Similar to Doesburg’s work, he too uses black and white with a single colour which I think works really well and gives a really nice boldness to the work. His use of sans-serif typefaces which are well anchored are also really effective at bringing structure to the pieces.