OUGD401 - Context of Practice: 3000 word essay

3000 word essay

We have to write a 3000 word essay in response to one of the set essay titles:

It should include -

• Selection of subject matter appropriate to your own interests that will allow you to critically analyse relevant source material
• Logical structure - supported by 3 academic sources
• Bibliography of at least 10 sources
• Introduction, main body and conclusion (10%)

Deadline - 29th January 4pm

Essay titles:

1. Focusing on specific examples, describe the way that Modernist art and design was a response to the forces of modernity?

Could include the following...

• Industrialisation
• Urbanisation
• Mass production
• Bauhaus - argued that a new period of history had begun with the end of the war
• A new style of design should reflect this
• Functional
• Herbert Bayer and other designers who emerged from the Bauhaus
• Red and black design
• Earlier stuff from the Bauhaus

Books - Graphic design as communication (Malcolm Barnard)

2. Choosing a particular period from 1800 to the present, in what ways has art or design responded to the changing social and cultural forces of that period? (2 specific examples)

• Can choose any style graphic design
• Opened up outside of Modernism
• 1800 - present day
• Russian revolution
• Rodchenko
• Arts and crafts - Victorian
• Print production - early musical posters
• More of an independent question
• Not any seminars on this question
• 60's UK Post war affluence and 70's US Repressive society

3. Is it possible to describe any aspect of graphic design today as post-modern (ist)?

• Book - Rick Poyner - No More Rules
• Forms of street art

4. Could it be argued that fine art ought to be assigned more 'value' that more popular forms of visual communication?

• Why are there millions of galleries that show paintings and no graphic design or not as much
• Barnard - Graphic design as communication

5. 'Advertising doesn't sell things; all advertising does is change the way people think or feel' Jeremy Bullmore. Evaluate this statement with reference to selected critical theories (past or present).

• We will have a seminar on this