designer
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Allen Hurlburt,
editorial designer " For years, man has accepted a neatly
packaged idea of measurable space, fixed time and a round
world that revolves around a reliable sun. Today, science is
challenging these three-dimensional views. As we move inward
towards the atom and outward toward space, we discover that
what seemed unreal to our untrained perception is actually
real and what we took for reality is sometimes an illusion.
Faced with these new concepts, no art director can afford to
take his perception and design approach for granted, and no
editor can afford the comfortable luxury of editorial
formulas and a fixed format." in Publication Design, VNR
1971.
Hurlburt was the distinguished art director of LOOK
magazine. See also his book on Monroe. He published his
ideas widely (The Grid etc) and was influential in urging
designers into broader mind sets - the analogy with the
cinema is a favourite theme, and here, almost a dimensional
picture based on the Eames studio scale animation Powers of
Ten.
Alfred Hitchcock, film director, article in
Stage,
July 1936 "There is not enough visualizing done in [film]
studios, and instead far too much writing. People take a
sheet of paper and scrawl down a load of dialogue and
instructions, and call that a day's work. It leads them
nowhere. There is also a growing habit of reading a film
script by the dialogue alone. I deplore this method, this
lazy neglect of the action, this lack of reading action in a
film story or, if you like it, this ability to visualize."
quoted in Sidney Gottlieb,
Hitchcock on
Hitchcock, University of
California Press, Berkeley, 1995, the original title of
Hitchcock's article was "Close Your Eyes and Visualize
!"
William Morris, designer, "I should have painted
well so far as the execution is concerned, and I had a good
sense of colour; but though I have so to speak the literary
artiustic memory, I have not the artistic artistic memory: I
can only draw what I see before me, and my pictures, some of
which exist, lack movement." quoted in Fiona
MacCarthy, William Morris, Faber and Faber 1994, from
the Mackail Notebooks, William Morris Gallery.
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film maker
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Ernst Lubitsch, German
director, "In my silent period in Germany as well as in
America I tried to use less and less subtitles. It was my
aim to tell the story through pictorial nuances and the
facial expressions on my actors. There were often very long
scenes in which people were talking without being
interrupted by subtitles. The lip movement was used as a
kind of pantomime. Not that I wanted the audience to become
lip readers, but I tried to time the speech in such a way
that the audience could listen to their eyes. " That
Lubitsch Touch [1968] quoted in Leyda, Film Makers Speak.
Hitchcock too designed his own titles and developed as a
film director in finding visual equivalents. As early as the
films of Griffiths there was a developed (if stylised) body
of acknowledged gestures to extend the audience's
understanding of the narrative.
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illustrator
painter
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"I
would go so far as to say that if an illustrator or a
potential illustrator does not see an image as soon as the
phrase is given him, he should not illustrate a book: if he
does not feel the excitement of a typographic page, he
should not illustrate a book; if he has no dreams or
aspirations, he should not illustrate a book; if there are
no books he feels he would wish to illustrate, then he
should not illustrate. These are some of the essential
qualities of the illustrator; they must be already there."
from John Farleigh, It Never Dies 1945. p.80 .
The British illustrator, highly prolific - putting the
capacity to visualise from text at the head of his list.
"The
artist creates the visual image ... accepted by the reader
and often becomes part of visual culture. From Struwwelpeter
to Orlando, from the Mad Hatter to Mrs.Tiggy-Winkle; Pooh
and Piglet, Mary Poppins, William, Paddington Bear, Mr.Toad,
and Mole, Rat, Badger, not to mention Sherlock Holmes - the
list is endless... It should also be remembered that often
the character is not described [in appearence] in the text
at all; the illustrator is doing his job of translating the
author's meaning into a visual form."
The British illustrator Faith Jaques in
Martin 1989
Saul Steinberg, "Drawing is a way of
reasoning on paper." from Harold
Rosenberg, Saul
Steinberg.
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N.C.Wyeth, "It is a
universal opinion among discriminating readers that
illustration in the majority of cases is a superimposed
burden upon the story it pretends to illustrate. I am in
hearty sympathy with that opinion. It is too often a
detached art and makes little pretence to be in working
harmony and sympathetically submissive to the spirit of the
tale. In being submissive it will add power and charm to the
story but if it precludes the author's artistry by repeating
in bald assertions the main incidents and characters it
becomes a vital menace and detriment in the expression of
any writing, be the writing ever so powerful and the
pictures ever so inferior. The artistic powers of an
illustrator spring from the same source as do the powers of
the painter; but the profound difference lies in the fact
that the illustrator submits his inspiration to a definite
end; the painter carries his to infinitude. Therefore, the
work of the illustrator resolves itself into a craft and he
must not lose sight of that very important factor. To
successfully illustrate he must be subjective. It is
important business to use restraint, particular in the
choice of subjects. The ability to select subject matter is
an art in itself and calls to action similar dramatic
instincts required in the staging of a play. The illustrator
must first feel the power of the story in all its rhythm and
swing, at the same time sense just at the right moment to
step in with his illustration just as the play producer
endeavours to intensify and enhance the drama with his
ingenious stage properties and effects. To do this requires
an amount of instinctive ability, but like everything else,
it improves with experience and serious study. By avoiding
the shackles of explicit action and detail the illustrator
will find a field of far greater range upon which to
exercise his powers, emotional and technical, and is given a
better chance to produce something of real merit." On
Illustration - A suggestion and a Comment on Illustrating
Fiction, "The New York Times" Oct 13 1912, quoted in Allen
and Allen, N.C.Wyeth, Bonanza, NY
1972.
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