PRACTITIONERS AT WORK

 

designer

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.

film maker

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.

illustrator

painter

"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.

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.

 

painting

"When observing a scene he wished to remember, he would study the essential points upon which the effect depended, then turn his back upon it and recapitulate these points, turning round again to see if he had got his lesson perfect." T.R.Way of the painter J.M.Whistler. Quoted in Lecoq.