Ken Garland talks to Unit Editions part 2 Ken Garland talks to Unit Editions about his essay Structure and Substance Buy the book here: ift.tt/1vEzsn2 Unit Editions: So your early ambitions were to be an illustrator? Ken Garland: They were, and I compared my work with other students who were doing illustration and I thought it just wasnt good enough. The switch to graphic design was for two reasons; first of all because I didnt think I was a good enough illustrator. Secondly, because graphic design appeared to me to be a more exciting area of work, quite simply. So that was fairly painless. I threw away all my work in illustration. I wish I hadn’t now, I’d love to see what I was up to then. But I just junked the whole lot, without compunction. Unit Editions: And where did you look for inspiration? You talked about studying with a wonderful group of graphic designers. Where were you looking for other graphic design that you thought was something to aim for? Were you looking to Europe? Ken Garland: Yes I was, very much so. I was looking at the work of the German graphic designers in the1920s, and at Swiss graphic design in the 1930s and1940s, and at current Swiss graphic design, which seemed to be single-minded. I wasnt quite so totally wrought up in Swiss graphic design as many of my fellows were. Many of my fellows were so enmeshed in that area that they couldnt see anyone could ever, for example, set anything in anything other than helvetica. I think helvetica was just coming into use then, or Germanic sans serif types anyway. It seemed to be rather narrow-minded to me then, and of course it does now, but that’s what we were into. The article I wrote, ‘Structure and substance’, compared two of my favourite designers; Karl Gerstner the Swiss graphic designer (with wider interests than other Swiss graphic designers I have to say), and Saul Bass, whose work I was becoming aware of in the middle- to late-1950s. Both of them seemed to me to be excellent examples. What I wanted to suggest was that we, in the middle of that, as it were, could combine the virtues of both. I think that’s the way I saw my own work: if possible, being a fusion of the work of Karl Gerstner and the work of Saul Bass. Karl Gerstner, incidentally, was my age and I met him in Switzerland when I went in 1960 to do a survey of Swiss graphic design and graphic printing for the Council of Industrial Design, who were the publishers of Design Magazine. So we became friends then. I met Saul Bass on his visits over here; he became a friend as well. I thought that there was a way in which graphic design could not be narrow-minded, not be channeled into over-specific tastes, but could take on all sorts of stuff. I thought that then and still do. _______ FOLLOW LIPSapp Hits56 Radio _______ FB: r-js/1uOEA6Y / TW: r-js/1us3SdS / Listen to LIPSapp Hits56 Radio r-js/1imT49y #thewho #beatles #elvis #jimihendrix #dylan
Posted on: Fri, 03 Oct 2014 15:28:42 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015