all that JAZZ...

F Scott Fitzgerald, a novelist, coined the phrase “The Jazz Age” to closely describe the exciting and flamboyant culture of the 1920’s. The age takes its name from jazz music, which saw a tremendous surge in popularity among many segments of society. This exciting culture centred on the media, music, arts, literature and fashion. During the 1920’s the media was able to develop so steadily and substantially because of the growing motion picture industry, and media such as films and magazines emerged as a primary area of graphic design.

The arts of the 1920’s influenced the culture drastically and the jazz lifestyle appealed to many. New art forms were affecting the fashion and the architecture of the United States during this time. The styles most associated with the jazz age are striking, bold, geometric and abstract. Many artists drew inspiration from avant-garde art movements such as Cubism, Futurism and Vorticism. The use of such styles in a growing commercial arts industry introduced elements of modern art to a much wider public than would be possible for a contemporary gallery.

In the 1920s, jazz became more than just a musical style. Jazz was style.

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Jazz_Age

http://www.1920s-fashion-and-music.com/jazz-age.html

http://www.answers.com/topic/jazz-1

http://www.ltmcollection.org/posters/about/behindthecollection.html?IXstory=The+golden+age+of+poster+design

ART DECO + CASSANDRE

Art Deco is eclectic form of elegant and stylish modernism, influenced by a variety of sources, including Art Nouveau, Cubism, Futurism, Primitive and Egyptian art, as well as "The Machine Age" industrial developments of the time. Art deco visual motifs include geometric shapes, curves, Egyptian zigzags, sunbursts, lightening bolts, airbrushed ray bands, motion lines, aerodynamic and streamlined forms.The bold use of stepped forms, sweeping curves, chevron patterns, and the sunburst motif are typical of Art Deco.

In Graphic Design the most influential designer of the art deco era was Adolphe Mouron Cassandre. His advertising posters and type designs helped define the art deco look. His first notable success was The Woodcutter (1923; Paris, Mus. Affiche & Pub.), executed in clear, simplified forms, somewhat influenced by Cubism. The airbrushed ray band motif used here was to become a major influence.

Cassandre produced hundreds of posters in his career. It is said that he helped make commercial art a respected profession. He often used the term "advertising engineer" to describe what he did. The magic of these posters lay in their bigger-than-life imagery and Cassandre's extraordinary sense of the dramatic. Every poster bore an invention in letterforms, fashioned as an integral part yet providing a visual bonus—lyrical, playful, geometric or decorative, and above all never banal.

Cassandre also designed several classic art deco typefaces: Bifur (1929), Acier Noir (1935) and Piegnot (1937). He only used capitals in his designs as he believed that they were more legible, especially when seen on a large scale. The way Cassandre links his typography with his images is one of the hallmarks of his design. Type is not a separate element but is integrated with the image to create the unified concept of the design.

Sadly, Cassandre took his own life in 1968. A letter of rejection for a new typeface design was found on his desk.

Art Deco buildings are still in abundance in many cities today influencing designers and artists who live in or near them. A resurgence of interest in Art Deco came with graphic design in the 1980s, where its association with film noir and 1930s glamour led to its use in ads for jewelry and fashion

.

Here is a great flash slide show of Art Deco Graphic Design

http://gds.parkland.edu/gds/!lectures/history/1925/artdeco.html

Sites on Cassandre:

http://gds.parkland.edu/gds/!lectures/history/1925/artdeco.html

http://www.adcglobal.org/archive/hof/1972/?id=296

http://www.cassandre-france.com/cassandre-france.com/MENU.html

http://new.myfonts.com/person/Adolphe_Mouron_Cassandre/

Post 2: Penny: Mah Jong

Mah Jong is a game originating in China which uses tiles similar to dominoes but is more similar in playing style to rummy. It has been said to have been invented by Confucius, however, as there is no evidence of the game existing before 1880, the story was probably invented by the American or British importers trying to create a sense of mysticism purely to impress potential clients.

Traditionally, tiles are made from bamboo, ivory or bone and have beautiful hand-painted pictures representing the face of each tile.

The first Mah Jong sets sold in America were sold by Abercrombie & Fitch in 1920. Following its immediate success, the company proceeded to buy from Chinese villages, as many sets as possible.

Through the 1920's the company sold 12,000 sets. Joseph Babcock, at the same time, wrote 'The Rules of Mah Jong'. Commonly known as the 'red book', the rules were simplified for the American public, however, through the decade many variations were invented. Babcock sold the patent to Parker Brothers in 1923.

Through the 1920's Mah Jong became one of the biggest and most popular fads, Mah Jong nights involved dressing and decoration of rooms in Oriental style. Popular songs of the era also included references to the Game, most notably, "Since Ma is Playing Mah Jong" by Eddie Cantor.
The popularity of Mah Jong in the 1920's can be attributed to the fascination of popular culture with all things Oriental.

Interior Design from the era including lighting, rugs, furniture and fabric, had elements of oriental design and even if not obvious in design, companies would often name products with on exotic or oriental flavor to increase the mysticism of their products.

Mah Jong was most popular with women and hugely popular with Jewish women in America.
The National Mah Jong League (NMJL) was formed in 1937 and still exists today. It was and is a primarily Jewish League.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahjong

http://www.tradgames.org.uk/games/Mah-Jong.htm

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-175874477.html

http://www.throughyourbody.com/blog/1983/mahjong-craze-game-chance/

http://cdiannezweig.blogspot.com/2009/10/mah-jongg-and-martinis-vintage-mah.html

1920's......the futura is now

The Art Deco period of type design celebrated the arrival of the machine age. Originally designed in the 1920s and '30s, these unique faces were characterized by bold outline, streamlined forms, and a sense of stylized geometry. They feature a forceful, yet elegant look. Although most commonly known for its influence on architecture, advertising, interior design and fashion, Art Deco cast its spell of sleek modernity over typography with equal abandon.

Typography, in the decade of 1920–1929 underwent a dramatic change. the constructivist movement took hold with the goal of creating a new technological society. The movement promoted a scientific language of design which was popularized in the new decorative movement called art deco. Power and speed became the themes of this machine age. Shapes were streamlined and simplified, curved letterforms were replaced with angular, sleek ones.

Futura is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed between 1924 and 1926 by Paul Renner. It is based on geometric shapes that became representative visual elements of the Bauhaus design style of 1919–1933. Commissioned by the Bauer type foundry, Futura was commercially released in 1927.

Although Renner was not associated with the Bauhaus, he shared many of its idioms and believed that a modern typeface should express modern models, rather than be a revival of a previous design.

Futura has an appearance of efficiency and forwardness. The typeface is derived from simple geometric forms (near-perfect circles, triangles and squares) and is based on strokes of near-even weight, which are low in contrast. This is most visible in the almost perfectly round stroke of the o, which is nonetheless slightly ovoid. In designing Futura, Renner avoided the decorative, eliminating non-essential elements. The lowercase has tall ascenders, which rise above the cap line. The uppercase characters present proportions similar to those of classical Roman capitals.

Typographic designers eschewed serifs and created new type-faces which according toHerbert Bayer, “reflected the notion of beauty in utility.” These new fonts were highly legible and especially served the commercial world.

www.tdekon.net/type/

//www.webreference.com/dlab/9802/sansserif.html

//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futura_(typeface)

//typophile.com/node/18165

//www.flickr.com/photos/20745656@N00/sets/72157600033961025/

The GREAT GATSBY

Published in 1925, The Great Gatsby is known as the Great American Novel and is considered the defining work of the 1920's, the decade often referred to as the Jazz Age.

The cover of The Great Gatsby has become one of the most celebrated pieces of jacket art in American literature. A little-known artist named Francis Cugat was commissioned to illustrate the book cover while Fitzgerald was in the midst of writing it. The cover was completed before the novel, with Fitzgerald so enamored of it that he told his publisher he had "written it into" the novel.

The image on the cover is produced in Art Deco-style gouache, with a pair of eyes hovering over the bright lights of an amusement park. The woman has no nose but full and voluptuous lips. Descending from the right eye is a green tear. The irises depict a pair of reclining nudes.

In researching many of the movie poster, fashion and make up trends of the 1920's I found similar themes that came through in striking images of movie stars and models.

1900-1910 Ballet Russe Claire

The Ballets Russes (French for The Russian Ballets) was an itinerant ballet company which performed under the directorship of Sergei Diaghilev between 1909 and 1929. They performed in many countries, including England, the U.S.A., and Spain. Many of the company's dancers originated from the Imperial Ballet of Saint Petersburg.

The company invited the collaboration of rising contemporary fine artists in the design of sets and costumes. These included Benois himself, Bakst, Braque, Gontcharova, Larionov, Picasso, Chanel, Matisse, Derain, Miró, de Chirico, Dalí, Bilibin, Tchelitchev, Utrillo, Nicholas Roerich, and Rouault. Their designs contributed to the groundbreaking excitement of the company's productions.

Leon Bakst

Leon Bakst, one of the most important

designers

for the Ballet Russe, was born in Grodno on May 10 1866. Aiding Diaghilev with the formation of Ballet Russe, Bakst assumed the role of artistic director. His sets and costumes brought him wide recognition. He is most noted for the sets and costumes for Scheherazade (1910), Firebird (1910), Le Spectre de la Rose (1911). He designed for Ballet Russe from 1909-1921.

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso designed Parade in 1917 for the Ballet Russe. Parade was the first ballet to include cubism sets and costumes.

Natalia Goncharova

Natalia Goncharova was born in 1881 near Tula, Russia. Her art was inspired by Russian folk art, fauvism, and cubism. She began designing for the Ballet Russe in 1921.

Although the Ballets Russes firmly established the twentieth-c

entury tradition of fine art theatre design, the company was not unique in its employment of fine artists. For instance, Savva Mamontov's Private Opera Company h

ad made a policy of employing fine artists, such as Korovin and Golovin, who went on to work for the Ballets Russes.

Edward Johnston-Railway type

About the Designer

Edward Johnston – born 11. 2. 1872 in San José, Uruguay, died 26. 11. 1944 in Ditchling, England – type designer, calligrapher, author, teacher. Studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh.

1898: obtains his Ph.

D. Moves to London. Studies ancient writing techniques in the British Museum. 1899–1913: teaches at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London in the new lettering de

partment. 1901–40: teaches at the Royal College of Art in London. 1906: his book "Writing and Illuminating and Lettering" is published, causing something of a "renaissance" for calligraphy. It is considered the most influential book on calligraphy ever written. 1910–30: designs fonts for Count Harry Kessler’s Cranach-Presse in Weimar. 1912: moves to Ditchling. 1913: founder member and editor of "The Imprint" magazine, of which there are a total of nine issues. 1915: Frank Pick, the director of London Transport, commiss

ions Johnston to design a typeface for the Londong Underground’s corporate identity.

1916: Johnston produces a typeface for the Underground. Eric Gill works on the project with him. Johnston works with London Transport until 1940. 1979: Johnston’s London Transport type is reworked by Colin Banks to produce New Johnston. 1928: an edition of "Hamlet" is published with Johnston’s Hamlet-Type and wo

odcuts by Edward Gordon Craig. 1930: designs a Greed alphabet for Count Harry Kessler’s Cranach-Presse in Weimar, yet only a f

ew of the letters are cast.

Johnston (or Johnston Sans) is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by and named after Edward Johnston. It is well-known for its use by Transport for London.

Johnston's former student Eric Gill also worked on the development of the typeface,which was later to influence his own Gill Sans typeface, produced 1928–32.

The font family was originally called Underground. It became known as Johnston's Railway Type, and later simply Johnston. It comes with two weights, heavy and ordinary. Heavy does not contain lower-case letters.A further change occurred in 2008 when Transport for London removed the serif from the numeral '1' and also altered the '4', in both cases reverting these to their original appearanceLondon Transport Museum licensed Edward Johnston's design to P22 Type Foundry, which was released as Underground Pro (or P22 Underground Pro) family. The full Underground Pro Set contains nineteen Pro OpenType fonts and 58 Basic OpenType fonts, covering extended Latin, Greek, Cyrillic character set

s. Weights are expanded to s

ix: Thin, Light, Book, Medium, Demi, Heavy. However, there are no italic styles in P22's designs. Underground, Underground CY, Underground GR support extended Latin, Cyrillic, Greek characters respectively. The Latin sub-family contains medium weight Titling fonts, which feature underscored and/or overscored Latin small letters. Pro fonts include extensive OpenType features, including eleven stylistic sets: Petite Capitals, Dryad Cap Alternates, Humanistic Alternates 1, Humanistic Alternates 2, Geometric Alternates, Round Points, Diamond Points, Alternate Tilde, All Under commas, All cedillas, Alternate Eng.

.

Features of the font are the perfect circle of the letter O and the use of a diagonal square dot above minuscule letters i and j and for the full stop. Commas, apostrophes and other punctuation marks are also based on the diagonal square dot. The capitals of the typeface are based on Roman square capitals, and the lower-case on the humanistic m

inuscule, the handwriting in use in Italy in the fifteenth century. In this, it marked a break with the kinds of sans serif previously used, sometimes known as grotesque, which tended to have squarer shapes.

The typeface was commissioned in 1913 by Frank Pick, Commercial Manager of the London Electric Railway Company (also known as 'The Underground Group'), as part of his plan to strengthen the com

pany's corporate identity, and introduced in 1916. In 1933, The Underground Group was absorbed by the London Passenger Transport Board and the typeface was adopted as part of the London Transport brand.

New Johnston The Johnston typeface was redesigned in 1979 by Eiichi Kono at Banks & Miles to produce New Johnston, the variant of the original typeface currently used by London Underground. The new typeface is slightly heavier or bolder than the original. The new family comes with Bold, Medium, Light weights. The new typeface replaced the old typeface.

The original font was developed in the 1920s by Percy Delf Smith (another former pupil of Edward Johnston). It was commissioned b

y Frank Pick of London Underground as a 'petit-serif' variation of the organisation's standard sans-serif Johnston face. The typeface was originally used for the headquarters building at 55 Broadway, SW1.

It can still be seen on some signs at Sudbury Town and Arnos Grove on the Piccadilly line.

In early 2007, an electronic version of the typeface was developed under the name Johnston Delf Smith, specifically for use on historic signs

London Transport Museum licensed Edward Johnston's design to P22 Type Foundry, which was released as Underground Pro (or P22 Underground Pro) family. The full Underground Pro Set contains nineteen Pro OpenType fonts and 58 Basic OpenType fonts, covering extended Latin, Greek, Cyrillic character sets. Weights are expanded to six: Thin, Light, Book, Medium, Demi, Heavy. However, there are no italic styles in P22's designs. Underground, Underground CY, Underground GR support extended Latin, Cyrillic, Greek characters respectively. The Latin sub-family contains medium weight Titling fonts, which feature underscored and/or overscored Latin small letters. Pro fonts include extensive OpenType features, including eleven stylistic sets: Petite Capitals, Dryad Cap Alternates, Humanistic Alternates 1, Humanistic Alternates 2, Geometric Alternates, Round Points, Diamond Points, Alternate Tilde, All Under commas, All cedillas, Alternate Eng.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Johnstonhttp://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Edward_Johnston