Julia Baranova

Discourse Blog

Posted by Julia Baranova Posted on Saturday

Design Studio: Mash Creative

Mash Creative is a design studio that specialises in branding and print media. They have produced quite a few interesting projects which concentrate on typography and logotypes, giving out a clear message by using bold typefaces. I have noticed that such graphics are being used quite frequently throughout a lot of print design in general. One of the projects that stood out most was ‘Rethink’ Royal Mail for ICON magazine project. They have re-branded Royal Mail by simplifying their logo and creating a new typeface, taking the lead of more is less idea. Looking at the current logo and a re-design I am definitely fonder of the new one, because it’s simple and intuitive where as the current logotype is filled with unnecessary detail and colour. Royal Mail should take up the re branding challenge and get up to speed with the 21st century!



photos taken from: http://www.mashcreative.co.uk/

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Posted by Julia Baranova Posted on Monday

Book Design: Irma Boom

After watching a 2 hour Design Lecture with Irma Boom, I can honestly say she has given me a precious insight in to book design and I have picked up a few tips from her wise words. After about 10 minutes I started to see how precise and accurate she was with everything, her design, the way she arranged her thoughts and sentences. I think that's one of the most important qualities every designer should have to produce very good quality work.

Irma Boom (2010) during a design lecture states
...words and definitions of what a book should be: accurate, antidote, art, bizarre, beauty, brilliant, democratic, composition, gesture, generous, humour, imperfection, independence, innovation, instinct, intuition, knowledge, minimalism, mood, navigation, paper, philosophical, pragmatic, seductive, sinful, thought, tradition, weird.

One of my favourite books was Colour, where Boom chose 80 fine artists and developed them in to colour schemes. The best part about the book is that you have to tear pages apart to see the inner beauty of colours, because there are only solids on the outside. I love how simple yet innovative all her books are, the way she gives them more than one perspective by coming up with a simple motion i.e flip the book backwards or unfold the pages. 


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Posted by Julia Baranova Posted on Friday

Typography: Eric Gill

About.com (Unknown) in Profile of Eric Gill 1882-1940 quotes that


Lettering is a precise art and strictly subject to tradition. The New Art notion that you can make letters whatever shapes you like, is as foolish as the notion, if anyone has such a notion, that you can make houses any shapes you like. You can't, unless you live all by yourself on a desert island.

Despite Eric Gills personal disturbing biography, I really appreciate his typographic work. His obsession with correct character spacing and line lengths lead him to the perfect typefaces, the famous Gill Sans has been used in railway signs back when British Railway first emerged and it is still in use to this day in printed works for the National Rail. I think it’s great that he could leave behind such an important piece of design for the rest of the world to enjoy. My personal favourite typeface would be Perpetua, because each letterform looks well structured and quite elegant.

A poster with a quotation from An Essay On Typography by Eric Gill

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Posted by Julia Baranova Posted on Saturday

Postmodernism: Thamesmead 'a 21st century town'

After finding a documentary on Utopia London, I have decided to blog about Thamesmead as it’s a town I lived close to and have visited it several times. Utopia is "any real or imaginary society, place,state, etc, considered to be perfect or ideal", and that is what the architects of early 21st century tried to create when considering the perfect living conditions for British people, they wanted to build heaven on earth. Thamesmead estates bold concrete blocks with futuristic architectural elements suited the perfect living vision at the time. From this documentary it seems like people have enjoyed living in this dull and cold housing estate, because they knew each other and it felt safe.  However the feeling of safety didn’t last very long and the utopian dream soon was in pieces, the estate became more dangerous, the dark walkways were no longer harmless as young people became more violent and preformed destructive acts of violence. Now Thamesmead has become a council estate and people no longer communicate with each other as they used to...I think this shows how one man’s idea of perfection can be others failure. The architects must feel like they have created a monstrosity, because in the end it brought people bleakness instead of happiness.


Video: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/video/2008/apr/16/thamesmead

screen shot from the video

screen shot from the video

HarperCollins Publishers (2011) Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition. Available at: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/utopia (Accessed: 12 May 2011)

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