Compose styles
Rather than blending styles toward a middle, this gives them roles. The first one carries the structure, the next comes in as the accent, and anything after that shows up in a single detail. Where they fight each other, it says so before you start.
How to divide the work
- Composition
- Follow AEG Corporate Identity: Products and advertising built on one grid and one dimensional system
- Type
- Set in AEG Corporate Identity's manner (One typeface fixed as a standard, sizes and margins given as numbers), and let Machine Art's lettering (Only the object's name and its maker, small, in one undecorated face. No adjectives) appear only where you want the eye to catch.
- Material
- Ground in AEG Corporate Identity's material (Standard industrial materials, with quality carried by the finish); bring in exactly one thing from Machine Art (Metal, glass and porcelain as they come from the factory. No paint and no pattern, so that tooling marks and sheen are all there is to see).
- Colour
- Build on #f1eeed, #937e5e, #22231a and admit one accent from #B9BEC2, #F2F1ED, #1E1F21.
Where they fight
- AEG Corporate Identity and Machine Art both belong to Modern Design Movements, so the difference is small. Push the roles further apart than feels comfortable.
Caution
- AEG Corporate Identity Reading standardization as sameness, making everything one shape and skipping the argument about quality, which lands in dull mass production.
- Machine Art Assuming the work is done once the objects are undecorated leaves the room and the fixtures decorated, and the forms lose to the pattern around them.
Image prompt
Produce four original images that take their structure from AEG Corporate Identity (style, 1907-1914) and their accent from Machine Art (style, 1934). ## What to make Make the kind of thing AEG Corporate Identity exists for: aligning products, printed matter and buildings under one corporate standard, or putting the design criteria for mass production into words a company can share. Choose one subject and hold it across all four. ## Structure comes from AEG Corporate Identity - Company lettering drawn from geometry - Products built as one family of forms - A gabled front of steel and glass with the ornament taken off - One hand visible from kettle to catalogue Composition: Products and advertising built on one grid and one dimensional system. Type and lettering: One typeface fixed as a standard, sizes and margins given as numbers. ## Accent comes from Machine Art, used sparingly - Utilitarian factory parts set out one to a pedestal, spaced apart - Mouldings on walls and ceilings screened over, leaving a background with no pattern in it - The objects are springs, pans and instruments, things never made to be looked at - Manufacturers' names standing where an artist's name would normally go Let one material quality come from it: Metal, glass and porcelain as they come from the factory. No paint and no pattern, so that tooling marks and sheen are all there is to see. ## Colour and feeling Build the ground on #f1eeed, carry the structure in #937e5e and #22231a, and let a single accent come from #B9BEC2. These are read off real works, so a direction rather than a fixed palette. Feeling to carry: trust, technique, futurity, calm. ## Where they fight - AEG Corporate Identity and Machine Art both belong to Modern Design Movements, so the difference is small. Push the roles further apart than feels comfortable. ## What goes wrong - AEG Corporate Identity: Reading standardization as sameness, making everything one shape and skipping the argument about quality, which lands in dull mass production. - Machine Art: Assuming the work is done once the objects are undecorated leaves the room and the fixtures decorated, and the forms lose to the pattern around them. ## Across the four Keep the roles fixed in all four. Vary the framing, the scale and the arrangement so the set shows what this pairing can do rather than four versions of one picture. ## Constraints - Do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work. - Do not reproduce the composition of an existing work. - Produce original compositions in the general period languages described above.
Related entries
- AEG Corporate Identity 1907-1914 / Style / Modern Design Movements
Products, factory and printed matter all handed to one architect, so that a company looked as though a single hand had made it. The lettering, objects and buildings Behrens drew for AEG from 1907 became the prototype of corporate design.
- Machine Art 1934 / Style / Modern Design Movements
The name of an exhibition the Museum of Modern Art held in New York from March to April 1934. Springs, pots and pans and scientific instruments, all factory made and all utilitarian, were placed on pedestals and treated as sculpture. Philip Johnson screened the walls and ceilings of the museum's nineteenth century brownstone to hide its mouldings, so that undecorated objects could be seen against nothing.
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