Dialogic Logotypes
Please allow 10 working days to process before shipping
Garment Dyed - Ivy Short Sleeve
Made in USA - 100% USA Cotton
"The carnivalesque crowd in the marketplace or in the streets is not merely a crowd. It is the people as a whole, but organized in their own way, the way of the people. It is outside of and contrary to all existing forms of the coercive socioeconomic and political organization, which is suspended for the time of the festivity."
Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World
Mikhail Bakhtin
The twentieth century Russian philosopher and literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin wrote extensively on the concept of dialogue. Although Bakhtin's work took many different directions over the course of his life, dialogue always remained the "master key" to understanding his worldview. Bakhtin described the open-ended dialogue as "the single adequate form for verbally expressing authentic human life." In it "a person participates wholly and throughout his whole life: with his eyes, lips, hands, soul, spirit, with his whole body and deeds. He invests his entire self in discourse, and this discourse enters into the dialogic fabric of human life, into the world symposium.”
The dialogue is the central piece in Bakhtin’s theory of the novel. The novel, unlike other literary forms, embraces heterogeneity in discourse and meaning: it re-creates a reality that is based on the interactions of a variety of subjective consciousnesses and ways of thinking and speaking about the world. In this sense novelistic discourse undermines absolute or authoritative (monologic) language, which is revealed to be merely one form of ideological expression operating within an essentially intersubjective medium. Language, in Bakhtin's view, is inherently dialogic, and the novel is the literary genre that has the greatest capacity to artistically represent this reality. According to John Sturrock, for Bakhtin the novel is "the most complete and the most democratic of genres, coming as close as it is possible for an artform to come to capturing the multiplicity, richness and zest of life itself."
Polyphony was a dialogic term Bakhtin used in his literary criticism, particularly with Dostoevsky. The word Polyphony is derived from a musical term which has special significance within the idiom of Russian Orthodoxy from which Bakhtin was operating. Note how in the monophonic chant, even when there are many singers, they sing in unison, in one voice, whereas in the polyphonic chant, the singers harmonize, singing in many voices.
"Dostoevsky portrayed not the life of an idea in an isolated consciousness, and not the interrelationship of ideas, but the interaction of consciousnesses…In Dostoevsky, consciousness never gravitates toward itself but is always found in intense relationship with another consciousness. Every experience, every thought of a character is internally dialogic, adorned with polemic, filled with struggle…It could be said that Dostoevsky offers, in artistic form, something like a sociology of consciousness. "
(Bakhtin, 1963/1984, p.32)
The original Russian word Bakhtin used for Heteroglossia was разноречие (raz-no-rech-i-ye), derived from "разно," or "different" and "речи," meaning "speech." This is a broader concept than polyphony. It is a complex mixture of languages and world views that is always...dialogized, as each language is viewed from the perspective of the others.
(Dimitriadis & Kamberelis, 2006, p.51)
For Bakhtin, discourse always articulates a particular view of the world... 'Heteroglossia' refers to the conflict between 'centripetal' and 'centrifugal,' 'official' and 'unofficial' discourses within the same national language. 'Heteroglossia' is also present, however, at the (q.v.) micro-linguistic scale; every utterance contains within it the trace of other utterances, both in the past and in the future.
So, no matter how hard a totalizing, centrifying, centripetal force tries to absorb and incorporate difference into its singular vision...That synthesizing voice will still be just one voice among countless other institutional, popular, academic, vulgar, formal, and informal voices.
According to Bakhtin (1986), the very essence of speech as a semiotic activity is multivoiced, filled with underlying principles, with unique points of view and forms of conceptualizing the world, characterized by various meanings and values. Therefore, language is by its very nature heteroglot, representing at any given moment “the co-existence of socio-ideological contradictions between the present and the past, between differing epochs of the past, between different socio-ideological groups in the present, between tendencies schools, circles, and so forth, all given a bodily form” (1986, 291).
In literary theory and philosophy of language, the chronotope is how configurations of time and space are represented in language and discourse. The term was taken up by Russian literary scholar Mikhail Bakhtin who used it as a central element in his theory of meaning in language and literature. The term itself comes from the Russian xронотоп, which in turn is derived from the Greek χρόνος ('time') and τόπος ('space'); it thus can be literally translated as "time-space."
Bakhtin scholars Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist state that the chronotope is "a unit of analysis for studying language according to the ratio and characteristics of the temporal and spatial categories represented in that language." They argue that Bakhtin's concept differs from other uses of time and space in literary analysis because neither category is given a privileged status: they are inseparable and entirely interdependent. Bakhtin's concept is a way of analyzing literary texts that reveals the forces operating in the cultural system from which they emanate.
For Bakhtin, chronotope is the conduit through which meaning enters the logosphere.
Kuwayama Logotypes
Yasaburo Kuwayama was born in Niigata prefecture, Japan in 1938. He graduated from the Musashino Art University in 1962 and taught Typography at Asagaya Acadademie de Beaux-Arts for 5 years from 1966. In 1969 he established the Kuwayama Design Room. In 1970 he began teaching typography at the Musashino Art University. In '75 he was teaching lettering at the Asahi Center and served as a permanent manager of the Japan Finish Work Association. In 1979 he retired from his posts and allowed him more time for other interests.
He was a member of the Association du Typographique Internationale, the Japan Typography Association, the Federation of German Typographers, The Tokyo Designers Space and the Japan Graphic Designer Association.
From his 1989 Logotypes of the World series, Kuwayama writes:
The tendency of designers is to place more emphasis on trademarks and symbols, in spite of the fact that more logotypes than trademarks or symbols are produced.
A look at these works from around the world reveals an imaginative use or script to create designs based on the form of letters or characters, or the way these are joined together. We also note, on the other hand, how dots, lines or planes are used to create images and abstractions which result in an overall sense of newness or originality. Whoever looks at these different styles of the groups of logotypes cannot fail to learn a great many interesting things. While it has become easy to achieve striking effects with the recent diversity of script styles, the real art of logotype design goes far beyond a facile combination of available styles.
This book could not have been produced without the cooperation of contributors from all over the world. We sincerely hope it will be of use to readers everywhere. A showcase of the best logotypes of the 80s and logotype trends during that decade, the book is also an important reference work to be used in creating future logotypes or checking for similarities, as well as in studying script styles and forms.
The special feature of this book is its grouping and categorizing of logotypes according to style. Logotypes have different styles depending on their content and individuality of the designer. We have tried to organize the logotypes to make them as easy to find as words in a dictionary. Because letter design is the main factor in logotypes, we used typeface style as the basis for broader categories.
Roman letters were divided into (1) sans serif (2) roman, egyptian, gothic and round gothic. Following are amplifications:
Negatives & Positives: Letters are usually written in black. This is called a positive. White letters on a black background are called a negative.
Open & Positives: Counter line letters are called open.
Abbreviations: Letters in which some vertical or horizontal lines have been eliminated.
Cut-off: The whole of the letter or word is cut off by lines.
Stencil: When letters are cut out in metal plates or paper, and are used to print the letters.
Double: When part of a letter or one letter in a word is doubled.
Continuation: When letters or the word as a whole is connected.
Overlap & Contact: When letters overlap each other or touch each other.
Gradation: Regular or gradual changes. The letters
in a word change from thick to thin or from dark to light or vice versa.
Strong-Weak: Words containing both strong and weak letters.
Enclosure: Those surrounded by lines.
Tile: A combination of several surfaces with one letter on one surface.
Line: Lines added to words, parts of letters becoming lines and those with few lines.
Inline: Letters with lines inside them.
Shadow: Letters with shadows.
Outline: Lines surrounding letters or words.
Modern: Those incorporating a new aesthetic sense.
Original: Those which have created a new style.
New: Those incorporating a new style.
Standard: Combinations of established typefaces or those close to established ones.
Plus: Those incorporating simple forms, points circles and signs.
Plus Person: Those combined with human beings or faces.
Plus Animal: Those combined with animals, birds, fish or insects.
Plus Plant: Those combined with leaves, fruits, flowers and trees.
Plus Instrument: Those combined with tools, utensils, containers, stationery, musical instruments, cars, ships and buildings.
Plus Heavenly Body: Those combined with the earth, sun and stars.
Sans Serif with Round Line Ends: Those equivalent to the round gothic of Japanese letters.
Serif Gothic: Those with small serifs at line ends as in established typeface serif gothic.
Optima: Style like established optima typeface.
Swash: Those in which the tails or parts of letters are long or whirled.
BallPoint Pen Script: Script with all the lines of the same thickness.
Dot: Letters formed by dots.
Mix: Those mixed with several typefaces.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder
The spirit of carnival is the active force in Bruegel’s work and the imagery to which we attach the term “Bruegelian”—those paintings, drawings and prints that the artist created in a fecund ten-year span during the third quarter of the sixteenth century—are testament to his carnivalesque view of the world. By carnival, we do not simply mean festivity, since feasts could be, and often were, official. The official is sanctioned by temporal powers, but carnival, by contrast, pertains to the alternate life of the people: that other, uncontrolled way of being in the world. It is an energetic disruption of the normal order of things. In this periodic eruption, hierarchies are subverted and that which is ordinarily improper is given rule over the seemly. In Bruegel, the carnivalesque spirit has as its center of gravity the human body. Bruegel’s people are different from those created under the influence of Greco-Roman antiquity. They do not simply adopt pious poses, or display nonchalant classical ease, rather: they run and dance wildly; they eat and over-eat; they drink to excess and face the walls to urinate; they fight; they doze; they kiss noisily; they squat to defecate; they are damaged by disease and by violence, subjected to various restraints, or lost in the rhythms of various physical exertions, and, always, they are animated by the spirit of carnival which carries, as one of its characteristics, the invitation to inventory-making.
While Foucault describes the way out of society for these marginalized figures, it is Bakhtin who takes up the task of describing a way back in. Much of what Bakhtin has to say about Rabelais’s bodily humor is relevant to Bruegel, not only because these masters are contemporaries, but also because they mine the same vein of mirth to powerful effect. They suggest that order, state control and civic harmony provide only part of the story of societies.
Carnivalesque
For Bakhtin, the medieval celebration of Carnival went beyond its Christian function to assume a secular-social one. It was a liberating time in the restrained culture of feudal Northern Europe when hierarchic differences in rank and status were suspended. The carnivalesque is another place where art and life are blurred—playfully disrupted by participation by everyone; an alternative world where rich may become poor and paupers, kings. It is a concept which encourages radicalism and dissensus; a concept well-aligned to radical socially engaged art interventions.
Bakhtin argues that we should not compare the "narrow theatrical pageantry" and "vulgar Bohemian understanding of carnival" characteristic of modern times with his Medieval Carnival. Carnival was a powerful creative event, not merely a spectacle. Bakhtin suggests that the separation of participants and spectators has been detrimental to the potency of Carnival. Its power lay in there being no "outside." Everyone participated, and everyone was subject to its lived transcendence of social and individual norms: "carnival travesties: it crowns and uncrowns, inverts rank, exchanges roles, makes sense from nonsense and nonsense of sense.
This temporary suspension, both ideal and real, of hierarchical rank created during carnival time a special type of communication impossible in everyday life. This led to the creation of special forms of marketplace speech and gesture, frank and free, permitting no distance between. (Bakhtin, 1965/1984, p. 199)
During the late medieval period and throughout the Renaissance, the peasant became a key motif forming part of an anti-aesthetic alternative canon that art historians now refer to as the ‘grotesque.’ From the late fifteenth to the mid-sixteenth century, the peasant topos developed in all sorts of ways, and artists, especially Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) and the Nuremberg school, created a visual repertoire that included dancing peasants, the drunken carousing peasant, and the peasant ‘fool.’ Southern German ‘carnival’ woodcuts by artists such as Erhard Schön (1491–1542), Hans Weiditz (1495–c.1537), and Peter Flötner (c.1490–1546) often provided a rich visual counterpart to the burgeoning Narrenliteratur (fool-literature) of writers such as Hans Sachs (1494–1576) and Sebastian Brandt (1457–1521). Various visual representations of the peasant could also be found in popular literature and propaganda around the time of the German Peasants’ War (1525), and this momentous historical event led to a proliferation of peasant images, some positive and some negative, but reaching an apogee by the 1530s in the work of the brothers Sebald and Barthel Beham, who rendered their festive peasant scenes in woodcut, and who in many respects were the German equals of the Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c.1525–1569; sometimes known as the ‘Peasant Breugel’). These artworks assert the significance of the peasant class for society as a whole, bringing the peasantry ‘as a class to the consciousness of all other classes.’
Ways of Seeing/Ways of Speaking
As John Berger points out in his “Ways of Seeing” series, oil paintings are essentially silent and still. So the most obvious way of manipulating them is by using movement and sound. For example, ‘The Road to Calvary’ by Pieter Bruegel is a relatively secular religious oil painting with an overwhelming tone of grief. But, a closeup of the piece’s soft, country landscape no longer lends itself to the deep emotions nor religious history that the viewers might have originally understood. Instead, this zoomed in reproduction takes on an entirely different meaning.
Looking closely in this way at The Fight Between Carnival and Lent, painted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in 1559, we see little scenes of human interaction, one at a time, within the polyphony of the nearly 200 characters in the painting. The spectacle is divided into two halves, and framed by two buildings: the inn on the left, the church on the right, which gives it the character of a scene in a stage show. The left side of the sprawling canvas depicts the Carnival, the right side, Lent. The boundary is not sharply defined, however, and in several places the followers of Lent and Shrove Tuesday invade each other's space. In the foreground is the battle itself: the two opponents, pulled and pushed and accompanied by supporters, are about to meet. The painting does not present either side as being better than the other, but presents both sides as extremities of the human experience.
Heteroglossia is the presence in language of a variety of "points of view on the world, forms for conceptualizing the world in words, specific world views, each characterized by its own objects, meanings and values." It is an attempt to conceptualize the reality of living discourse, where there is always a tension between centralizing and decentralizing forces, between the imposition of systematic order and the prior condition of freedom from it. Linguistics, insofar as it is an attempt to systematize language, must always ignore or conceal this reality.
According to Bakhtin, language is always a multiplicity of languages. This is not merely a matter of dialectology, but of the many different ways of speaking, which are reflections of the diversity of social experience, of differing ways of conceptualizing and evaluating. Linguistics fails to appreciate the importance of this multiplicity in the reality of language as it is actually lived and practiced. It is not merely a matter of different vocabularies, but a complex of experiences, shared evaluations, ideas, perspectives and attitudes that are "knitted together" (срастаться, srastat'sya) in an organic process: a coalescence of separate entities that have themselves been formed by such a process, which is to say by a living process of adaptation and growth.
What is a House?
Perhaps the first paradigmatic conceptualization of the house subsequent to the Modern Movement was the one drawn by Charles Eames halfway through World War II. Six months before the launch of the Case Study Houses program, John Entenza, editor of the Los Angeles magazine Arts & Architecture, which he had overhauled, prepared what would be its ideological axis for at least the entire following decade, through an ambitious article published in the July 1944 issue under the title ‘What is a House?’. Herbert Matter and Eames set out to provide innovative large-format graphic material for a definitive statement of Buckminster Fuller in defense of prefabrication as the solution to the problem of modern housing. Nevertheless, and despite the media success of the later CSH program as well as Fuller’s prestige, the only part of the feature to go down in history is Eames’s small diagram, discreetly appearing in the lower inner quadrant of one of the final left-side pages. Though it did not prefigure prefabrication, it soon became an expression of the flexible and uninhibited modern dwelling that would prevail throughout the second half of the 20th century and even into the early decades of the 21st. The drawing showed, grouped together, the wide range of leisure activities that could take place in the house.
https://placesjournal.org/article/happy-furniture/
