BLACK & WHITE, THE FOUNDATION OF ALL GOOD DESIGN
Great graphic design starts in black and white; this is where to explore composition and contrast, balance and symmetry. It is only after you have ‘nailed’ the design at this stage that you even begin to think of adding colour.
Times have really changed, 25 years ago when I was a budding student we were on the cusp of moving from drawing boards to computers, colour was just starting to make an appearance on daily newspapers and when you were taught about good design you were taught properly, I wasn’t allowed to use colour for the first year, everything had to be in black and white, as an old teacher said, “if you can get it right in mono colour is easy”. And it’s a lesson that has stayed with me all these years, the design in black and white comes first, and then you think about the colour as a completely new stage.
We live in a fast changing world, where vibrant colour surround us, and many of the everyday tools in business have been discarded, such as fax machines, with their ‘bitmap’ images. Now a bitmap is a process where ‘only’ black and white can be used, no grays, no tones; and it was here that designs had to stand on their own two feet. There was no chance to use ‘drop shadows’, no chance to overlap grey on black, and it’s again an old skill that I feel still has a place in todays design world. Now OK you’re sat there saying well when in gods name will I have only black and white to work with, I mean fax machines are pretty much a thing of the past, even the cheapest printer in the world can print full tonal ranges, all true, and all wide of the mark.
What about Neville Brody, almost all of his work is firmly fixed in black and white? OK he uses a little colour here and there, but all his work works well in just mono.
And here’s another example of his work. He is considered by many as the father of ‘Typography’, modern typography that is, and he’s spawned a generation devoted to that art.
A little while ago whilst on one of my favorite blogs, borninconcrete, the work of Derek Stenning, I came across a book his work is going to appear in called Schwarz auf Weiss II, Style Needs No Color. Now this has got to be on my buy list, OK it’s not so much on about graphic design as illustration, but the same rules are there for all to see, great composition all in black and white.
Schwarz auf Weiss II, Style Needs No Color
borninconcrete, the work of Derek Stenning
And talking of illustration how could I not mention the simple yet striking work of Gianmarco Magnani, here is a truly talented illustrator who 100% understands the whole black and white rule.
Black and white illustration work by Gianmarco Magnani
And here are some designs from the ‘master’, all still in use today. If you want to see the very best in ‘pure’ graphic design, design that only uses black and white at its core than look no further than Otl Aicher. He is to me, and a great many others, the father of modern graphic design, don’t know who he is? – Oh yes you do, just look at the Olympics every 4 years. Otl Aicher was a famous German graphic designer at the height of his success when he was chosen to design the look and feel for the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, and from all the masses of work that he and his team produced one thing stands out, his pictograms. The real problem that the Olympic committee had was that there would be 1000’s of people looking to find their way around, find their way to the right venue, just how many different signs would they need, just how many languages would they have to translate everything into? And this is where his most famous work came into it’s own.
black and white pictograms by Otl Aicher
With these simple pictograms he had discovered a ‘language’ that everyone could understand, and as you can see a design based firmly on the principle of just black and white, bitmaps in fact. Every Olympics since has used the very same pictograms, as new sports have been admitted to the event a whole new generation of graphic designers have simply used his ‘template’.
black and white pictograms template by Otl Aicher
And all of this was way before computers appeared in every studio, all was done by hand. Work was produced at far larger sizes than needed, so that any imperfections would disappear when reduced in size, which explains the images of him in his studio working on large panes of glass.
Otl Aicher working in his studio, in black and white
If you really want to discover Otl Aicher, you must try to get the best book on the man I know, Otl Aicher by Markus Rathgeb. It’s not cheap by any means, but this is where any good local library comes in. When I first heard of the book I had a quick look on Amazon and almost choked at the price, £75, but after ‘test driving’ the book through the great people at my local library I was hooked. And it’s a route you may have to take as there is really very little of his work freely available on the web, which is a real shame.
Otl Aicher by Markus Rathgeb, a brilliant book on this talented graphic designer
So what about my own work, do I practice what I preach? From a design point I’ve always been drawn to working in mono, even though it’s now been a couple of years since I last did any real graphic design work I still work that way and am still drawn to great composition in black and white. I find have moved very much back into my art, illustration, sculpture and photography, but still I’m drawn into working the way I was taught all those years ago.
With the dragon chair the idea was always to produce work that used strong reds to get across the whole ‘soviet’ feel, but the design, the composition was done just in mono, checking that the design worked long before colour finds it’s way onto the page.
And then there are the times that working this way tells you immediately that something is amiss, take a rough I was working on a couple of months ago, 1967 Monte Carlo Rally Mini, here was a great design in pencil, until I started to ink it in and work on it on the Mac, all of a sudden I could see something was very wrong with the composition, the balance.
So I went back to the drawing board as it were, got rid of the signs and hey presto the ‘balance’ is there, a now far stronger image, all discovered before any colour is added.
It’s not just artwork and graphic design that appeals to me in black and white, I can’t help but always be pulled in by great black and white photography. As by way of an example is this image taken in Canada earlier this year, 2011, using 35mm film on my Olympus OM2sp. The same image was taken by my wife at the same time, but in colour, on her DSLR and just didn’t work, the colours got in the way, but as a black and white print it works.
Regardless of what ever colours you have in your mind always start your design work in black and white and I promise you wont go far wrong, remember great design is like many things in this life, ‘fools rush in’.
Posted by Brent Meheux - 2/2/12 - Tags - black and white, mono, graphic design, mono
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