Postmodernism at V&A

It was such a rich exhibition I have to post about this. The exhibition on postmodernism at V&A was large in content, sectioning its involvement in different practices; fashion, product, graphic, music, performance and costume, films, personal journals, architecture, photography etc. The exhibition plots its influence on designers and artists very clearly, and the presentation was striking! Whoever the curator was to organise this, is genius. The theme titles were neon-signed, the pieces were installed in a very appropriate way, obedient to the theme postmodernism. As V&A puts it, postmodernism is "an unstable mix of the theatrical and theoretical. " It exaggerates, kicking a drastic departure from modernism which was based on clarity and simplicity. From about 1975 to 1990, postmodernism brought freedom to art and design and was led to New Wave met with technology. Grpahic design in this period is playful, experimental and decorative, with use of collage technique, vivid colours and geometry shapes. Wolfgang Weingart was the first graphic designer to adapt this movement into the field of graphic design, whose stair-stepping visual motif has become the trademark of postmodern graphic design. I personally love punkyness in postmodern designs, which I believe should not be vanished. As I blogged earlier, pure geometry is the simplest and the most impactful element that is used in design.

time to time

thinking back my life, there were so many times that I didn't necessarily have to act cool.
caught up with prejudice and pride, I made things difficult, taking a tougher way to get passed.
I can't say I've overcome this strange habit because nothing really challenges me, but I still take my pride important.
Being alone may have been better than being with someone who'd keep challenging me at the moment, but I was scared then... now I understand all the psychological path I took along the way and it's pathetic. Hopefully one day, I am most confident and therefore generous enough to announce the feelings I had to others.

How dublin is branded

I went on a three day trip to Dublin right after the holiday broke. The last brief of the first term was the hometown branding brief set by Marc, and it kept me look for 'Dublinness' during the trip. While I was walking around the town, I noticed some its use of colour in branding limits to yellow/green/blue. Green is the representative colour of Dublin, because of the clover, (that's been branded for a long history) and yellow and blue seemed to harmonise to the symbolic colour. I found Dublin quite familiar because of its similar rainy and gloomy atmosphere to London, but to say it definately was an exotic city. It has signages in their own language throughout the city, especially inside the tram on the map on the wall, the name of each station was labelled in its own language. The city was branded very much for tourists with souvenir shops everywhere just like in London, but it also had many local shops and restaurants that weren't found anywhere else. I didn't feel its identity as strong as I did in London, but perhaps it's because I experienced London first where is comparably similar to Dublin. Its style of typeface used is consistent with a sense of Irishness, and these were seen mostly in souvenirs or pub signs where image of tradition is bound to appeal.