Media_Specificity
I think the Media Specificity lecture was a pretty broad topic and covered aspects of design from type and layout, to photography, to comics. So I'm going to make a list of designers that hopefully are quite broad too like the lecture and add to the database of designers that I'm piling up by going through with this task.
Jock
Jock is the pseudoym for a British based illustrator who has worked widely on comic books. Most famous for working on 2000 AD, The Losers and the Batman: Black Mirror story arc in Detective comics in 2011. I'm a big fan of his work and his work really caught my eye when I was reading Black Mirror. It's heavily stylised and breaks away from normal comic conventions, with dark lighting, and sharp inking with vivid colours. It's all very crisp.
Francesco Francavilla
Francavilla is an Italian comic book artist who often works on creator-owned titles such as The Black Coat and the Zorro series by Dynamite. He caught my eye in the same title that 'Jock' did, the acclaimed comic book - Batman: The Black Mirror. Jock and Francavilla have seemed to work on a few of the same titles, such as Black Mirror and Scalped. Scalped is a title I'm going to look into in the near future. I enjoy his work because it's got so much variety, some of it looks very 'grindhouse' and definitely takes inspiration from horror movies and b-movies of the 70s, and on the other end of the scale some of his work looks very classic and has the iconic comic book style of flat colours, with thick outlines with thick ink. He's also done unoffical commissioned illustrations and poster work for movies such as Dr. No and Pan's Labyrinth. He often uses the same 2-3 colours, that complement each other really well and makes it work, I find this useful and interesting.
Johannes Gutenberg
Gutenberg was a German blacksmith, publisher, printer and goldsmith who I find is relevant to the lecture as he's basically the godfather of movable type. Which kickstarted the printing revolution in the 13th century. Some of his most well known contributions are movable type that's mass produced, the use of oil based ink. The use of movable type drastically changed the way media was published, back then books were handwritten in Europe, this changed to movable type. This revolution spread throughout Europe and the world. Nowadays his name still lives on with the Gutenberg Press which is still widely used for letterpress and more traditional methods of printing. This finding by Gutenberg drastically changed the way mass media is printed, period. It's changed the way we interact with media such as newspapers, comics, magazines.
Storm Thorgerson
Storm and Aubrey Powell are both co-founders of Hipgnosis a British art and design group that specialised in album sleeves for rock musicians, most notably artists such as Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and AC/DC. One of their most iconic album covers is Dark Side of The Moon by Pink Floyd. It's simple and bold design The design represents three elements; the band's stage lighting, the album lyrics, and Richard Wright's request for a "simple and bold" design. Thorgerson still works on album covers, his partner Powell actually worked on some videos, notable for The Who.
Saul Bass
I knew of Saul Bass a long time ago, he's one of the most famous graphic designers ever and pretty much everyone is a fan of him, as am I. I was surprised to find out he's also made a massive mark on movie title sequences, some of which I've been a big fan of but never realised they were Saul's work. Check some of these out
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