Category: Art & Design

Manifestos that forward artistic endeavours and better design

Kim Mok: The Manifesto Manifesto

Kim Mok The Manifesto Manifesto

Creator: Kim Mok, Copywriter

Purpose: To poke some fun at Manifestos.

Manifesto

How to Write a Manifesto

Today, we write a manifesto.

Today, our second sentence starts with the first word of the first sentence.

We write a short sentence.

Then a shorter one.

Then a really, really long one that maybe doesn’t make any sense but is immediately followed by

One.

Word.

Sentences.

Then we make our point even clearer

By using fragmented prepositional phrases.

By repeating that first preposition.

By doing it a total of three times.

And then we have another really long sentence that builds up excitement for our overarching concept that is summed up in a word that makes absolutely no sense.

Kumquat.

Source

Website: http://www.kimmok.com/514799/The-Manifesto-Manifesto

Thanks to Gihan Perera for sharing this with us.

A Design Education Manifesto

A Design Education Manifesto

Creator: Mitch Goldstein, graduate student pursuing a Master of Fine Arts degree in Visual Communication at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Purpose: “…how to go through a design program and get the most out of the experience, and beyond as a creative professional.”

Manifesto

A Design Education Manifesto (selected highlights)

Always take risks.

You should be pushing yourself and you should be taking risks, especially in school. Big risks. Trying what may not work. Asking questions that may not have answers. Seeing if what you throw against the wall sticks.

Be aggressive.

Some professors will push their knowledge on you. Others will make you pull what you need from them. Ask questions of both. Challenge their statements. Ask for precedents.

Break the rules.

Defying the rules forces you to stray from the path of least resistance and ultimately make work that is more interesting, more meaningful and more fun to create.

Look at everything. Dismiss nothing.

Everything has potential to be interesting and influential. Not everything will be, but the more you see the better your chances are at seeing something that will be useful to you.

Be obsessive.

Obsession is what drives you to explore and find out as much as possible about something that interests you.

Be uncomfortable.

It is easy to get into the habit of making the kind of work you are comfortable making. Truly great, interesting, inspiring design comes not from comfort but from discomfort.

Be opinionated.

You should have opinions about design and the world around you. Preferably, you should have strong opinions. Ideally, you should have strong and informed opinions.

Be a cop.

A designer needs to act like a cop. When you are a designer, you are a designer 24/7/365. Always noticing, always observing, always designing, even if only in your head.

Source

Complete Manifesto: http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/a-design-education-manifesto

The Filmmakers’ Vow of Chastity

Festen - First Dogme 95 Manifesto Movie

Creator: Dogme 95 is an avant-garde filmmaking movement started in 1995 by Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg.

Purpose: Highlights traditional filmmaking values of story, acting and theme and excludes the use of overblown special effects or technology.

Manifesto

The Filmmakers’ Vow of Chastity

1. Filming must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in. If a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found.

2. The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. Music must not be used unless it occurs within the scene being filmed, i.e., diegetic.

3. The camera must be a hand-held camera. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted. The film must not take place where the camera is standing; filming must take place where the action takes place.

4. The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable (if there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera).

5. Optical work and filters are forbidden.

6. The film must not contain superficial action (murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.)

7. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden (that is to say that the film takes place here and now).

8. Genre movies are not acceptable.

9. The film format must be Academy 35 mm.

10. The director must not be credited.

Sources

General: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogme_95

Image: Festen or The Celebration was the first Dogme movie made. It was produced by Thomas Vinterberg.

The Cheap Art Manifesto

The Cheap Art Manifesto

Creator: Bread and Puppet Glover, Vermont 1984

Purpose: Art is at its best when it is available to all, not just business and museums who can afford to buy it.

Manifesto

The Why Cheap Art? Manifesto

PEOPLE have been THINKING too long that ART is a PRIVILEGE of the MUSEUMS and the RICH. ART IS NOT BUSINESS!

It does not belong to banks and fancy investors

ART IS FOOD. You can’t EAT it BUT it FEEDS you.

ART has to be CHEAP and available to EVERYBODY.

It needs to be EVERYWHERE because it is the INSIDE of the WORLD.

ART SOOTHES PAIN!

Art was up sleepers!

ART FIGHTS AGAINST WAR AND STUPIDITY!

ART SINGS HALLELUJA!

ART IS FOR KITCHENS!

ART IS LIKE GOOD BREAD!

Art is like green trees!

Art is like white clouds in blue sky!

ART IS CHEAP!

HURRAH!

Sources

General: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_manifesto#Cheap_Art_Manifesto_1984

Description plus Image: http://www.aisling.net/bus/cheapart.htm

Architectural Centre Manifesto

Architecture Centre Manifesto

Creator: The Architectural Centre is a voluntary organisation of architects, artists, designers and the like with an interest in the built environment in Wellington, New Zealand. They formed in 1946 with the aim of creating a manifesto, although nothing was completed or published. This one was completed on the 60th anniversary of the organisation in 2006.

Purpose: The general aim is to improve the urban environment in Wellington, New Zealand.

Manifesto

The Architectural Centre: Manifesto for Architecture

  1. Architecture must be better than what it replaces. (Fresh air is better than some buildings)
  2. Architecture relies on intelligent government. (Mindless bureaucracy will only create mindless architecture)
  3. Architecture needs an assertive public. (Architecture will only thrive if the public demands this)
  4. Urban Environments must be planned (but not only by planners)
  5. Recycle Architecture; Good architecture is elegant environmentalism (Continued human existence relies on having planet earth in our future: ditto for the next planet)
  6. Architecture must facilitate better living. (The delights of good design – light, warmth and pleasure etc – must be cherished)
  7. Bad building must be eliminated. (Wellington is too important for soulless buildings; buildings designed heartlessly for profit are not architecture)
  8. Architecture must be celebrated. (New architecture is our future heritage)
  9. Architecture has an obligation to challenge (Controversy has a positive role in architecture)

Sources

Architectural Centre Inc: http://architecture.org.nz/about/

Image: Geoff McDonald, Walter Read Reserve, Oxford Street, Sydney

Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto

Boccioni - Elasticity - Futurist ManifestoCreator: Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, published in French as ‘Manifeste du futurism’ in Le Figaro on 20 February 1909.
Purpose: To launch an art movement that celebrates speed, machinery and the modernisation of Italy.

Manifesto (extract)

The Futurist Manifesto

We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness.

  1. The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt.
  2. Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist.
  3. We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath … a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.
  4. We want to sing the man at the wheel, the ideal axis of which crosses the earth, itself hurled along its orbit.
  5. The poet must spend himself with warmth, glamour and prodigality to increase the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements.
  6. Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.
  7. We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed.
  8. We want to glorify war — the only cure for the world — militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman.
  9. We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice.
  10. We will sing of the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure and revolt; the multi-colored and polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern capitals: the nocturnal vibration of the arsenals and the workshops beneath their violent electric moons: the gluttonous railway stations devouring smoking serpents; factories suspended from the clouds by the thread of their smoke; bridges with the leap of gymnasts flung across the diabolic cutlery of sunny rivers: adventurous steamers sniffing the horizon; great-breasted locomotives, puffing on the rails like enormous steel horses with long tubes for bridle, and the gliding flight of aeroplanes whose propeller sounds like the flapping of a flag and the applause of enthusiastic crowds.

It is in Italy that we are issuing this manifesto of ruinous and incendiary violence, by which we today are founding Futurism, because we want to deliver Italy from its gangrene of professors, archaeologists, tourist guides and antiquaries.

Sources

About the Manifesto: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurist_Manifesto

Full transcript: http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/T4PM/futurist-manifesto.html

Image: Clipped section from Umberto Boccioni ‘Elasticity’ 1912.

Ban Comic Sans

Ban Comic Sans Manifesto

Creator: Holly and David Combs
Purpose: To ban the use of the font Comic Sans and preserve the quality and traditions of typography.

Manifesto

Ban Comic Sans Manifesto

We believe in the sanctity of typography and that the traditions and established standards of this craft should be upheld throughout all time.

From Gutenberg’s letterpress to the digital age, type in all forms is sacred and indispensable.

Type is a voice; its very qualities and characteristics communicate to readers a meaning beyond mere syntax.

Early type designing and setting was so laborious that it is a blasphemy to the history of the craft that any fool can sit down at their personal computer and design their own typeface.

Technological advances have transformed typography into a tawdry triviality.

The patriarchs of this profession were highly educated men.

However, today the widespread heretical uses of this medium prove that even the uneducated have opportunities to desecrate this art form; therefore, destroying the historical integrity of typography.

Like the tone of a spoken voice, the characteristics of a typeface convey meaning.

The design of the typeface is, in itself, its voice.

Often this voice speaks louder than the text itself.

Thus when designing a “Do Not Enter” sign the use of a heavy-stroked, attention-commanding font such as Impact or Arial Black is appropriate.

Typesetting such a message in Comic Sans would be ludicrous.

Though this is sort of misuse is frequent, it is unjustified.

Clearly, Comic Sans as a voice conveys silliness, childish naivete, irreverence, and is far too casual for such a purpose.

It is analogous to showing up for a black tie event in a clown costume.

We are summoning forth the proletariat around the globe to aid us in this revolution.

We call on the common man to rise up in revolt against this evil of typographical ignorance.

We believe in the gospel message “ban comic sans.”

It shall be salvation to all who are literate.

By banding together to eradicate this font from the face of the earth we strive to ensure that future generations will be liberated from this epidemic and never suffer this scourge that is the plague of our time.

Sources

Website with Resources: http://bancomicsans.com
As mentioned in Simon Garfield, Just My Type

Yvonne Rainer: No Manifesto

Yvonne Rainer

Creator: Yvonne Rainer (1965)
Purpose: To revolutionise dance and reduce it to its essential elements.

Manifesto

No to spectacle.
No to virtuosity.
No to transformations and magic and make-believe.
No to the glamour and transcendency of the star image.
No to the heroic.
No to the anti-heroic.
No to trash imagery.
No to involvement of performer or spectator.
No to style.
No to camp.
No to seduction of spectator by the wiles of the performer.
No to eccentricity.
No to moving or being moved.

Sources

The Manifesto : http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_was_Yvonne_Rainer%27s_NO_Manifesto

Yvonne Rainer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yvonne_Rainer

Image: http://www.lafilmforum.org/index/Winter_2010/Entries/2010/1/10_Yvonne_Rainer_Retrospective_%28Part_6_of_8%29.html

Thanks to Helen Omand for sharing this manifesto.

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