Native American Motifs

The Washington Redskins

The Washington Redskins are a professional American football team.

Logo Designs throughout the History

 

1937 - 1951

1952 - 1959

1960 - 1964

1965 - 1969

1970 - 1971

1972 - 1981

1982

1983 - Pres

Over the years, the logos have changed slightly but they have always depicted the face of the chief.

Their logo is the face of an Native American chief facing the right. The chief's head is placed within a yellow circle that has some yellow feathers. The yellow comes from the team colors of burgundy and gold. One of the fans has been coming to all the games since 1978 dressed as the Chief, and this man goes by the name Chief Zee.

The strong bold yellow circle around the Chief may symbolise Protection and strength. Also in the Native American Indian culture, feathers represented the power of the thunder gods, along with the power of air and wind. The Native American chief looks traditional, serious and wise, this could be the mood that the Washington Redskins want to portray.

Motifs: 

The use of Traditional Indian feathers, circles and the colour yellow. 

National IndianParent Information Center's Logo

http://tiny.cc/zf8k8

william and mary college logo

http://tiny.cc/zf8k8

The Washington Redskins logo hasn't been changed to become more culturally appropriate through out history, The team has actually strengthened the iconic logo as years go by and this has offended people and has been called inappropriate numerous times. So the Washington Redskins will be changing their name and identity to prevent future media and culture controversies. 

The logo is to reflect the Teams name, as Washington has nothing to do with the Logo design the word 'redskin' takes full credit for the inspiration of the design. As "Redskin" is a racial descriptor for Native Americans and one of the color metaphors for race used in North America and Europe since European colonization of America. The term is controversial and considered by some to be offensive. I believe the intention of having that Native American theme was achieved but was not culturally aware on how this was going to personally effect some people and their background culture. So in the end, the logo and name  has become so unsuccessful it has resulted to going to supreme court over keeping or changing the title/logo design.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Redskins

http://www.sportslogos.net/team.php?id=168

http://www.dinesh.com/history_of_logos/nfl_logos/washington_redskins_logo_-_design_and_history.html

http://www.whats-your-sign.com/symbol-meaning-of-feathers.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redskin_(slang)

Melbourne Sports Museum Critques

Sporting Uniform: 'Swift Suit' made by Nike and famously worn by Cathy Freeman (runner) in 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, who glided to a gold in the 400-metre event.

The 'Swift Suit's' colour palette includes strong emerald green, bold canary yellow and shimmery white. The colour choice was you simply symbolise Australia's trademark colours, white represents safety, faith, purity and lets in positive energy.
The three colours contrast well and clearly outline the shapes in the suit making the design as whole look striking and dynamic.

Nike is busting out the Swift suit, This Specially made, one piece suit is made out of a thin, smooth Lycra material.
A hooded unitard which promises to maximize an athlete's potential by regulating heat and reducing drag, Netting at the back of the suit allows the skin to breath and Seaming is located in the back of the suit for aerodynamics.

The style, theme and design of the 'Swift Suit' is Futuristic (Futurism) and the shapes and symmetric patterning in the design look Abstract and the colour contrast (including the shoes) could be classified in the 'Pop Art' style by the use on bold dynamic colours together. 

I believe that Nike's design is very smart and effective, the way it is supportively made to enhance physical activity and how different fabrics strategically placed to allow minimum resistance and maximum efficiency. 

The colours are striking and clearly distinguishes Australia's 'Green and Gold' Trademarked colours. 

The logo's included on the front of the 'Swift Suit' are... 

AUS, 

the Nike 'swoosh' Logo, 

Olympic rings, Australia coat of arms and 

Sydney 2000 to represent the year.

  

Bibliography 

http://tiny.cc/hzuwv
http://tiny.cc/7ncb1
http://tiny.cc/ebh3t
http://www.dexigner.com/news/2206
http://www.yenra.com/nike/

Sporting Logo: The vector styled Logo of The Essendon Football Club, nicknamed The Bombers.
The logo is a symmetrical design, very dynamic using lots of sharp vertical and horizontal lines also built up from geometric shapes and tones of colour to create form and dimension. The Logo's text and Iconic image of an angry looking bomber aircraft is heavily outlines with a bold black shape helping to hold the two items together and creates a defined contrast with the vivid red and lighters shades on grey used in the logo. The Grey tonal usage works very effectively on the vector image of the bomber aircraft, It gives the aircraft movement and a more realistic and interesting form, it also give the logo as a whole, dimension, a metallic look and a bulky shape that creates a feeling of strength and sharpness. 

As a vector styled image the art style of Digital Art relates to the logo, also the bold stencil style of the logo can relate to Street art (Stencilling).

The way that the tone is used in different colours and the bold and simplicity of the design may symbolise then theme of Underground comix. 

The art theme: Vorticism is based on using geometric shapes and dynamic vertical/horizontal lines, both these styles are used in the Logo design for The Essendon Football Club.

Critiquing Tools

Art Vocabulary List

Positive space: is the area in an artwork that is occupied by elements or forms; it is the opposite of Negative space.

Cross Hatch: is an artistic technique used to create tonal or shading effects by drawing (or painting or scribing) closely spaced parallel lines. 

Visual hierarchy: is used in page design to help the viewer process information. The hierarchy can be used in several dimension, such as color, contrast, texture, shape, position, orientation and size. 

Medium: Any material used by an artist to produce a work of art.

Focal point: The element or object in a work of art on which the viewer's attention is focused. 

Adjective List

Tint; A slight colouring or faint tinge of any color; especially, a variation of a color obtained by adding white.

Organic:  shapes or forms. Shapes or forms that are non-geometric or free- flowing, and that are based on natural objects.

Smooth- Having a texture free from roughness and stubble. Which creates a smooth surface. 

Blurred:Out of focus, partially obscured, smudged, less distinct or clear.

geometric: Shapes with regular contours, and straight edges such as squares, triangles, or circles.

Principles and Elements of Design List

BASIC ELEMENTS OF DESIGN

Line: a length (straight or curved) without breadth or thickness; the trace of a moving point

colour: the appearance of objects (or light sources) described in terms of a person's perception of their hue and lightness (or brightness) and saturation.

texture: is the perceived surface quality of an artwork. It is an element of two-dimensional and three-dimensional design and is broadly distinguished by its perceived visual and physical properties. 

shape: s defined as an area that stands out from the space next to or around it due to a defined or implied boundary, or because of differences of value, color, or texture. Shapes can also show perspective by overlapping. They can be geometric or organic.

form: Form is sculptural or three-dimensional shape (e.g. height, width and dept)

BASIC PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN

Stability: The condition of being stable or in equilibrium, and thus resistant to change

dynamics:  Characterised by constant change, activity, or progress with shapes that have angles

rhythm: is the expression of visual harmony within a design

scale:Dimensional element's defined by other elements of design-size relative to other art, its surroundings, or in relation to human size.  Unusual or even unexpected scale can certainly be used as a attention  grabber. 

Style Time Line

Graffiti

Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property. Graffiti is sometimes regarded as a form of art and other times regarded as unsightly damage or unwanted.

To some, graffiti art is merely vandalism. But to many of our young generation, considered this as an art form that’s worth displaying in galleries and museums.

Graffiti started all over the world basically back when the cave men from them writings on the wall to the Egyptian time called hieroglyphics then in the urban times we just took from that and made it our sort of version we hate then more people took from that shaping it in different ways and different colors from names to art. 

Dating all the way back to 1 BC. 

Banksy

Ghostpatrol and Miso

Cubism

Popular cubism subjects are people or landscapes. They were represented as combinations of basic geometric shapes - sometimes showing multiple viewpoints of a particular image. 

This approach was related more to the way we see images in our 'minds-eye' rather than in real life, that is if we close our eyes and try to see an image, perhaps of a friend or a family member, it is often hard to visualise the 'whole' image - we usually see parts or fractured pieces. Cubist pictures are therefore often described as looking like pieces of fractured glass. 

Cubism was the first 'abstract' art style which began in the early 1900s when artists such as Georges Braque (French) and Pablo Picasso (Spanish) began painting in such a way that was far removed from traditional art styles.

Paul Cézanne 

picasso 

Toyism

Toyism is an art movement that rose to prominence in The Netherlands in the 1990s. Introduced by an artist using the pseudonym Dejo at the Veenmuseum in 1992, the toyist style of painting emphasizes narrative depictions featuring figurative rather than abstract objects focusing on aspects of the human condition. Stylistically, it features the heavy use of outlining, bold colors and craftsmanship. Toyist artists select a pseudonym and an icon which is incorporated into their paintings.

Miss Sassy

Mr. Dejo's

Art Deco

Art Deco ‎ is an eclectic artistic and design style that blossomed in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and jewelry, as well as the visual arts such as painting, graphic arts and film.

Art Deco's bold, linear symmetry was a distinct departure from the soft pastels and flowing asymmetrical organic forms

Hector Guimard 

Raoul Lachenal

Op Art

Op art, also known as optical art, is a style of visual art that makes use of optical illusions.

"Optical art is a method of painting concerning the interaction between illusion and picture plane, between understanding and seeing." Op art works are abstract, with many of the better known pieces made in only black and white. When the viewer looks at them, the impression is given of movement, hidden images, flashing and vibration, patterns, or alternatively, of swelling or warping

The term first appeared in print in Time magazine in October 1964, though works which might now be described as "op art" had been produced for several years previously. For instance, Victor Vasarely's painting, Zebras (1938), is made up entirely of curvilinear black and white stripes that are not contained by contour lines. Consequently, the stripes appear to both meld into and burst forth from the surrounding background of the composition.

Bridget Riley

Victor Vasarely

Naive art

Naive art is characterized by a refreshing innocence and the charming use of bright colors, child-like perspective and idiosyncratic scale. It portrays simple, easily-understandable and often idealized scenes of everyday life.

Brazil, the naive movement appeared at the end of the 1940s with the first exhibitions of Silvia de Leon Chalreo (1905-1987).

henri rousseau

Grandma Moses

International Typographic Style

Also known as the Swiss Style, is a graphic design style developed in Switzerland in the 1950s that emphasizes cleanliness, readability and objectivity. Hallmarks of the style are asymmetric layouts, use of a grid, sans-serif typefaces like Akzidenz Grotesk, and flush left, ragged right text. The style is also associated with a preference for photography in place of illustrations or drawings. Many of the early International Typographic Style works featured typography as a primary design element in addition to its use in text, and it is for this that the style is named.

Hofmann 

Mueller-Brockmann 

Pop Art

Pop art is a visual art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States

Pop art is a style of art which explores everyday imagery common to contemporary consumer culture. Source of subject matter commonly includes advertisements, product packaging, celebrities, and comic strips. 

Andy Warhol

Roy Lichtenstein

Pixel Art

Pixel art is a form of digital art, created through the use of raster graphics software, where images are edited on the pixel level. Graphics in most old (or relatively limited) computer and video games, graphing calculator games, and many mobile phone games are mostly pixel art.

The term pixel art was first published by Adele Goldberg and Robert Flegal of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in 1982. The concept, however, goes back about 10 years before that, for example in Richard Shoup's SuperPaint system in 1972, also at Xerox PARC.

Jason Huang

Gary J Lucken

eBoy

Shock art

Shock art is contemporary art that incorporates disturbing imagery, sound or scents to create a shocking experience. While the art form's proponents argue that it is "embedded with social commentary" and critics dismiss it as "cultural pollution", it is an increasingly marketable art, described by one art critic in 2001 as "the safest kind of art that an artist can go into the business of making today".

Evolved in the 20th century.

Damien Hirst 

Andres Serrano

http://en.wikipedia.org
crichtonscraft.com.au
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0HMU/is_3_28/ai_73023799/
www.artpainting-naive.com
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cube/hd_cube.htm