Joseph Muller-Brockmann 1962
1.
The International Style
In Switzerland, just after World War II, elements of Futurism, Constructivism and the Bauhaus were distilled into a utopian system of grids, sans serif type and neutrality known as the International Style. The visual system was based upon the belief that the typography should be totally clear allowing no distraction from the content.
This visual order had no links to historical traditions and eschewed any references to culture or geography. Its adaptability to any place and application — architecture, furniture, product and graphic design—allowed it to become a world-wide style, or international style.
Below: Modernism must be on everything!--a wine label by Massimo Vignelli
The Corporate Takeover of American Modernism
The stylistic influences of Modernism and The International Style on American graphic designers may have originated in the work of the European Futurists, the Constructivists or the designers of the Bauhaus, but the social utopianism of those movements never reached the United States. Ironically this style was used by postwar global capitalists to promote their large multi-national corporations. The abstraction and simplicity of this style worked well as a unifying language of corporate identification across continents.
2.
Reactions to Modernism: Pop Art
A movement that blurred the lines between art, commerce and popular culture. After the large-scale pop art exhibition at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York in 1962, Pop Art established itself as a serious, recognized form of art. This exhibition became a turning point for Modernism when a series of critics foresaw the end of modernism and the beginning of the postmodern era. Although Pop was treated more as entertainment, it had a serious impact on the period. Leading American artists of the Pop Art movement were Andy Warhol (above), Roy Lichtenstein (below).
1.
Punk
The punk phenomenon (London, c. 1976) expressed a rejection of prevailing values in ways that extended beyond the music. British punk fashion deliberately outraged propriety with the highly theatrical use of cosmetics and hairstyles, clothing typically adapted or mutilated existing objects for artistic effect: pants and shirts were cut, torn, or wrapped with tape, and written on with marker or defaced with paint; safety pins and razor blades were used as jewelry.
Punk included elements of irony, absurdist humor and genuine suspicion of mainstream culture and values.The DIY (Do it Yourself) aesthetic of punk created a thriving underground press.
In March 13, 2001, an English panel of judges composed of editors and artists gave their highest honor to the controversial artwork of Jamie Reid (top), calling it the "best record cover ever produced." More...
(above) Reed poster, Anarchy in the UK auctioned by Christie's.
1.
Post Modern Architecture
The term Postmodernism designates an international architectural movement that emerged in the 1960's. The movement largely has been a reaction to the orthodoxy, austerity, and formal absolutism of the International Style.
The practitioners of postmodern architecture tended to reemphasize elements of metaphor, symbol, and content in their credos and their work. They share an interest in mass, surface colors, and textures and frequently use unorthodox building materials.
Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown realized the first post -modern structure in suburban Philadelphia in 1961. (above) They used the vernacular elements of chimney and arched doorway to signify a traditional home environment.
"In addition to the immediacy of its unique formal and functional qualities, the house is rich in references to historic architecture. The monumental street facade alludes to Michelangelo's Porta Pia in Rome and the back wall of the Nymphaeum at Palladio and Alessandro Vittoria's Villa Barbaro at Maser. On the other hand, the broken pediment recalls the 'duality' of the facade of Luigi Moretti's apartment house on the Via Parioli in Rome." See quote source
3. New Wave Graphic Design
Wolfgang Weingart is a German graphic designer credited as the progenitor of New Wave typography. According to Weingart, "I took 'Swiss Typography' as my starting point, but then I blew it apart, never forcing any style upon my students. I never intended to create a “style”. It just happened that the students picked up —and misinterpreted— a so called 'Weingart style' and spread it around.”
How well was his progressive idea about typography received at that time? Weingart recalls, "in my presentations in 1972, there was always a group of audience that hated it, one group that loved it, and the rest would all leave during the lecture.”
It wasn't until the early eighties, when his American students like April Greiman and Dan Friedman (above 1971 poster) brought back to the US a wealth of typographic arsenals from Basel and co-opted it into the mainstream of graphic design. From April Greiman's ´hybrid imagery" to David Carson's deconstructive page layouts, anarchy reigned supreme in the nineties. Those were the days for graphic design superstars, whose style many a graphic designer adored and imitated. While no one can give a definitive answer as to whether these American graphic designers took what Weingart did and brought it to new heights, they certainly managed to make it a huge commercial success. "They were doing it as a style and it was never my idea to create fashion," denotes Weingart. The teaching at Basel for Weingart is not about trends but a 'stability' that they try to move away from, but never totally.
Dan Friedman (1945-1995)
New Wave/Radical Modernism
Known for his work at Ansbach and Grossman and Pentagram, Friedman grew to feel that modernism had devolved into a bland, soulless surface treatment. (His Citibank logo of 1975 above.) He invented the term Radical Modernism to distance himself from both the formal constraints of Modernism and the post modern label. Friedman was attempting to reconcile the social idealism of the early 2oth Modernists with the realities of his life in 1980's New York City.
"Radical modernism is my reaffirmation of the idealistic roots of our modernity, adjusted to include more of our diverse cultures." In his text, Radical Modernism, Freedman illustrates his work in diverse mediums,- experimental furniture, sculpture, posters, logos, books, installations, typographic lessons, and his apartment. "Friedman argued that design was in crisis and urged designers to see their work in a larger cultural context..
Friedman's philosophy quoted from Eye shortly before his death in 1995.
'In the 1960s I saw graphic design as a noble endeavor, integral to larger planning, architectural and social issues. What I realized in the 1970s, when I was doing major corporate identity projects, is that design had become a preoccupation with what things look like rather than with what they mean. What designers were doing was creating visual identities for other people - not unlike the work of fashion stylists, political image consultants or plastic surgeons. We had become experts who suggest how other people can project a visual impression that reflects who they think they are. And we have deceived ourselves into thinking that the modernization service we supply has the same integrity as service to the public good. Modernism forfeited its claim to a moral authority when designers sold it away as corporate style.
To read more...
Robert Rauschenberg
Rauschenberg influenced painting, sculpture, cinema, music, theater and most certainly graphic design. It is evident that his work, incorporating photographic images and the theme of technology was a major influence on post modern designers.
"The human-machine interaction that is so important in Rauschenberg's art as a whole is crucial here. The symbiosis of of the human and the technological."
The Print in the Western World,
Linda Hults,1996
(above) Booster from the 'Booster and Seven Studies'
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, (1970)
Soviet/American Array III, 1988
April Greiman
Although initially educated in the Modernist style at Kansas City Art Institute, Greiman was later influenced by Wolfgang Weingart in Switzerland to break from Modernism. She moved to California where she was inspired to use the computer as a means of artistic expression and exploration of new image generation. "It's not just Graphic Design anymore. We don't have a new name for it yet."
Ms Greiman synthesized the complex layering style of artists like Raushenberg and the aesthetic of New Wave typography with the new capabilities of the computer to become a visionary pioneer of digital design.
(Above) Her 1987 life-sized centerfold for Minneapolis Walker Art Center's Design Quarterly has become an icon of the digital era. Below her US Postage Stamp, 1995
In 1984 Rudy VanderLans and Zuzana Licko, both Europeans relocated in the US, started an independent type foundry and publication Emigre Graphics, in Berkeley, California. Their publication, Emigre magazine was a collection of essays, interview, reviews and font showcases that circulated between 1984 and 2005. You can read a selection of past articles here.
To come in 2009
Designing Outside the Lines
Design and Social Conscience
Tibor Kalman | M & Co.| Please read the entire article on this inspiring social activist designer on the AIGA Medallist web site ..here..(excerpt below)
When the clothing company Esprit, which had prided itself as being socially liberal and environmentally friendly, was awarded the 1986 AlGA Design Leadership award, an irate Tibor anonymously distributed leaflets during the awards ceremony at the AlGA National Design Conference in San Francisco protesting the company's exploitation of Asian laborers. Tibor believed that award-winning design was not separate from the entire corporate ethic and argued that many bad companies have great design. In 1989, as co-chair with Milton Glaser of the AlGA's Dangerous Ideas conference in San Antonio, he urged designers to question the effects of their work on the environment and refuse to accept any client's product at face value. He is most known for his work with Benetton Colors Magazine.He used the magazine as a vehicle to explore contemporary social issues including aids, racism, power and sex.
Dared to Design Without a Licence
David Carson did not go to art school but he did earn a degree in Sociology and he was a pretty decent surfer. With a very limited exposure to formal graphic design education, he nevertheless learned enough to pursue experiments with typography. Carson created some unorthodox, interesting and highly controversial work which he showcased in Ray Gun Magazine in 1992. Despite some initial criticism, Carson won over the hearts and minds of many—as evidenced in this quote from his current web site:
Typography, a title published by Graphis, lists Carson as a "Master of Typography." I.D. magazine chose Carson for their list of "America's most innovative designers". A feature in newsweek magazine said of Carson "he changed the public face of graphic design"... Emigre devoted an entire issue to Carson, the only American designer to be so honored in the magazine's history. And in April 2004, Creative Review magazine calls David, "the most famous graphic designer on the planet".
Deconstruction in Literature
Jacques Derrida: French Proponent of Deconconstruction in Literature
For a semi-comprehensible description go here:
Derrida's work focuses on language. He contends that the traditional, or metaphysical way of reading makes a number of false assumptions about the nature of texts. A traditional reader believes that language is capable of expressing ideas without changing them, that in the hierarchy of language writing is secondary to speech, and that the author of a text is the source of its meaning. Derrida's deconstructive style of reading subverts these assumptions and challenges the idea that a text has an unchanging, unified meaning. Western culture has tended to assume that speech is a clear and direct way to communicate. Drawing on psychoanalysis and linguistics, Derrida questions this assumption. As a result, the author's intentions in speaking cannot be unconditionally accepted. This multiplies the number of legitimate interpretations of a text.
Deconstruction shows the multiple layers of meaning at work in language. By deconstructing the works of previous scholars, Derrida attempts to show that language is constantly shifting. Although Derrida's thought is sometimes portrayed by critics as destructive of philosophy, deconstruction can be better understood as showing the unavoidable tensions between the ideals of clarity and coherence that govern philosophy and the inevitable shortcomings that accompany its production. More...
The Cranbrook Academy of Art (Michigan), under the direction of Professors Michael and Katherine McCoy, became a center of Post-Modernist discussion from the mid 1970s. What emerged became know as the 'Cranbrook Discourse' widely publicized intersection of post-structuralism and graphic design.
Designers at Cranbrook had first confronted literary criticism when they designed a special issue of Visible Language on contemporary French literary aesthetics, published in the summer of 1978. Daniel Libeskind, head of the Cranbrook architecture program, provided the graphic designers with a seminar in literary theory, which prepared them to develop their strategy: to systematically disintegrate the the series of essays by expanding the spaces between lines and words and pushing the footnotes into the space normally reserved for the main text. French Currents of the Letter, which outraged designers committed to the established ideologies of problem-solving and direct communication, remains a controversial landmark in experimental graphic design."
From Ellen Lupton
Design Writing Research
Student Ed Fella, came to Cranbrook after over 20 years as a commercial artist. His hand-crafted aesthetic explored a contrast to immaculately finished computer-aided graphic design. Go see his work.
Elliot Earls
The current chair of 2D design at Cranbrook moves the conversation forward.
"Paul Rand is a pygmy walking in the footsteps of giants. In the essay I discuss the idea that Paul Rand is still the archetype for the vast majority of graphic/info/interactive designers, and that he was a pygmy raised by giants. I postulate that he fundamentally misunderstood the work of men like Kurt Schwitters, and that the institutions of design (schools, museums and magazines) are bastions of neo-conservatism that seek to define design solely in terms of a designer/client relationship and a traditional problem solving methodology...There was a period after World War I where some of the greatest artists of the time (the giants of which I speak) were as important to the history of architecture, painting or photography as they were to the history of design. I hear all of the time that what I do is not design. Well, frankly, I see that as a damning indictment of our times, not of my work." More...
above Elliot Earls
Stephan Sagmeister
1996
“My goal for the rest of my life is to touch someone's heart with design”
Austrian Sagmeister's work can make viewers feel a bit uneasy — chickens with their heads cut off, words scratched into his own skin and giant cow's tongues. Sagmeister "defines how to get attention in a way that creates an idea."
Now located in New York City his small studio, Sagmeister Inc, turns out "all things printed."
I'd like to end the semester with a touching little
film about Sagmeister. "Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far" on the Hillman Curtis web site. It is worth the 5 minutes.
(PS. There is a Things I Have Learned in My Life web site too.)