Canalblog
Editer l'article Suivre ce blog Administration + Créer mon blog
Publicité
palimpsests & other things
2 novembre 2011

No more rules, graphic design and postmodernism

The products of postmodern culture tend to be distinguished by such characteristics as fragmentation, impurity of form, depthlessness, indeterminacy, intertextuality, pluralism, ecclectism and a return to the vernacular. Originality, in the imperative modernist sense of ‘making it new’ ironic recycling of earlier forms prolifere.

The modernist poet T.S. Eliot observed ‘It’s not wise to violate rules until you know how to observe them’. This is a truly observed point of view that we should master one’s discipline before seeking to disrupt it.

 Referenced to John Lewis, a British designer who published in 1963 Typography: basic principles, in which a chapter is dedicated to ‘Rules are made to be broken’. He writes ‘Before you start breaking the rules, you should know what they are’.

Lewis believed that there was even a place for illegibility, for mixing up fonts and mutaliting letters, if it would serve the message by ading more excitement. However, when it came to book design no interference between author and reader could ever be justified.

In 1981, the American designer Bob Gill summarized the thinking behind his 25 years as a designer with a two-sentenced book title that was a manifesto in itself: Forget all the rules about Graphic Design. Including the ones in this book.

From early 1990s, every principle and ordinance created by earlier generations has been subjected to continuous assault. Edward Fella, an American designer then in his late forties has a pivotal place in these developments. Fella was essentially self-taught, but his rule-breaking method was grounded in a thorough acquaintance with design’s conventions.

David Carson, took a diffarent view, arguing without embarrassment that it was his ignorance of rules, that allowed him to produce designs that seemed to many to resemble nothing ever encountered before in commercial print media. ‘There’s no grid no format. I think it ends up in a more interesting place than if it just applied formal design rules.’ 

This new theory of designers trusting to their intuition of what will work has provoked several years of soul-searching in design schools. During that period, the materiality of typographic form takes precedence over linguistic sense. By opposition to the work of the French graphic designer Massin. What an intellectual graphic designer able to play with words as well as their translation in design. Illustration of Ionesco’s books... Illustration and writing of Cocteau...

Designers re-examined existing rules and forges new approaches. New technologies has opened up graphic production and expression to many more people. Postmodern graphic designers are deeply implicated in a consumer culture that makes ever more ingenious use of design as a tool of seduction.

Today’s lifestyle provides tomorrow’s nostalgia. The good thing about nostalgia is that you can recycle ideas without being accused of petty larceny. It can be considered as a recognition of the talent of previous designers.

from Rick Poynor, published in 2003 by Laurence King Publishing Ltd

 

Publicité
Publicité
Commentaires
Archives
Publicité
Publicité