To obtain a greater understanding of what defines post modernist graphic design you must begin by looking at the aspects that define modernist design, and where modernist designers acquire their inspiration.
Modernist design as a generalization is born from a Europe that is in a transitional period of social and cultural change. Largely the vehicle for this social and cultural change was that of revolution and industrialization with in Europe.
It wasn’t until the later 19th century that modernist design started to appear, on European streets. It was the French who were the first to embraced, what was then, the evil of industrialization, beginning to take an optimistic outlook for the future. The first pieces design in the public eye would have been posters promoting cabaret shows and such like, a major part of the new modern ideology.
This a poster by Toulouse-Lautrec made in the 1890’s. It shows the first kind of movement away from fine art, with use of typography and simple design layout. It wasn’t until about ten years later that the rest of the industrialized nations with in Europe begin to embraces these French ideologies of optimism and change. It wasn’t until 1903 that functional design came to fruition with in Europe, which caused a major shift in the way design was viewed, bridging a gap between art and industry.
An example of early advertising design, for cocoa cola.
Futurism was really the first movement within modernism that completely rejected all old ideologies, and this quote by Marinetti the founder of futurism backs that up.
“There can be no nostalgia, no pessimism, there’s no turning back!”
(Marrinetti,1909,Graphic Style,page 90)
it is this gusto that can be seen in his early futurist work, with new way of manipulating text. With almost entirely text based works. What futurism was really trying to achieve was to renew and revitalize all aspects of human life. Like the change that futurist tried to apply to everyday life of the average person, 1920/30’s Russian constructivist also had the same theme. The Russian revolution was in full swing and graphic design was constantly in the public eye in the form of propaganda. Due to low literacy rates in the country among other reasons, designers such as Rodchenko believed that graphic design should coded signs, free from ornament. It is this idea that graphic design should be free from ornamentation that is a major difference between modernist and post modernist design, and will be crucial in assessing weather any aspects of graphic design made today is indeed, post modernist.
This is an example of Russian constructivist propaganda, with simple colorful style and layout, typical of this period.
Perhaps the most influential group of designers throughout modernism were designers that attended the Bauhaus. The Bauhaus enabled students to be multi disciplinary, and were aimed at producing design for mass production with functionality. It is this functionality that set the strap line for the entirety of modernism ‘form follows function’. The Bauhaus also had a philosophy of universality, another important aspect in defining modernism. This is demonstrated perfectly in Bayer’s typeface.
San serif typefaces are typical with modernism. This universality is embodied in the typeface Helvetica, created in Zurich, Switzerland by max Miedinger.
In summarizing what really defines modernism in a piece of design, you must look for its universality, functionality and real lack of ornamentation. Modernist designers favored the clean and simple.
To further develop this essay, it is now important for me to define Post Modernist design, looking at the influences that caused the movement and the characteristics it posses.
The postmodern environment within design, is said to of began in the 80’s, in collaboration with the age of electrical design. On a broad scale post modernism is the rejection of orthodox modernist simplicity and purity, and reverts back to portraying something in a more ornamental manner. It could be said that it is less precise, more about form that the piece of design takes. Post modernism is a mixture of theories and practices. A true post modernist would need to embrace such eighties styles as neo-dada, neo-expressionism, punk and pacific modern. Post modernism takes inspiration from the exuberance of historical art, and the raw technology, to produce a commercially expectable look. Below is a quote from Simon Reynolds from the guardian newspaper in 1990, it demonstrates how diverse post modernism is in terms of it inspiration for the movement itself.
“Generally post modern artists like to mix the highbrow and the populist, the alienating and accessible, and the ‘sample’ elements different t styles and eras…
now you can reinvent yourself endlessly, gaily pick ‘n’ mixing your way through the gaudy fragments of a shattered culture”
(Simon Reynolds,The Guardian,1990)
This quote describes perfectly the style and inspiration of postmodernism.
Postmodernism can be seen not only in graphic design, but through out any form of design, and is especially prevalent in architecture and textiles.
Text based graphic design in its modernist form, would follow rules and order, however in postmodernist graphic design there is a sense of spontaneity and inclusion for the viewer.
The image above shows a book cover created by Wolfgang Weingart. Here you can see the way in which the text has been manipulated to include an almost interactive sense to the on looker, defiantly showing a sense of spontaneity which is common in post modernism. You can say that post modernism really pushes the boundaries of legibility.
During the early 80’s punk was in full swing, and this gave way for post modernist designers to explore exciting and chaotic ways of demonstrating the style, collaging was very popular at this time, and was considered a mainstream technique. As I explained earlier post modernist graphic designers had a huge effect on the architecture of the time, gone of the days of housing estates, built for purpose, hello to the stylized buildings of postmodernism.
Postmodernism is really a responses, or attack of modernism. Where the strap line for modernism was “form follows function’ perhaps postmodernisms would be ‘everything has already been done’. Its looking at technology and the advances that have been created from it, and rejecting them. Has technology driven our lives to exhaustion?
Now knowing the diffences in modernist and postmodernist graphic design, its time to look at graphic design today, and asses the criteria of postmodernism and compare to what is being created now.
“postmodernism was a passing fad, the best thing about it, is that it is dead.”
(bigthink.com/ideas/19593)
Massimo Vignelli, believes strongly that post modernism was never really a period at all, merely a fad, a false idea in its entirety. This approach is to one sided, there are aspects of graphic design today that demonstrate higher levels of ornamentation as apparent in the large majority of typography with in advertisements. The typography below shows an example of type as image, surely this by definition cannot be modernist graphic design, as it is not the legibility that is paramount but the form that it takes.
(par of virgin mobile advertising campaign)
Modernist design incorporated ideologies of simplicity and symbolism, with in post modernism, there is a much more expressionate, literal way of working and this is demonstrated primly in the advertisement for ‘ink this 2’
Its obvious that some of the inspiration for the piece of work will have come from the romantic painters, and combined with the technology used to create it, it proves that post modernism exists, and exists today.
David Carson is a famous American designer, who holds a lot of postmodernist ideologies. Not only does he design work today but it’s constantly in the public eye suggesting not that postmodernism is coming to a limping end, but in fact still influencing the decisions of the people. Like in the punk stages of postmodernism.
In conclusion, to me it is very apparent that postmodernist theory and practice is still occurring, throughout graphic design, to say that postmodernism is at an end is foolish. The thing I would say however is that modernism as whole was given around 70 years to flourish and develop. The ideologies of postmodernism have still only been given 25 years. Postmodernism, if following trend, should continue to develop for a lot longer into the future.
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