Postmodernism Is not a style, but a group of approaches

motivated by some common understandings,

Characteristics of Postmodern Art and Design:

Montage

Pluralism, stylistic eclecticism

Surface

Parody/Irony “contrived depthless-ness”

Fragmentation

Randomness

Unpredictability

Juxtaposition of Styles

End of originality. Art can only be repetitious.”

Stands in opposition to the

ordered rationality of Modernism.

The 60's Toots of postmodernism

Pop is born

Communities of opinion

and belief readers identified with

each other through style– graphic,

music and fashion.

Fasion

Music

Communities forming based on magazines

push pin studios Milton Glasser, Seymore Chwast

A new pluralism

emerged from the

“ME” generation, a

spirit of the 60’s,

pluralistic, eclectic,

hedonistic, and anti -

establishment.

are you experience-jimi hendrix

became the moto

Graphic novel comics and edgy adult literature form hybrids- Village Voice, Rolling Stone.

pushpin studios cleaned up the late 21st century

Rejections of the International style by young Swiss designers- Began in Basel through the teaching of Wolfgang Weingart-

energy of motives begins to loosen the hold and gives the swiss style a new way to design a page

New Wave- european design updated for postmodernism design

Gets a bigger hold on the west coast than the east coast, It burst on the west coast because of the culture, there were more open artists. The east coast such as new york was still very corporate.

Questions the customs of typographic arrangements and Swiss typographic decisions.

Every Graphic convention or assumption was up for interrogation...

Wolfgang first designer to work with a computer

The Swiss Poster 1984 offset litlograph first poster made on the macintosh

Idea of rupturing the picture plan'

Willi Kuntz-One of the first new wave spreads

Conservative but still involved with dividing the picture plan in half

he was the segway into corporate world in New York

Rosmiare Tissi, Siegfried Odermatt, shared his passion for a more intuitive approach

Playfulness

not taking yourself to seriously

bold stair stepped rules - micheal mayburry vandevile

Early days of the computerfirst with the paint boxes and later with the first Machintoshs.

Postmodernism: appropriation, to copying styles, was no longer naive nostalgia but calculated because the past itself was considered invented....

what ever you want to work with because everything was considered inventive.'

Hatch letter printing press is famous for doing blues and western posters

Charles Anderson-

CSA Archive - collection of historic

line art and illustrations.

trends...retro punk funk

Nevel Brody: urban primitive

typographic configurations

become iconic emblems glyphs

emblematic of British new wave

music- They become Iconic

In the 90's people started ripping off his style

The idea that people could create their own typefaces sooo they did. It was the second wave of the typographic era

Deconstruction is the idea of really questioning, it's a form of questioning, a way of looking at anything that is a representation of nature culture, it's about asking questions that disturb the way we feel about something.

Speech the poorest form of expression. Writing is the second

Glas, 1974 by Jacques Derrida

designed by Richard Eckersley

Derrida’s writings were unconventional: A sentence might begin on page 319 and not end until page 322; a single footnote might run the length of an article; two separate narrations might share the pages of a book.

The Idea of information architecture being explored

deconstruction is a way to read

“texts” (as broadly defined);

any deconstruction has a text as its object and subject.

normative :

SEE IMAGE –––––– READ TEXT

deconstruct:

SEE TEXT ––––––– READ IMAGE

ED FELLA

distinctly unsystematized... inspires “Grunge”

If type is a systemized system what can I do to unsystemize it.

Ed Fella- all had done cut out type, he created everything with his hands to add a personal touch

emigre magazine, tried to harness the new type/design world

It's the idea that the designer has something to say

that type doen't have to be unmeaningful

David Carson Disruptive and

disturbed... attacking the “grand narratives” of type and design.

grand narrative

a myth or faith bassed statement that encompasses how we got here why we are here and how we should live story telling in the interest of the powerful.

Everyone was making type and the internet made it possible to sell it

Text and Img period

Questioning motives

disturbing the unknown

Post-Structuralism - challenging hierarchies

computer age

signifier and the signified

Words are not merely codes,

using them is a behavior, and

the behavior alters their

meaning.

Structures in the mass media can be reshuffled and re-inhabited.

Mau views graphic design as a restrictive discipline...

instead expands it to economies of information...

challenging hierarchies:

tentativeness, slipperiness,

ambiguity and the complex

interrelations of culture and

meanings...

Emphasis on the body, the actual insertion of the human into the texture of time and history...

rupture of the picture plan

fragmentation- and the electronic media-

The 90’s a rethinking of the ways order can be

achieved...

Chip Kidd book designer

Stock photographs onto the covers of fiction

We don't read the imgs as imgs we read them as text

It's all about the now movement

If the past is now and the future is now then where do we go from here? To the left? To the right? I enjoy postmodernism but maybe that's just because it is the now. Thinking of it that way really makes me look at it a different way. It seems more valid maybe since it's now. My brain is totally scrambled now. But i'm excited to be apart of a movement.

Barbara Kruger's stand for what she think is right I feel is very admirable. And shows the strength that most women should.

How to pick a good typeface

img1

img2

img3

img4

The legibility of a typeface has anexact parallel in the audibility of a human voice.

type, the voice of the printed page, can be legible and dull, or legible and fascinating, according to its design and treatment.

What the book–lover calls readability is not a synonym for what the optician calls legibility

That is, it is very unlikely that a type-founder or composing–machine manufacturer would produce and offer to good printers a face of which any 2 characters had confusing similarity

The size must be chosen in view of whether the work is one of reference that is, to be read in short sections by people who are concentrating, or a novel to be read uninterruptedly by people who are enjoying themselves, or an educational book for young and reluctant eyes.

Though any size may be called "unreadable" when it is too small or even too large for a given purpose

Set a page in Fournier against another in Caslon and another in Plantin, and it is as if you heard three different people delivering the same discourse –– each with impeccable pronunciation and clarity

Perhaps the layman would not be able to tell one old-style setting from two others of the same group; yet he could not read the tree pages in turn without at least a subconscious discrimination.

Baskerville and Fournier were both designed during the eighteenth century, and some people thing that they represent in miniature, the clarity and good manners of that age.

It would be better first to remember that Baskerville, being relatively generous in set–width, will "drive out" the book; whilst Fourier, a neatly condensed face will be more frugal of space.

Thus Pride and Prejudice by Jane Auseten, produced by Peter Davies Ltd. had a large amount of text to begin with, and not too many pages were to seperate one illustration from the next: Fournier, in a beautifully legible small size, solved the problem.

Baskerville Printed on bulky paper, has saved many a fine book from seeing to offer less than the money's worth

The word "set" which appears in our type specimen books, means that an actual type of the widest letter in the front (M) will be as many points wide as the number giver.

Some typefaces are more sucessfull in the sizes above 11 pt. than in those below it

Bodoni demands in justice exquisite printing for 6-8pt. Saslon and Garmond seem to improve as the sizes increase.

Fournier and monotype are very successful in the smallest settings as well as normal sizes.

Centaur is fine in any size

Baskerville's experiments; the difficulty arises in the fact that a smooth-finished surface of paper takes the inked copy with such ease that little or no impression into the fabric of the paper is necessary, and therfore, the only ink which comes off they type is that on the actual printing surface.

"kiss" impression of thousands of shallow dots of metal on smooth paper is different from the pressure of a deep–cut type and wood–block into damped paper.

The modern printer is versatile, our ancestors never would have thought it to be. he prints from a rotary as well as a flat surface and often from rubber or copper cylinders

But some survival of crafr tradition prevents many printers from realizing that a face, like an ink or a paper can be suitable or unsuitable for a given process.

If a monotype user has four body composition faces, and each well–designed and adapted to a particular printing process, and if the four designs are sufficiently different to convey four different "tones of voice" it would be inordinate to expect that man to increase his type repertory without very good reason.

Nowadays italic is thought of as a part of the whole font loosely called "roman." but the appearance in a page, or even a long sentence, in italic would show why this form of letter, at least until the middle of the sixteenth century, was considered as an entirely separate alphabet.

Neither it nor the body roman must be to discrepant in weight serif treatment, and general appearance. Perpetua is one of the few types which may be said to have "a greek" in the sense that most romans have "an italic"

The almost superstitious regard for caslon old face has been such that only a typographer of our own time has dared to point out that its capitals, especially the capital M, are so heavy in contrast to the lowercase that very often they create a spotty effect

If the craft is to maintain its touch with the real world, must always be considered first and foremost. But beyond all the questions of relative width, color, suitability for certain processes, and optical legibility, lies the whole fascinating field in which the skilled typographer is at home

The first is that before any question of physical or literary suitability, must come the question of whether the face itself is tolerable or intolerable as a version of the roman alphabet.

If the letters, however pretty in themselves, do not combine automatically into words; if the fourth consecutive page begins to dazzle and irk the eye, and in general if the pages cannot be read with subconscious but very genuine pleasure, that type is intolerable and that is all there is about it.

There are bad types and good types

The second generalization is, that the thing is worth doing. It does genuinely matter that a designer should take trouble and take delight in his choice of typefaces.

The best part of typographic wisdom lies in this study of connotation, the suitability of form to content. People who love ideas must have a LOVE of words, and that means, given a chance they will take a vivid interest in the clothes which words wear.

They will use such technically indefensible words as "romantic," "chill," "jaunty" to describe different typefaces. If they are wise, they will always admit that they are dealing with processes of the subconscious mind, mere deft servants of the goddess Literature.

img1. is a good example of how good type can still look bad. It's a good Idea but not very well thought out. There is too much spacing between the paragraphs and not enough between leading. the white on blue is horrible, It is also a good example of how a "classy" typeface can attempt to have a modern look.

img2. is an example of a good display of text even though it's showing you a variety of faces they are still spaced nice, but it is showing a favorite on a typeface which this article said you should not have, for if it is a good typeface it can be used or not used but shouldn't only be used or cast aside.

img3.Is just an example of how type can look good in many different ways and shows a variety of things you can do to experiment with type. Even though it is set at an angle it is still legible and set nicely. I think it's just a good way to show that even though it's different or the typeface looks different that it doesn't mean it should be cast away. And also shows that it is appropriate for the page that it is on.

img4. is a better example of what a good text body can look like. It has meaning and a purpose for being made. It's set in a tolerable face with a good amount of leading. I think the gutter is a bit large but that may just be me.

International style flourished during

the 60’s in the two Swiss cities:

Zurich and Basel

Swiss design did most of the first graphic design books

unfeeling unemotional -> just facts

Emil Ruder-universe type face

Armin Hoffmann published a graphic design manual

master of the poster

boslo school took more chances

he plays with the rules of swiss design

type could be visual and verbal

Josef Muller Brockman

swiss grid wrote grid systems

his posters considered masterpieces

music poster-used stankowski's tectonic elements to express music visually

the shifting creates rhythm

Created a visual counterpart to the structural harmony of Music.

The Swiss Movement had a major

impact on American Graphic Design

and the emerging field of corporate

graphics. The two ultimately merged.

fight of who was going to control american design

the golden age of logo

Critics of Swiss design claim it suppressed the role of content and the “voice” of designers

producing a rigid and severe style that had inflexibility at and sameness of form.

Paul Rand: cared about the audience familiarity

appreciated humor and wit, and child play

he did not follow the strict approach to the formalities of Graphic Design, he gained by his travels and what he worked with

UPS logo, they got rid of the package because of the string they didn't want people using it anymore

enron- bad things in co. america

art imitates life

control there message, and maybe even hide their faults. from the pubic by changing their logo design

Chermayeff and Geismar Associates

“Early Design office” with strong

aesthetic background through

educational diversity of the partners.

also did a little bit of film

they are responsible for most media design

Vignelli he will not go down without a fight

Unigrid system, developed in 1977 for the United States National Park Service by Vignelli Associates-

strict but flexible grid system

Knoll

Herbert Matter- 1950’s- 60’s

menely is on one exream swiss and paul rand on the other more flexible

Media revolution-

“The Society of the Spectacle,”

- Guy Debord

print fought to be relevant, it had to get more involved with entertainment

fasion becomes important in print and tv

henry wolf- tip of the hat

photo shoots became the hallmark of photography and advertising, very little use for illustrations at this time

george lois -genius

tells him they have to make it more racy

The model was formulated by Rand

early in the 40’s. In the 60’s the role of

art director and copywriter formed the

creative soul of the firm.

he set the level of response

esquire magazine

Lois most innovative concepts grew from his ability to understand and respond to the people and events of his era. Staying in touch with his times vital.

Herb Lubalin

Photo-typography Became viable with the establishment of a firm in New York 1936. The perfected technology finally allowed an expansion in the mid 50’s.

It was drawn very big then shrunk down no space negative leading

decorative type faces

Term was “figurative typography”

he used american work all the way it was really the laucnh of post modernism

provoke the audiance, make it simple, make it direcet, speak to them

I think it's so amazing that the arts and life all around influence each other. It's crazy to think about he movements in terms of inventions which in a round about way I think makes it easier for me to understand. And now I understand better about how post modernism and graphic design played off of each other.