Modern and postmodern style in graphic designThe art of graphic design is considered a form of communication where the subject and the object where able to send message visually, that is by using text and/or images to present information or to simplify, to convey a message.
It embraces a wide range of cognitive skills and talent which includes typography, image development and layouting. The term “graphic design” may be applied both to commuincation design as well as in fine arts. It also entails a certain kind of procedure where the entry-point is designing, where the communication is created; and followed by the by-product called design, which primarily is composed of creative solutions, imagery and multimedia compositions. It is also being applied to books, magazines and brochures for its covers.
However, in the the emergence of the computers, graphic design has also widened its scope to include designs crafted using electronic media where the output is most commonly known as an interactive design or a mutlimedia design.It has been said that graphic designs are works that are mostly drawn, painted, photographed, or even computer-generated images. It is also involving those designs crafted for the letterforms that make up various typefaces found in movie credits as well as in television advertisements and in books, magazines, and menus. It can also be seen even on computer screens.
The graphic designers mostly are the ones responsible for the creation, choices, and organization of design elements such as typography, images, and the so-called “white space” around them in order to communicate a message. It has been a widely known fact that graphic design has become part of our daily living. From humble things like shirt designs to huge things like billboards to the jeans one can be wearing, graphic design seeks to inform, persuade, organize, stimulate, locate, identify, attract attention and provide pleasure.Graphic design is an entirely creative process that combines both the art and technology to communicate ideas.
The graphic designer works with a variety of communication tools in order to convey a message from a client to a particular audience. The primary tools which is said to be the graphic artist’s magic tools are image and typography.In addition, graphic design can also be image-based. It develops images to represent the ideas their clients want to communicate.
Images can be incredibly powerful and compelling tools of communication, conveying not only information but also moods and emotions. People respond to images instinctively based on their personalities, associations, and previous experience.In the case of image-based design, the images must carry the entire message; there are few if any words to help. These images may be photographic, painted, drawn, or graphically rendered in many different ways.
Image-based design is employed when the graphic designer determines that – in a particular case – a picture is indeed worth a thousand words.Aside from being image-based, it has been said that graphic design can also be typed-based. In some cases, graphic designers rely on words to convey a message, but they use words differently from the ways writers do. To designers, what the words look like is as important as their meaning.
The visual forms, whether typography or handmade lettering, perform many communication functions. They can arrest your attention on a poster, identify the product name on a package or a truck, and present running text as the typography in a book does. Designers are experts at presenting information in a visual form in print or on film, packaging, or signs.Graphic designers also often combine images and typography to communicate a client’s message to an audience.
They explore the creative possibilities presented by words or what has been commonly coined as typography and images may it be photography, illustration, and fine art. It is up to the graphic designer not only to find or create appropriate letterforms and images but also to establish the best balance between them.Graphic designers are also considered the link or the connection between the client and the audience. On the one hand, a client is often too close to the message to understand various ways in which it can be presented.
The audience, on the other hand, is often too broad to have any direct impact on how a communication is presented. What’s more, it is usually difficult to make the audience a part of the creative process. Unlike client and audience, graphic designers learn how to construct a message and how to present it successfully. They work with the client to understand the content and the purpose of the message.
They often collaborate with market researchers and other specialists to understand the nature of the audience. Once a design concept is chosen, the designers work with illustrators and photographers as well as with typesetters and printers or other production specialists to create the final design product.Apart from the means on how to present graphic designs, it has been said that symbols as well as logos are deemed important in any work of art much so in making or creating a design. Symbols and logos are special, highly condensed information forms or identifiers.
Symbols are abstract representation of a particular idea or identity. Some active “television” are symbolic forms, which we learn to recognize as representing a particular concept or company. Logotypes are corporate identifications based on a special typographical word treatment. Some identifiers are hybrid, or combinations of symbol and logotype.
In order to create these identifiers, the designer must have a clear vision of the corporation or idea to be represented and of the audience to which the message is directed.However, there exists certain degrees in graphic design much like in any other field of communication and art. It may involve from those verbally communicated ideas, to visual rough drafts, to final production. Meanwhile in the commercial art, what matters most in graphic design are the client edits, technical preparation and mass production, which are usually required, but usually not considered to be within the scope of graphic design unless the client is also a graphic designer.
Design elements in graphic design are the basic tools in every design discipline. The elements which includes shape, form, texture, line, value, and color has composed the basic vocabulary of visual design. Meanwhile, design principles such as balance, rhythm, emphasis, as well as unity, constitute the broader structural aspects of the composition.As early as the 19th century, the modernist view in graphic design emerged.
Modernist graphic designers such as Bauhaus in Germany, the De Style in Holland, and Constructivism in Russia, share essentially the same Modernist ideology as designers like Paul Rand, Massimo Vignelli, and Eric Spiekermann. The primary idea behind modernism in graphic design is that the articulation of form should always be derived from the programmatic dictates of the object being designed. In a much laymanized manner, it can be well-described as a form which strictly follows function.In addition, it has been said that modernism in graphic design was formed part in most art schools where the pedagogical strategies were developed that continue to this day in design schools.
It is a formalist, rationalist, visual language that can be applied to a wide range of circumstances.However, modern design of the early 20th century is much like the fine art of the same period. It was a reaction against the decadence of typography and design of the late 19th century. The hallmark of early modern typography is the sans-serif typeface.
Early Modern, not to be confused with the modern era of the 18th and 19th centuries, typographers such as Edward Johnston and Eric Gill after him were inspired by vernacular and industrial typography of the latter nineteenth century. The signage in the London Underground is a classic of this era and used a font designed by Edward Johnston in 1916.Modernism in graphic design has started as early as the 1920s. During that time, the Soviet Constructivism as an art is applied as an ‘intellectual production’ in different spheres of production.
The movement saw individualistic art as useless in revolutionary Russia and has moved towards creating objects for utilitary purposes.Members employing the Soviet Constructivism has designed buildings, theater sets, posters, fabrics, clothing, furniture, logos, menus and others.To illustrate, it has been said that modernist designer Jan Tschichold codified the principles of modern typography in his 1928 book, New Typography. He later repudiated the philosophy he espoused in this book as being fascistic, but it remained very influential.
Tschichold, Bauhaus typographers such as Herbert Bayer and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and El Lissitzky are considered the fathers of graphic design. They pioneered production techniques and stylistic devices used throughout the twentieth century. Although the computer has completely altered production of graphic designs, the experimental approach to design has remained.Soon after the principles of the Bauhaus were then applied also to the popular advertising as well as logo design in order to create a uniquely American approach to European minimalism while becoming one of the principal pioneers of the subset of graphic design known as corporate identity.
This has been extremely amplified after the post-World War II American economy as manifested in advertising and packaging. This has been primarily brought about the emigration of the German Bauhaus school of design to Chicago in 1937 where it paved way for minimalism in America.Notable names in mid-century modern design include Adrian Frutiger, designer of the typefaces Univers and Frutiger; Paul Rand; and Josef Müller-Brockmann, who designed posters in a severe yet accessible manner typical of the 1950s and 1960s.Meanwhile, postmodernism is a period in art or even culture which was estimated to have started at around 1950s up until the present.
It is a non-traditional movement. Although there has been a lot of shared themes and philosophies, nothing perhaps could unify or put into place th extent of postmodernism.It is primarily a skill in visual communication where what matters most is not the meaning but the aesthetic sense. The major defining fators of postmodernism in graphic design is style as well as technique.
It has been said that the visual style of postmodernism in graphic designs is charcterized by the obsession with style, as earlier mentioned. With all the visual embellishments and the dominant figure in an appearance, it has been said that the meaning is totally wiped out and it becomes all the way imaginary, in effect both has been mixed interchangeably. The two most common modes of communication where parody and pastiche leading to a culture of irony.Some themes found in work that are manifested from postmodern view in graphic design include the identity politics; the gaze; money as the mediator of all relationships; panopticism; hyper reality; and in general power, who has it and what structures create it.
In addition, postmodernism in graphic design has been said to have manifested several characteristics which might probably laid down the distinction from the modernist view. It has been said that postmodernism is manifested in the sphere of art and culture as the unfettered expression of the social outlook of the petite-bourgeoisie. It rejects science and its application to social affairs. Its salient features are promotion of a lack of order or organization and opposition to communal objectives and social purpose.
It is anarchic, individualist, and claims to be value-free. Post-modernism cannibalizes and recycles everything old to produce the “new” which is merely recycled. In art and graphic design, the habits of this approach involve removing a central, organizing theme, giving equal prominence to disparate elements, and bringing the background to the foreground.However, postmodernism in graphic design has not created much impact in the industry.
It has been said that postmodernism in graphic design for the most part has been a visual and decorative movement. Many designers and design critics contend that postmodernism – in the literary or architectural sense of the term – never really impacted graphic design as it did these other fields. Alternatively, some argue that it did but took on a different persona. This can be seen in the work produced at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan during the late 1980s to late 1990s and at the MFA program at CalArts in California.
But when all was said and done, the various notions of the postmodern in the various design fields never really stuck to graphic design as it did with architecture. Some argue that the “movement” had little to no impact on graphic design. More likely, it did, but more in the sense of a continuation or re-evaluation of the modern. Some would argue that this continuous re-evaluation is also just a component of the design process – happening for most of the second half of the 20th century in the profession.
Since it was ultimately the work of graphic designers that inspired pop artists like Warhol and Liechtenstein, and architects like Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown, it could be argued that graphic design practice and designs may be the root of postmodernism.Furthermore, graphic design saw a massive popular raising at the end of the seventies in form of Graffiti and Hip Hop culture’s rise. Graphic forms of expression became a vast everyday hobby among school kids all around the developed western countries. Along side this ‘movement’, that took rebellious and even criminal cultural forms, was born the mass hobby of coding computer graphics.
This phenomenon worked as a stepping stone towards the graphic infrastructure that is applied in the majority of computer interfaces today.Moreover, another article also carried with it the same argument which stated that there has been little or no impact of postmodernism in the graphic design industry. To wit, it stated that postmodernism did not have much impact on graphic design until the middle of the 1980s. Initially, many designers thought it was just undisciplined self-indulgence.
A hodgepodge of styles with no unifying ideals or formal vocabularies, dreamed up by students in the new graduate programs. But in fact, it was a new way of thinking about design, one that instigated a new way of designing. Designers began to realize that as mediators of culture, they could no longer hide behind the “problems” they were “solving.”;One could describe this shift as a younger generation of designers simply indulging their egos and refusing to be transparent like a crystal goblet.
Or you could say they were acknowledging their unique position in the culture, one that could have any number of political or ideological agendas.It also stated that the vernacular, high and low culture, pop culture, nostalgia, parody, irony, pastiche, deconstruction, and the anti-aesthetic represent some of the ideas that have come out of the 80s and informed design practice and theory of the 90s. After the 80s designers may still choose to be anonymous, but they will never again be considered invisible.On the other hand the distinction primarily lies on the usage of the traditional types or era in the graphic design timeline.
It has been said that the prime mover of postmodernism was Jan Tschichold as well as W.A. Dwiggins.It has been said that Tschichold as a modernist graphic artist has often employed asymmetric typography where designers have placed immense respect to calligraphy and other classical work.
It has also been said that his work has formed part of the history of graphic design as a precedent of the mdoern-day typography as it represent a diversified ideology and style. His work was said to have ranged from a craft-based calligraphy.It also has been stated that Dwiggins translated traditional values and aesthetics into a modern sensibility. He was considered a tireless experimenter with form, who took inspiration for his work from eastern cultures, history, and new technology.
Unlike Tschichold, Dwiggins never embraced the Modernist movement nor was he deified by it. However, he was absolutely committed to being a modern designer.Although Dwiggins’s and Tschichold’s work seems to have little in common, there is a similarity in how their work was initially misrepresented. Tschichold was celebrated as a Modernist typographer, which downplayed his more substantial body of design and writing based on traditional and classical ideas.
On the other hand, Dwiggins has always been represented as a traditional designer in spite of the innovative and experimental nature of most of his work.It has only been in recent years that discussions of Tschichold and Dwiggins have expanded to include the full scope and plurality of their work. That is because the postmodern context has encouraged diversity and complexity, and given us a critical distance to assess Modernism and its ramifications. In the postmodern era, the line dividing modern and classical, good and bad, new and old, has, like so many lines in graphic design today, become very blurry, distressed and fractured.
It also have been a fact that in the late 80s, an anti-aesthetic impulse emerged in opposition to the canon of modernist “good design.” It was a reaction to the narrow, formalist concerns of late Modernism. It staked a larger claim to the culture and expanded the expressive possibilities in design. The new aesthetic was impure, chaotic, irregular and crude.
A point that was so successfully made, in terms of style, that pretty much everything was allowed in the professionalized field of graphic design, and from then on typography would include the chaotic and circuitous as options in its lexicon of styles. In fact, most of the formal mannerisms of the late 80s have continued to predominate throughout the 90s. But now it’s no longer an ideologically relevant, or even new style – now it’s just the most popular commercial style.Meanwhile, the distinction can be drawn easily between the two views in graphic design.
It has been said that postmodernism is as a movement against modernism.;Modernism in graphic design is primarily believed in the universal spirit of man, while in the postmodernism view, it sees that as diversity destroying, non-pluralistic, overly-rational, and dangerous. Modernism also believed in purity and truth and rational thinking while the postmodernism saw all things as being skewed by the economic-cultural-historical-gendered perspective of all readers and writers. In modernism, the symbols as used as metaphors for deeper truths while in postmodernism, the symbols as stylistic devices that have no deeper truth since what has been important is the aesthetic sense and not the meaning within.
This only means that there is no truths that there has been no distinction lying between the two schools of thought in graphic design.It also has been said that the progressive modernism is riddled with doubt about the continued viability of the notion of progress. Conservative modernism, in the United States at least, has fallen prey in the political realm to the influences of the Church in the form of the so-called religious right which in recent years especially has seriously undermined the very constitutional foundations of the whole American experiment.The postmodern is deliberately elusive as a concept, avoiding as much as possible the modernist desire to classify and thereby delimit, bound, and confine.
Postmodernism partakes of uncertainty, insecurity, doubt, and accepts ambiguity. Whereas Modernism seeks closure in form and is concerned with conclusions, postmodernism is open, unbounded, and concerned with process and “becoming.”The post-modern artist is “reflexive” in that he/she is self-aware and consciously involved in a process of thinking about him/herself and society in a deconstructive manner, “demasking” pretensions, becoming aware of his/her cultural self in history, and accelerating the process of self-consciousness.This sort of sensitivity to cultural, ethnic, and human conditions and experiences has been ridiculed by conservatives in recent years as “political correctness.
“Effects of modernism and postmodernism in graphic designThe idea of postmodernism is expressionism. It is considered as a sphere of art and culture filled and dominated with the expression. It has been said that the primary effect of modernism in graphic design is that it rejects science and its application to social affairs. Its salient features are promotion of a lack of order or organization and opposition to communal objectives and social purpose.
It is also considered anarchic, individualist, and claims to be value-free as it does not follow any standard or norm in order for a visual art to be communicated.As earlier mentioned, what matters essentially is that message is expressed or conveyed clearly. In addition, postmodernism also has the effect of cannibalizing and recycling almost everything old to produce something “new” which is merely recycled. In art and graphic design, the habits of this approach involve removing a central, organizing theme, giving equal prominence to disparate elements, and bringing the background to the foreground.
In an article written by Wesly Hurd, he stated that the central characteristics of postmodernism present us with a radically different way of looking at life. To quote, “At this point, however, we need to remember the proverb that says ‘If you want to know about water, don’t ask a fish!” The postmodernist elements of our culture are to us like water to the fish: we live and breathe in them everyday, but we take them so much for granted that it is very difficult for us to see them. He added that perhaps the most general characteristics of postmodernism are fragmentation and pluralism.Our culture is rapidly reaching the point where we no longer think of ourselves in a universe but rather a multi-verse.
In the postmodern worldview, transience, flux, and fragmentation describe our growing sense of how things really are.”In addition, the same article also stated that at the level of the individual there abides a sense of uncertainty about how to understand oneself. Most people consciously search for a sense of identity–for who and what they are and for what significance and worth they have. Our media-generated consumer culture daily offers us a thousand choices for who we should be like, what we should value, and how we can attain worth and significance.
And we take these images for what is real. It has been illustrated as manifested by tennis pro Andre Agassi can say “Image is everything!” in an advertisement, and certainly the audience would believe him as manifested in the graphic design of the famous athlete.The same article also illustrated the effect of postmodernism as that which is recent, wildly successful sitcom “Seinfeld” vaunts itself as a “show about nothing.” Isolated, narcissistic, urban, “thirty-something singles” float through their existences trying to make sense out of what they ultimately perceive to be a meaningless, patchwork world.
These actors portray individuals with no roots, vague identities, and conscious indifference to morals outside their self-determined ones. George riotously works out his “pathetic” life “going with” whatever works for him at the moment in jobs, scams, or relationships. The commercial and critical success of this show is attributable not only to the genius of its script, character development, and acting, but also to the way the audience identifies with the fragmented, ludicrous, pastiche of “moments” which make up the characters’ lives. Seinfeld is uniquely postmodern in its presentation of groundless, malleable character identities.
;It is also postmodern–as are most TV sitcoms today–in its radical, up-front play with “moralities” altered at the characters’ whim; there is no one morality.It also stated that it has been nowhere are the effects of postmodernism more glaring than in pop culture and its media. Hurd said that the image and fiction are promoted as reality in contemporary music, television, and print media by producers who understand the power of visual image to present a fictional reality that we will accept as reality itself. Dissolving the distinction between fiction and truth is justified by the postmodernist, because truth itself is a fiction; all we ever get are the fictions of our language games.
The quintessential example of postmodern media production is MTV. From its fast, fragmented production editing to its underlying visions, MTV represents the “cutting edge” of postmodernism applied to consumer media. MTV’s editors “collage” the shows together into a jumpy, stream-of-consciousness presentation that leaves older viewers baffled by its pace and apparent incoherence. But to the postmodern “generation-X” crowd who make a steady diet of it, MTV’s randomness is normal.
MTV’s twenty-four-hour parade of images, pseudo-documentaries, hedonistic dating-scenario game shows, music videos, and cutting-edge advertisements relentlessly assault one’s visual and auditory senses, leaving viewers feeling fragmented and transient within a decentered plural-reality: the postmodern world.In his conclusion, Hurd said that the postmodern outlook is characterized by that which is increasingly influencing our lives at both the individual and social levels. According to the arcile of Hurd, he focused on the negative aspects of the postmodern theory as it dismantles or “deconstructs” the traditional and modernist paradigms that have preceded. Meanwhile, it has been said that the effect of modernism in graphic design is that it detracts the attentiveness of the audience.
It has been said that modernism was never a really style, but an attitude. This is often misunderstood by those designers who dwell on revivals of the form rather than the content of Modernism.What probably is the clear effect is that Modernism is set to be employed as design and typography to serve the function of communication in the most effective, efficient manner, while the content of Postmodern is to challenge, enthrall, arouse, and entertain by expressing the personality of the artist.The most controversial aspect of the modern movement was and still remains its rejection of tradition.
Modernism’s stress on freedom of expression, experimentation, radicalism, and primitivism disregards conventional expectations. In many art forms this often meant startling and alienating audiences with bizarre and unpredictable effects: the strange and disturbing combinations of motifs in Surrealism, or the use of extreme dissonance and atonality in modernist music. In literature this often involved the rejection of intelligible plots or characterisation in novels, or the creation of poetry that defied clear interpretation.The central characteristic of Modernism is its rejection of tradition.
It emphasizes the return of the arts to their fundamental characteristics, as though beginning from scratch. This dismissal of tradition also involved the rejection of conventional expectations. Hence Modernism often stresses freedom of expression, experimentation, radicalism, and even primitivism. In many art forms this often meant startling and alienating audiences with bizarre and unpredictable effects.
Hence the strange and disturbing combinations of motifs in Surrealism, or the use of extreme dissonance in Modernist music. In literature this often involved the rejection of intelligible plots or characterisation in novels, or the creation of poetry that defied clear interpretation.In some fields the effects of Modernism have been stronger and more persistent than in others. In visual art the break with the past has been most complete.
Most major capital cities have museums devoted to ‘Modern Art’ as distinct from post Renaissance art. Examples are the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate Gallery in London, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. In such galleries, there is no distinction between Modernist and Post-Modernist phases. Both are seen as developments within ‘Modern Art’.
The idea that we are ‘modern’ is a characteristic of every age and Western culture has long been driven by the idea of constant progress and change as a positive value. What went out of the window with postmodernism was the idea of originality; the ‘original’ new was rejected and replaced by the concept of ‘reference’ and ‘quotation’. So to be ‘post-modern’ meant, in one respect, the end of the new. The idea of finding something authentic and original was discarded.
Indeed, ‘newness’ in postmodernism was regarded as the product of re-combining one or more different elements from within existing culture. ‘Mixing’ was not just something to be done on turntables, but with styles of architecture, music, food, furniture, with genres of film and photography and so on. ‘Newness’ came through a referencing of bits from various existing cultural elements that were usually kept separate. Thus an image then called a ‘text’ had to use, quote or refer to other ‘texts’.
While this was an old social process — one that the cultural anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss had long ago defined as bricolage, to be post-modern you had to wear your ‘intertextual reference’ on your sleeve for all to see. Today some scholars assert that this design is used to meet the expectations of a younger generation trained in computer graphical interfaces in video games, rock videos, and computer programs. With an overbroad brush, MacKenzie identifies the style with both youth culture and the style magazines pioneering deconstructionist typography, such as Émigré, The Face, Ray Gun and now Bikini began on the margins, but now occupy the mainstream of youth culture.What would have appeared unapproachable, meaningless clutter a decade ago is now a preferred leisure reading material for a particular youth subculture.
In this respect it has been given that there are no universal rules for typography but that readers are most at ease with the style they are most familiar with. In an environment in which products must be target-marketed, then this is an important conclusion which should influence advertising design and editorial layouts. On this point, Katherine McCoy is a prominent spokesperson as the 1995 president of the American Center for Design. She says, One significant trend is toward specialized audiences, focused messages and eccentric design languages tailored to each audience’s unique characteristics and culture.
We are witnessing the end of one era of mass communications and the beginning of another: narrowcasting instead of broadcasting, subcultures instead of mass culture, and tailored products instead of mass production.Specialized audiences often communicate in vernacular languages or specialized jargon. Rhetorical styles vary radically from low key to ‘in your face,’ from colloquial to formal. This is true for visual-style languages and; symbolic visual codes, as well.
Will editors and advertisers have to use this style and postmodern philosophy to tailor information for youth? If this style meets the needs of advertisers and communicators who target the young adult population, then we should see evidence of this in magazines aimed consciously at youth.Yet, a sampling of magazines that do use this design style will not support this assertion. From discussions in the design literature, it seems the best known examples of the application of this style to both editorial and advertising copy are Bikini, Eye, Émigré, and Wired which are not aimed at youth but a more select target audience — the cultural community of artists, writers and intellectuals.According to researchm, it has been said that Émigré’s audience is graphic designers themselves: One specialized audience has always been other graphic designers–design for designers.
Paper company promotions and, more recently, cutting-edge magazines such as Émigré have provided graphic designers with opportunities for idiosyncratic graphic expressions. Bikini, Eye, Émigré, and others are aimed at a cultural community which seeks to express his own artistic inclinations. Discussing the arrogance of artists who impose their personal creativity on readers, John Bielenberg says: Just like an addict creates a lust for drugs or alcohol, the designer develops a craving for the new, the visually compelling and the beautiful. The image becomes an end in itself.
The graphic language sometimes takes a dominant role over the message being communicated. Graphic designers have developed a hyperliterate visual sense and a highly refined appreciation for the craft of graphic design. Conflict often exists when you combine the intoxication of craft, exposure to and interest in cutting-edge design with the engineering of a client-driven message to a client-defined audience. It does not arise from a desire to meet the expectations of younger audiences — or if it does it shows a failure to recognize the different tastes, aesthetics and visual literacy of the artistic community and the general population of young people.
Wired magazine – an example Media commentators recognize Wired’s design style as representative of this design trend adopted by “hip” magazines, comparing it’s creative design to another group of artistic community lifestyle magazines — Raygun, Sassy, and Inside Edge.There is no evidence that Wired is youth-oriented, nor is it the magazine of choice of computer experts, rather it is a business-oriented publication popularizing trends within a particular industry: In fact, according to Advertising Age, some 84 percent of Wired readers are managerial professionals with median household income of well over $80,000. They may be revolutionaries, but they also happen to be the legions of M.B.
A.’s graduating each year from business schools around the country, where Wired is a must-read. Wired’s creative editor doesn’t appeal to the either the “techie” or youth market for justification of his editorial design. He has said, “I sometimes have to sacrifice readability when I’m pushing the edge of the envelope on design”.
Taking a position in the magazine industry on the basis of style and image is more important than providing readable information on the topic. If we accept that the magazine is there to provide a vehicle for the advertisers, then this need come as no surprise.This brings us back to and explains the free play given to the arrogant attitude of designers who see themselves as artists rather than as information designers. Foregrounding occurs not only where you’d expect it, in ‘picture-making’ typography, but even in journals in which words matter.
There are a number of magazines which do target the youth market — if not specifically, the Generation X segment. These include Details, Swing, Spy. These particular magazines do not use the interactive 2D design style in editorial text. They infrequently or sparingly use it in artistic displays.
The only other evidence of the style in their pages is in some of the display advertisements. Their editorial content is delivered in the modernist style — or functionally, as I would prefer to put it.Readers will select for purchase and loyalty those magazines which provide them with lifestyle connections: advice, guidelines, examples, and a community of tastes. This can even be a self-conscious choice.
One young Vancouverite, asked about his choice of magazines, indicated he reads “lifestyle magazines” like ID and Cameo which address the “cultural underground”. But while younger readers cope well with, and even seem to enjoy the interaction with new fragmented typography, older generations of readers, conditioned to static simplicity of traditional printed pages of continuous text, are disinclined to make the necessary effort to reconstruct a text. In informal exploratory research, older readers dismisses the multiple, fragmented, disrupted texts of the new typography as ‘illegible’ and ‘meaningless’. It has been admit that there is no research to support the conclusion that youth prefer this typographic and design style.
To date, little research has been published discussing how teenagers are interacting with deconstructed printed texts. We do not yet understand whether the younger generation is developing new ways of constructing meaning from such texts, or indeed, whether they even do generate meaning. There isn’t enough, if any, evidence to support this. There is merely the advertisers’ belief that this design suits the Generation X lifestyle.
Until research and evidence establish that young adults reading processes are so different, it has been considered a style concomitant of the postmodernist artist’s personal expression in the field of graphic design. The prior history of interactive design style shows that it is not a product of the telecommunications age but of a social strata unconcerned with the needs of others.BIBLIOGRAPHY:AMERICAN GRAPHIC DESIGN EXPRESSION . http://www.
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