Post Modernity

Richard Buchanan, Declaration by Design.:
'The goal of communication is to induce in the audience some belief about the past, present or future.

Appropriation - MOMA Definition:
Taking inspiration, basically .
Collage?

Andy Warhol playing sued for 'appropriating' (stealing) photographers work

Appropriation is to use a past image and manipulate it or alter it to make it your own
Pastiche is more of a satirical hat tip to the original image.

Jamie Reid - Queen poster
Duchamp - Readymade

Amy West founded Grafik BS - trying to catch out people's obsession with style over substance by creating shit.

Helvetica

Helvetica is a typeface created by Swiss typographer Max Miedinger. Created in 1957 it quickly became the most commonly used typeface in the world and was credited by many well renowned graphic designers as the perfect typeface that could be used in almost every scenario. 

Today, it is still the most commonly used typeface in all forms of graphic design and can be seen on almost every sign, brand or advertisement you see. It is also the default font for use on Mac computers, the industry standard for graphic design.

While some famous graphic designers, such as Erik Spiekermann protest strongly against it, believing it to be the immediate sign of 'bad design', it is still universally loved for it vast versatility and is still viewed as the iconic typeface for modernism due to it's simple, clean and efficient design. 

Art Movements - Dadaism + Appropriation

Dadaism was a European art movement starting in the early 1900's. Originating from the concept of 'Anti-Art', Marcel Duchamp, along with other surrealist artists of the time, creating what became Dada with the intention of being anti-everything, including war, politics and bourgeois.

The perculiar name was the result of one of the members placing a knife into a German/ French dictionary and landing on the word Dada, translating as 'hobbyhorse', which has nothing to do with art, thus making itself the perfect title for a group keen to reject all conventional concepts of what art it. As this story suggests, Dadaists believed strongly in rejecting the notion that words must be related to their meanings, directly contrasting with all principles which build semiotics.

Inspired by modernism and cubism, the Dada artists took great influence from many of the Bauhaus greats, namely Wasilly Kandisky's, theories and beliefs surrounding the order and conventions which controlled art at the time. Based off his principles, they where able to break free of the constraints at the time and strove to create pieces of work which questioned what art truly was. Marcel Duchamp's 'Fountain' is the perfect example of this as he simply took a lavatory urinal and wrote his own name on it to prove that anything he created could be art. Others took this concept to further, more disgusting lengths, to see just how far they could push the boundries of what they thought the public would accept as 'art'.

Dadaism was pivotal to the invention and development of the photocollage and strong advocated of the concept of appropriation. Manipulating and editing others work to create their own, many questioned their artistic talents as the only parts which where viewed as demonstrating genuine talent was 'appropriated' from other fine artists.

Anthony Burrill

Anthony Burrill is an English designer, graphic designer and print maker. He is famous for his style is notable for his use of vibrant colours and bold text in order to communicate a more upbeat and persuasive message clearly.

Semiotics and messages are incredbily important to all of his work and he has developed a reputation for his incorporation of more subtle, clever meanings beneath the more explicitly obvious ones which subtly enforce his orignal message, i.e. using oil attained from the sea and mixing it with water to produce his ‘Oil and Water don’t mix’ piece.

Every one of his pieces has it's own meaning beneath the meaning which can be found in through his use of semiotics when it comes to picking the materials, colour and layout of his pieces.

 

While not not created for this purpose, Anthony Burrill's influence can be seen in my work created during a recent process and production lesson wherein we had to create kinetic typography. I go into the process and lesson in more depth on my original blog, but here are the screens from the final result of the lesson 

Daniel Eatock - Manifestos

Daniel Eatock is a graphic designer who's most famous work was his creation and development of the 'Big Brother Eye'. A design with very distinctive look which has still allowed itself to be manipulated over the years to keep itself current, something I should look into for my New Visual Language project. 

Something that Eatock does, which has influenced numerous other designers, is create a manifesto of what to do in future. Below is his 'Mini Manifesto'

Mini Manifesto

1. Begin with ideas.
2. Embrace chance.
3. Celebrate coincidence.
4. Ad–lib and make things up.
5. Eliminate superfluous elements.
6. Subvert expectation.
7. Make something difficult look easy.
8. Be first or last.
9. Believe complex ideas can produce simple things.
10. Trust the process.
11. Allow concepts to determine form.
12. Reduce material and production to their essence.
13. Sustain the integrity of an idea.
14. Propose honesty as a solution.

As part of my research into him I am going to attempt to create my own mini manifesto in reference to design:

1. Start with a some sort of concept
2. Allow it do develop naturally
3. Don't fear the blank page
4. Scribbles are your friend
5. Soft Brushes are not
6. Believe in your insticts
7. Less can be more
8. More can be more
9. Don't hate it just because you made it
10. Let an idea brew
11. Don't dismiss something straight away
12. Embrace criticism

Semiotics

Semiotics is the theory behind interpretation and understanding of signs. Everything we see can be viewed as a sign if we believe it to be signifiying something other than being simply an object. 

The two dominant figures in the exploration of the theory of semiotics is Ferdinand de Sausure and Charles Sanders Peirce.
Saussure believed that there was to parts to a sign: 

• The Signifier - the form of the sign
• The Signified - The thing the signifier is referring to.

I.e. The word 'CAT'.
The letters C.A.T represent the signifier, while the physical cat itself is the signified.
A pheesable combination of these two is what creates a 'Sign'. 

Just because one signifier stands for one thing, does not mean that it cannot stand for another. The word 'CAT' could also be seen on a pair of work boots and would be referring to the workwear brand 'CAT', rather than a feline. This means that this is a different sign. 

Peirce's approach was that there was three parts to a sign within the boundries of semiotics: 

• The Symbol - The form of the signifier that does not resemble the signified. The relationship between it and the signified must be learnt.
• The Icon - A simplified version of the signified which resembles it and associations could be made on first impression.
• The Index - Where the signifier is not arbitrary but dirrectly related to the signified

I.e. in reference to the male gender:
The symbol = Male Gender Symbol ♂
The Icon = The symbol on Male toilets
Index = A man


As well as explicit signs, such as those explored by Peirce and Saussure, there is also something called colour semiotics. While Interpretation of colours is an entirely unique and personal response, here are still numerous recurring themes throughout each culture in the way in which people respond to them. This has helped to create a series of universal visual signs and symbols which mean the same in every culture, regardless of their accompanied text I.e. Road signs and directions. 

One of the key aspects of semiotics is colour theory. This is the connection between a colour and it's meaning I.e. Red means stop, green means go. Despite there being some which are viewed as more universal, colours have drastically different meaning in some countries to others, as shown in the image below: 

As is visible in the picture above, red, or black, is universal for it's portrayal of anger, or evil, but the definition of which colour represents something which 'repels evil' is far more muddled, with yellows, reds and greens all viewed as the most representative. Colour theory is something which strongly influenced Bauhaus professors, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and Johannes Itten.

What Is Post Modernism?

By the early 1970, it was the general belief that modernism was coming to an end accross all art forms, including graphic design. While is by no means meant an end to the grid system and predominant use of negative space, a lot of designers where moving away from the style.
The post industrial society at the time felt that the modernist style was becoming more and more dated and far less relevant in the environmentally conscious present day, of the time.

Across all art forms, people started to disgard the term ‘Modernist’ and adopted the new style; ‘Post Modernist’, and ironically unimaginative title for such an audacious design style.
The new style was to reflect the diversity of the time as everything was changing; women’s rights where growing and the was far more equality for minorities. These changes resulted in the design themes of the past being viewed as outdated and a part of the old way of things.
More than anything else, though, post modernism is a reaction to modernism, rather than a blatant rejection. While people felt Modernism was refelective of outdated times, it was not immeditely dismissed and rejected. A lot of designers still clung to the old ways and viewed Post Modernism as being ‘undisciplined’ and ‘self indulgent’. A garish jumble of styles with no discernable theme or consistency which was created as a sort of attention seeking ploy by modern students.
It wasn’t until around the 1980’s that the established designers of old started to acknowledge it as a legitimate step forward and it was then, with their former knowledge of Modernism in hand, that it was able to become a true development and reaction to the existing norms, rather than a blatant protest with no merit.


Through post modernims, the boundries between high culture, such as fine art, and pop culture, such as advertisements, where being blurred and destroyed .
Designers stopped seeing themselves as simple messengers of the information they where conveying, but artisst in their own right, wih a message of their own to share with the world. Each piece of work started to become its own sort of protest against one thing or anothers.
In the late 80’s, a design style started to emerge that was a blatant response to the Modernist theory of what was viewed as ‘good design’. It was a strong reaction to the very string guidelines and rules that where laid out to determine what was or wasn’t viewed as a good piece of design. Headlined by David carson, we started seeing a design style that was reckless, garish, chaotic and inconsistent.

This design style was heavily predominant throughout the 80’s and continued onto the 90’s, before settling down completely. While modern design is far less chaotic, the post modern influence is always visible in todays design.