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 These changes resulted in the design themes of the past being viewed as outdated and a part of the old way of things.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 While people felt Modernism was refelective of outdated times, it was not immeditely dismissed and rejected.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.