History of Graphic Design

-Postmodernism
-Distinctions in culture and politics
-Communities o opinion and belief
-Experimental alternative publishing
-Push Pin Studio
-Wolfgang Weingart
-New Wave
-Fragmentation, layering, randomness, unpredictability
-April Grieman
-Paul Scher, appropriation or "to quote" vs. plagiarism
-Charles Anderson
-Nevel Brody
-Jacques Derrida
-Cranbrook, ecplored post-structuralism and the language games of Derrida's Grammatology
-Distinctly unsystematized
-Deconstruction
-Roll of Fontagrapher
-"Citational grafts"
-Attention to the role of language and "texts" in our construction of reality and identity.



Postmodernism stands in opposition to the ordered rationality of Modernism, is not a style, but a group of approaches motivated by some common understandings. It's not a theory but a set of theoretical positions. Skeptical of truth, unity and progress what it seed as elitism in culture, tends towards cultural relativism, celebrates pluralism, discontinuity and heterogeneity. Suspicious of public norms, inherent values, given hierarchies, authoritative standards, consensual codes or traditional practices.
Savvy consumers had outgrown the message mode of graphic design. Style of graphic design appeal to the counterculture youth, and the dizzying euphoria of the era.
Wolfgane Weingart, rejected the right angle, intuitive design, richness of visual effect, broad technical knowledge. Anti-functional, deliberately chaotic and averse to message driven forms.
Postmodernism, appropriation, to copying styles, was no longer naive nostalgia but calculated because the past itself was considered invented.
Nevel Brody, work was plundered and plagiarized as his distincitive work was quickly assimilated around the world in part through the advent of computer and scanning technology.
Words are not merely codes, using them in a behavior, and the behavior alters their meaning.
Post-Structuralism, challenging hierarchies, tentativeness, slipperiness, ambiguty and the complex interrelations of culture and meanings.

Screen: Essays on Graphic Design, New Media, and Visual Culture
By Jessica Helfland, John Maeda

The New Illiteracy

Riyong Wang March 3rd 10:59pm

- Design principles are not the real problem, but more resonant issue is the degree to which we have come to accept this sort of ill-defined, anything-goes expressionism.
- Design principles like good sentence structure, editing techniques, or the ability to articulate an original idea seem to have little if any tangible value.
- The issue is the degree to which we have come to accept this sort of ill-defined, anything-goes expressionism: messy and myopic, part stand-up comedy and part soapbox-proselytizing, a "medium" that is more likely to ricochet from personal issues than respond to public ones, in the end, verges on illiteracy.
- “Angry Websites make people feel good: but are they god or people? ”
- There are no rules.



The new illiteracy is an incubator for anger a breeding ground for self-importance. Designers these days tend to use childlike grammar, “kinda”, “gottta”, and horrifyingly precious misspelling of the word “cuz”. It’s nothing compared to the warped perception of inflated self-worth evidenced in this writer’s final posting: “I’m gonna write a book.”



On the website the opportunity to say anything is both seductive and eminently achievable. “Undecipherable type and vibrating colors as if to day: I’m angry, and my site says I’m angry too, so don’t mess with me.” Design tells designer's mood.


There are no rules, anybody can do, say, think, be anything, so is design principles. Every designer has experience, so everyone should be able to learn more about the problem of creating.

- The Basel School
- Point, Line, and Plane
- Harmony of opposing forces
- Josef Muller Brockman
- Der Film poster
- Swiss Movement
- “Good design is good business.”
- Brandbury Thompson
- Chermayeff and Geisman Associates: abstract form unto itself, free from alphabetic, pictographic, figurative connotations.
- Vignelli Associates
- Media revolution, “The Society of the Spectacle”
- Wolf’s vision
- Typography unified with photography by locking text or display tightly with image.
- George Lois: new advertising
- Photo-typography
- “New flexibility”
- “Type talks”


International style flourished during the 60’s in the two Swiss cities: Zurich and Basel. The Basel School of Design was laboratory of the international style, graduates spread the style to educational institutions around the world. Emil Ruder, Armin Hoffmann, and Josef Muller Brockman were associated with the school and its education, they all published books to establish their design philosophies. Josef Muller Brockman, treated image as objective symbol, gaining impact through scale and camera angle, created a visual counterpart to the structural harmony of music.
The Swiss Movement had a big impact on American Graphic Design and the emerging field of corporate graphics. 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, understood value of invented forms for both symbolic and communicative ends, through skillful analysis of the context. Branding was seen as a major way to shape a reputation for quality and reliability. Along with Saul Bass, Paul Rand helped define a new American Graphic design that turned away from European sources. Form and essence of a message and playful symbolism.
Brandbury Thompson, expanded the range of design possibilities throught a thorough knowledge of printing and typesetting and an adventurous experimental spirit.
Standards for format sizes, typography, grid systems, paper specifications, and colors realized tremendous economics in materials and time.
George Lois was a advertising genius, his concepts were dominated and text and images became completely interdependent. The role of art director was expanded into editorial deliberations. The new advertising: visual statements used simple images, talked intelligently to there audience, focus on the benefits of a product.
1940-1960, social conventions and standard design thinking was challenged as new conceptual approaches emerged from advertising and the advent of photo-typography.