Entry 9

Postmodernism

• Group of approaches motivated by some common understandings.
  
• A set of theoretical positions, which at the core are self reflexive and aware of the tentativeness, slipperiness, the ambiguity and the complex interrelations of culture and meanings.
• Opposes the ordered rationality of modernism
• Rejects totalities, universal values.
• Skeptical of truth
• Underground 60's and early 70's
• Communities of opinion and belief
• 60's pluralistic, eclectic, hedonistic, and anti-est.
• Underground comics
• Experimental alternative publishing - Village Voice
• Pushpin studios famous for their designs in the 60's

New Wave Typography

• Rejections of the International style by swiss designers began in Basel.
• Anti-functional approach.
• Wolfgang Weingart
• Rejected the right angle
• Intuitive design
• Questions the customs of typographic arrangements
• Every convention was up for interrogation
• First designer to use computer for experiments
• New wave included:
• Wide Letter Spacing
• Bold stair stepped rules
• Rule lines punctuating space
• Diagonal Type
• Mixing typefaces or weight changes within words
• Type reveresed from a series of bars
• Diagonal Type
  
• Mixing typefaces or weight changes within words
• Type reveresed from a series of bars
• April Grieman
• New wave Basel Studio in LA
• First paint boxes and later Macs
• digital graphic design
• illusion of depth
• Postmodernism: appropriation, to copying styles, was no longer naive nostlagia but calculated because the past itself was considered invented
• Paula Scher
• Appropriation or "to quote" vs. plagiarism
  
• Constructivism vocabulary was her inspiration
• Assumption that art can only be repetitious
• Pop art and Warhol
• Charles Anderson
• CSA Archieve - collection of historic line art
  
• history of art and design was a vast archieve to quote
• textural patterns of enlarged cheap comic books for clip art
• Postmodernism does not comprise a single style but a conspicuous group of trends
  
• Nevel Brody
• Urban primitive typographic configurations became iconic emblems.
• Brody plundered and plagiarized as his distinctive work was quickly assimilated around the world in part through the advent of computer scanning.
• Jacques Derrida / Deconstruction
• Showed most value-laden distinctions we attempt to establish.
• Unconventional writings
• Cranbrook - explores post-structuralism and the language games of Derrida's Grammatology
• Deconstruction is a way to read texts
  
• SEE IMAGE ------ READ TEXT
• SEE TEXT -------- READ IMAGE (deconstructive)
  
• Ed Fella
  
• distinctly unsystemized inspires "Grunge"
• David Carson
• Disruptive and disturbed type and design
• Untrained - walked the line between illegibility and chaos angering many
• Professionals unwilling to accept the impact of a post-structural world
• Un-natural cropping of print images
  
• Emigre magazine features digital typefaces
• Fontographer allows people to make fonts
• Deconsturction Structures in the mass media can be reshuffled
• Why not Associates
• Formal Characteristics of late postmodernism
• Layering
• Fracturing
• Transparency
• Disunity
  
• Deformation
• High and low juxtapositions
• Chip Kidd - book covers for Knopf stock photographs onto the covers of fiction
• Jonathan Barnbrook - demonization to market fonts

Tonight I leave somewhat inpired by the newer styles and post-modernism. I feel like having one style is such a trap. I read a quote about design that said "Having a style is like being in prison." I'm excited to be in the age where we have run out of "isms". I feel boundless possibilities because of the fact that I can use any style in my aresonal. I really enjoyed the work that was shown by Why not Associates. I really thought it was amazing. I am more curious about deconstructivism and want to look even more into it!