Postmodernism in Design

Postmodern Styles

The first signs of postmodern graphic design appeared in the late 1970s and early 1980s.  Postmodernism entered the built environment, and a dialogue developed in which architecture and graphic design were mutually influenced.  A generation of young designers seemed to be parodying their modern teachers and disregarded the rules of International Style.  Not only did they dispense with adherence to formal organization, they also seemed to throw out legibility as well.  Postmodern formal manipulation was often anti functional and deliberately chaotic.  The postmodernism period did not comprise of a single unified graphic style, rather the characteristics were all conspicuous trends.

Retro style was superficial in its relation to historical sources.  Techno style had a streamlined, metallic quality, hard-edged and robotic, almost electronic.  Punk style took Pop nonconformism and pushed it to extremes.

1.  Retro style posters

2.  Punk style poster.

Postmodern Consumption and Conservatism

A period of economic depression followed the end of the Vietnam War in the early 1970s and smaller, more conservative governments shrank benefits and programs that had been considered central to the social contract in earlier decades.  The 1980s were fraught with boom and bust economic cycles, oil shortages, and global tensions.  

Critical Theory and Postmodern Sensibility

Postmodernism was an attitude toward origin and change.  Utopianism was gone along with the unwavering faith in progress that had been characteristic of modernity since the industrial revolution.  The suspicion that everything had already been said, drawn, photographed, written, recorded, or thought stood in contrast to the modern enthusiasm for innovation that had dominated in the early part of the century.  Postmodern design seemed largely a matter of style, but in reality postmodern designers questioned assumptions about representation and communication that had been the basis of graphic design since its origins.

Postmodernism and Activism

A flexible sense of history and a free association of styles made postmodern design feel like it had no rules or restraints.  critical analysis of social conditions and the rise of cultural studies had an impact on the graphic design industry, offering tools for thinking, intervention, and change.

Changes in the Profession

Technological advances were on the horizon in the 1970s, but early postmodernism design was a photomechanical production, not an electronic one.  The use of photographic negatives to layer and manipulate content preceded the desktop computers by 10 years.  By the 1980s, graphic designers were not only working in advertising, packaging, and editorial, but it also involved special effects, animations, films, and television.  Many designers also combined their roles as teachers and critics while their design work shed the last vestiges of modern decorum, their teaching and writing took on critical issues.  Designers often expressed ideas graphically without a full appreciation of their theoretical implications.

Glossary

Deconstructive - of or pertaining to a philosophical method of interpretation premised on the idea that texts and images do not reveal truths but create fields of signification and that reading their signs through a play of difference produces meaning that is always shifting.

Grunge -a word meaning dirt achieved through neglect, appropriated to describe a style of music identified with a nihilistic or self-consciously apathetic attitude that originated in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.

Hybrid - an organism produced by mixing genetic material

Hyperreal - of or pertaining to appearances in which it is impossible to distinguish reality from illusion, either because a representation is so believable or because conditions of perception or cognition do not allow for distinctions between real and imagined phenomena or experience.

Postmodernism - a cultural moment at which modernism's claims for universal, formal, and autonomous qualities in works of art or design were replaced by notions of relativism, contingency, and play within sign systems.

Punk - a rebellious counterculture movement that began in Britain and the United States, whose harsh sound and abrasive lyrics attached the pretenses of middle-class culture and conservative politics.

Retro - of or pertaining to rhetoric, the art of persuasion or effective presentation.

Sign systems - finite networks within which symbols circulate and gain their value.

Simulacra - illusions that pass for reality.

Techno - of or pertaining to a style that uses the imagery and motifs of contemporary technology not as functional forms but as elements of an aesthetic.