Modernism and Postmodernism (OUGD401)

Modernism-"To what extent did Modernist design principles influence graphic design?"

Postmodernism-"How did post modernism impact on graphic design?"

The key features of Modernism are

• Use of grids to create order
• Minimal
• Timeless-ignores trends
• Stripped back to its bare essentials
• Form follows function-effectiveness of portraying its point rather than being aesthetically pleasing being the main focus
• Key purpose to be clear and straight to the point 
• Based on lack of chaos-organization
• Everything is logical and ordered
• The rejection of ornament
• Grotesk/Helvetica

Modernism became known as the International typographic style or Swiss style

• Switzerland post WW2
• Grid
• Grotesk/Helvetica
• Flush left and ragged right

Were all key components to the style

The poster above shows a quote by a big name in Modernist graphic design Massimo Vignelli. The poster also shows a great example of the style of design.

The impressive thing about modernism is the designs still look contemporary even the ones done 50 years ago which proves the idea that modernism is timeless is quite true, so far anyway. The drive behind it all was an ambition to change the world into a minimal and idealistic place where everything followed modernist princliples-the buildings, interior design and graphic design. You don't see that kind of drive in graphic designers anymore so its quite impressive really. 

This is a sketch by a modernist architect called Le Corbusier in the 20's called Plan Voisin. It was his and the modernists idea of the perfect city. The idea was everything was cut back to its minimal form, they could maximise space by building high. They were mostly communist believers and thought in their perfect world everyone should live in the same sized apartment and have the same wages no matter what. I personally dont agree with this idea, I think complete equality could dampen people's dreams to do well for them selves and less talent would result. Also close living quarters could easily cause trouble and dispute creating an unhappy and cramped environment. The sketch shows the roads and footpaths completely separate using overpasses which i actually think is a really good idea, this is a minimal solution to a lot of accidents and would be more peaceful and attractive. But overall I don't think this is my idea of an ideal city at all. It was a naive vision that a project like this could ever actually work and was never carried out.

I watched a clip from the film Helvetica of an interview with Micheal Beiruit called Helvetica Period that beautifully shows the views of modernism in a really simple and brilliant way. A great quote within it was "I can imagine a time when it felt so good to take something that was old and dusty and home made and crappy looking and replace it with Helvetica. It must of felt like you were scraping the crap off old things and replacing it with beauty.".

I also watched an interview with Wim Crowel he explained how it was all about rejecting the old and over complicated ugly design and completely starting a fresh and only included the things that were necessary. 

Wim designed this grid for himself to order all his work in a way he felt was perfectly ordered and got the point across in a readable and legible way.

And above is an example of a poster he designed using this grid. I can see quite easily how he has followed it and think its quite effective in putting the message across. 

Wim believed all the meaning in graphic design should be put across through the text and possibly diagrams if necessary but the typeface should be completely neutral and give you no other feelings towards it.

Although I do like a lot of the neutral typefaces used by Wim and other modernists it makes you question whether there should be more to a designers work than just a simple representation of information. This method gives the designer a lack of individuality and creativity and makes them invisible. I think graphic designers should be able to show their personality and flair in their work.

Lastly I watched a clip from the film of an interview with Massimo Vignelli once again he talked about the belief that type should not be expressive and joked with the idea you could change weights if you really wanted to add a little personality to a piece. A brilliant quote I got from this was "Being a graphic designer is a fight against the ugliness". I really think this is a very true quote, its all designers aim to make things more aesthetically pleasing. It also shows his ambition for the style and how he believed his work was fighting the visual disease all around him.

Postmodernism on the other hand is described as...

• Exhaustion with optimistic and idealistic views
• Pluralism
• Disillusionment with the idea of absolute knowledge
• Critical of the naivety of modernism

Post modernism was talked about and practiced in the 1960's but it became a really recognizable style in the 80's and was dominant throughout the 90's. But even now not long after it already looks quite dated as an aesthetic style. Its definately not as timeless as modernism but was an important turning point for the creativity of graphic designers and has allowed us to have more of a voice in the industry. We are no longer in the era of postmodernism so that raises the question what are we in post postmodernism? That just sounds ridiculous. Post modernism more importantly was the realisation that there is more than just one way of visually engaging people and minimalist themes weren't necessarily the most effective. 

Above shows the demolition of the Igoe development, St Louis. Said to be the death of modernism by Charles Jencks at exactly 15 July 1972 3:31pm. The development was a modernist design made to be a communist way of living. It was everything the Modernists has dreamed of as a perfect way of living but it failed dramatically. The place became riddled with drugs, prostitution and crime as it was affordable people from 'lower' walks of life were living there. The place became such a liability they had to blow it up. It proves that modernist ideals of a perfect world were very naive and wouldn't work in real practice and post modernist designers laugh in the face of this failure.