Why is modernity such a burden for graphic design?

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credit that he was able to recognize and appreciate the emergence of a middle class and the values of its popular taste as being the driving force behind modernity. Modern now: The value of shock So what constitutes “shock” in 2008? Where do we turn to locate the marginal and disenfranchised in contemporary graphic design? One possible option is to turn to criticism itself. Similar to Baudelaire’s study of those figures derided by 19th century society, it is possible to look at contemporary criticism itself to determine what our culture chooses to dismiss now as a possible signifier of modernity today. One of the most infamous 20th-century critiques of graphic design was published in 1993 by writer and critic Steven Heller. In contrast to Baudelaire’s adventurous attitude toward the exigencies of modernity, Heller’s article, “The cult of the ugly,” lambasted the forms of graphic design among an emerging generation as “ugly.” Originally published in the British graphic design magazine, Eye, Heller’s criticism was precipitated by his receiving a eight-page pamphlet produced by the graduate students of Cranbrook Academy of Art. [Fig.3] In writing about this pamphlet, which Heller decidedly describes as ugly, he states, “Ask [what beauty is] to the Cranbrook Academy of Art students who created the ad hoc desktop publication, Output, and judge by the evidence that they might answer that beauty is chaos born of found letters layered on top of random patterns and shapes. [Fig.4] Those who value functional simplicity would argue that the Cranbrook students’ publication, like a toad’s warts, is ugly.” 5 [Fig.5] And Heller continues his tirade, “Output is eight unbound pages of blips, type fragments, random words, and other graphic minutiae purposely given the serendipitous look of a printer’s make-ready… Output could be considered a prime example of ugliness in the service of fashionable experimentation.” “As personal research, indeed as personal art, it can be justified, but as a model for commercial practice, this kind of ugliness is a dead end.” 6 But if Heller’s critique is held to the methods set forth by Baudelaire, clearly the shock value of the work Heller wishes to dismiss as “irrelevant,” suggests that this work is modern. Heller’s essay was—and still is—one of the most valuable pieces of Western graphic design criticism. Its value can be measured by the amount of discussion it caused which was symptomatic of a greater problem within graphic design: How does graphic design expand to accept that which is “other”? In 1993, the work of designers like Ed Fella, [Fig.6] Jeffery Keedy [Fig.7] and David Carson [Fig.8] was a divisive wedge issue. It was hardly “beautiful” by any conventional or traditional definition. It lacked signs of a mastered technique and it flaunted the proper conventions of accepted norms in typography. In fact, it looked “amateurish” or vernacular. It looked undesigned. The fallout from “The cult of the ugly” was ultimately beneficial to graphic design because it uncovered the cracks in the veneer of established practice. Sadly however, the ensuing discussion here will attempt to show that discourse in graphic design has not changed all that much since Heller’s article was first published. Why ugly? The loss of technique One of the tools that made this free-wheeling “amateur” aesthetic possible was the introduction of the Macintosh computer in 1984 and Adobe’s PostScript printing language in 1986, which made desktop publishing commonplace. The computer brought us such great moments as the “swirl filter” [Fig.9] and some might say it was all downhill from there. [Fig.10] The computer gave us the possibility to easily layer, distort, merge, mutate and essentially perform a whole number of operations which were either previously impossible, or immensely time consuming. One could even produce new typefaces by simply using software to merge their contours, thus we could literally produce a Frankenstein typeface. [Fig.11] But perhaps most importantly, what the computer did do, was to disseminate the tools of graphic design among a general public: now everyone could be a graphic designer. But the dissemination of graphic design as an open practice comes with a price. The “uninitiated” or amateur designer’s lack of knowledge about the strict rules of typography resulted in a loss of quality from a classical perspective. This democratization and resulting debasement of quality meant that there was little to distinguish the work of trained, educated graphic designers from that of a general public. The loosening of the rules of knowledge about what
constitutes the “proper” and what does not, would lead designers to create eccentric advertisements [Fig.12] with tattooed, Hare Krishna nudists that use six different typefaces at the same time. But the accusation that graphic design which is excessive, decorative and clumsy is therefore “amateur” or “undesigned” relative to the refined modernist designs of Josef Müller-Brockmann, Massimo Vignelli, or Wim Crouwel [Fig.13] is not a label which is so clearly applied. In 1922, William Addison Dwiggins coined the term “graphic design” to distinguish his profession from the practice of fine art and the vocational service of mere typesetting. But while Dwiggins recognized that as a graphic designer, his work was more intellectually complex than that of a commercial typesetter, he also distanced himself from what he saw as the non-American, imported aesthetic of “those Bauhaus boys” as he liked to call them, which included the likes of Paul Rand and Herbert Bayer. In contrast to the European modernists, Dwiggins’ work recalled the decorative, irregular and painterly lettering of the Arts and Crafts or Art Nouveau periods [Fig.14]: Dwiggins’ work appeared old-fashioned and personal. His typography was ornamented, highly idiosyncratic and irrational. In contrast, the spare, rationalist work influenced by the Bauhaus was new—and in an American context—it was shocking. [Fig.15] Dwiggins’ work appealed to the decorative impulse of the general public, which put it in an antagonistic position relative to the spare, minimalist work of the commonly accepted forms of modernism. So while Dwiggins’ work was mannered and some might say a throwback because of its roots in Arts and Crafts design, it was hardly “shocking,” and in this context, hardly “modern.” But nearly 70 years later, by the time that Steven Heller wrote “The cult of the ugly” and criticized designs which were being non-conventional and excessive, the discipline’s acceptance of what was expected in graphic design had reversed: in a context of well established minimal corporate graphic design of the 1990s, the mannered experiments described by Heller were shocking. It’s 1993 all over again: The new ugly graphic design One would think by now that this mannered and clumsy work would be fully embraced by graphic design as part of the conventions of practice, and hardly worth criticism, but this is apparently not the case. In 2007 and in an editorial column published on the design blog Design Observer, [Fig.16] contributing writer Dimitri Siegel has this to say about the work of Elliott Earls, current Chair of the 2D Design Department at Cranbrook Academy of Art: [Fig.17] “The problem with the authorship model is that it replaces a tangible engaged client with a vague notion of a market, passively waiting to consume (or more likely ignore) the self-generated work of the designer (as author).... [T]he quest for authorship may jeopardize the economic and cultural free agency that defines the field.” 7 Which was followed by an anonymous post, “[G]arbage. It’s just not design.” 8 [Fig.18] Forgive me for dredging up some old history, but many of the comments echo some of what was written by Steven Heller in “The cult of the ugly.” In fact, in a column published January 30, 2008, Steven Heller laments the re-emergence of hand typography or “amateur” graphic design as yet again, a “dead end” in development: Handwritten, expressively drawn lettering… is perilously close to the veritable precipice, and on the proverbial edge of becoming an overused graphic design cliché. While style invariably breeds redundancy, this hand-wrought style is so easily (and pleasurably) used in place of rigidly conventional form, and it is found in so many print and internet venues that it may become an old hand-me-down too soon.” 9 The comments of both Siegel and Heller display a desire to maintain disciplinary limits based on a nostalgia for familiar visual tenets, a nostalgia for a loss of status. It is hardly forward thinking to forecast the success or failure of a form of visual expression. Rather than attempt to impede the progression of a visual form, the value of such work could be found in highlighting how the work makes present the character of an age: “The pleasure which we derive from the representation of the present is due not only to the beauty with which it can be invested, but also to its essential quality of being present.” 10 The anti-mastery of today’s handwork comes with a difference: [Fig.19] Hand typography is no longer necessary. [Fig.20] The computer made hand typography and hand design superfluous. By stripping hand typography of its necessity—nowadays, type comes from a pulldown menu—the choice to do typography or lettering by hand is a conscious polemical statement. [Fig.21] The partners of Paris-based Vier5, Achim Reichert and Marco Fiedler write,
Page 1: The rhetorics of rejection: Why is

Why is modernity such a burden for graphic design?

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