Week 3 Postmodern Design - A History of Graphic Design

A HISTORY OFGRAPHIC DESIGNChapter 22 – Postmodern DesignSUMMARYWithin the context of design, the term postmodernismrefers to a shift away from the objectivity of moderndesign toward a more subjective approach to designing.Postmodernism gained a strong foothold with designerswho emerged in the 1970s. They turned away from theorder and clarity of the International Typographic Style,which had been prevalent since the Bauhaus, and foundinspiration in historical references, decoration, and thevernacular as they sought a broader range of designpossibilities. The term postmodernism is rejected bysome who see the period merely as a continuation of themodern movement; they prefer the terms late modernismand mannerism instead.Chapter 22 identifies five major directions of postmoderngraphic design including: early extensions of theInternational Typographic Style by Swiss designers whodiverged from the dicta of the movement; new-wavetypography, which began in Basel, Switzerland throughthe teaching and research of Wolfgang Weingart; themannerism of the early 1980s with focus on the workfrom the Memphis group in Milan, Italy, and on SanFrancisco designers; retro, the revivals and reinventionsof earlier design models, particularly the European vernacularand modern design from the decades betweenthe world wars; and the electronic revolution of the late1980s generated by the Macintosh computer, which willbe discussed in Chapter 24.Precursors to postmodern design, 461During the 1960s, the terms supermannerism and supergraphicswere used to describe work that broke withmodern design. Supermannerism stems from the termmannerism, the stylish art of the 1500s that broke withthe natural and harmonious beauty of the High Renaissance.Supermannerism was first used as a derogatorylabel by proponents of modern design in reference tothe work of young architects who broke from moderndesign. Supergraphics describes the application ofconcrete graphic form to architecture, usually geometricshapes and letterforms that brought vitality and color tothe built environment. Philadelphia-born Robert Venturi,the original and most controversial supermannerist,added large-scale lettering to his architectural vocabluary.He sees graphic communications and new technologiesas important tools for architecture, as shown in hisproposal for the Football Hall of Fame. Supermanneristarchitect Charles W. Moore called on graphic designerBarbara Stauffacher Solomon, who had studied graphicdesign at the Basel School of Design, to bring vitalityand order through supergraphics to his 1966 project, SeaRanch, a large condominium project in California. By1970 supergraphics had caught on, and graphic designbecame more involvemed in environmental design.Early Swiss postmodern design, 461A shift away from modern design began in the 1960swhen designers working within the InternationalTypographic Style expanded its parameters as theyexperimented with a broader range of design possibilitiesto enhance communication and meaning. Amongthe pioneers who evolved the International TypographicStyle in this way were Swiss designers Rosmarie Tissi,Siegfried Odermatt, and Steff Geissbuhler. Odermatt andTissi deviated from the strict requirements of the gridand intuitively composed form in a more relaxed andexpressive manner to communicate ideas and meaning,as in the 1964 advertisement for E. Lutz & Company.Odermatt and Tissi frequently positioned text type ona background shape, which was defined by the depthof the text block and the lengths of the lines of type, asshown in the 1981 direct mail folder for Anton Schöbprinters. Geissbuhler’s work during this period is representedby an engaging complexity; yet complexity is notan end in itself; rather, it is a dynamic visual languagethat communicates the concept of the message, asdemonstrated in his 1965 Geigy brochure cover and 1974“Blazer” financial services poster.New-wave typography, 465During the 1970s, practitioners and teachers schooled inthe International Typographic Style sought to reinventtypographic design, like Herbert Bayer, Jan Tschichold,and others had done in the 1920s. These new directions,inspired by the experimental work and teaching of WolfgangWeingart, were labeled new-wave typography.In 1964, Weingart came from Germany to Basel, Switzerland,where he had studied typography with Emil Ruderat the Basel School of Design, and in 1968 he joinedArmin Hofmann on the faculty of the Basel School. From

A HISTORY OFGRAPHIC DESIGN1968 to 1974,Weingart worked with lead and wood typeon the letterpress, which had defined the horizontaland vertical constraints of typography since the era ofGutenberg. Within this context, Weingart began to challengethe objectivity, absolute order, and precision of theInternational Typographic Style, as well as the time-honoredtraditions of letterpress typography and the morerecent traditions of photographic typography. Weingartquestioned everything and broke all the rules. He infusedfeeling and humor into his work and encouragedhis students to do the same. Working on the letterpress,Weingart experimented with printing curves by bendingstraight metal rules and using magnets to position theelement on the press bed; he exaggerated letter spacingin contrast to the tight letter spacing made popular byphoto typesetting to create typographic texture; he inventednew typographic forms by combining charactersin unexpected and whimsical ways—a colon turned onits side became an umlaut, a comma on its side becamea u, a rotated lowercase m became an E, and a bulletover the vertical stroke of a lowercase n became an i-nligature—or letters simply became concrete, abstractforms.By the mid-1970s, Weingart turned his attention awayfrom purely typographic design toward the creativeopportunities of offset lithographic printing, the printer’sphotographic processes, and film. He began to experimentwith collage as a medium for visual communicationand a method of combining image with typography.In the process Weingart developed a new technique,which led to complex compositions created by sandwichinglayers of film positives containing photographicimages, type, and graphics cut from printer’s block-outfilm. This method enabled Weingart to compose complexvisual information, unify typography and pictorialimages, and juxtapose type and image with textures,which were often created by enlarging halftone dots oroverlapping halftone screens to create moiré patterns.Examples of this work include exhibition posters from1977 and 1982.Dan Friedman, April Greiman, Willi Kunz, and KennethHiebert, all of whom spent time at the Basel School andafterwards came to the United States to teach and practice,helped spread the new design sensibility. AlthoughWeingart and others who pioneered new-wave typographyrejected the notion of style, by the late 1970s and1980s, their work was widely imitated. Among the designconventions adopted as new wave were sans-serif typewith a lot of letter spacing, ruled lines that punctuatedand energized the space, type placed on a diagonal, fontchanges within a single word, type reversed out of solidbars, and bold, stair-stepped rules.Friedman, who also studied at the Ulm Institute of Design,rethought the nature of typographic forms and howthey behaved in space, as shown in the 1971 magazinecover he designed for Typographische Monatsblätter(Typographic Monthly Sheets) . After returning to theUnited States, he taught at Yale University and the PhiladelphiaCollege of Art, where he introduced students tothe basics of a new typography through syntactic and semanticexplorations using ordinary text such as the dailyweather report, which can be seen in Rosalie Hanson’sstudent work from 1970. This assignment was publishedin Visible Language in 1973, and had widespread influenceon the teaching of typography in the United States.As his own work progressed, he rejected the term postmodernismin favor of radical modernism.Greiman established a studio in Los Angeles after studyingwith Weingart and Hofmann in Basel in the early1970s. Her work from 1980 for the nightclub China Clubdemonstrates strong tactile qualities, and a strong senseof depth is achieved in the typographic space, whichhas been compared to El Lissitzky’s PROUN paintings.Organization is accomplished not by the use of a highlystructured grid but rather through a point-counterpointorganization, which maintains order of the intuitivedispersal of design elements. Greiman, in collaborationwith photographer Jayme Odgers, moved graphicdesign and photographic illustration into the realm ofdeep space, as seen in the 1979 California Institute of theArts poster.After apprenticing as a typesetter, Swiss-born Kunzcompleted his postgraduate studies at the Zurich Schoolof Arts and Crafts before moving to New York in 1970. Heaccepted a one-year appointment at the Basel School asWeingart’s replacement while Weingart was on sabbatical.Inspired by Weingart’s research and the work of hisstudents, Kunz took advantage of access to the typeshop and produced a series of typographic interpretationsof writings by the Canadian philosopher MarshallMcLuhan. Although structure is evident, Kunz does notconstruct his work on a predefined grid, instead determininga starting point and allowing the structure of thecomposition to evolve during the design process.Among the changes that followed as the new wavespread was a reintroduction of play and intuition into thedesign process, which can be seen in the 1979 exhibi-

A HISTORY OFGRAPHIC DESIGNtion and symposium poster by designer and educatorKenneth Hiebert. The poster introduces texture, a widerrange of typefaces, and elements that shift from the grid.The Memphis and San Francisco schools, page 470As the 1970s ended and the 1980s began, a new movementin postmodernism emerged. Inspired by the 1981exhibition of the Italian design group Memphis, led byItalian architectural and product designer Ettore Sottsassand postmodern architect Michael Graves, the movementwas characterized by playful geometry; the useof surface pattern, texture, and color; and references toearlier cultures. Graphic designer William Longhausersums up Graves’s postmodern motifs in his 1983 posterfor a Michael Graves exhibition. The letters, which spellG-R-A-V-E-S, are transformed into geometric formsdecorated with pattern and texture that evoke a postmodernarchitectural landscape. In the early 1980s inSan Francisco, Michael Vanderbyl, Michael Manwaring,and Michael Cronin forged a postmodern design movementthat positioned San Francisco as a creative centerof design. Although the San Francisco designers sharegestures, shapes, palettes, intuitive spatial arrangements,and assign symbolic roles to geometric elements,personal attitudes are evident in their work.Retro and vernacular design, page 475Retro, which first emerged in New York in the 1980s andspread quickly throughout the world, was a movementbased on historical revival, particularly a revival of modernistEuropean design from the first half of the twentiethcentury. New York retro began with Paula Scher,Louise Fili, and Carin Goldberg. Scher’s 1979 poster forCBS Records was inspired by Russian constructivist andnineteenth-century wood type posters. Vernacular designand artistic and technical expression broadly characteristicof a particular locale or historical period, goes handin hand with retro. Book-jacket designer Louise Fili findsinspiration in the vernacular graphics of France and Italy,which she collects during summer vacations in Europe.Eccentric letterforms on signs and vernacular graphicswith long-lost typefaces discovered in flea markets andused-book stalls inform her highly personal and intuitiveapproach. Goldberg, who worked as an assistant to LouDorfsman at CBS in the 1970s and later under PaulaScher at CBS Records, acknowledges A. M. Cassandreas an influence on her work, as well as the ViennaWorkshops. The influence of the latter on her 1987 bookcover for Reiner Maria Rilke’s The Sonnets of Orpheusis evident in the vine motif and sans-serif lettering,which is confined in outlined rectangles. Other New Yorkdesigners who embrace the retro approach are LorraineLouie and Daniel Pelavin, who find inspiration in GustavKlimt, the Vienna Workshops, and art deco. Although metinitially with disdain, retro, like new wave, crept into thevisual vocabulary of graphic design.Beyond New York, the potential of retro and vernaculardesign resonated with Joe Duffy and Chares SpencerAnderson of the Duffy Design Group. Inspiration camefrom a wide variety of sources, including old matchbookcovers and newspaper ads, graphics from the 1940s,traditional typefaces, nineteenth-century woodcuts, anddecorative emblematic labels. They designed nostalgicrevivals for clients as diverse as their influences: fromClassico pasta sauce to Chaps/Ralph Lauren clothing.In 1989 Anderson left to start his own firm, Charles S.Anderson Design Company, and the subsidiary CSAArchive, which manufactures products and publications,such as a large collection of historical and original lineillustrations.Although it would be a misnomer to label Englishdesigner Neville Brody a retro designer who reinventedstyles of the past, he did draw inspiration from thegeometric forms of the Russian constructivist artists, aswell as the Dada experimental attitudes and their rejectionof the doctrines of the ruling establishment. Brodyemerged as one of the more original graphic designersof the 1980s as he sought to discover an intuitive andlogical approach to design. He designed graphics andalbum covers for rock music and art directed Englishmagazines, including Arena and The Face, for whichhe designed a series of geometric sans-serif typefacesand emblematic logo designs. Brody’s work was widelyimitated.The chapter closes with Paula Scher’s 1994 graphic forMTV’s “Free Your Mind” campaign entitled “Languageis a Deadly Weapon.” Hand lettering and a hand-drawnimage on rough paper represents the freedom to beintuitive and personal. Postmodernism heralded a spiritof liberation that allowed designers to respond positivelyto vernacular and historic forms and to incorporate theminto their work. An atmosphere of inclusion and expandingpossibilities encouraged designers to experiment.

A HISTORY OFGRAPHIC DESIGNKEY TERMS (IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE; THE FIRST PAGE NUMBER OF THEIR APPEARANCE IS LISTED)Postmodernism, page 460, a climate of cultural change that took place through almost all the cultural disciplines aroundthe 1970s. In design, it designated the work of architects and designers who were breaking with the international styleso prevalent since the Bauhaus. Postmodernism sent shock waves through the design establishment as it challengedthe order and clarity of modern design, particularly corporate design.Late modernism, page 460, a term proffered as an alternative to postmodernism for late-twentieth-century design.Some observers reject the term postmodern, arguing that it is merely a continuation of the modern movement.Mannerism, page 460, a term proffered as an alternative to postmodernism for late-twentieth-century design. Someobservers reject the term postmodern, arguing that it is merely a continuation of the modern movement.Supermannerism, page 461, a term first used by advocates of the purist modern movement to describe work by youngarchitects whose expanded formal range embraced the pop art notion of changing scale and context. Zigzag diagonalswere added to the horizontal and vertical structures of modern architecture. An architecture of inclusion replaced themachine aesthetic and simple geometric forms of the international style.Supergraphics, page 461, became the popular name for bold geometric shapes of bright color, giant Helvetica letterforms,and huge pictographs warping walls, bending corners, and flowing from the floor to the wall and across theceiling, expanding or contracting space in scale changes relative to the architecture. Psychological as well as decorativevalues were addressed as designers created forms to enliven dismal institutional architecture, reverse or shorten theperspective of endless hallways, and bring vitality and color to the built environment.New-wave typography, page 465, specific design ideas explored by Wolfgang Weingart and his students in the late1960s and early 1970s and adopted a decade later include letter-spaced, sans-serif type; bold, stair-step rules; ruled linespunctuating and energizing space; diagonal type; the introduction of italic type and/or weight changes within words;and type reversed from a series of bars. This style gave rise to a prevailing typographic approach in the late 1970s and1980s.Halftone dots, page 465, the small dots from which printed photographs are comprised.Moiré, page 465, the patterns produced when these halftone dot patterns are overlapped and then shifted against eachother.“Gutenberg approach,” page 465, the idea that designers, like the early typographic printers, should strive to stayinvolved in all aspects of the process (including concept, typesetting, prepress production, and printing) to ensure therealization of their vision.Legibility and readability, page 467, The first, a quality of efficient, clear, and simple reading, is often in conflict with thelatter, which is a quality that promotes interest, pleasure, and challenge in reading.Radical modernism, page 467, a reaffirmation of the idealism of modernism altered to accommodate the radical culturaland social changes occurring in the late twentieth century.Memphis, page 471, the Italian design group led by Italian architectural and product designer Ettore Sottsass that influencedthe postmodern movement of the late 1970s into the 1980s. The name reflects the inspiration of both contemporarypopular culture and the artifacts and ornaments of ancient cultures; form is prevalent in its design, and becamethe reason for the design to exist.Retro design, page 475, (from retrograde, or backward looking), a movement based on historical revival that firstemerged in New York in the 1980s and then spread quickly throughout the world.Vernacular design, page 475, artistic and technical expression broadly characteristic of a locale or historical period.

A HISTORY OFGRAPHIC DESIGNKEY PEOPLE AND THEIR MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONS (IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE; THE FIRST PAGE NUMBER OF THEIRAPPEARANCE IS LISTED)Wolfgang Weingart (b. 1941), page 461, Beginning in the 1960s, he began to question the typography of absolute orderand cleanness. He wondered if perhaps the international style had become so refined and prevalent throughout theworld that it had reached an anemic phase. Rejecting the right angle as an exclusive organizing principle, Weingartachieved a joyous and intuitive design with a richness of visual effects in new-wave design. He used the printer’s camerato alter images and explored the unique properties of the film image. Weingart began to move away from purelytypographic design and embraced collage as a medium for visual communicationRobert Venturi (b. 1925), page 461, a controversial and original supermannerist architect. When Venturi looked at thevulgar and disdained urban landscape of billboards, electric signs, and pedestrian buildings he saw a vitality and functionalpurpose and urged designers to learn from the hyperbolic glitter of places such as Las Vegas. Venturi saw thebuilding not as sculptured form but as a component of the larger urban traffic/communication-interior/exterior environmentalsystem. Uncommon uses and juxtapositions of materials, graphic elements from the commercial roadside strip,billboards, and environmental-scale lettering were freely added to his architectural vocabulary.Barbara Stauffacher Solomon (b. 1932), page 461, a San Francisco native and painter who had studied graphic design atthe Basel School of Design during the late 1950s, she used a pallet of pure hue and elementary shape in compositionsthat transformed the totality of the space. In 1970, the American Institute of Architects presented its medal to Solomonfor “bold, fresh, and exciting designs clearly illustrating the importance of rational but vigorous graphics in bringingorder to the urban scene.”Rosmarie Tissi (b. 1937), page 461, a Swiss postmodernist designer who used strong graphic impact, a playful sense ofform, and unexpected manipulation of space in seeking logical and effective solutions to design problems. In a 1964 E.Lutz & Company advertisement, different kinds of copy printed by the client—headlines, text, halftones, and solids—areillustrated by elemental symbols. Rather than align these images in boxes ordered on a grid, the five images appear tohave been intuitively and randomly placed (Fig. 22-3).Siegfried Odermatt (b. 1926), page 463, a Swiss designer who broke away from the international style in the 1960s. Hedesigned a trademark for the Union Safe Company in 1966 that is the antithesis of Swiss design: the letterforms in theword Union are jammed together to form a compact unit suggesting the sturdy strength of the product, sacrificinglegibility in the process. In full-page newspaper advertisements for Union (Fig. 22-4), placed during prestigious bankingconferences, Odermatt treated this logo as pure form to be manipulated visually, creating a plastic dynamic on thenewspaper page.Steff Geissbuhler (b. 1942), page 463, a Swiss designer and partner at Chermayeff & Geismar. Complexity of form isnever used as an end in itself in his design; the dynamic of multiple components forming a whole grows from the fundamentalcontent of the design problem at hand (Figs. 23-8 and 23-9). Careful structural control enables Geissbuhler toorganize vast numbers of elements into a cohesive whole.Dan Friedman (1945–1995), page 466, An American who studied at the Ulm Institute of Design in 1967 and 1968 and atthe Basel School of Design from 1968 to 1970, he rethought the nature of typographic forms and how they could operatein space. Friedman addressed the problem of teaching the basics of a new typography through syntactic and semanticinvestigations. Texture, surface, and spatial layering were explored in his work; organic and geometric forms werecontrasted. Friedman believed that forms could be provocative and amusing to look at, and he freely injected theseproperties into his designs (Fig. 22-18).April Greiman (b. 1948), page 466, Typographic design has usually been the most two-dimensional of all the visualdisciplines, but Greiman achieves a sense of depth in her typographic pages. Overlapping forms, diagonal lines thatimply perspective or reverse perspective, gestured strokes that move back in space, overlap, or move behind geometricelements, and floating forms that cast shadows are the means she uses to make forms move forward and backwardfrom the surface of the printed page.Willi Kunz (b. 1943), page 466, a Swiss-born designer who does not construct his work on a predetermined grid; rather,

A HISTORY OFGRAPHIC DESIGNhe starts the visual composition and permits structure and alignments to grow through the design process. He buildshis typographic constellations with concern for the essential message, the structure unfolding in response to the informationto be conveyed. He might be called an information architect who uses visual hierarchy and syntax to bring orderand clarity to messages, as seen in a lecture series and exhibition schedule announcement (Figs. 22-24 through 22-6).Jayme Odgers (b. 1939), page 468, a photographer who collaborated with April Greiman. Odgers’s wide-angle photographswith extreme depth of field have objects thrusting into the picture space from the peripheral edges.Kenneth Hiebert (b. 1930), page 470, a designer and educator who employed intuition and play in the design process. Heretained the harmonious balance achieved through experience with grid systems, but in designs such as his 1979 “art/design/play” poster for a Paul Rand exhibition (Fig. 22-27), introduced texture, a small dot pattern, and a wider typefacerange, and shifted forms on the grid.Ettore Sottsass (1917-2007), page 471, an architectural and product designer who led the Italian design group Memphis.Christoph Radle, page 471, designer who headed the Memphis graphic design section (Fig. 22-28).Michael Graves (b.1934), page 471, a postmodernist architect, he rebelled against the modernist tradition in the late1970s and expanded his range of architectural forms. Classical colonnades and loggias were revived and combinedwith visual elements inspired by cubist paintings. Graves’s geometry is not the cool purism of Mies van der Rohe; it isan energetic, high-spirited geometry of decorative surfaces and tactile repetitive patterns.Michael Vanderbyl (b. 1947), page 472, a San Francisco designer, who worked in graphics for products ranging fromwoolen knit caps to office furniture (Fig. 22-33). Vanderbyl combines a casual postmodern vitality with a typographicclarity echoing his background in the ordered typography of the international style. His poster for California Public Radio(Fig. 22-30) is an important harbinger of the emerging school. Forms such as the lines and gestures signifying radiowaves are carefully selected for their symbolic meaning; they also play strong decorative and structural roles.Michael Manwaring (b. 1942), page 472, Elements are given symbolic roles and become part of the content in this BayArea designer’s work. A lyrical resonance permeates the color, form, and texture in Michael Manwaring’s graphic andenvironmental designs. In his series of posters for Santa Cruz clothing (Fig. 22-34), graphic forms and color serve thefunction of a traditional headline, linking lifestyle values to consumer products.Michael Cronin (b. 1951), page 473, a San Francisco designer who often builds his compositions with shapes that becomesymbolic vessels or containers for color. His Beethoven Festival poster (Fig. 22-36), designed with Shannon Terry,uses the repetition of diagonal and curved forms to bring order and harmony to the composition. Three treatments ofdisplay typography are unified by their structural relationship to the edges of the rectangle and the green architecturalelements.Paula Scher (b. 1948), page 474, an outspoken designer with an ironic sense of humor, she worked as a designer for CBSRecords during the 1970s. By 1979, tight budgets often forced Scher to develop typographic solutions based on imagination,art and design history sources (such as art deco), and her fascination with obscure and little-used typefaces.Russian constructivism provided important typographic inspiration. Scher did not copy the earlier constructivist stylebut used its vocabulary of forms and form relationships, reinventing and combining them in unexpected ways. Her useof color and space are different; the floating weightlessness of Russian constructivism is replaced by a dense packingof forms in space, with the weight and vigor of old wood-type posters (Fig. 22-38).Louise Fili (b. 1951), page 475, After working for Herb Lubalin and art directing Pantheon Books from 1978 to 1989, shelaunched her own studio. Working in book design, she was influenced by vernacular design in Europe. Eccentric letterformson signs at little Italian seashore resorts built between the world wars fascinated her, as did graphics fromthe same era found in French and Italian flea markets and used-book stalls. These vernacular graphics incorporatedtextured backgrounds, silhouetted photographs, and modernistic sans-serif typefaces with decorative elements or exaggeratedproportions (Fig. 22-40).Terry Koppel (b. 1950), page 475, partner, with Paula Scher, in Koppel and Scher studio, which was founded in 1984.Carin Goldberg (b. 1953), page 475, describes her work as being 90 percent intuition and acknowledges the influence

A HISTORY OFGRAPHIC DESIGNof early modernist designers, especially A. M. Cassandre. Goldberg’s early experience as a painter informs her attitudetoward space, as does an architectural orientation inspired by classes she shared with architecture students in schooland by the location of her studio, which is adjacent to her husband’s architectural office. She says she “paints with herT-square”—functioning as a typographic precisionist with a painterly orientation. This explains the personal attitudethat underlies her work, transcending her myriad and eclectic sources (Figs. 22-41 and 22-42).Lorraine Louie (b. 1955), page 476, embraced the general resonance of the retro approach. Shape, spatial composition,and color are primary vehicles in Louie’s work.Daniel Pelavin (b. 1948), page 476, working in the retro style, he draws inspiration from Gustav Klimt, the Vienna Workshops(Fig. 22-44), and streamlined art deco forms. He combines a reductive abstraction with precise mechanistic forms(Fig. 22-45).Joe Duffy (b. 1949), page 479, At his Duffy Design Group in Minneapolis, he and Charles S. Anderson designed nostalgicrevivals of vernacular and modernistic graphic arts from the first half of the century. Historical graphic resources asdiverse as Aztec ornaments and Ouija boards were plumbed for their form and color.Charles S. Anderson (b. 1958), page 479, also at the Duffy Design Group in Minneapolis, his inspiration came from humble,coarsely printed spot drawings on old matchbook covers and newspaper ads (Fig. 22- 6); the warmth of traditionaltypefaces and nineteenth-century woodcuts was applied to grocery-store packaging (Fig. 22-47), decorative emblematiclabels (Fig. 22-48), and trademarks recalling postage stamps, official seals, and pictorial trademarks of an earlier time.Neville Brody (b. 1957), page 481, Taking a painterly approach to the graphic arts, he has designed album covers forrock music and art directed English magazines, including The Face (Fig. 22-53) and Arena. Although Brody has beeninfluenced by the geometric forms of the Russian constructivist artists, especially Alexander Rodchenko, and by Dada’sexperimental attitudes and rejection of the canons of the ruling establishment, it would misrepresent his philosophyand values to label him a retro designer reinventing past styles. Brody’s work evolved from an effort to discover an intuitiveyet logical approach to design, expressing a personal vision that could have meaning to his audience.