Tuesday, December 1, 2015

How did postmodernism impact on Graphic Design practice?

"How did postmodernism impact on Graphic Design practice?"Postmodernism is an art movement that was realised in the 1980s but really got started in the late 20th century and was widely know in Europe and especially in America during the 1980s and 1990s. Many people knew that postmodernism was about to happen because by the late 1960s, modern design and beliefs became irrelevant in the emerging new society. The art movement is represented by using and mixing various different types of media and styles in art design that opposes general conventions to create new adaptations in art design. People such as architects and designers had welcomed the postmodern era as a cultural change. This had made a positive impact for designers as they it allowed them to become more free by incorporating different elements and styles in their work where it wasn’t idiosyncratic but more personal and open minded. Postmodern design movement had created pop art, collage, digression, surrealism, parody and irony. Postmodern theorists also know it as ‘jouissance’ as the postmodern era has made design less serious and more playful so it felt more pleasurable not prudent.
 In Graphic Design, the ‘new wave’ was about breaking traditions of typography so that you could use different typefaces and have inconsistent spacing and positioning between letters.
'It was a sign that design was beginning to break from its mooring, question its commitments to rationalism and determinacy and take an increasingly unfixed and open-ended new forms.'[1]The author is saying it as he is re-living this great experience as the quote suggests that postmodernism had a positive impact on graphic design as everything in the design world started to change in terms of new media, therefore had affected the production of graphic design practice. Graphic design had become increasingly popular to new opportunities and began to break away from its solidarity and people began to question the philosophy of graphic design as postmodernism made it more exciting and revolutionary. The excitement was unquestionable as people were so fascinated to see the postmodern era such as the new wave and the extensive styles as it gave endless variety of new options to choose from. The quote also implies it was time for a new change and a new beginning in graphic design because it was inevitable, people were simply waiting for it to happen, and when it did, it was substantial. The break through of postmodernism meant that designers could create something different without having to stick to a certain set of modernist rules which made design more exciting and interesting.
“Postmodernism's distinctive character lies in this kind of wholesale "nudging" commitment to doubleness, or duplicity. In many ways it is an even-handed process because postmodernism ultimately manages to install and reinforce as much as undermine and subvert the conventions and presuppositions it appears to challenge. Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to say that the postmodern's initial concern is to de-naturalize some of the dominant features of our way of life; to point out that those entities that we unthinkingly experience as "natural" (they might even include capitalism, patriarchy, liberal humanism) are in fact "cultural"; made by us, not given to us.”[2]“Some of those strategies postmodernism borrows from modernism, in particular its self-consciousness and self-reflexivity, as well as its questioning of such Enlightenment values as progress, science, and empire or such nineteenth-century values as bourgeois domesticity, capitalism, utilitarianism, and industry.”[3]


[1] Poynor, R. (2003) No More Rules. London: Lawrence King - Postmodernism[2] Felluga, Dino. "Modules on Hutcheon: On Parody." Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. [Last update 31 January 2013] Purdue U. [Accessed 23 November 2015] <http://www.purdue.edu/guidetotheory/postmodernism/modules/hutcheonparody.html>. [3] Felluga, Dino. "Modules on Hutcheon: On Postmodernity." Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. [Last update 31 January 2013] Purdue U. [Accessed 23 November 2015] <http://www.purdue.edu/guidetotheory/postmodernism/modules/hutcheonpostmodernity.html>

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