Graphic Design History, A Critical Guide - Johnanna Drucker and Emily McVarish

MODERNISM IN DESIGN

Corporate Identities and International Style - 1950s - 1970s
p259

• The work of a graphic designer expanded from composing and stylising messages to coordinating an image across products and communications.
• Aesthetics of corporate systems drew on the 'universal language' based on the values of clarity, rational organisation and functional efficiency

Post WWII, a time of great social and political upheaval, designers sought to create order and clarity through a formalised and ordered aesthetic. 

p262 - 'Universal signs succeed by becoming familiar'. Perhaps this relates to Rand/Heller because he believes style and trends is a product of repetition no matter how 'good' the design is.

International Style paralleled the growth of corporate culture:

• Characterised by underlying grid structures, asymmetrical layouts, and sans serif type
• Favoured objective photography - No decoration or illustration, predominantly geometric forms.
• 'Clean, unfussy directness was the primary aim of this approach.'
• Max Bill, Josef Muller-Brockmann, Emil Ruder, Armin Hoffmann stressed a highly logical, grid based system of layout.
• 'Other cultural approaches to graphic design did not enter the international spotlight. Internationalism meant a conformism that had little room for the social differences that stylistic diversity might express.' p266

Style systems and graphic design concepts

• Some designers did not fit the universal model and developed their own equally contemporary styles

Conclusion

p276

Anonymous International Style held the most ground

Corporate culture tended to efface traces of individual expression

'Modernism' had become mainstream, losing its political claims and innovative edge in the process. 

Self-conscious graphic design

p284

• Graphic design became self-conscious in the early 1960s. 
• Designers developed a sense of humour as they recognised a growing sophistication of the consumer.
• This can perhaps be used as evidence to support a postmodern approach because society is always changing. 

POSTMODERNISM IN DESIGN

Postmodernism was a deliberate, self-conscious reaction to the "universal" formal language of Modernism that sparked an eclectic interest in historicist, retro, techno and vernacular styles

• Eclectic - 'Deriving ideas, style, or taste from a broad and diverse range of sources.'

• Disregarded a lot of the principles developed in modernism - 
• Form follows function turned upside down
• Anti-functional, deliberately chaotic
• No single, unified style