"There is nothing new under the sun"—how often we hear that saying, uttered perhaps to console those who have no gift for discovery, or more likely to discourage the search for truths that might upset our complacency. —Herbert Read, The Origins of Form in Art, 1965
Pure art may be immaculately conceived; graphic design is not. Pure art inhabits almost any form and defines the forms that it takes. Graphic design is proscribed, communicating within delineated realms. While the sky is not the limit in graphic design, there are many ways to work within its confines. The history of graphic design is the legacy of attempts to expand the universe of visual communication.
This book is about the expanding universe. It is also about the consequent relationships between art and design, culture and design, and design and design. It is, therefore, about the interplay between fine and applied artists and how their collective innovations and derivations have influenced graphic design since the field took shape in the late nineteenth century. It is, in turn, about the impact of one hundred years of aesthetics, form and content on the look, feel and function of graphic communications, and how our antecedents shaped graphic design into an interdependent art form. Ultimately, it is about finding clues that reveal how the design language has evolved over time.
Through a survey of known and lesser-known affinities, this book follows the roots and routes of graphic design. Graphic design can either be ahead of or behind major artistic developments depending, of course, on the individual designers practicing at any particular rime. Occasionally, pure art embraces commercial art as a means to an end. Such was the case with the early twentieth-century movements of Futurism and de Stijl, as well as the 1960s Fluxus group, where both pure and applied art forms were advanced simultaneously and complementarity. But on the whole, graphic design's progress ultimately depends on a client's tolerance for and the market's acceptance of original ideas. Furthermore, the clients (or patrons) are influenced by unpredictable social and economic conditions that may affect how designers address the problems they are asked to solve.
Yet it takes only one rogue to start a stampede. One designer with vision can inextricably change the direction of graphic design. Committees do not create innovative work, they strangle untested promise with consensus. Singular efforts make the difference. Sure, the casual audience may view graphic design (if they see it at all) as the ebbs and flows of discernable stylistic waves, but in truth even the most dominant styles are melanges of idiosyncratic attributes.
In the final analysis, however, each of the constituent pieces comprises a whole. Individuals deposit ideas into a bank, yet every designer can make withdrawals. The original creator invariably bequeaths her discovery to everyone. Once it enters the public domain,
few characteristics of one's unique design, even the most proprietary, remain the sole ownership of an individual for long. Popularity is the great equalizer. Imitation is the ultimate response. Assimilation is the final outcome.
Graphic design, like all art, is built on the shoulders of genius and perpetuated by many others. The origin of the world's major graphic design styles, mannerisms and fashions, therefore, cannot always be pinpointed with precise accuracy. Innovations that develop here can turn up there without proper attribution simply because the elements that comprise graphic design are filtered and refined as the number of proponents increases. Early twentieth-century Modernism, for example, was not solely based on the uniform visual traits that today characterize its distinctive look (like black and red bars and sans serif gothic type). It began as an amalgam of various shared design decisions (i.e., preferences for mechanical instead of hand-drawn art, asymmetrical instead of symmetrical composition, etc.) that were initiated by individuals but were absorbed into an overall aesthetic and political philosophy. Likewise, mid-1980s Post-Modernism was not typified by layered, kinetic typography alone, but rather by the repetition of various design substyles that together forged an overall period style.
Modernism may be celebrated today as a revolutionary blow against antiquated, "old guard" methods, but in fact, it was born in fits and starts over a period of time. Similarly, Post-Modernism may seem to have sprung up overnight as a reaction against Modernism, but other alternative approaches (some with very similar decorative graphic attributes) had been percolating for years prior to the introduction of Post-Modernism as a full-blown international style.
As you can see, our roots and routes can be confusing. Yet it is
necessary to address this confusion. And one way is to study past methods. Vintage graphic design tends to be classified in broad generalizations because stylistic or thematic generalizations are easier to comprehend than detailed taxonomies that address formal or theoretical complexity. But in fact, most designers only want a tertiary overview of design history. They are understandably more concerned with how their work will be judged by clients who pay the bills than by what phenomena came before them. In daily practice, knowing the origin of certain components of graphic design is usually of little consequence to a successful end-product.
And yet graphic design history is consequential because it separates the graphic designer's art and craft from mere client-driven service. And with historical awareness, designers are a little less likely to regurgitate proscribed formulae that result in mediocre templates. "Graphic design is a language," wrote Philip Thompson in The Dictionary of Visual Language (Bergstrom & Boyle Books Limited, 1980). "Like other languages it has a vocabulary, grammar, syntax, rhetoric. It also has its cliche, but this is where the analogy ends."
The key to graphic design is knowing what to apply and how to revivify What is familiar. History provides insight for using the basic formal and stylistic tools. Yet this book is not a definitive history of form or style like Philip B. Meggs's A History of Graphic Design or Richard Hollis's Graphic Design: A Concise History. Since these historians track integral movements and individuals, repeating their respective findings would be redundant. So in this book, the standard chronology of accomplishments and litany of personae are replaced by an admittedly idiosyncratic visual survey of common recurring themes (such as ugliness, beauty, fantasy, etc.) and mechanisms (such as layering, blurring, handwriting, etc.).
Unearthing these traits (and relics) is something of an archeologi-cal dig. The slew of paper artifacts presented here reveal major, minor and speculative influences on the overall practice of graphic design. Showing that, over periods of time, many concepts and tools were reprised helps shed light on the evolution of our visual language. And it is fascinating to learn that various visual notions that might be considered unique to a particular time frame actually existed much earlier than previously accepted. For example, the use of the demonstrative pointing finger in patriotic political posters (see pages 38-39) was employed decades before the most familiar World War I-era American poster, "Uncle Sam Wants You." In fact, the poster artist,James Montgomery Flagg, borrowed this concept from three other nations' graphic arsenals, yet his reinvention tends to overshadow the originals. It is sobering to realize that even the most original piece of American iconography is rooted in precedent.
Patterns emerge from the aggregation of interconnected motifs and concepts that reveal both the truly unique and uniquely derivative ways that graphic designers have tackled a range of persistent problems. They highlight the continual reinvention of design elements within a finite realm. They also show the resourcefulness of designers as they attempt to unhinge the expectations of their audiences.
Examining these formal and fashionable traits—as well as the tics and quirks—of a century's worth of graphic design may sound a bit like speculating on the number of angels found on the head of a pin. You may ask: Other than the comparative girth of angels, does this exercise yield quantifiable data? What can we learn from a census of designers who used layered type, or outstretched hands or otherwise based their compositions on squares, triangles or circles? Admittedly, as an end in itself these findings are arcane. But assessing the influence
that these elements have had on design offers insight into how our shared visual language is applied over time.
Regardless of their genius (or lack thereof), graphic designers draw from the same sources of signs and symbols that date back to the turn of the century (if not antiquity). Even most of the extant typefaces are influenced by early archetypes, if not copies of the actual forms themselves. Until the onset of computer-aided design, for example, a mechanical produced in 1920 was constructed with the same materials and production methods as an editorial illustration using similar elements produced in 1980. When following old craft traditions, how can we not fail to be linked to the past?
Let's face it, graphic designers are cliche mongers. Yet don't be insulted (or embarrassed)—this is not as damning as it sounds. It is, however, the essential paradox. Although most designers' goal is to create work that is here and now, the majority of graphic communication is grounded in the tried and true. In A Dictionary of Visual Language, Philip Thompson explained that classic or "hackneyed" pieces of imagery "persist because they contain an essential truth that appeals to our collective sense of myth and form." The world understands these images at a glance. People don't necessarily relish learning a new language every time they open a magazine, read an advertisement or see a billboard. Yet neither do they want to be bored by what they read or see.
In printing jargon used during the late nineteenth- and mid-twentieth centuries, a cliche was a generic stock or clip art image that could be used to fill space or add visual interest to a page. In popular vernacular, however, a cliche is an overused word, phrase, metaphor or image. Eric Partridge wrote in A Dictionary of Cliches, "A cliche is a stereotyped expression—a phrase 'on tap' as it were." A cliche is, therefore, a formula. To use the word cliche in a critique about a work of art or graphic design is indeed the sharpest barb.
Yet visual cliches are also mnemonics, entry points and way-finders —both necessary and invaluable. The job of the contemporary designer is to somehow manipulate cliches by recasting their archetypal meaning. Mediocre designers use cliches without alteration, but clever designers invest timeworn veneers with new levels of meaning. Since graphic design is in large part a recycling of common imagery, then designers should squeeze out uncommon solutions. In From Cliche to Archetype, Marshall McLuhan offers a humorous anecdote about a teacher who challenged her students to use a familiar word in a new way. He writes, "One [student] read: 'The boy returned home with a cliche on his face.' Asked to explain his phrase, he said, 'The dictionary defines cliche as a worn-out expression.'" Like this young wiseguy, designers must also transform cliches from the expected to the unexpected. This is the most useful tool a design education can impart.
