Final Project

The directions for this final project seem simple (pick a past design style and argue why it is better than today’s), but the complexity and sheer breadth of graphic design requires two pieces of analysis before you can choose: one, how do you evaluate a piece of visual communication, and two, how do you categorize that same piece?

Evaluating an era of design could mean discussing many different aspects and genres, how do you break this down for a fair comparison? And what do the various eras/styles share in common and how are they different? These categories offer different aspects to evaluate and perhaps get to the heart of what we are actually comparing when we label one era “the best:.

How do you evaluate a work of graphic design?

The definition of graphic design is visual communication, but the underlying purpose behind a communication varies widely. A poster can persuade (to buy something, change one’s mind about an issue, do something), make you feel something about something, provide information with no persuasion or feelings involved (subway maps, signs for buildings), explain something, tell a story (usually so you feel something)…I think I am starting to see why the Bauhaus curriculum included rhetoric, these are all topics from classical rhetoric, or in short, the different purposes of giving a speech (in ancient Greece), or an article or paper today. Just like writing a speech or an essay, your purpose guides your design.

Does it matter what the purpose is?

I think so. For each of the purposes I gave above, I could probably come up with a different designer who was particularly talented and then whichever era they were working in. But it isn’t about specific designers but rather the specific eras and styles that I need to discuss. In classical rhetoric, persuasion is considered the most important rhetorical skill, so I’m going to use that to narrow down my choices, and let’s not do advertising as persuasion, but rather more argumentative persuasion: convincing someone to do something or change their mind about an important issue of the day (again, this is what Greek orators were trained to do).

What kinds of graphic design composition try to persuade? And is persuasion only political?

Classic posters/compositions meant to be seen by members of the public and articles in magazines and newspapers are the two things that come to mind. The Polish poster style, the revolutionary posters from South America and Africa, the WWI and WWII posters, amid others come to mind. Most of these examples use political persuasion, namely, about the current government in power or related happenings, but there are many examples of designers critiquing parts of their culture and/or society and trying to persuade a viewer to think differently about a topic or issue.

Are we evaluating style or content here?

One of my favorite designers is John Heartfield, especially his posters that spoke against Hitler and the Nazis. He was a Berlin Dadaist and used photo collages to make his posters, especially the famous ones mocking Hitler. The content of these posters is brilliant and worthy of being put into a book on the history of graphic design. But is the photocollage technique the best way to communicate visually? Could Heartfield have done this with drawings, or a more constructivist approach? Maybe. In any case, it is important to separate the content or brilliance of the designer/artist from the techniques they used, but there’s also a case to be made for a particular style or technique offering a designer an avenue to bring an idea fully to life.

What about evaluating it with the criteria “I just love it”?

When I first heard about this project, I assumed I would do Arts and Crafts style and argue why that is better than today’s graphic design. But as I looked through the pages in Meggs and online at Kelmscott Press, Bruce Rogers, and other examples, my arguments came down to the fact that the art, the ornate letters, and the typefaces personally appeal to me very much, as well as the fact that I think we need to return to handmade items that are beautiful and last for a long time (as opposed to cheaply produced items that are trash in a few short years). Or can I come up with a better argument? Keep reading…

Defining styles of graphic design, or what makes one style different from another?

Before I started on this project, I leafed through Meggs from beginning to end, noting which compositions appealed to me or caught my eye, as well as jotting down a brief timeline of the different eras in design. Putting technology of creating compositions and printing aside, there are opposing forces that determine the techniques artists used for each style. Does the piece:

I’m sure I am missing a few categories, but this will suffice for the purposes of this analysis. If I wanted to, I could classify each era or style with the categories above to add some clarity as to how to classify the different styles from different eras, but that’s for another day.

I will say that thinking about classification of styles made me realize that the Arts and Crafts style doesn’t need to compete with political persuasion works because their purposes are completely different. The A&C style of book design – of which I will use William Morris’ Kelmscott Press as my main example – is about decoration and making a classic book a work of art. I can only compare this to other styles of book design, which I do below.

Choosing an era or style to compare to today’s graphic design – twice!

Finally, the heart of the assignment.In thinking about graphic design as a whole and writing the above, I will discuss two styles from two categories, and why they are more effective than today’s styles.

Arts and Crafts style for book design

I would argue that books done in the Arts and Crafts style are more effective than modern books (anything from the last 40 years) because they convey the sacred nature of books through the illustrations, the decoration, the typography, the cover designs, and finally, the quality of the paper and printing used in making these books. I don’t use the term “sacred” ironically here, writing and texts are what allowed mankind to have a history, memory and culture and our classics have remained in our possession as a marker of how ancient and medieval peoples viewed them. The medieval illuminated manuscripts, painstakingly handmade, illuminated, and decorated convey how medieval societies felt about books, and indeed, they played no small part in helping to restore European civilization with the Renaissance (although we need to give proper credit to the Middle Eastern and Far East cultures for preserving ancient texts as well). Somehow, a Penguin Classics edition of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales fades away in comparison to Morris’ Kelmscott Press edition of the same book (you can see all pages here: http://www.rarebookroom.org/Control/chkwks/index.html?page=1). And perhaps comparing it to a Penguin Classics edition is a little unfair, but even an Oxford, Cambridge, or LOA (Library of America) hardback editions doesn’t hold up to Kelmscott’s edition.

The beautifully intricate and gorgeous line-drawn floral pattern that decorate the edges of the first chapter pages – even in black and white, they are striking – are unforgettable. The opening title page incorporates the title of the book into the illustration and considering that William Morris (or Burnes-Jones, Crane, or Cere) drew these on paper first and then his engraver would make woodcuts with them for the printing process, the artistry and skill involved is astounding. Of course, these large illustrations aren’t the only ones in the book, there are smaller illustrations and ornaments used to mark new chapters, headings, titles of poems, and more. Morris also used words in red ink to mark important places in the text. It is amazing what Morris accomplished within the limits of the technology available at the time.

The typography is Morris’ own Chaucer font, which was a larger version of his Troy font, based on gothic lettering but much more legible and balanced. Morris wanted the type to be legible but still bring in that flavor of medieval manuscripts. I was surprised by how readable the words are (here’s a video looking at the Chaucer book up close: https://youtu.be/v83XqGJ-7cM) although I know this typography isn’t universally loved. I think serif fonts for long text are easier to read and I also think Morris did his best to use a legible text for Kelmscott within the limitations of the technology available at the time. I’d love to know what he thought about sans-serif fonts, however, that’d be a very interesting conversation.

And finally, we have the overall design of the book, including the materials used and the care taken in the printing. They all help to create a masterpiece of a book, and indeed, the book goes from being just a well-made book into a work of art on its own. I would never argue that we should print all books this way, obviously this would make books too costly, but there’s no denying that Kelmscott treated classics as the precious works of art that they are.

Dadist style of political posters – persuasion at its most effective

Extreme political situations like fascism and authoritarianism are crucibles for brilliant design work. I consider the Polish posters, revolutionary designs from South America and Africa, and even the WWI and WWII work some of the very best work seen in the history of graphic design. They are not propaganda (the technical definition is correct, but the connotation is not) as Meggs describes them, they are persuasive visual communications, with the power to change history. Since I need to pick only one style, I’ll select the Dadaists.

The Dada movement was an art movement of “absolute freedom” and I argue that this freedom allowed designers to bring brilliant ideas to life, specifically with political and cultural criticism posters. Dada designers made some of the most devastatingly sharp and persuasive posters that has yet to be matched, even today. Dada as a movement was a rebellion against the cultural and political trends of their time, and so it makes sense that Dada artists would create works criticizing their governments and societies. For my discussion, I’ll use John Heartfield as my example Dadaist, especially since he was a master in photomontage (or collages), something the Dada movement is known for inventing.

John Heartfield used photomontages in making his anti-Nazi posters in Weimar Germany, which resulted in him barely escaping with his life before war broke out. They are brilliant and carry a very distinct message that cannot be ignored. Evil thrives when good people ignore it, and it is important to show the people that it is evil in the first place. This is exactly what Heartfield accomplished with his posters about Hitler and the Nazis. The freedom of Dada gives a designer the freedom to bring their ideas to full life, without being constrained by rules. Persuasion can happen with orderly data and modular text, but political persuasion usually has to take a more human and shocking form.

And why do I think Heartfield’s work is better than political persuasion today? Heartfield’s work is purely visual, there is no text to read, everything is right there in the image. It is a visceral, instinctual kind of persuasion, perhaps as far as you can get from Cicero’s speeches in ancient Athens, but it is effective and able to be universally understood. Today’s forms of political persuasion (political cartoons – probably not technically graphic design – and memes on social media) just aren’t as effective. Have I ever seen a meme as effective as Heartfield’s work? In a word, no. I mean, memes can be funny and even somewhat effective at puncturing the image of a politician or celebrity or highlighting an issue, but they aren’t stellar examples of persuasion or even graphic design. This is ironic because modern GD owes a debt to the Dadaist, while we have principles of design today that use grids and other orderly ideas, we also have a lot of freedom in designing which comes from the Dadaists exploding expectations and rules.

Sticking to the main assignment…

Before writing this section, I had gone to submit my project, but in reading some of the other entries, I became a little worried about not choosing one era and deciding if it was better or worse than today’s GD. Hence this section!

If I had to choose one era to defend, I would pick the Dada movement. While there weren’t many Dada artists, designers, or even graphic design work that falls under this style, they changed graphic design forever with their ideas of absolute freedom in designing visual communication pieces. The idea of having no rules, or rather the rule of complete freedom, allowed designers to explore, play, create, let creativity run amok, experiment, and do what they wanted when it came to the empty page. It opened the door to Herb Lubalin and his wonderful typographic experimentation, the conceptual image work of the Polish poster artists (and many more), the Pushpin people, and of course all of the designers who experimented with the early digital tools. While today’s GD seems to have returned to having principles of using grids and hierarchy to communicate visually – and that’s not a bad thing – we also have the freedom to not follow those rules.

Miscellaneous comments…

There are a few things that I am choosing to ignore in this final project, mainly because they would require another post, to be honest. My first issue is in person examination of work. In this class we looked at images of all of these works in our Meggs book and were not able to hold, look at, read, or closely examine books, posters, etc., to decide how we felt about the work. It is one of the reasons my field journal for the last 10 weeks have contained a lot of “I need to see larger images and more examples of this designer’s work”, I was trying to make up for only have a small box on a page to decide how I felt about a work. I would argue that holding a Kelmscott Press book in your hands is a far different experience than looking at Morris’ designs on a page (as beautiful as they are), and while a book is probably the most extreme example of the difference between in person and an image,

My second issue is that modern graphic design is a compilation of the best past eras had to offer, with some editing of course. I see how every single stage of the development of graphic design has influenced and left its mark on today’s work. We might learn that modular grids are best for making layouts, but there is freedom to play outside of these rules, and if you are good enough, you can make a wonderful composition. So it is hard to completely separate a past era from today. I also think past designers were working under limitations that we modern designers do not, which gives us an unfair advantage – I often wonder what Morris, Heartfield, Lubelin, and many others would have done with our toys and tools.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I’ve touched on why comparing two styles of design is a complicated exercise! I certainly could be overthinking all of this (very fair point, I do that), but sometimes it is the simplest of questions that offer the greatest challenge and requires the deepest analysis. Ask a physicist “why is the sky blue?” and she might still be talking 8 hours later. In any case, this was a very valuable exercise in analysis for me, and while I apologize for making this a longer project than I possibly needed to write, I found every minute worthwhile and even fun.