【毕业设计论文】Graphic_Design_Theory

Edited by Helen Armstrong PrincEton ArcHitEcturAl PrEss nEw York rEAdings from tHE fiEld

G raphic D esiGn T heory

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This project was produced with editorial support from

the Center for Design Thinking, Maryland Institute College of Art.

Design Briefs Series Editor: Ellen Lupton

Special thanks to: Nettie Aljian, Sara Bader, Nicola Bednarek, Janet Behning, Becca Casbon, Carina Cha, Penny (Yuen Pik) Chu, Russell Fernandez, Pete Fitzpatrick, Wendy Fuller, Jan Haux, Aileen Kwun, Nancy Eklund Later, Linda Lee, Aaron Lim, Laurie Manfra, John Myers, Katharine Myers, Lauren Nelson Packard, Jennifer Thompson, Paul Wagner, Joseph Weston, and Deb Wood of Princeton Architectural Press —K evin C. Lippert, publisher

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Graphic design theory: readings from the field / edited by Helen Armstrong.

p. cm. —(Design briefs)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-56898-772-9 (alk. paper)

1. Graphic arts.

2. Commercial art. I. Armstrong, Helen, 1971–

NC997.G673 2008

741.6—dc22

2008021063

t H E f u t u r E l i E s A H E A d o f u s , b u t b E H i n d u s t H E r E i s A l s o A g r E A t A c c u m u l A t i o n o f H i s t o r Y —A r E s o u r c E f o r i m A g i n A t i o n A n d c r E A t i v i t Y . i t H i n k w E c A l l “c r E A t i v E ” t H A t d Y n A m i s m o f i n t E l l E c t u A l c o n c E P t i o n t H A t f l o w s b A c k A n d f o r t H b E t w E E n t H E f u t u r E A n d t H E P A s t .Kenya hara Designing Design 2007

conTenTs

6F oreword: Why Theory? Ellen Lupton

8Acknowledgments

9Introduction: Revisiting the Avant-Garde 16 Timeline

secTion one: creaTinG The FielD 19Introduction

20manifesto of futurism | F. T. Marinetti | 1909

22w ho we Are: manifesto of the constructivist group | Aleksandr Rodchenko, Varvara Stepanova, and Aleksei Gan | c. 1922

25our book | El Lissitzky | 1926

32typophoto | László Moholy-Nagy | 1925

35the new typography | Jan Tschichold | 1928

39t he crystal goblet, or why Printing should be invisible | Beatrice Warde | 1930

44on typography | Herbert Bayer | 1967

T heory a T WorK

50Futurism

52Constructivism

54The Bauhaus and New Typography

secTion TWo: BuilDinG on success

57Introduction

58d esigning Programmes | Karl Gerstner | 1964

62g rid and design Philosophy | Josef Müller-Brockmann | 1981

64good design is goodwill | Paul Rand | 1987

70l earning from las vegas: the forgotten symbolism

of Architectural form | Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown,

and Steven Izenour | 1972

77m y way to typography | Wolfgang Weingart | 2000

81t ypography as discourse | Katherine McCoy

with David Frej | 1988

84the macramé of resistance | Lorraine Wild | 1998

87the dark in the middle of the stairs | Paula Scher | 1989

T heory a T WorK

90International Style

92Modernism in America

94New Wave and Postmodernism

secTion Three: MappinG The FuTure

97Introduction

98the underground mainstream | Steven Heller | 2008

102design and reflexivity | Jan van Toorn | 1994

107design Anarchy | Kalle Lasn | 2006

108the designer as Author | Michael Rock | 1996

115 designing our own graves | Dmitri Siegel | 2006

119dematerialization of screen space | Jessica Helfand | 2001

124designing design | Kenya Hara | 2007

127i mport/Export, or design workflow and contemporary

Aesthetics | Lev Manovich | 2008

133univers strikes back | Ellen and Julia Lupton | 2007

T heory a T WorK

138Contemporary Design

145G lossary

147Text Sources

148 B ibliography

150Credits

151I ndex

ForeWorD

wHY tHEorY?

ellen lupTon, DirecTor

GRAPHIC DESIGN MFA PRoGRAM, MARYLAND INSTITuTE CoLLEGE oF ART

This book is an introduction to graphic design theory. Each selection,

written in its own time and place across a century of design evolution,

explores the aesthetic and social purposes of design practice. All of these

writers were—or are—visual producers active in the field, engaged with

the realities of creating graphic communication. Why did they pause from

making their work and building their careers to write about what they do?

Why should a young designer today stop and read what they wrote?

Theory is all about the question “why?” The process of becoming a

designer is focused largely on “how”: how to use software, how to solve

problems, how to organize information, how to get clients, how to work

with printers, and so on. With so much to do, stopping to think about why

we pursue these endeavors requires a momentary halt in the frenetic flight

plan of professional development. Design programs around the world have

recognized the need for such critical reflection, and countless designers

and students are hungry for it. This book, carefully curated by emerging

scholar and designer Helen Armstrong, is designed as a reader for history

and theory courses as well as an approachable volume for general reading.

Armstrong developed the book as graduate research in the Graphic Design

mfa program at Maryland Institute College of Art, which has produced

a series of collaboratively authored books. Hers is the first book from our

program edited independently by a graduate student. Presented within its

pages are passionate, intelligent texts created by people who helped build

their field. These writers used their practical understanding of living pro-

cesses and problems to raise philosophical, aesthetic, and political questions

about design, and they used those questions, in turn, to inspire their own

visual work as well as the work of people around them.

Design is a social activity. Rarely working alone or in private, designers

respond to clients, audiences, publishers, institutions, and collaborators.

While our work is exposed and highly visible, as inpiduals we often remain

anonymous, our contribution to the texture of daily life existing below

the threshold of public recognition. In addition to adding to the common

beat of social experience, designers have produced their own subculture, a

global discourse that connects us across time and space as part of a shared 6 | Graphic Design Theory

endeavor, with our own heroes and our own narratives of discovery and revolution. Few members of the general public are aware, for example, of the intense waves of feeling triggered among designers by the typeface Helvetica, generation after generation, yet nearly anyone living in a literate, urbanized part of the world has seen this typeface or characters inspired

by it. Design is visible everywhere, yet it is also invisible—unnoticed and unacknowledged.

Creating design theory is about building one’s own community, constructing a social network that questions and illuminates everyday practice—making it visible. Many of the writers in this book are best known for their visual work; others are known primarily as critics or educators. But in each case, a living, active connection to practice informs these writers’ ideas. Each text assembled here was created in order to inspire practice, moving designers to act and experiment with incisive principles in mind. El Lissitzky, whose posters, books, and exhibitions are among the most influential works of twentieth-century design, had a huge impact on his peers through his work as a publisher, writer, lecturer, and curator. In the mid-twentieth century, Josef Müller-Brockmann and Paul Rand connected design methodologies to the world of business, drawing on their own professional experiences. Wolfgang Weingart, Lorraine Wild, and Katherine McCoy have inspired generations of designers through their teaching as well as through their visual work. Kenya Hara has helped build a global consumer brand (muji) while stimulating invention and inquiry through his work as a writer and curator.

A different kind of design theory reader would have drawn ideas from outside the field—from cognitive psychology, for example, or from literary criticism, structural linguistics, or political philosophy. Designers have much to learn from those discourses as well, but this book is about learning from ourselves. Why theory? Designers read about design in order to stimulate growth and change in their own work. Critical writing also inspires new lines of questioning and opens up new theoretical directions. Such ideas draw people together around common questions. Designers entering the field to-day must master an astonishing range of technologies and prepare themselves for a career whose terms and demands will constantly change. There is more for a designer to “do” now than ever before. There is also more to read, more to think about, and many more opportunities to actively engage the discourse. This book lays the groundwork for plunging into that discourse and getting ready to take part.

Foreword | 7

AcknowlEdgmEnts

The idea for this book sprang from conversations I had with Ellen Lupton

as I prepared to teach a course in graphic design theory at the Maryland

Institute College of Art in Fall 2006. In her roles as director of mica’s

Center for Design Thinking and mica’s Graphic Design mfa program,

Ellen provided invaluable guidance throughout the project. The Center for

Design Thinking works with mica students and faculty to initiate publi-

cations and other research projects focused on design issues and practices.

As both a student and a teacher at mica, I have profited from the sheer

dynamism of its Graphic Design mfa program. Special thanks go to my

classmates, as well as the program’s associate director, Jennifer Cole Phillips.

I also recognize my own students, who provided a strong sounding board,

allowing me to vet each stage of this book within the classroom. Gratitude

is due, as well, to readers of my introduction, particularly art historian T’ai

Smith. Her contemporary art seminar helped contextualize issues of anonym-

ity and collectivism so important to graphic design. And, finally, thanks to the

research staff of mica’s Decker Library, particularly senior reference librarian

Katherine Cowan.

Essential to this project, of course, are the many eminent designers

who graciously contributed their work. Special recognition goes to Shelley

Gruendler for sharing her expertise and photo archive of Beatrice Warde. At

Princeton Architectural Press, thanks goes to my editor, Clare Jacobson, for

her thoughtful comments and ongoing support of the project. I hope this

collection will inspire graphic designers to continue creating such vital

theoretical texts.

Finally, to my family. To my daughters, Tess and Vivian, who will create

by my side for a lifetime to come. My mother, Sarah Armstrong, who made

annual essay contests a high point of my childhood. My father, John

Armstrong, whose deep resounding voice I still hear when I read a verse of

poetry. And to my husband, Sean Krause, a talented writer and the love of my

life, without whom none of this would have been possible.

8 | Graphic Design Theory

inTroDucTion

rEvisiting tHE AvAnt-gArdE

The texts in this collection reveal ideas key to the evolution of graphic design. Together, they tell the story of a discipline that continually moves between extremes—anonymity and authorship, the personal and the universal, social detachment and social engagement. Through such oppositions, designers position and reposition themselves in relation to the discourse of design and the broader society. Tracing such positioning clarifies the radically changing paradigm in which we now find ourselves. Technology is fundamentally altering our culture. But technology wrought radical change in the early 1900s as well. Key debates of the past are reemerging as crucial debates of the present. Authorship, universality, social responsibility—within these issues the future of graphic design lies.

collecTive auThorship

Some graphic designers have recently invigorated their field by producing their own content, signing their work, and branding themselves as makers. Digital technology puts creation, production, and distribution into the hands of the designer, enabling such bold assertions of artistic presence. These acts of graphic authorship fit within a broader evolving model of collective author-ship that is fundamentally changing the producer-consumer relationship.

Early models of graphic design were built on ideals of anonymity, not authorship. In the early 1900s avant-garde artists like El Lissitzky, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Herbert Bayer, and László Moholy-Nagy viewed the authored work of the old art world as shamefully elitist and ego driven. In their minds, such bourgeois, subjective visions corrupted society. They looked instead

to a future of form inspired by the machine—functional, minimal, ordered, rational. As graphic design took shape as a profession, the ideal of objectivity replaced that of subjectivity. Neutrality replaced emotion. The avant-garde effaced the artist/designer through the quest for impartial communication.

After wwii Swiss graphic designers further extracted ideals of objectivity and neutrality from the revolutionary roots of the avant-garde. Designers like Max Bill, Emil Ruder, Josef Müller-Brockmann, and Karl Gerstner converted these ideals into rational, systematic approaches that centered on the grid. Thus proponents of the International Style subjugated personal perspective

Introduction | 9

10 | Graphic Design Theory to “clarity” of communication, submitting the graphic designer to their programmatic design system. Müller-Brockmann asserted, “The withdrawal of the personality of the designer behind the idea, the themes, the enterprise, or the product is what the best minds are all striving to achieve.”1 Swiss-style design solidified the anonymous working space of the designer inside a frame of objectivity, the structure of which had been erected by the avant-garde.Today some graphic designers continue to champion ideals of neutrality and objectivity that were essential to the early formation of their field. Such designers see the client’s message as the central component of their work. They strive to communicate this message clearly, although now their post-postmodern eyes are open to the impossibility of neutrality and objectivity.In contrast to the predominate modern concept of the designer as neutral transmitter of information, many designers are now producing their own content, typically for both critical and entrepreneurial purposes. This assertion of artistic presence is an alluring area of practice. Such work includes theoretical texts, self-published books and magazines, and other consumer products. In 1996 Michael Rock’s essay “The Designer as Author” critiqued the graphic authorship model and became a touchstone for continuing debates.2 The controversial idea of graphic authorship, although still not a dominant professional or economic paradigm for designers, has seized our imagination and permeates discussions of the future of design. And, as an empowering model for practice, it leads the curriculum of many graphic design graduate programs.Out of this recent push toward authorship, new collective voices hearken-ing back to the avant-garde are emerging. As a result of technology, content generation by inpiduals has never been easier. (Consider the popularity of the diy and the “Free Culture” movements.)3 As more and more designers, along with the rest of the general population, become initiators and produc-ers of content, a leveling is occurring. A new kind of collective voice, more anonymous than inpidual, is beginning to emerge. This collective creative voice reflects a culture that has as its central paradigm the decentered power structure of the network and that promotes a more open sharing of ideas, tools, and intellectual property.4Whether this leveling of voices is a positive or negative phenomenon for graphic designers is under debate. Dmitri Siegel’s recent blog entry on Design Observer, included in this collection, raises serious questions about where designers fall within this new paradigm of what he terms “prosum-erism—simultaneous production and consumption.”5 Siegel asks, “What 3 T he DIY (Do It Yourself) movement

encourages people to produce things themselves rather than depend on mass-produced goods and the corporations that make them. New technologies have empowered such inpiduals to become producers rather than just consumers. For an explanation of the Free Culture

movement, see 8c45497d55270722192ef7ae. This movement seeks to develop a culture in which “all members

are free to participate in its transmis-sion and evolution, without artificial limits on who can participate or in what way.”

1 J osef Müller-Brockmann, The

Graphic Artist and His Design Problems (Zurich: Niggli, 1968), 7. 4 F or a discussion of the network

structure and our society, see Pierre Lévy, Cyberculture, trans. Robert Bononno (Minneapolis: university of Minnesota Press, 2001).

5 D mitri Siegel, “Designing our own

Graves,” Design observer blog, http://www.designobserver .com/archives/015582 (accessed April 28, 2008). 2 M ichael Rock, “The Designer

as Author ,” Eye 5, no. 20 (Spring 1996): 44–53.

Introduction | 11services and expertise do designers have to offer in a prosumer market?” The answer is, of course, still up for grabs, but the rapid increase in autho-rial voices and the leveling of this multiplicity of voices into a collective drive suggest the future of our working environment. Already designers increas-ingly create tools, templates, and resources for their clients and other users to implement. Graphic designers must take note and consciously position themselves within the prosumer culture or run the risk of being creatively sidelined by it.

universal sysTeMs oF connecTion

At the same time that technology is empowering a new collectivity, it is also redefining universality. To understand how this crucial design concept is evolving, we need to take a look at how it initially emerged.Members of the influential Bauhaus school, founded in Weimar in 1919, sought a purifying objective vision. Here, under the influence of constructiv-ism, futurism, and De Stijl, a depersonalized machine aesthetic clashed with the subjective bent of expressionism, ultimately becoming the predominant model for the school. Artists like Moholy-Nagy equated objectivity with truth and clarity. To express this truth artists had to detach emotionally from their work in favor of a more rational and universal approach.6 Objective detachment spurred on other Bauhaus teachers, including Herbert Bayer and Josef Albers, who sought to uncover ideal forms for communicating clearly and precisely, cleansing visual language of subjec-tivity and ambiguity.7 As Moholy-Nagy optimistically claims in his essay “Typophoto,” in this new universal visual world, “the hygiene of the optical, the health of the visible is slowly filtering through.”8 In the 1970s and 1980s, postmodernism challenged the notion of universality by asserting the end-less persity of inpiduals and communities and the constantly changing meaning of visual forms.The technology through which designers today create and communi-cate has quietly thrust universality back into the foundation of our work. Designers currently create through a series of restrictive protocols. Software applications mold inpidual creative quirks into standardized tools and palettes. The resulting aesthetic transformation, as Lev Manovich explores in his essay “Import/Export,” is monumental.9 Specific techniques, artistic languages, and vocabularies previously isolated within inpidual professions are being “imported” and “exported” across software applications and profes-

sions to create shared “metamedia.” Powered by technology, universality has

6 F or a more complete discussion

of Moholy-Nagy at the Bauhaus,

see Victor Margolin, The Struggle

for Utopia: Rodchenko, Lissitzky,

Moholy-Nagy, 1917–1946 (Chicago:

university of Chicago Press, 1997).

7 F or a more complete discussion

of the Bauhaus quest for visual

language, see Ellen Lupton and

J. Abbott Miller, eds., The ABC’s

of Triangle Square Circle: The

Bauhaus and Design Theory

(New York: Princeton Architec-

tural Press, 2000), 22.

8 L ászló Moholy-Nagy, “Typophoto,”

in Painting, Photography, Film,

trans. Janet Seligman (Cambridge:

MIT Press, 1973), 38–40.

9 L ev Manovich, “Import/Export,

or Design Workflow and

Contemporary Aesthetics,”

8c45497d55270722192ef7ae

(accessed April 28, 2008).

12 | Graphic Design Theory Kenya hara MuJI advertise-ment, 2005 tea house posters. Hara’s advertising philosophy for MuJI reinterprets old concepts of anonymity and universality. As he explains, “Communication becomes effective only when an advertisement is offered as an empty vessel and viewers freely deposit into it their ideas and wishes.”11 Kenya Hara, Designing Design, trans. Maggie Kinser Hohle and Yukiko Naito (Baden: Lars Müller, 2007), 243.

Introduction | 13moved far from the restrictive models of the past toward this new common language of, in Manovich’s words, “hybridity” and “remixability” unlike anything that has come before.This revamped hybrid universal language crosses boundaries between disciplines and inpiduals, between countries and cultures. In their essay “Univers Strikes Back,” Ellen and Julia Lupton note it is “a visual language enmeshed in a technologically evolving communications environment stretched and tested by an unprecedented range of people.”10 Both global and local, the mass of work emerging from this universality and the resulting blurring of singular vision would boggle the minds of even the avant-garde. The universal systems of connection emerging today are different from the

totalizing universality of the avant-garde, which sought to create a single, utopian visual language that could unite human culture. Today, countless designers and producers, named and unnamed, at work both inside and

outside the profession, are contributing to a vast new visual commons, often using shared tools and technologies. Through this new “commonality” the paradigm of design is shifting.

social responsiBiliTy

The same digital technology that empowers a collective authorship and

enables a new kind of universal language is also inspiring a sharpened critical voice within the design community. Designers are actively engaging their societies politically and culturally, increasingly thinking globally inside a

tightly networked world. As more and more designers, enabled by technology, produce both form and content, issues like sustainability and social justice are moving to the forefront. Designers are looking beyond successful business and aesthetic practices to the broader effects of the culture they help create.

Although currently recontextualized within the digital world, design-

driven cultural critique, like issues of authorship and universality, is rooted in the avant-garde. Rodchenko, Lissitzky, Moholy-Nagy, and Bayer attempted to actively reshape their societies through design, pruning the chaos of life into orderly, rational forms. Both their language and their designs, included in this collection, portray the power of their societal visions. Beginning in

the 1920s, Russian constructivists like Rodchenko and Lissitzky, in particular, helped enact a revolutionary avant-garde agenda. In the new Soviet Union, they transformed inpidual artistic intent into a collective utopian vision, hoping to achieve a better, more just, more egalitarian society. The fine artist became the unnamed worker, the “constructor.”

10 L upton, Ellen and Julia, “univers

Strikes Back,” 2007. An edited

form of this essay was published

as “All Together Now,” Print 61,

no. 1 (January–February 2007):

28–30.

14 | Graphic Design Theory The detached neutrality of the International Style, particularly as practiced in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, distanced designers from revolu-tionary social ideals. American designers like Paul Rand, Lester Beall, and Bauhaus immigrant Herbert Bayer used the almost scientific objectivity of Swiss design systems to position graphic design as a professional practice of value to corporate America. Rather than immerse their own identities within a critical avant-garde paradigm of social change, these designers sought to efface their identities in service to the total corporate image, bolstering the existing power structures of their day.11 In the late 1960s, the tide began to turn, leading to a renewed sense of social responsibility in the design community. A postmodern backlash against modernist neutrality broke out. Wolfgang Weingart, trained as a typesetter by typographic luminaries Emil Ruder and Max Bill and later a teacher at Basel Künstgewerbeschule, led a movement termed New Wave design in Swit-zerland.12 He pushed intuition to the forefront, stretching and manipulating modernist forms and systems toward a more self-expressive, romantic approach.In the United States Katherine McCoy, head of Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, led her students from the 1970s to the early 1990s to engage more subjectively with their own work. While exploring poststructuralist theories of openness and instability of meaning, McCoy destabilized the concrete, rational design of the International Style. She emphasized the emotion, self-expression, and multiplicity of meaning that cannot be controlled within the client’s message. And, in so doing, she shifted the user’s gaze back to the inpidual designer, instating a sense of both voice and agency.In the 1990s such rebellious forays into emotion and self-expression joined an increasing global awareness and a new concentration of production methods in designers’ hands. Together, these forces motivated more and more graphic designers to critically reengage society. As the field shifted toward a more subjective design approach, a social responsibility movement emerged in the 1990s and 2000s.13 Graphic designers joined media activists to revolt against the dangers of consumer culture. Kalle Lasn launched Adbusters, a Canadian magazine that co-opted the language and strategy of advertising. Naomi Klein wrote No Logo, an influential antiglobalization, antibranding treatise.14 Thirty-three prominent graphic designers signed the “First Things First Manifesto 2000” protesting the dominance of the advertising industry over the design profession. Designers began generating content both inside and outside the designer-client relationship in the critique of society.15 13 F or an overview of this social

responsibility movement, see Steven Heller and Veronique Vienne, eds., Citizen Designer: Perspectives on Design Responsibility (New York: Allsworth Press, 2003). 14 N aomi Klein, No Logo

(New York: Picador , 2002). 15 R ick Poynor , “First Things

First Manifesto 2000,” AIGA Journal of Graphic Design 17, no. 2 (1999): 6–7. Note: This manifesto refer-ences the “First Things First” 1964 manifesto authored by Ken Garland. 11 F or a discussion of avant-

garde artists and corporate America, see Johanna Drucker , The Visible Word: Experimental Typography and Modern Art, 1909–1923 (Chicago: university of Chicago Press, 1994).

12 N ew Wave design is also

called New Typography, postmodernism, or late modernism.

Introduction | 15As the new millennium unfolds, graphic designers create within a vast pulsating network in which broad audiences are empowered to produce and critique. Within this highly connected world, designers like Kenya Hara, creative director of muji and managing director of the Nippon Design Center, develop innovative models for socially responsible design. For Hara, as for the avant-garde, the answer lies in the rational mind rather than inpidual desire. This new rational approach, however, incorporates a strong environmental ethos within a quest for business and design models that produce “global harmony and mutual benefit.”16 Issues of social responsibility, like graphic authorship, have also entered graphic design educational curriculum, encour-aging students to look beyond formal concerns to the global impact of their

work. No longer primarily led by restrictive modern ideals of neutral, objective communication, the design field has expanded to include more direct critical engagement with the surrounding world.

The avanT-GarDe oF The neW MillenniuM

This book is pided into three main sections: Creating the Field, Building on Success, and Mapping the Future. Creating the Field traces the evolution of graphic design during the early 1900s, including influential avant-garde ideas of futurism, constructivism, and the Bauhaus. Building on Success

covers the mid to latter part of the twentieth century, looking at International Style, Pop, and postmodernism. Mapping the Future opens at the end of the twentieth century and explores current theoretical ideas in graphic design that are still unfolding.

Looking back across the history of design through the minds of these

influential designers, one can identify pervasive themes like those discussed in this introduction. Issues like authorship, universality, and social responsi-bility, so key to avant-garde ideology, remain crucial to contemporary critical and theoretical discussions of the field.

Jessica Helfand, in her essay “Dematerialization of Screen Space,” charges the present design community to become the new avant-garde. This collection was put together with that charge in mind. Helfand asks that we think beyond technical practicalities and begin really “shaping a new and unprecedented

universe.” Just as designers in the early twentieth century rose to the challenges of their societies, so can we take on the complexities of the rising millennium. Delving into theoretical discussions that engage both our past and our

present is a good start.

16 K enya Hara, Designing Design,

trans. Maggie Kinser Hohle

and Yukiko Naito (Baden: Lars

Müller , 2007), 429–431.

18 | Graphic Design Theory

herBerT Bayer Photomontage cover for the first issue of bauhaus zeitschrift, 1928. Bayer combines the tools of a graphic designer, basic geometric forms, and a page of type in his layout. Word and image come together to communicate

to the reader.avanT-GarDe DesiGners haD GuTs anD vision. MosT Were younG people, jusT in Their TWenTies. They WanTeD noThinG less Than To chanGe The WorlD. At the beginning of the twentieth century they unabashedly confronted their society through design. Surrounded by chaos—industrialization, technological upheaval, world war—they sought order and meaning. These artists spoke in manifestos and created posters, books, magazines, and typefaces using strikingly new visual vocabularies. They embraced mass communication; they abandoned easels. They treated the aesthetic conven-tions of symmetry and ornament like stale leftovers to be scourged at all costs. Instead the avant-garde looked to the machine for inspiration—sleek, functional, efficient, powerful. They tried to discover untainted visual forms that were fitting for the new modern world. Through such experiments they explored asymmetri-cal layout, activated white space, serial design, geometric typefaces, minimalism, hierarchy, functionalism, and universality. out of their sweat, movements sprang up—futurism, Dadaism, De Stijl, constructivism, New Typography. Their ideas clashed and converged to form the modern foundation from which the graphic design industry emerged.

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E creaTinG The FielD

20 | Graphic Design Theory F . T. MarineTTi BroKe The syMMeTrical paGe. he cracKeD iT aparT anD Then puT iT BacK ToGeTher usinG BiTs anD pieces oF Type, prinTers’ MarKs, anD aDs. First and foremost, he was a poet, but when in 1909 he published the “Manifesto of Futurism” in Le Figaro, a Paris newspaper , he embarked on a modern crusade that took him far beyond the realm of verse. In fact, it took him into the middle of a fledgling discipline called “graphic design.” Marinetti was a showman, a scoundrel, and a fascist, but he matters today. Mainly out of economy and convenience, he used print to communicate with the masses —posters, books, flyers. He bent and twisted typography to better suit his poetry and his overall message of noise, speed, and aggression. In the end, the concrete, visual nature of type stood at the forefront of his work, exposed. He challenges us even now to embrace the future —in his words, to “exalt” in the “punch and the slap,” to believe that entirely new forms are not only possible but imminent.

F . T. MarineTTi Foldout from

Les mots en liberté futuristes (The

Futurist Words-In-Freedom),

1919.

Creating the Field | 21ManiFesTo oF FuTurisM F . T. MarineTTi | 1909 1. W e intend to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and fearlessness. 2. C ourage, audacity, and revolt will be essential elements of our poetry. 3. U p to now literature has exalted a pensive immobility, ecstasy, and sleep. We intend to exalt aggressive action, a feverish insomnia, the racer’s stride, the mortal leap, the punch and the slap. 4. W e say that the world’s magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing car whose hood is adorned with great pipes, like serpents of explosive breath—a roaring car that seems to ride on grapeshot—is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace. 5. W e want to hymn the man at the wheel, who hurls the lance of his spirit across the Earth, along the circle of its orbit. 6. T he poet must spend himself with ardor, splendor, and generosity, to swell the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements. 7. E xcept in struggle, there is no more beauty. No work without an aggressive character can be a masterpiece. Poetry must be conceived as a violent attack on unknown forces, to reduce and prostrate them before man. 8. W e stand on the last promontory of the centuries! . . . Why should we look back, when what we want is to break down the mysterious doors of the Impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We already live in the absolute, because we have created eternal, omnipresent speed. 9. W e will glorify war—the world’s only hygiene—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman.10. W e will destroy the museums, libraries, academies of every kind, will fight moralism, feminism, every opportunistic or utilitarian cowardice.11. W e will sing of great crowds excited by work, by pleasure, and by riot; we will sing of the multicolored, polyphonic tides of revolution in the modern capitals; we will sing of the vibrant nightly fervor of arsenals and shipyards

blazing with violent electric moons; greedy railway stations that devour

smoke-plumed serpents; factories hung on clouds by the crooked lines of their smoke; bridges that stride the rivers like giant gymnasts, flashing in the sun with a glitter of knives; adventurous steamers that sniff the horizon; deep-chested locomotives whose wheels paw the tracks like the hooves of enormous steel horses bridled by tubing; and the sleek flight of planes whose propellers chatter in the wind like banners and seem to cheer like an enthusiastic crowd.

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F . T. MarineTTi

“ “The Founding

and Manifesto

of Futurism”1909

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