Geo-tagging Studio Practice

I found this weeks resource, 'Drip-dry T-shirts; the evolution of the graphic designer' by Lucienne Roberts (AVA) very insightful into how the role of the graphic designer has evolved since the second world war and all the influences that have contributed to the practice of graphic design today.

Evolution of Design Culture to Today

Looking at the history of graphic design gives us an understanding of how we got to where we are today. 

Connections can be seen, of how one moment led to the next, how style and ideas evolved and what influence social environments have played. The timeline shown opposite, is a great visual representation of how styles have evolved and can be tied to the emergence of inventions and technological advances and radical shifts in styles can be dated to specific events in history. Graphic design has come a long way in a relatively short space of time and continues to evolve.

Printing had been around for 500 years, initially to create books, when the industrial revolution gave rise to advertising. At the turn of the ninetieth and twentieth centuries there was a noticeable shift in recognition of the design decision, from that of the print decision, requiring the existence of the typographer and the designer. The 20s and 30s saw a rejection of the ideals of craft production. The machine and mass production was now what excited artists and designers alike (Roberts,
2005, p3)

Following World War 2 western society was left fragmented and sociological, political and economic changes were inevitable. Society needed to reject old ideas to invent new, to try and make everything better (Roberts, 2005, p2).

To be ‘modern’, typography had to be asymmetrically arranged on the page and type was predominantly sans serif, see the example left (Sock, 2016).. Typographers looked at abstract paintings as a source of theoretical and aesthetic inspiration, which led to a different approach to the integration of type and images. Images particularly photographs were used more abstractly and simply, like type, whilst type was exploited visually in the manner of an image. This marked the start of graphic design thinking that is still relevant today (Roberts, 2005, p3).



Pentagram Logo Designs (Image of the Studio, 2022), PMT machine (Design Bull, 2022), Traditional Typesetting (Adobe, 2022), Barney Bubbles, Emigre magazine.

In the 70s companies began to require a recognisable image and the logo was born. In order, to market products and services they needed to be instantly identifiable, and in comes the idea of branding. The likes of Fletcher, Forbes and Gill and Pentagram saw the emergence of independent practice and the birth of branding. Logos were seen as an Important tool and these design groups began creating identities for multinational companies, which were heavily influenced by modernist ideas (Hollis, 2001, p186-187).

In our lecture, ‘how did we get here?’, Maziar Raein talks about how the 80s was an interesting time for it seemed almost split in half. The early 80s had designers looking back to the production and design practices dating back to the 60s and the latter looked towards the future. Maziar, remembers clunky PMT machines (Photo-mechanical transfer) were used for enlarging work and much of type was still handset. These were then quickly replaced with the introduction of the computer. 

Maziar goes on to say that there was a cultural shift against the political climate, after the disruption and turbulence of the 70s. The likes of Barney Bubbles and Jamie Reid became influential with their punk influenced graphics linked to the post-modern movement.

Emigre magazine was influential between 1984 and 2005 and one of the first publications to use Macintosh computers, Emigre influenced the move towards desktop publishing within graphic design. Art directors, Rudy Vanderlands and Zuzana Licko, caused quite a stir in the design community with their experimental layouts and Émigré became a platform for design debate, publishing essays and writing on design (Design is History, 2022).  

This has by no means a succinct history of graphic design but touches on some of the developments which have influenced design culture today.

Trends today seem to be leaning towards moving image with the need to capture audience’s attention amongst a myriad of information bombarded at us continually through our new dependency on mobile technology and digital devices. With recent technological advances in 3D printing, AI and AR technology, where will
we go next?

Four key evolutionary design steps that contributed to the identity of the modern-day design culture in my area.

•  Printing / Mass Production
•  Photography / Advertising
•  Logo design / Branding / Identity
•  Computers / Web / Moving Image

Task 2: Design Production

Select three places for design production in my area.