Design Issues II
Interactive Graphic Design -- To Serve Youth or Art?
By Cheryl Stephens
A style of graphic design which
prevails in recent advertising (See
endnotes) has moved onto the editorial pages of certain
"lifestyle" magazines. This design style has been
defended, or promoted, as suited to the youth audience when
actually it is a style appropriate to attract and entertain an
audience of artists and the cultural community. It is a style
that rejects the modernist notion that form should serve function
in communication and instead promotes artistic form as the
greater value.
Describing the Style
For want of a better name, this style will be called
"interactive two-dimensional design" (interactive 2D
design). Interactive 2D design adopts the some of the conventions
of layered computer graphics but within the restrictions of the
two-dimensional, static medium of paper. Its main textual feature
is its requirement that the reader expend energy to construct the
words from the scattered or mismatched letters and collate
sentences from random words to establish the basic structure of
the writing. Then the reader must begin the process of
interpreting, decoding, or even encoding meaning.
I believe this interactive 2D design sacrifices legibility for
artistic expression, which is an unjustifiable trade-off for
communicators. Whether this is a desirable exchange is an issue
hotly discussed in design circles:
"...especially when one considers the current
'postmodernist' climate within graphic design discourse
where not only the relevance of legibility research, but even the
importance of legibility per se, is questioned or even denied.
'Legibility' is surely not a fashionable term --
evocative communication towards a small specific audience
allowing 'artistic self expression' is the explicit
agenda of many graphic designers today."(See endnotes)
Categorizing the Style
There are those who claim that interactive 2D design style
falls within the ambit of the "postmodern" developments
in culture and art:
"During the last few years especially,
legibility research, or more precisely the notion of legibility,
has come under attack from what might be called post-modern,
anti-modern or even neo avant-garde modernist positions, exposed
in influential graphic design magazines like
Émigré and Eye." (Lund
94)
The style is consistent, from a design perspective, with the
development of the literary theory that "the author is
dead" and the graphic designers' "make the reader
work" philosophy. The notion seems to be that if the reader
is sufficiently interested, he or she will make the effort to
reconstruct the physical components of the message in order to
interpret its relevancy and meaning in their own lives. Michel de
Boer said of his own work:
"This is at the centre of the studio's
philosophy -- that design should not be too easy, either to do or
to see. The receiver of the message should be made to work,
forcing them to think about what they see. 3
I suggest that there are better ways to engage the reader in
the text. Maureen MacKenzie, a Senior Research Associate at the
Communications Research Institute of Australia, attempts to
justify the style by placing its parentage in postmodernism:
"Post-modern and constructionist theory allow us
to understand that meaning can only be generated when the reader
engages with the printed words. We now understand that meaning
and thus communication, is brought into being by the interactive
relationship between the reader and the document." 4
Post-modernism is manifested in the sphere of art and culture
as the unfettered expression of the social outlook of the
petite-bourgeoisie. It rejects science and its application to
social affairs. Its salient features are promotion of a lack of
order or organization and opposition to communal objectives and
social purpose. It is anarchic, individualist, and claims to be
value-free. Post-modernism cannibalizes and recycles everything
old to produce the "new" which is merely recycled. In
art and graphic design, the habits of this approach involve
removing a central, organizing theme, giving equal prominence to
disparate elements, and bringing the background to the
foreground. 5
Tracing the History of the Style
Interactive 2D design may be postmodern in philosophy, but it
is not new. The implicit claim is that this style evokes or
arises from the post-modern angst and technological advancement
of Generation X. Yet other social strata in earlier times have
promoted this style and different explanations of its origins
were offered.
Discussing graphic design, Ann Ferebee uncovers the history of
this style:
"Kokoschka, Kirchner and other members of Die
Breucke and Der Blaue Reiter, the original Expressionist
movements, established a tradition Expressionist graphic design
in the first dozen years of the 20th century. In this tradition
designers manipulated layouts to enhance their emotional
intensity. It was carried forward in the Dadaist magazine, Merz
(1923-1932), in which designers placed type in a seemingly
irrational way for startling effect. Kurt Schwitters and Hans
Richter, who inserted type as a decorative device in Dadaist
collages, also advanced Expressionist graphics. To a lesser
degree, Surrealism, in which juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated
objects is used to suggest the irrationality of the unconscious
mind, influenced poster design from the late 1930's until the
early 1950's."
The Expressionists are said to have found their inspiration in
the new scientific discoveries of Freud in psychology and Darwin
in biology. Later they were described as "naturalists"
for finding their inspiration in the primitive and irrational.
Yet the key elements of their approach accord with the postmodern
justification for interactive 2D design: manipulating layouts to
enhance their emotional intensity, placing type in a seemingly
irrational way for startling effect, use type as a decorative
device, juxtaposing seemingly unrelated objects to suggest the
irrationality of the unconscious mind.
Their approach to graphic art was soon followed by
typographers, where its practitioners were called
"Futurists":
"Although Futurists held different views from
the expressionists, their 'free typography' was
Expressionist in intent and appearance. Growing out of
Marinetti's 'free-word' poetry, in which meaning was
determined by special relationships between words rather than by
conventional syntax, 'free typography' was introduced in
the pages of the Futurist periodical, Lacerba (1913-1914). It
destroyed the conventional symmetry of the printed page as it had
been laid out since the invention of movable type. The editors of
Lacerba, Giovanni Papini and Ardengo Soffici, placed type
according to emphasis and let pictures and headlines fall at
random. They ignored the conventions of using similar type faces
on the same page and of placing printing so that it could run
only from left to right." 6
The Expressionist and Futurist styles were the opposite of the
Cubists who "encouraged order, geometric regularity and
abstraction in graphic design.... Two extensions of Cubism--de
Stijl and Constructivism--were the primary influence on
Functionalist typography and poster design." (Ferebee,
107)
The modernist, Bauhaus typographic style was influenced by
these latter trends. Sometimes described as minimalist, the work
of de Stijl and Bauhaus stylists was consolidated in Die Neue
Typographie (1928) by Jan Erick Tschichold. (Ferebee 110)
Katherine McCoy, a historian of graphic design, says:
"Modernism, especially at the Bauhaus, was a
response to the economies of scale and standardization in the new
mass societies. This functionalist design philosophy of 'form
follows function' is based on standardized processes, modular
systems, industrial materials and a machine aesthetic of
minimalist form. Universal design solutions were sought to solve
universal needs across cultures." 7
The Modernists looked for solutions to communications
problems. They sought methods to enhance effective communication.
Justin Vood Good and Peter Good are critical of modernism in
"Is Functionalism Functional?" where they criticize the
modernist striving for "clarity and purity", yet their
interpretation does not detract from its attractiveness as a
focused problem-solving methodology:
"... Massimo Vignelli states that 'Modernism
was never a style, but an attitude. This is often misunderstood
by those designers who dwell on revivals of the form rather than
the content of Modernism.'... Take for example, Jan
Tschichold's early manifestos on functionalist typography
where he asserts:
 |
The new typography is purposeful. |
|
The purpose of all typography is communication. |
|
Communication must be made in the shortest, simplest, most
definite way." 8 |
In summary, I suggest the content of Modernism is to use
design and typography to serve the function of communication in
the most effective, efficient manner, while the content of
Postmodern, interactive 2-D design is to challenge, enthrall,
arouse, and entertain by expressing the personality of the
artist.
Finding a Social Basis for the Style
Vood Good and Good describe the ascendancy of modernist
functionalism in the Germany of the 1920s and 1930s as the
triumph of the "Cult of Utility over the Cult of
Subjectivity". They discuss the social basis of this in
pre-World War II Germany:
"According to the principal theorists of modern
and design theory, the economic stratification of society has
created, on one hand, a small elitist class of bourgeois artists
and intellectuals who spent their time indulging irresponsibly in
their own vain subjectivity, titillating either themselves or
their wealthy patrons and clients with superfluous decoration. On
the other hand, there existed the vast proletariat, the people--
the Volk--which constituted the true essence of Germany; the
essence which had been neglected and betrayed by the guardians of
culture." (Vood Good 32)
Adrian Forty discusses the need for design to be grounded in
social circumstances. By implication acknowledging that targeted,
lifestyle audiences may require special design approaches:
"No design works unless it embodies ideas that
are held in common by the people for whom the object is intended.
To represent design purely as the creative acts of individuals as
Nikolus Pevsner did in Pioneers of Modern Design, temporarily
enhances the importance of designers, but ultimately only
degrades design by severing it from its part in the workings of
society.... Only exploring this process and by shifting our
attention away from the person of the designer can we properly
comprehend what design is, and appreciate how important it has
been in representing to us the ideas and beliefs through which we
assimilate and adjust to the material facts of everyday
life." 9
Today, how does the use of I2DD design overlap or connect the
advertising and the editorial pages of the magazine? What is the
conceptual link? The desire of the advertisers to reach an
audience interested in their products drives the industry and the
creative and editorial decisions of magazine publishers. In the
era when Western "democratic capitalism" was gloating
over its contribution to the overthrow of governments in the
former Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, while ignoring its role
in the propping up of undemocratic regimes in other parts of the
world, the postmodern culture of schizophrenia prevails. Keith
White may have put his finger on it:
"...as the ideology of the
counterculture--chaos, revolution, and disorder--became the
ideology of corporate America, as evidenced by the corporate
antinomianism of management gurus like Tom (Thriving on Chaos)
Peters, a major transformation in the public's image of the
computer had to take place. Information technology would have to
undergo a gigantic face-lift to be accepted in a business world
increasingly fascinated with notions of chaos, revolution, and
non-conformity. The famous TV commercial that introduced the
Macintosh in 1984 as a conformity-smashing implement suggested
the course. Wired simply picked up where the TV advertising left
off." 10
Current Application of the Style
Today some scholars assert that this design is used to meet
the expectations of a younger generation trained in computer
graphical interfaces in video games, rock videos, and computer
programs. With an overbroad brush, MacKenzie identifies the style
with both youth culture and the
"... style magazines pioneering
deconstructionist typography, such as
Émigré, The Face, Ray Gun and now Bikini began
on the margins, but now occupy the mainstream of youth culture.
What would have appeared unapproachable, meaningless clutter a
decade ago is now a preferred leisure reading material for a
particular youth subculture."(MacKenzie 1994)
MacKenzie claims, "What our results suggest is that
legibility is culturally learned and sub-culturally
developed". (MacKenzie 1994). In this respect she confirms
what has often been asserted -- that there are no universal rules
for typography but that readers are most at ease with the style
they are most familiar with. In an environment in which products
must be target-marketed, then this is an important conclusion
which should influence advertising design and editorial
layouts.11
On this point, Katherine McCoy is a prominent spokesperson as
the 1995 president of the American Center for Design. She
says,
"One significant trend is toward specialized
audiences, focused messages and eccentric design languages
tailored to each audience's unique characteristics and
culture. We are witnessing the end of one era of mass
communications and the beginning of another: narrowcasting
instead of broadcasting, subcultures instead of mass culture, and
tailored products instead of mass production....
"Specialized audiences often communicate in
vernacular languages or specialized jargon. Rhetorical styles
vary radically from low key to 'in your face,' from
colloquial to formal. This is true for visual-style languages and
symbolic visual codes, as well." (McCoy 148)
Will editors and advertisers have to use this style and
postmodern philosophy to tailor information for youth? If this
style meets the needs of advertisers and communicators who target
the young adult population, then we should see evidence of this
in magazines aimed consciously at youth. Yet, a sampling of
magazines that do use this design style will not support this
assertion. From discussions in the design literature, it seems
the best known examples of the application of this style to both
editorial and advertising copy are Bikini, Eye, Émigré, and Wired, which are not aimed at youth but a more
select target audience -- the cultural community of artists,
writers and intellectuals.
According to McCoy, Émigré's audience is
graphic designers themselves:
"One specialized audience has always been other
graphic designers--design for designers. Paper company promotions
and, more recently, cutting-edge magazines such as
Émigré have provided graphic designers with
opportunities for idiosyncratic graphic expressions." (McCoy
149)
Bikini, Eye, Émigré, and others are aimed at a
cultural community which seeks to express his own artistic
inclinations. I consider it a problem when they then try to
impose those tastes on wider audiences when they perform their
role as editors, artists, or creative directors. Discussing the
arrogance of artists who impose their personal creativity on
readers, John Bielenberg says:
"Just like an addict creates a lust for drugs or
alcohol, the designer develops a craving for the new, the
visually compelling and the beautiful. The image becomes an end
in itself. The graphic language sometimes takes a dominant role
over the message being communicated.... graphic designers have
developed a hyperliterate visual sense and a highly refined
appreciation for the craft of graphic design. I call it the
intoxication of craft. ... Conflict often exists when you combine
the intoxication of craft, exposure to and interest in
cutting-edge design with the engineering of a client-driven
message to a client-defined audience." 12
I believe that the interactive 2D design style is precisely
the expression of this devotion to self-expression for the
artists and their desire to show-off for each other. It does not
arise from a desire to meet the expectations of younger audiences
-- or if it does it shows a failure to recognize the different
tastes, aesthetics and visual literacy of the artistic community
and the general population of young people.
Wired Magazine - An Example
Media commentators recognize Wired's design style as
representative of this design trend adopted by "hip"
magazines, comparing it's creative design to another group of
artistic community lifestyle magazines -- Raygun, Sassy, and
Inside Edge.(White 79)
There is no evidence that Wired is youth-oriented, nor is it
the magazine of choice of computer experts, rather it is a
business-oriented publication popularizing trends within a
particular industry:
"In fact, according to Advertising Age, some 84
percent of Wired readers are managerial professionals with median
household income of well over $80,000. They may be
revolutionaries, but they also happen to be the legions of
M.B.A.'s graduating each year from business schools around
the country, where Wired is a must-read."(White
77)
Wired's creative editor doesn't appeal to the either
the "techie" or youth market for justification of his
editorial design. He has said, "I sometimes have to
sacrifice readability when I'm pushing the edge of the
envelope on design". (White 77) Taking a position in the
magazine industry on the basis of style and image is more
important than providing readable information on the topic. If we
accept that the magazine is there to provide a vehicle for the
advertisers, then this need come as no surprise.
This brings us back to and explains the free play given to the
arrogant attitude of designers who see themselves as artists
rather than as information designers. Paul Stiff, in
"Structuralists, stylists, and forgotten readers",
says:
"...it seems to me that typographers are weakest
when most explicitly looking for style -- when style is
foregrounded and laid on thick. Foregrounding occurs not only
where you'd expect it, in 'picture-making'
typography, but even in journals in which words matter."13
What Does the Young Adult Market Demand?
There are a number of magazines which do target the youth
market -- if not specifically, the Generation X segment. These
include Details, Swing, Spy. These particular magazines do not use the
interactive 2D design style in editorial text. They infrequently
or sparingly use it in artistic displays. The only other evidence
of the style in their pages is in some of the display
advertisements. Their editorial content is delivered in the
modernist style -- or functionally, as I would prefer to put
it.
Readers will select for purchase and loyalty those magazines
which provide them with lifestyle connections: advice,
guidelines, examples, and a community of tastes. This can even be
a self-conscious choice. One young Vancouverite, asked about his
choice of magazines, indicated he reads "lifestyle
magazines" like ID and Cameo which address the
"cultural underground". (These use the interactive 2D
design style.) He told the interviewer, "I don't
actually read [Cameo]. I buy it because it has ads for lots of
cool stuff. My friends and I buy one and we share it. I just look
at the pictures to get an idea of what's cool.."14
Those, like Maureen MacKenzie, who mistakenly categorize this
as a youth-oriented design style are quick to assert a
generational rather than cultural bias to the opposition to the
style:
"But while younger readers cope well with, and
even seem to enjoy the interaction with new fragmented
typography, older generations of readers, conditioned to static
simplicity of traditional printed pages of continuous text, are
disinclined to make the necessary effort to reconstruct a text.
In informal exploratory research, older readers dismisses (sic)
the multiple, fragmented, disrupted texts of the new typography
as 'illegible' and 'meaningless.'"(MacKenzie
1994)
Even MacKenzie has to admit that there is no research to
support the conclusion that youth prefer this typographic and
design style. The best MacKenzie can offer is this:
"From personal observation and informal research
with educators in secondary and tertiary institutions it appears
likely that the 'TV generation' are developing different
ways of reading and processing visual information to preceding
generations.... To date, little research has been published
discussing how teenagers are interacting with deconstructed
printed texts. We do not yet understand whether the younger
generation is developing new ways of constructing meaning from
such texts, or indeed, whether they even do generate
meaning." (MacKenzie 1994)
Is interactive 2D design necessary to reach the general young
adult market rather than the "cultural underground"?
There isn't enough, if any, evidence to support this. There
is merely the advertisers' belief that this design suits the
Generation X lifestyle. Until research and evidence establish
that young adults reading processes are so different, I will
continue to consider this style a concomitant of the
postmodernist artist's personal expression in the field of
graphic design. The prior history of interactive 2d design style
shows that it is not a product of the telecommunications age but
of a social strata unconcerned with the needs of others.
- For examples: United Colors of Benetton advertisements for
women's dresses and suits, 1995; Officeworks promotional
brochure, 1995; numerous paper manufacturer's catalogues,
Levis jeans for women ad in SWING, November 1995
- Lund, Ole, 'Book Review: In black & white: an r&d
report on typography and legibility", Information design
journal 8/1(1995), p. 91
- de Boer, Michel, 1991, lecture at Monotype conference,
London, 1991 qouted in Information Design Journal 7/3 (1994), p
238
- MacKenzie, Maureen, "Our changing visual environment:
Questions and challenges", Communication News, Vol. 7(4),
July/August, 1994, page 11-14
- Vattimo, Gianni, The End of Modernity: Nihilism and
Hermeneutics in Postmodern Culture, Baltimore: John Hopkins
University Press, 1988
- Ferebee, Ann, A History of Design from Victorian Times to the
Present, page 106
- McCoy, Katherine "Graphic Design in a Multicultural
World", HOW: The Bottomline Design Magazine, Vol X, No. 2,
April 1995 , page 146-7
- Vood Good, Justin and Peter Good, "Is Functionalism
Functional? The Relationship Between Function and Purity",
Communication Arts, Vol. 37, No. 1, September/October 1995, page
27
- Forty, Adrian, Objects of Desire: Design and society from
Wedgewood to IBM, page 245
- White, Keith, "The Killer App: Wired magazine, voice of
the corporate revolution", Utne Reader, No. 71,
September-October 1995, page 79
- Leiss, William, Stephen Kline, and Sut Jhally, Social
Communication in Advertising: Persons, Products & Images of
Well-being, (1990) Scarborough: Nelson Canada
- Bielenberg, John, "Design Issues: Thinking About
Communications", Communication Arts, Vol. 37, No. 1,
March-April 1995, page 21
- Stiff, Paul, "Structuralists, stylists, and forgotten
readers", Information design journal, 7/3 (1994)
227-241
- Janet Dean, interviewing Johnny Ray, April 5, 1995
© 2000 Cheryl Stephens All rights
reserved.
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