Michaela Maloney Graphic Media Design What Is Anti-Design? Anti-Design is a movement that challenges the rules of “good” design. First we should ask, what is good design? The graphic design canon, like most of the art world, largely consists of work by men of privilege. This canon has shaped what we consider today as “good” design. From Eye on Design Magazine: "...design values and history is taught through a canon; that accepted pantheon of work by predominantly European and American male designers that sets the basis for what is deemed “good” or “bad.” (Khandwala) The Anti-Design movement challenges those who hold power in the design world and challenges us to rethink who the work is made for. Where Did Anti-Design Come From? The role of the graphic designer as we know today started alongside the Industrial Revolution. Jarrett explains in Eye On Design Magazine, “As mass production simplified manufacturing processes, moving from the hand to the machine, so did the work of the designer, moving away from ornate decoration to more streamlined "modern" images.” (Fuller) As technology progressed so did schools of thought around design. In 1910, the architect Adolf Loos wrote an essay on how the use of abundant ornamentation is a crime. He argues that ornamentation is used by civilizations that lack culture, likening indigenous art to that of a child. It’s his belief that highly cultured societies prefer simplification and contends that “cultural evolution is equivalent to the removal of Ornament from articles” (Loos). Loos’ bigoted essay would go on to inspire The Bauhaus Movement and then Swiss Modernism, both of which are considered to be the basis of design minimalism of the 2010s. In a Vox article writer Eliza Brooke coined the term ““startup minimalism,” following a string of Silicon Valley rebrands including Facebook, Google, Pinterest, Pandora, Spotify, and Uber who all employed new geometric sans-serif wordmarks, effectively removing the personality of the previous identities.”(Brooke). She characterizes it by: “sans-serif lettering, neatly presented in black, white, and ultra-flat colors.(...) The abundance of white space around words, photos, and playful doodles.” (Brooke) This “startup minimalism” was a turning point for design. Every brand from technology to underwear had the same look. Anti-Design is a reaction to the past 100 years of graphic design culminating in the startup minimalism aesthetic. In order to stand out in the design world at that time you had to break away from the canon and what was considered good design. That is where the Anti-Design movement comes in. Anti-Design today Some elements of the Anti-Design movement include- not following a grid structure, illegible type, and clashing colors; all things you are taught to avoid when going to school for graphic design. Tracy Ma’s work for Bloomberg Businessweek and The New York Times is a good example of Anti-Design. She uses bright colors, a lack of grid systems, clip art, collage, and “bad” type. Her work doesn’t take itself too seriously. Walker Art Center describes her work at Bloomberg Businessweek as “graphically aggressive layouts that interpreted the written word with a surreal sense of humor.” (“Insights 2022: Tracy Ma, Homer”) Throughout Ma’s work she enlists common everyday “bad design” in order to convey a message or tell a story. Her work is in many ways more approachable to people outside of the design world. Sources
Brooke, Eliza. “Why Does Every Lifestyle Startup Look the Same?” Vox, Vox, 27 July 2017, www.vox.com/2017/7/27/16029512/sans-serif-lifestyle-font. Fuller, Jarrett. “Graphic Designers Have Always Loved Minimalism. But at What Cost?” Eye on Design, 1 Apr. 2021, eyeondesign.aiga.org/graphic-designers-have-always-loved-minimalism-but-at-what-cost/. “Insights 2022: Tracy Ma, Homer.” Www.youtube.com, Mar. 2022, www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCUyDxBENSA. Khandwala, Anoushka. “What Does It Mean to Decolonize Design?” Eye on Design, 5 June 2019, eyeondesign.aiga.org/what-does-it-mean-to-decolonize-design/. Loos, Adolf. Ornament and Crime. 1913.
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