Hi, this is BA from the DfAD course. Since my DPS year started I have been working as a design intern and creative producer for a plant-based food brand with a wide audience target-reach. I realized since the beginning of the placement that their visual branding approach is very rigorously minimalistic. Plenty of white space, mostly no colors, black and white compositions – avenir and lato font families, easy, minimal, so called by many working there a ‘no brainer’. Broadly speaking, in the world of marketing and commercial brands that want to do well, minimalism is pretty much the synonym of having good taste: the perfectly centered logo, the aligned and simple captions at the bottom of a perfectly cut video, the examples are many and predictable, once you get the hang of it. Less is more rules. The common idea, in my experience, is that in most commercial environments the cleanest your visual communication is, the better that the message is conveyed. Generally this kind of brand doesn’t mind being similar to many others in the same sphere, they instead encourage it. While working on perfectly centered and aligned graphics, photoshopping to perfection a poster that will make its way to a newsletter or an Instagram portrait size pic, I’ve started questioning whether our predictable, clean and easily replicable brand communication would be able to stand out. How are we different than many others? Do we want to be different? Is this the time to stay safe and produce understated visual matter? The new wave of anti-design matter in the last couple of years such as magazines, album covers but also brands who have decided to be less predictable and to have more character have been showing that anti-design as a concept can be as successful in provoking engaging reaction with its audience, if not more. As designers who work in commercial and non-commercial environments, how do we expect others see the value in what we do? Is the clean, good looking, perfectionist good enough now? This is perhaps what anti-design as a response comes in with something to say. The infringement of graphic rules and boundaries has now by many been associated with anti-design practice, a visual communication that is not currently valued by many non-designers. It may be overlooked because of the overly decorated, maximalist designs that ignore any kind of ‘good taste’. Most of the visual language evokes somehow the early days of the internet, almost as a parody of the oversaturated clean graphic design rules perpetuated up until now. This is perhaps why the movement has been gaining more exposure and became trendier since the start of the covid-19 pandemic. The pandemic was a shocking, frightful and unprecedented (at least in this century) event, while most of our life and lifestyle as we knew it changed drastically. I believe this played a substantial role in making the anti-design movement grow as it is now. Our visual communication can’t be as quiet and subtle as it was before the pandemic, it being a representation of a lifestyle that we are not able to sustain anymore, nor we are desiring, while it’s lacking touch of reality and currency. The chaotic feel of an anti-design poster or the indie magazines that AYGA in his blogs mentions, where you can barely read the characters, the colors are clashing between each other, seems the reflection of the period we are going through now as a generation. The engagedness of the anti-designed matter relies in its shock factor and its unpredictability, but also in its clear refusal and criticism of old and almost obsolete look. However, when talking about any current trends one must ask whether the trend of the moment/period could take-over and become the new norm or end up in the pile of cyclical design and aesthetic trends that get pushed around and have their beginning and end. Will anti-design see its more mainstream days? Could anti-design become the new norm? This discourse translates in my practice, in the search and query of new venues and new forms of designing, by exploring and researching where my practice hasn’t wandered before. The anti-design movement shows an unpredictable development in design practice and needs to be considered in its various forms. Sources: https://www.joostkoster.com https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/the-new-wave-of-anti-design-magazines-will-question-your-sense-of-taste-and-thats-a-good-thing/ https://cecile-roger.com/ https://www.behance.net/gallery/11829025/Gus-Van-Sant-Ciclo-Aturdido https://muchwow.graphics/post/169677454626/jack-warne/amp https://www.creativereview.co.uk/anti-digital-graphic-design/
2 Comments
sarah temple
1/7/2022 03:52:54 am
No credit? Insightful look at chaos of recent times reflected in a new visual aesthetic and the role of design and art direction as a visual disruptor. We need anti-design like we need Greta to parody and critique? Delighted that this is underway in your own practice.
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Robert Urquhart
1/7/2022 12:39:42 pm
Interesting to note that 'The anti-design movement shows an unpredictable development in design practice and needs to be considered in its various forms.' unpredictable is a great word to use - here's to more unpredictability in movements and theories -
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