Hi, I'm Amy from BA Design Management. My first reaction to the topic of Anti-design was confusion. What is anti-design? What design are we talking about? But after some research, I learned that Anti-Design is a movement that started in Italy in the 1960s. Anti-design is the resistance to the novelty and minimalistic design derived from the rise of consumerism and technological advances. With the technological advances of the early 20th century, modern designers pushed for the form to follow function and be aesthetically pleasing with minimal shapes and colours (Martinique, 2016). But anti-designers rejected the traditional design and embarrassed exaggerated design that questioned the concept and taste of 'good design'. Anti-design vaguely reminded me of a design work I did during my work placement. Since August, I have been working as a Production Assistant for two Youtube channels. For one of the channels, I was asked to design a t-shirt that had a badly-photoshopped design of Josh in a mullet. Although it wasn't exactly created with the same approach as that of anti-design, the process was similar in that I tried to break the rules of a good, clean design: composition, colours, typography, etc. From this, I realised that to create an anti-design design, one must understand the principles of creation. And this was frankly quite hard to do as a person exposed to and learned from a minimalism-centred design background. I thought about how I would typically design and design backwards. I used Comic Sans (yes, the designers' favourite font) and off-centred the text. So is anti-design on the rise now? I would argue yes. Anti-design trends can be seen in all industries, from interior to publications. For instance, it is prominent in magazines. As written by Jamieson on AIGA Eye of Design, there's been a growing movement of magazines moving out from the clean, crisp, white space and 'good taste' (Jamieson, 2016). But individuals and organisations started shaking things up because the clean, minimalist, luxury look was becoming a cliché, as Jamieson put it. She wrote, " In the sea of minimalism and luxury, these doing-it-wrong mags are the ones that stand out". The trend became more popular during the pandemic, as people, not just professional designers, started designing and producing to kill the abundant time. Everyone can be creative. And that, mixed with the urge to create something different from the sea of 'good design', is what pushed this anti-design trend further. I have often resided to anti-design when designing something that has a lot of information but not enough space and time. For example, my DPS report, which I've started, has pages that almost look like a 'messy/ collage. I still tried to follow the general rule of what makes a design look nice, but I also experimented with abstract shapes and collaged backgrounds. I felt like this was a great way to signal that the work experience was busy, organised, and chaotic at the same time. Additionally, I didn't need to put too much thought into designing because having it messy was a part of the plan. Now, anti-design can be seen everywhere. A quick search on Behance will show how many creatives pursue the style. I think that anti-design has now become too big, that it's no longer the minority. It's not the unpopular option that creatives once broke through with because they wanted to do something different. Instead, it's a living culture, a living design practice that is widely accepted and used by the young generation. Anti-design brings in elements from the past but is used in a messy and chaotic way in order to bring out a strong and bold voice. Thus, that explains why anti-design is so popular amongst the younger generation. It's bold, it has character, and it's loud. It doesn't look corporate and 'cookie-cutter', even though minimal designs are harder to execute. In conclusion, is anti-design on the rise? Yes. It has been for the past decade, and I believe it will only grow as more people desire to express themselves- regardless of how 'good taste' their outcome is. I've come to respect anti-design more, and often, I prefer seeing anti-design works over clean design because it shows the creatives' character and voice. For example, this thesis journal by Beverly Ng was fascinating because it's not anything like the clean, crisp reports I'm used to seeing. However, readability is another problem which anti-design often overlooks. In this particular project, the author traded readability for character and uniqueness. However, for serving the purpose of a report, to deliver information through writing, one might argue that this project misses the mark. But on the other hand, I was able to see how the designer used white space to balance out the readability with the messy handwriting. As seen from the examples shown today, anti-design has a large spectrum of how anti-design or how non-traditional it is. Some mimick anti-design but still follow the general rules of 'good' design, while some miss all the marks on purpose. One thing is for sure. Anti-design has given more variation to the creative world and allowed for creatives from non-traditional backgrounds to express themselves. I think anti-design will rise even further as the current young generation, which is less hesitant to accept the look, will grow older and dominate the mainstream corporate world. However, I must mention a significant problem with anti-design in applying wider corporate use. It has a relative niche market, and as seen from Beverly Ng's Thesis Journal, it can fail to deliver information. It is also signals not-luxurious themes such as cheap, wild, and messy. https://www.widewalls.ch/magazine/anti-design-italian-movement
https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/the-new-wave-of-anti-design-magazines-will-question-your-sense-of-taste-and-thats-a-good-thing/ https://www.behance.net/search/images?similarStyleImagesId=569408713 https://www.behance.net/gallery/43205521/Thesis-Journal-%28201516%29
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
February 2023
Categories |