Graphic Design Theory: Readings from the Field - [PDF Document] (2024)

Edited by

Helen Armstrong

PrincEton ArcHitEcturAl PrEss

nEw York

rEAdings from tHE fiEld

Graphic DesiGn Theory

conTenTs

6 Foreword: Why Theory? Ellen Lupton

8 Acknowledgments

9 Introduction: Revisiting the Avant-Garde

16 Timeline

secTion one: creaTinG The FielD

19 Introduction

20 manifesto of futurism | F. T. Marinetti | 1909

22 who we Are: manifesto of the constructivist

group | Aleksandr Rodchenko, Varvara Stepanova,

and Aleksei Gan | c. 1922

25 our book | El Lissitzky | 1926

32 typophoto | László Moholy-Nagy | 1925

35 the new typography | Jan Tschichold | 1928

39 the crystal goblet, or why Printing should

be invisible | Beatrice Warde | 1930

44 on typography | Herbert Bayer | 1967

Theory aT WorK 50 Futurism

52 Constructivism

54 The Bauhaus and New Typography

secTion TWo: BuilDinG on success

57 Introduction

58 designing Programmes | Karl Gerstner | 1964

62 grid and design Philosophy | Josef Müller-Brockmann | 1981

64 good design is goodwill | Paul Rand | 1987

70 learning from las vegas: the forgotten symbolism

of Architectural form | Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown,

and Steven Izenour | 1972

77 my way to typography | Wolfgang Weingart | 2000

81 typography as discourse | Katherine McCoy

with David Frej | 1988

84 the macramé of resistance | Lorraine Wild | 1998

87 the dark in the middle of the stairs | Paula Scher | 1989

Theory aT WorK 90 International Style

92 Modernism in America

94 New Wave and Postmodernism

secTion Three: MappinG The FuTure

97 Introduction

98 the underground mainstream | Steven Heller | 2008

102 design and reflexivity | Jan van Toorn | 1994

107 design Anarchy | Kalle Lasn | 2006

108 the designer as Author | Michael Rock | 1996

115 designing our own graves | Dmitri Siegel | 2006

119 dematerialization of screen space | Jessica Helfand | 2001

124 designing design | Kenya Hara | 2007

127 import/Export, or design workflow and contemporary

Aesthetics | Lev Manovich | 2008

133 univers strikes back | Ellen and Julia Lupton | 2007

Theory aT WorK 138 Contemporary Design

145 Glossary

147 Text Sources

148 Bibliography

150 Credits

151 Index

18 | Graphic Design Theory

herBerT Bayer Photomontage

cover for the first issue of bauhaus

zeitschrift, 1928. Bayer combines

the tools of a graphic designer, basic

geometric forms, and a page of

type in his layout. Word and image

come together to communicate

to the reader.

avanT-GarDe DesiGners haD GuTs anD vision. MosT Were

younG people, jusT in Their TWenTies. They WanTeD noThinG

less Than To chanGe The WorlD. At the beginning of the twentieth

century they unabashedly confronted their society through design. Surrounded

by chaos—industrialization, technological upheaval, world war—they sought

order and meaning. These artists spoke in manifestos and created posters, books,

magazines, and typefaces using strikingly new visual vocabularies. They embraced

mass communication; they abandoned easels. They treated the aesthetic conven-

tions of symmetry and ornament like stale leftovers to be scourged at all costs.

Instead the avant-garde looked to the machine for inspiration—sleek, functional,

efficient, powerful. They tried to discover untainted visual forms that were fitting

for the new modern world. Through such experiments they explored asymmetri-

cal layout, activated white space, serial design, geometric typefaces, minimalism,

hierarchy, functionalism, and universality. out of their sweat, movements sprang

up—futurism, Dadaism, De Stijl, constructivism, New Typography. Their ideas

clashed and converged to form the modern foundation from which the graphic

design industry emerged.

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20 | Graphic Design Theory

F. T. MarineTTi BroKe The syMMeTrical paGe. he cracKeD iT aparT anD Then puT iT

BacK ToGeTher usinG BiTs anD pieces oF Type, prinTers’ MarKs, anD aDs. First and

foremost, he was a poet, but when in 1909 he published the “Manifesto of Futurism” in Le Figaro, a Paris

newspaper, he embarked on a modern crusade that took him far beyond the realm of verse. In fact, it took

him into the middle of a fledgling discipline called “graphic design.” Marinetti was a showman, a scoundrel,

and a fascist, but he matters today. Mainly out of economy and convenience, he used print to communicate

with the masses—posters, books, flyers. He bent and twisted typography to better suit his poetry and his

overall message of noise, speed, and aggression. In the end, the concrete, visual nature of type stood at the

forefront of his work, exposed. He challenges us even now to embrace the future—in his words, to “exalt”

in the “punch and the slap,” to believe that entirely new forms are not only possible but imminent.

F. T. MarineTTi Foldout from

Les mots en liberté futuristes (The

Futurist Words-In-Freedom), 1919.

Creating the Field | 21

ManiFesTo oF FuTurisMF. T. MarineTTi | 1909

1. We intend to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and fearlessness. 2. Courage, audacity, and revolt will be essential elements of our poetry. 3. Up to now literature has exalted a pensive immobility, ecstasy, and sleep.

We intend to exalt aggressive action, a feverish insomnia, the racer’s stride, the mortal leap, the punch and the slap.

4. We say that the world’s magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing car whose hood is adorned with great pipes, like serpents of explosive breath—a roaring car that seems to ride on grapeshot—is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.

5. We want to hymn the man at the wheel, who hurls the lance of his spirit across the Earth, along the circle of its orbit.

6. The poet must spend himself with ardor, splendor, and generosity, to swell the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements.

7. Except in struggle, there is no more beauty. No work without an aggressive character can be a masterpiece. Poetry must be conceived as a violent attack on unknown forces, to reduce and prostrate them before man.

8. We stand on the last promontory of the centuries! . . . Why should we look back, when what we want is to break down the mysterious doors of the Impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We already live in the absolute, because we have created eternal, omnipresent speed.

9. We will glorify war—the world’s only hygiene—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman.

10. We will destroy the museums, libraries, academies of every kind, will fight moralism, feminism, every opportunistic or utilitarian cowardice.

11. We will sing of great crowds excited by work, by pleasure, and by riot; we will sing of the multicolored, polyphonic tides of revolution in the modern capitals; we will sing of the vibrant nightly fervor of arsenals and shipyards blazing with violent electric moons; greedy railway stations that devour smoke-plumed serpents; factories hung on clouds by the crooked lines of their smoke; bridges that stride the rivers like giant gymnasts, flashing in the sun with a glitter of knives; adventurous steamers that sniff the horizon; deep-chested locomotives whose wheels paw the tracks like the hooves of enormous steel horses bridled by tubing; and the sleek flight of planes whose propellers chatter in the wind like banners and seem to cheer like an enthusiastic crowd.

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“ “The Founding

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of Futurism”

1909

22 | Graphic Design Theory

aleKsanDr roDchenKo Was The son oF a propMan anD a launDress. aT The

BeGinninG oF The sovieT revoluTion, he TransForMeD hiMselF FroM a painTer

inTo soMeThinG enTirely neW. He became a constructor, an assembler, more engineer than artist.

Inspired by Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square, and the Suprematist movement as a whole, he turned away

from representational art and grasped firmly to beliefs in utility and industry. Working intently in his self-

designed leather workman’s “production suit,” Rodchenko utilized new technology and mass production in

an attempt to give form not just to revolutionary concepts of functionalism and economy but to ideal Soviet

citizens as well.1 He embraced, redefined, and elevated graphic design as an essential force in society. In his

“laboratory” Rodchenko and his great collaborator, love, and wife, Varvara Stepanova, repositioned artists

as agents of social change standing at the center of a brave new world. We know Rodchenko’s work. His

distinctive style of geometric letterforms, flat color, diagonal composition, angled photography, and striking

photomontage helped give visual voice to constructivism. His manifesto reminds us of the vision for society,

and the designers within it, that these familiar images represent.

Who We are mAnifEsto of tHE constructivist grouPaleKsanDr roDchenKo, varvara sTepanova, anD aleKsei Gan | c. 1922

We don’t feel obliged to build Pennsylvania Stations, skyscrapers, Handley Page Tract houses, turbo-compressors, and so on.

We didn’t create technology.We didn’t create man.but we,Artists yesterdayconstructors today,

1. we processedthe human being2. we organizetechnology1. we discovered2. propagate3. clean out4. mergepreviously—Engineers relaxed with artnow—Artists relax with technology

1 For a detailed discussion of

Rodchenko’s belief in the

ideal Soviet citizen, see Victor

Margolin, The Struggle for

Utopia: Rodchenko, Lissitzky,

Moholy-Nagy, 1917–1946

(Chicago: university of Chicago

Press, 1998).

Creating the Field | 23

what’s needed—is no restWho saw a wall. . . .Who saw just a plane—everyone . . . and no oneSomeone who had actually seen came and simply showed:the square.This means opening the eyes to the plane.Who saw an angleWho saw an armature, sketcheveryone . . . and no one.Someone who had actually seen came and simply showed:A lineWho saw: an iron bridgea dreadnoughta zeppelina helicoptereveryone . . . and no one.We Came—the first working group of constructivists—aleksei gan, rodchenko, stepanova . . . and we simply said: This is—todayTechnology is—the mortal enemy of art.technology. . . .We—are your first fighting and punitive force.We are also your last slave-workers.We are not dreamers from art who build in the imagination:AeroradiostationsElevators andFlaming citieswe—are the beginningour work is today:A mugA floor brushBootsA catalogAnd when one person in his laboratory set upA square,

His radio carried it to all and sundry, to those who needed it and those who didn’t need it, and soon on all the “ships of left art,” sailing under red,

aleKsanDr roDchenKo

Sketch of “production clothing,”

1922.

24 | Graphic Design Theory

black, and white flags . . . everything all over, throughout, everything was covered in squares.And yesterday, when one person in his laboratory set upA line, grid, and point

His radio carried it to all and sundry, to those who needed it and those who didn’t need it, and soon, and especially on all the “ships of left art” with the new title “constructive,” sailing under different flags . . . everything all over . . . everything throughout is being constructed of lines and grids.

of course, the square existed previously, the line and the grid existed previously.What’s the deal.Well, it’s simply—they were pointed out.they were announced.The square—1915, the laboratory of malevichThe line, grid, point—1919, the laboratory of rodchenkobut—after this The first working group of constructivists (aleksei gan, rodchenko, stepanova)announced: the communist expression of material constructionsandirreconcilable war against art.Everything came to a point.

and “new” constructivists jumped on the bandwagon, wrote “constructive”poems, novels, paintings, and other such junk. Others, taken with our slogans, imagining themselves to be geniuses, designed elevators and radio posters, but they have forgotten that all attention should be concentrated on the experimental laboratories, which show usnewelementsroutesthingsexperiments.

—the demonstration experimental laboratory and material constructions’ station of the first working group

of constructivists of the rsfsr.

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