Postmodernism is a movement that was a climate for cultural change and ‘the spirit of the decade’. Stemming from the colourful architecture and decorations in 1970, it rejects the traditional values of art instead being based on experimentation using various styles of medias and art mixed together. The overall style was very visual due to its randomness and playfulness because there was no visable structure to the majority of it.
The main characteristics of it are:
Postmodernism is said to of started with the ‘act of demolition’ when in 1972 a block of flats in St Louis, Missouri were knocked down after several years of abandonment. This very moment in history was hailed as the death of modernism and birth of postmodernism by Charles Jencks. Achitects and deisgners of this time wanted to be more experimental in their work and abandon the simplicity of modernistic styles such as constraints of grids and structuring and create more unique and freer looking pieces using the complexity and contradiction of postmodernism.
International style designers Rosmarie Tissi, Siegfried Odermatt and Steff Geissbuhler started to use this new style design in their work in the 1960, with the first known pieces being an advertisement by Tissi in 1964. Tissi also worked alongside Odermatt creating their own original typefaces, using unusual letter form to create a 3D effect for a cover of Graphis magazine published in the 1980’s.
1960 Tissi Poster
Rosmarie Tissi 1980
Schriftgestaltung 1972 Rosmarie Tissi
Created by Wolfgang Weingart, the new wave typography was created from typographic experimentation by Weingart and his students. The starting point of these unique experiments was the swiss style and Weingart wanted to see how far the typographic qualities could be distorted and changed without changing or losing the meaning of it. This new style which was originally known to his students as ‘The Weingart Style’ caused the typography to lose some legibility and many believed there was no point of the type being really legible if it was not noticable. They used lead type and letter pressing to print this new style for use, creating posters by hand using the type. I think it is amazing that they could create this by hand as in todays world, very little people could due to us relying on technology to do it for us.
Grieman is an American graphic designer born in New York during 1948. Her work is heavily inspired by the postmodernism work of Wolfgang Weingart as she attended to Basel School of Design where Weingart taught her. The reason I believe she is such an influential part of the postmodernism movement is her ability to see technology as a design tool and embrace it to further her work and use it in her projects such as ‘Made In Space’. This really made her stand out among other designersin the 1970’s as others were hesitant on the use of digitalizing their work.
