OUGD601_Context of Practice 3

Graphic Design Trends

Trend List
'Graphic Design is as well as fashion design or music is influenced by contemporary tendencies. Even more in a world where information is transmitted with speed of light. Trend List's task is to search, name and sorts these tendencies in graphic design. It is trying to spot when and where they rise, in which countries they are most extended or you can follow their evolution in time.

Selection of works mainly focuses on posters, books, catalogs, magazines, album covers, and invitations for cultural sphere. It is because these publications usually provides large space for experiments and the "most current" graphic design.

It is interesting to observe how many of today's "professional" designers create "conceptual" design, custom-made for client, that prefers content instead of formal appearance (which seems to be nowadays quite unimportant). But in the same time they are using graphic language very typical for visual communication in recent years, which can be also characterise as a trend. 

Trend List explores the graphic design from an entirely opposite side. It ignores content of the work and analyses just its appearance. Based on the formal attributes of the site and it then sorts and catalogs. 

But is it possible to separate content and visual part? It is possible to present graphic design without further explanation? 

It seems so. It happens on every exhibition of graphic design, where the works are also taken out of context and the audience is not usually able to go under the surface of exposed posters. They do not examine the content . They perceive design only visually.

Trend List is not a criticism of contemporary graphic design. It just points to the fact that graphic design as well as everything else, is affected by certain trends, and today is not exception. But a lot of designers do not agree and still insist on the originality of their work that is based on pure concept. Wim Crouwel says: “You are always a child of your time, you can not step out of that!" 

So why close our eyes to the rules and styles around us? We are always looking for something unique and new, even at the cost of incomprehension? After all, if someone is able to create a modern design it just means that he is able to express the spirit of our time!

OUGD601_Context of Practice 3

Graphic Design Trends

Trend Generator

‘Trend List, the categorised blog of colour, form and compositional trends found in graphic design, has just released its image-making app, Trend Generator. Programmed to create posters 'on the fly,' you can access the palettes and elements of the moment, placed together and exportable to Facebook, Tumblr and email.

The app, released in December, is a follow-on from their online generator, which It’s Nice That reported, 'If you thought graphic design was a load of old formulaic nonsense that could be put together by a chimp, a small child or just a simple algorithm, then consider yourself proved right courtesy of Trend List and their trendy design generator.'

The website has long been a source of both visual fodder and frustration since its inception, a visit bearing an overview of international styles and unfortunate labelling of art direction and composition, neglecting the context, meaning, production or application of the work. Broken into tags, encompassing normal, centre aligned, staircase, underlined, condensed, IK blue (do they explain what IK means?), slash, waves, slant and gradients, the featured work is also edited to showcase of the most iconoclastic work being produced – and this is the work most dangerous to the understanding of graphic design when portrayed in a collection without this social context. All this, however, is immensely indicative of the image culture encouraged by the internet and the phenomenal distribution of the poster thumbnail – the seductive image prized over content, process, meaning and purpose.

The developers of Trend Generator appear to have a view of design as being something more akin to open source programming, a collection of pre-existing ideas that can be indiscriminately applied, swapped and replicated: 'Trend Generator tries to change the rules in graphic design,' TL explains. 'It provides graphic designer with the right tools to create great posters in a cool way. Developed by graphic designers with the attention to the contemporary trends. Generating posters have never been more fun before.'

'It’s fun, but it also represents big shift in the designing process.'

This ‘shift’, meaning the construction of image making, is not new, but an enduring misunderstanding of the role of graphic design that causes daily frustration between clients and designers. While the democratisation of graphic design isn’t necessarily a threat to the industry, without ample explanation or education through such popular sites, these misunderstandings are only reinforced.

Selling for $1.99, the app has only one thinly veiled user review, from Graphic designer Ryder Ripps. 'I actually went to hunter college but everyone thinks i went to RISD or Yale when they see the work i create with this wonderful app! Thank you!'

Whether this is used for compositional experimentation or visual reference, it also raises the questions – why are these images produced? Why is the creation of an image without purpose, in poster format, such a thrilling activity? What is graphic design, if you don’t have to think?’

OUGD601_Context of Practice 3

Graphic Design Trends

Crap is Good

Crap = Good is a blog and online platform regarding contemporary visual culture, extending itself into a publishing imprint named ‘Crap is Good Press’. Initiated, curated and edited by graphic designer and visual artist Pieterjan Grandry. Crap = good tries to develop, document and describe following ideas.

Internet has changed the structure and distribution of knowledge. It is a vast, global, information reservoir. Websites like Wikipedia developed a new way of researching, offering easy access to the public. Besides, people interested in particular topics create online communities where they can exchange information about various topics with others from all over the world. It is an alternative way of learning, much different from the academic way and usually much more practical. Amateurs can become experts and experts can learn from amateurs. It is directed more to experiment and the topics can vary from very specific scientific subjects to banal ones. With the increasing speed of internet, uploading became easy and video became a popular medium for people to share their thoughts or give tutorials about their field of knowledge and expertise, be it dancing hip-hop, plumping, cooking or programming. With the fast development of computers and software, they can even make their video’s look as professional as they aspire, supplying them with titles, images and graphics.

All this knowledge is there for a long time, and has been used as well. But it wasn’t until the economic crisis in 2008 that this existing knowledge started appearing so largely outside of the www and entering the ‘real world’. With the massive unemployment rates followed by the 2008 crisis, people have experienced that our economical and political system isn’t as solid as one thought, or as they made one believe. We lost some of our faith in the system and became more sceptic towards it, developing a new perception of time or ‘work-time’. This subtle change in mentality gives room for the phenomenon of applying internet-knowledge, which is free, open source, and got defined as DIY-culture (Do It Yourself). It offers one the possibility to develop personal interests. By spending time developing these various fields of interest, people spend less time in the big market economy and move away from it, setting up small-scale business, producing locally, and orienting their practice away from this established system and its connected politics. Linked to that, we perceive that by moving away from this big economy, we are also moving away from its visual culture, and establish a new one.

Crap is good investigates this new aesthetics and it’s subject in the creative field, it documents projects realised by small groups or individuals in search of independence and with attention to experiment.

Looking at graphic design, we see a huge amount of self-publishers appearing, people setting up small independent printing presses or organising pop-up book events, all with a specific visual aesthetics connected to it. But even if one looks deeper into this aesthetic we find similar ideas occurring in all of the creative branches. Furniture design; going back to the mid-century concept, using bended metal, simple materials, flat pack furniture, a regained interest to the properties of material and the rise of eco-design. In photography we see a come back of the documentary style, photographers are stepping out of the high tech studio or entering daily life, editing less and showing more, be it analogue or digital. In architecture one perceives this new way of thinking in the contradiction between the big established offices who are closely connected to the current economic system and the small younger ones. Big commercial offices have answered the public’s demand for a more ecological or social approach by colouring their design green and do very little for social wellbeing or sustainability, while the small offices are organising urban farming projects and aim for social engagement with simple solutions or local interventions.