Throughout our daily lives we are surrounded and peppered by graphic messages. Indeed it has become so much part of the fabric of everyday modern life – from breakfast cereal packaging and advertising billboards to logos on clothes and television company identities – that often we register its codes only on a subconscious level. Against an ever-present insidious backing track of visual Muzak, graphic designers vie for the viewer’s attention by shaping communication that is not only visually arresting but also frequently intellectually contesting. To this end they can either grab attention in a bold and direct manner or slowly reel us in with visual ambiguity or double-coded meaning. In an ever-expanding sea of information and images the best “snaggers” of attention are those who bait their hooks with meaningful content, quirkily intelligent humour and/or more rarely genuinely new formal inventiveness. Because of the overwhelming bombardment of visual communications that we all experience on a daily basis, we have not only become more visually literate and culturally savvy in the deciphering of the intentions that lie at the root of the codes, but also our senses have become increasingly jaded by the stylistic sameness of much mainstream, “strategic”, marketing-led communication. These days, for something to attract our attention for more than just a few seconds it has to be really thought provoking or amusing. Today, more than at any other time in the short but prolific history of graphic design, the pressure on professional practitioners to produce distinctively authentic work that conveys a message in a uniquely captivating way is greater than ever. And that’s not all; graphic design just got bigger. The profession has broadened as the boundaries between creative disciplines have become increasingly blurred through the application and opportunities presented by new democratising digital technologies.

For the vast majority of designers the computer has become their primary tool, but given this, there is also a desire by many to break out of the constraining limitations imposed by off-the-shelf software programmes. The Internet and advanced computing power has delivered greater speed to graphic design practice yet at the same time this technologically driven acceleration has also increased the stylistic obsolescence of graphic design solutions – what appears cutting-edge one year will seem old hat the next as new ways of making graphic design provide novel possibilities of expression. Over the last decade graphic design has grown from a primarily static medium of encapsulated messages (books, posters, display ads, etc.) to one that is increasingly about movement, play and is open to interaction with the advent of graphic user interfaces (GUI). This does not mean, however, that we should be writing obituaries for the printed page as new computer technologies have actually made the execution of books easier – hence the proliferation of small print-run publications showcasing the work of individual graphic designers. Indeed, this type of publication along with the numerous journals, exhibitions and award ceremonies dedicated to graphic design help to raise the profile of this omnipresent yet often invisible profession, while also facilitating the cross-pollination of ideas amongst practitioners. The Internet has also had an enormous impact on the transference of ideas between graphic designers and has helped to instigate an unprecedented level of collaboration between different design communities throughout the world. It is, however, printed publications that not only tangibly demonstrate through words and pictures the cultural flux of contemporary graphic design, but may well remain the most accessible record of work made from sprinklings of pixel dust as new media platforms are perpetually rendering other not-so-new ones obsolete. In comparison to print, New Media is in its infancy and today’s pioneering generation of graphic designers are still grappling with how best to mine its communicative potential. The evolution of graphic design has been and will continue to be inextricably linked to the development of technological tools that enable designers to produce work with ever-greater efficiency.

Already within graphic design practice there is a strong sense of convergence with other disciplines (such as fine art, film, illustration, music) and this will inevitably continue and grow. Graphic design’s continuing love affair with advanced technology, its complicity with corporate globalisation and its adoption of the poetic ambiguity of Post-Modern cultural interpretation over the direct clarity of Modern universal communication are also much in evidence today. In an attempt, therefore, to make sense of where graphic design might be heading, we have identified a number of the common concerns and themes: the blurring of boundaries between disciplines; the importance of content; the impact of advanced technology; the desire for emotional connections; the creative constraints imposed by commercial software; the distrust of commercialism; the increasing quantity, complexity and acceleration of information; the need for simplification; (and lastly but by no means least) the necessity of ethical relevance.

To better understand how graphic design got to this stage of development, it is perhaps necessary to briefly outline the evolution of this relatively young profession. While the increasing cross-disciplinary aspect of graphic design practice may seem a new phenomenon this is not really the case. In the late 19th century the graphic arts* most visibly manifested themselves in the design of large advertising posters in the Art Nouveau style – from the cabaret posters by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) to the advertisements for Job cigarette papers by Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939). This kind of commercial art was often undertaken by practicing artists and architect/designers and as such was highly influenced by contemporary developments in the fine and applied arts. The new profession of graphic design was, however, mainly confined to the creation of posters and books and was closely related to the British Arts & Crafts Movement’s promotion of “art” printing. At this stage even when mechanized printing was used the results often still appeared hand-printed. It was not until the early years of the 20th century that the so-called “graphic arts” were used to develop comprehensive and integrated corporate identities. In 1907, for example, Peter Behrens (1868-1940) was appointed artistic adviser to the well-known German manufacturer, AEG and subsequently became the first designer to introduce such a programme. At this stage, however, designers were jacks-of-all-trades. One day they would be designing furniture and lighting, the next day textiles or ceramics and because of this graphic design was seen as just another field in which artists or architect/designers could try their hand. The well-known logo of the Carlsberg brewery for instance was initially devised by the Danish ceramicist and furniture designer, Thorvald Bindesbøll (1846-1908) in 1904.

The emergence of this new discipline during the early years of the 20th century led to the founding of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) in New York in 1914 – the first organization to be specifically set up for the promotion of what was then termed “graphic arts”. It was not until the First World War, however, that the importance of graphic design as a tool for propaganda was firmly established, most notably by James Montgomery Flagg (1877-1960), who created the famous “I Want You for US Army” recruiting poster showing Uncle Sam (based on a self-portrait). Following the war’s end the Art Directors Club was founded in New York in 1920 so as to raise the status of advertising – a growing area of the graphic arts that was distrusted by the general public because of the false claims and visual excesses that had become associated with it. The Art Directors Club subsequently staged exhibitions and produced publications that showcased the most creative advertising work and in so doing helped to establish a greater professionalism within graphic design practice. Reflecting the discipline’s move away from the subjectivity of fine art to the objectivity of design the American typographer, William Addison Dwiggins (1880-1956) reputedly first coined the term “graphic design” in 1922.

After the enormous upheavals of the First World War, many people put their faith in new technology and mass-production, which had already given the world an array of technical marvels from telephones and wireless radios to automobiles and aeroplanes. Sweeping artistic tradition away with industrial progress, there was a quasi-religious belief in the benefits of standardization and an overwhelming desire to strip everything from furniture and lighting to posters and books down to their purest and most elemental form. At the same time new movements in fine art – Futurism, Constructivism and De Stijl – emerged that also had a profound impact on the evolution of graphic design. Strongly influenced by these avant-garde impulses, graphic designers associated with the Bauhaus developed a new rational methodology for graphic design, which involved the use of bold geometric forms, lower-case lettering and simplified layouts. Often incorporating photomontages, this new kind of graphic design was not only visually dynamic but also had a communicative clarity. Graphic designers aligned to Modernism rejected individual creative expression in favour of what was described by Jan Tschichold (1902-1974) as “impersonal creativity”. At the Bauhaus designers such as Lásló Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946), Herbert Bayer (1900-1985) and Joost Schmidt (1893-1948) sought to codify a set of rational principles for graphic design practice through their endorsement of sans-serif typography, asymmetrical compositions and rectangular fluid grids, a preference for photography over illustration and the promotion of standardized paper sizes.

Prior to and during the Second World War, the Swiss School built on the Bauhaus’ developments in order to create a Modern form of graphic design known as the “International Graphic Style”, which had a strong reductivist aesthetic that incorporated lots of “white space” and “objective photography” (ie. realistic images). Precise, direct, and clinical, Swiss School graphic design was centred on the Modernist precept that “Form Follows Function”.
During the Second World War graphic designers, especially in Britain and America, produced bold propaganda posters that similarly displayed the formal purity and aesthetic economy of Modernism. Wartime designers such as Abraham Games (1914-1996), F.H.K. Henrion (1914-1990) and Jean Carlu (1900-1997) fused bold images with short yet powerful slogans, such as “Talk Kills”, “We’re in it together” and “America’s Answer! Production”, so as to produce a kind of non-narrative visual shorthand that conveyed the given public information message in the most direct manner possible. This type of high impact visual communication that sought universal perception was later used for commercial purposes.

After the Second World War, graphic designers working in the United States such as Herbert Matter (1907-1984) and Paul Rand (1914-1996) utilized the European avant-garde approach of dynamically combining typography and imagery in order to produce eye-catching, expressive and at times humorous graphic design work for high profile corporate clients, such as IBM and Knoll International. From the immediate post-war years to the late 1950s, there was a dramatic increase in the use of design as a marketing tool, which led to greater specialization in design practice. By now graphic design was recognized as a distinct profession rather than just a branch of a general design vocation. During this period the Swiss School’s influence spread internationally through the success of Modern typefaces such as Helvetica designed by Max Miedinger (1910-1980) and Edouard Hoffmann in 1957 and Univers designed by Adrien Frutiger (b.1928) in 1957 and also through the launch of the journal New Graphic Design in 1959. Large corporations increasingly employed graphic designers to help them differentiate their products in an ever-more competitive marketplace. At this time Modern graphic design became almost completely detached from its social foundations and instead became inextricably linked to the consuming desires of corporate advertising. In 1958 the Canadian-born communications theorist Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) began undertaking an in-depth analysis of contemporary advertising and subsequently concluded, “the Medium is the Massage” (a pun on the term Mass Age and an allusion to the media’s soft pummelling of culture). What this “Oracle of the Electronic Age” had identified was that image had become more important than content. Of perhaps even greater significance, however, was McLuhan’s questioning of where electronic media was ultimately taking society – a subject for debate that has certainly more pertinence now than when it was first raised.

By the late 1960s there was a fundamental questioning of Modernism and its de-humanizing aesthetic blandness. A new generation of graphic designers, including Wolfgang Weingart (b.1941) began experimenting with more expressive compositions while continuing to follow the Modern approach of the Swiss School. Other graphic designers such as Milton Glaser (b.1929) were highly influenced by Pop Art, which had itself been influenced by commercial art. With artists such as Andy Warhol (1928-1987), Richard Hamilton (b.1922) and Peter Blake (b.1932) looking to the visual language of popular culture for inspiration the distinctions between fine and commercial art became hazier. In the late 1960s, a plethora of anti-Vietnam War protest posters showed that designers did not have to use a Modernist approach in order to produce work that powerfully conveyed a message. Throughout the 1960s graphic design expanded into new areas of visual communication such as television and film title sequences. The discipline was now also playing an increasing role in the dissemination of cultural publicity and public information as well as commercial advertising. By the late 1960s graphic designers were also beginning to exploit the enormous changes taking place in photographic print technology, which allowed them a far greater degree of creative control and provided them with cheaper and better quality colour printing.

Graphic design became even more closely tied to marketing during the 1970s with many companies commissioning new logos – the universal language of corporate capitalism – in an effort to compete more effectively in an increasingly global and image-based world. As a reaction against the ascendancy of the banal uniformity of corporate visual language the Age of Aquarius saw the lurid kaleidoscopic dawn of the psychedelic poster, which was the very antithesis of the Swiss School. In response to growing disenchantment with Modernism and its perceived complicity with big business many other designers began seeking alternative approaches to graphic design. In the late 1970s, the Punk movement acted as a catalyst for the birth of a new approach to graphics in Britain, which was exemplified by the Sex Pistols’ God Save the Queen record sleeve (1977) designed by Jamie Reid (b.1940). This brash rough-and-ready-made anarchic style not only captured the energy and frustrated anger of contemporary youth-culture, but also intentionally mocked the staid aesthetic refinement of Modernism.

Around the same time a New Wave of Post-Modern graphic design swept Holland and America. Although retaining certain Swiss School elements, New Wave graphic design subverted the holy grid of Modernism and playfully incorporated eclectic cultural references from art, photography, film, advertising and iconic graphic designs from the past. New Wave designers such as Jan van Toorn (b.1932) and April Greiman (b.1948) replaced Modern objectivity with a Post-Modern subjectivity that evoked viewer response through a new kind of visual poetry. Inspired by the emergence of new forms of electronic media, Californian New Wave work incorporated deconstructed compositions so as to produce a sense of messages being filtered through layers, which in turn affected a strong three-dimensional quality or visual depth. Using Apple Macintosh software, designers created a language of hybrid imagery with encoded messages, while the seemingly random placement of collage-like images provided their work with a refreshing vitality. In 1982 the launch of the large-format graphic magazine, Émigre by Rudy VanderLans (b.1955) and Zuzana Licko (b.1961) disseminated the ideas behind this new movement in graphic design to a much wider international audience. Eventually Post-Modernism came to mean a multiplicity of graphic styles (often appropriated), which were characterised by visually arresting layered compositions that frequently had indecipherable meaning.

During the 1980s the increasing emphasis on image over content led to the meteoric rise of “The Brand”, which with the right help from graphic designers transcended national preferences to become a globally understood seal of approval. Companies such as Levi’s and Nike were quick to understand that “cutting-edge” graphic design could give their products a distinct competitive advantage. At a time when the social glue of traditional institutions, from the nuclear family to organized religion, was becoming unstuck, brands offered the consumer a no-strings-attached sense of belonging while helping them define their self-image. Branding is essentially all about the projection of aspirations and the creation of desires. It is the package (style) rather than the product (content) that appeals to us on an emotional level and this is the reason why certain commercial logos are worshipped like religious idols. The feel-good factor of a brand, however, can be quickly eroded with the knowledge that those ludicrously expensive trainers, clothes etc. have been made by wage-slaves in the Third World – quite simply the gilt can turn to guilt. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s the graphic design profession aided and abetted the meteoric rise of The Brand and appeared almost completely blinkered to the ills of rampant consumerism.

By the early 1990s Post-Modernism had escaped from the confines of design institutions and the music and art scenes and became widely embraced by corporate marketeers desperately searching for the elusive elixir of cool – the very life blood of branding. At long last the gulf between progressive educational theory and mainstream professional practice appeared to have been bridged. There was, however, a growing realisation among a new generation of Late Modern designers that style and content are equally important in Good Design solutions (a very un-PoMo notion). Today’s New Pluralism in graphic design must be seen on the one hand as a response to the greater multiculturalism of today’s global society and on the other to be prompted by the strong desire of designers to develop their own unique style, which enables them to stand out from the crowd. Many designers are challenging traditional notions of beauty with provocative work that expresses radical ideas. The majority of image-makers working today have been strongly inspired by developments in art and film and have incorporated aspects of these disciplines into their work, which has in turn led to a broader interpretation of what actually constitutes graphic design. Designers such as M/M, Mevis & van Deursen and Jonathan Barnbrook have developed close associations with the art world, however, their work in most cases remains constrained by the client’s brief and as such can never match the complete creative freedom of art unless it is work undertaken by themselves for themselves. Increasingly designers are therefore subsidizing self-initiated exploratory and experimental work that allows them to express their own creative individuality and personal ideas with revenues from well-paid commercial work (Jonathan Barnbrook for instance). Many have realised that uncertain meaning can evoke a sense of mystery, which can help to capture and hold the viewer’s attention. This phenomenon has led graphic design to be used not as a means to solve a communication problem but as a way of posing the viewer with a communicative riddle. There are also, however, a growing number of designers who are producing more text-based work, which has a single powerfully direct message that is not open to a multitude of interpretations. Often the directness of messages comes about because the communicator stands for an ideal and wants to promote his/her cause with the utmost clarity. Since the early 1990s “Subvertising” with its jamming of corporate messages has displayed a strong communicative directness in its attempt to help spearhead an anti-globalisation revolution. Certainly there is now a growing realisation that simplification is often the best way to filter information from an endless ocean of trivia and that in the future the onus will be on graphic designers to become “information architects” so that they can create tools that help the user to better navigate the complex seas of the digital age.

The long-standing complicity of the graphic design profession with big business has led to the rapid expansion and globalisation of commercial culture and perhaps it is now time for practitioners to question the ethical basis of the work they produce. For too long graphic design has been cynically used as a means to induce people in the developed world to buy more products they don’t really need, when in developing nations literally millions still do not have access to clean water, sufficient food, basic medicines or rudimentary education. To make matters worse these superfluous marketing-driven products are often made in exploitative sweatshops by the most deprived members of our global society yet all too frequently graphic designers have helped corporations gloss over such brand depreciating details with slick ad campaigns. Rather than helping to sell questionable products – from alcopops, cigarettes and junk food to gas-guzzling cars and environmentally damaging petrochemicals – graphic designers could use their communicative ingenuity to highlight human rights abuses as well as vital social and environmental concerns. In fact this is already happening at a grassroots level as can be gleaned from a casual perusal of Adbusters magazine.

Above all else, graphic designers working today need to acknowledge that they have a special responsibility (and ability to respond) not just to the needs of their clients but also to those of society as a whole. The phenomenal persuasive power of graphic design could be harnessed and directed in such a way that it radically alters the way people think about the important issues of the future, from global warming and third world debt to human rights and gender politics. Although not all the work done by graphic designers falls into the realm of ethical decision-making, the profession still needs to tip the balance from the commercial to the social if it is to remain a relevant and vital cultural force.

*Please note: for the purpose of this essay we are viewing graphic design in terms of the combination of text and image. Typography as a specialisation of graphic design has of course, a much longer history.