from typeface "distortion" (late 1990s) to 2000s maximalism

design for saatchi (2000s)

design for ferrari (2000s)

emmanuela harris, (2000s)

omatic design (2000s)

there are different names, glitch art, pixabay, holographic art, warp, etc. 

what do we see?

sedendipity, 

an unintentional distortion made by a digital crash has led to an entire, mind-bending sub-genre of graphic design.......

bold, rich colors,
pattern and texture saturation,
layering textures,
ornamentation is back,
avec-serif,
drawn typefaces,
 horror vacui!
mixing and matching vintage,

more distortion... typeface "morire" (the end of the grunge era)

Somewhere in the mid-2000s, clean lettering and subtle spacing experienced a resurgence in popularity, and the use of grunge typography went into decline: conservative became modern, and chaotic became clichéd. Fasforward to 2015: the reversion to classicism is nigh complete. Demand for grunge fonts comes from LatinAmerica and Europe rather than the U.S. (!)

jeffery keedy's manifesto

 

why jeffery keedy? 

not only is he an important graphic designer, he's also an accomplished design theorist.

here's jeffery's EMIGRE type specimens:

keedy is, guess what?,  a graduate of the Cranbrook Academy of Art, 

to be expected of a Cranbrook alumnus, keedy has been teaching design at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) since his graduation. 

keedy was also a frequent contributor to Emigre magazine throughout the twenty years of its publication. his designs and essays have been published in Eye, I.D., Emigre, Critique, Idea, Adbusters, Looking Closer One and Two, Faces on the Edge: Type in the Digital Age, New Design: Los Angeles and The Education of a Graphic Designer.

keedy's typeface Keedy Sans, designed in 1989, is distributed through Emigre Fonts.

he has also designed the Hard Times typeface which reassembles the elements of Times New Roman. 

according to keedy, the international style has been upgraded to what he calls global style.

so, what do we have?

1- keedy's "global style" is to 2000s what the international style was to the 1950s.

2- if the international style used typographic trickery to animate the frame, keedy's global uses the 4th dimension: time. it accomplishes this by looking like it was a single llime taken out of an animated sequence. 

3- what you see has undergone countless iterations and distortions.

4- the grid is not planned, but sort of process driven.

5- yet, the global style already looks familiar. 

what's the lesson here?

lifting and copying old styles was no longer seen as nostalgic. why? now, the past itself was considered to be an invention! (it's not, but that's a different story)

Jeffrey Keedy's emigre type (2002) borrows the geometric language of primary colors, red black, etc from constructivism, yet the design looks digital enough, this is what some call post-postmodern effect.

How are you doing in our ARH 346 class?

According to our syllabus, there are three grade parameters:

1. Attendance, 25%, 

2. Exams, midterm & final, 25% each, for a total of 50%

3. Posts for comments and project: 25%

_______

a) Suppose your attendance is 80%, you got an A in the midterm, and you have 9/10 assignments. 

or else,

b) Suppose your attendance is 70%, you got a B in the midterm, and you have 7/10 assignments.

a) Input the parameters and grades, and you have 25 points for the midterm, 20 points for attendance, and 22.5 points for your posts, for a total of 67.5.

b) Input the parameters and grades, and you have 20 points doe the midterm, 17.5 for attendance, and 17.5 points for your posts, for a total of 55 points.