Design Literacy

by Steven Heller

  Politics was no longer operative, rather interest in material culture was dominant.

  Although it seemed that the underground aesthetic was not entirely dead and the torch had only changed hands, the truth was that alternative culture had changed. Politics was no longer operative, rather interest in material culture was dominant. The antiestablishmentarianism, so naively practiced by the underground, was codified by a new group of design-literate practitioners. Outrageousness became an end in itself, manifest in the design clichés of the period—a Mad Max, Road Warrior, post-Holocaust vision of life wed to a skewed 1930s modernism. It quickly emerged as a distinctly identifiable style, easy prey for style merchants, the entrepreneurs who learned from the 1960s that even the most sincere youth culture can be a profitable commodity. Punk was co-opted and commercially packaged as new wave. A domino effect began, in which a plethora of new wave products—from clothes to watches to records—created a need for eyecatching advertising, which in turn created demand upon publishers for outlets.

  In Los Angeles, the surge in chic, trendy, and not altogether uninspired new wave–styled publicity for boutiques, restaurants, and galleries fostered the tabloid Stuff, ostensibly an elegant supermarket handout whose only editorial content (save for a few insignificant text pages) was its paid advertising. Indeed, some of the ads were designed with more zest, imagination, and panache than a lot of conventional graphic design. On the East Coast, similarly focused “square” tabloid magazines, including Details, Paper, and the full-sized tabloid, New York Talk, were merely editorial environments for advertising. As a rule these East Coast periodicals ran “soft” feature stories, picture spreads, and random items covering their cultural milieu. Although each masthead listed a considerable number of contributing writers, it is fair to say that the writing would not overtax the average reader. At best it would entertain and at worst, separate one page of ads from the next. Still, these publications should not be totally dismissed as fluff.

  A famous photograph taken by Berenice Abbott in the early 1930s shows a packed newsstand in midtown Manhattan with more than one hundred different magazines for sale (most for about a nickel, as compared to today’s average three-dollar cover price). Despite the varied photographs, illustrations, and titles on their covers, many of the publications look alike. Graphic style is a visual indication of a cultural period. Many of the magazines in Abbott’s photograph are in the deco mold—then the dominant style. Although style represents a period, it does not always state content. In every period there are manifestations that define the dominant attitude and those that copy it. That many of today’s culture tabs look the same is simply a signpost of a design-conscious and technologically advanced period. Some of the publications discussed here will be forgotten, like the hundreds of me-too undergrounds published during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Others will make a lasting contribution to (rather than merely being a reflection of) the visual culture and the culture as a whole.

  Emigre

  RUDY VANDERLANS AND ZUZANA LICKO

  Deconstructivist typography, an idea more or less inspired by linguistic theory, had a complicated birth and many midwives. During the 1970s Basel designer Wolfgang Weingart developed a system of typographic reordering as an alternative to the dominant Neue Grafik or international style. On the surface his radical approach was chaotic, yet underneath it was built on a structure of hierarchical logic. Many of Weingart’s exponents were schooled in academic modernism and found that this new method released them from old strictures. The modern method was becoming unresponsive as shifts in technology, economy, and politics began to unhinge the canonical absolutes.

  The spread of electronic media and computer technology began to suggest, if not define, new ways to present information. With new interactive media, graphic design could no longer be one dimensional. As traditional methods of designing books and magazines were challenged, visionary American designers like April Greiman and Dan Friedman found new ways of busting the grid. Harnessing the primitive characteristics of electronic media and making strengths out of technological weakness resulted in new methods that, over time, evolved into a language. The use of multiple layers of discordant typefaces integrated with imagery became, on the one hand, a commentary on the information deluge, and, on the other, a signpost that underscored new perceptual pathways. A similar discordant eruption in typography took place in the late 1890s, the Victorian era—the chaotic, nascent period of commercial design when job printers purposely mixed different typefaces together in the service of fashion and function.

  In 1983, a year before the introduction of the Macintosh computer, Rudy VanderLans (b. 1955) and Zuzana Licko (b. 1961), the former Dutch and the latter Czech, founded an alternative culture magazine they called Emigre. What started as a cousin of the 1960s underground newspaper developed into the clarion of digital typography and design. The first Macintosh and its primitive default faces inspired Emigre’s founders to focus on design. VanderLans called it “a cultural force,” rather than a passive observer. Emigre Graphics (later Emigre Fonts), the type business, became a pioneer in typeface design, and Emigre, the magazine, propagated the faith. Emigre Fonts introduced some of the earliest and quirkiest dot-matrix and, as the technology improved, high resolution digital typefaces. Emigre magazine showcased the leading proponents and exponents of a new typography that wed youthful rebellion, evolutionary imperatives, and intellectual curiosity into type and page designs that challenged the canonical rules. These designers sought to reach audiences that were either disinterested in, or turned off by orthodox modern approaches, and they developed visual codes that forced reevaluation of conventional type design.

  As Emigre challenged the status quo it earned the ire of certain proponents of classic modernism. Massimo Vignelli referred to the new typography as “garbage,” and in “The Cult of the Ugly” (Eye, No. 3, Vol. 9) I (Steven Heller) called it a “blip in the continuum of graphic design history.” This antipathy was not entirely a knee-jerk reaction to the new, but it did reveal an inevitable generational schism. On the surface trends and fashions were being scrutinized, while underneath lurked discomfort with change.

  Once released from the safe haven of the laboratory the tension between young and old ignited. Progress in art and design is certain, but the baton is rarely passed smoothly. Action and reaction in design are as natural as the changing tides, and just as necessary. Arguments force practitioners of all ages to assess and defend. Stasis, the hobgoblin of creativity, is invariably disrupted. The approaches promoted by Emigre encouraged a reevaluation of old methods and aesthetics in the light of a new technological era. They became touchstones for progress but, paradoxically, also provided templates for mimicry.

  It is axiomatic that when a progressive method becomes popular its edges are smoothed. By the time the avant-garde enters the mass consciousness many of its successful experiments have already been diluted, reduced to little more than style. In fine art the acceptance of radical approaches into the mainstream may mean victory for their proponents, but ultimately the most progressive forms are neutered to appeal to a larger audience. The outsider in graphic design is even more of a contradiction. The commercial nature of design necessitates that what’s outside be brought inside or become irrelevant. Regardless of how determined Emigre was to forge new directions, they were incapable of preventing appropriation.

  The cultural feeding frenzy that overtook the Emigre “style” was predictable. What Emigre initiated was co-opted by scores of mainstream, cultish manifestations—from magazines to MTV. The ethos further outgrew its experimental stage and became the “cool” or “hip” way to communicate. But this should not diminish Emigre’s impact or significance.

  VanderLans and Licko, while launching a business, took the necessary, courageous leaps that pioneers must take. Emigre was not just the standard-bearer of the new design style, but was, and continues to be, the bearer of standards for experimental digital typography. Through the shift
from hot metal to phototype and even to computer type, although the mechanics of type had changed frequently, the fundamental nature of type had remained constant. While other serious type designers initially adapted traditional methods to the digital medium, Emigre pushed the boundaries. VanderLans and Licko were not satisfied to follow tradition, and ultimately they created a tradition of their own.

  RAW

  FRANÇOISE MOULY AND ART SPIEGELMAN

  Françoise Mouly (b. 1955) and Art Spiegelman (b. 1948) were married in 1982. Within a few months they gave birth to a publishing business which they named Raw Books and Graphics. It was consigned to a corner of their loft in Manhattan’s SoHo district, where it quickly grew into a healthy concern. Mouly, a native of Paris, had been an architecture student at the École des Beaux-Arts and worked as a colorist for Marvel Comics in New York; Spiegelman, a native New Yorker, was an underground comic strip editor and artist with a unique analytical approach to comic page construction. The comics brought them together; and because they agreed that viable outlets did not exist in America for the kind of experimental work that interested them, they decided to fill the void left by the demise of underground comix in the mid-1970s by starting a publishing venture that would somehow provide a forum for new and radical forms. This entrepreneurial commitment thrust them into the roles of publisher and editor, and more reluctantly into being the virtual foster parents to a group of artists whose unconventional styles and approaches were given little encouragement in mainstream publishing circles. Within a few years RAW magazine, the flagship of Raw Books and Graphics, had enlivened a moribund field.

  From the outset, Spiegelman and Mouly wanted a three-letter title in the tradition of MAD.

  The reasons for starting Raw Books and Graphics were compelling. “There was no place worth appearing in,” Spiegelman said. “There were magazines interested in me, but they wanted me to bend myself out of shape to do comics that would be fitting for them.” Mouly had already singlehandedly published The SoHo Map and Guide, an ambitious first project that sold advertising space to SoHo merchants. Now she wanted to learn printing, so they bought a used multilith press and rebuilt it in their loft.

  “The real genesis of RAW,” admitted Spiegelman, “was François getting involved in publishing. That meant setting up a makeshift distribution system so that things she printed could get around, which she did. And then her being ready to take on something more ambitious. For a while it seemed that might be books rather than the magazine, but the advantage after we did the first issue of RAW (which we swore we would never do again) was that we’d already set up something we could build on. A book is always another book and requires a whole new constituency to be gathered each time. The magazine gave us a core of readers.” The SoHo Map and Guide provided enough capital to publish a first issue, and the makeshift distribution Mouly had set up eventually paid them enough to keep going without further infusions of outside capital.

  In a way, RAW evolved from Spiegelman’s anthology Breakdowns, at least in adapting the book’s expansive dimensions (eleven by fourteen inches), which enabled him to print his strips at almost their original size. There were other reasons for the new magazine’s format, too. “RAW started at a time when there were a number of large-size cultural tabloids, such as Wet, Fetish, Skyline, and Interview,” recalled Spiegelman. “The only thing they had in common was the fact that they were ‘new wave,’ with a large size and a new sensibility. So whether it was fashion, architecture, art, or politics, they sat next to each other on the newsstand. Whatever vestigial marketing sense I had said that if we did comics as a large-size thing, they could sit next to the architecture magazines and nobody would say ‘where should the comic book go?’”

  From the outset, Spiegelman and Mouly wanted a three-letter title in the tradition of MAD. They went through many ideas before settling on RAW, which for them meant “having vital juices intact” rather than untamed or aggressive. To this they added a new, enigmatic subtitle with each issue, among them, “The Graphix Magazine for Damned Intellectuals,” “The Graphix Magazine of Abstract Depressionism,” “The Graphic Aspirin for War Fever,” and “The Graphix Magazine that Overestimates the Taste of the American Public.” By comic book standards, RAW’s premiere issue was tame: every element was purposefully designed. But in the beginning RAW’s design was a disquieting mix of what seemed like trendy new wave detailing, and, by modernist graphic design standards, a comic book heavy-handedness. Every page had an obtrusive running head, an inelegant rule with a panel in which the artist’s name appeared, and a page number dropped out of a circle. Although this became RAW’s signature design element, when it was first introduced it appeared a distracting conceit. Each contents page was an artwork in its own right, with overprints, drop-outs, and other design details that echoed the punk graphic aesthetic of the time.

  RAW #1 was printed on heavy white paper and included a small comic book by Spiegelman called “Two-Fisted Painters” (one of his many strips devoted to exploring and satirizing the comic form). The front cover had a color panel pasted on it to give Spiegelman’s stark black-and-white illustration another dimension and to compensate for the lack of full-color printing. “A lot of attention was paid to its objectness,” said Spiegelman, who was creative consultant for Topps Bubble Gum Company during that period, and has always harbored a fetish for novelty that he translated into the magazine. Though many of the strips were visually raw compared to those of slick mainstream comics, their surreal and heady unpredictability forced the reader to take notice. By RAW #5, which Spiegelman and Moulyagree was the most challenging issue, the various mixtures of typography, art, and novelty were so well integrated that RAW’s style was decidedly its own. RAW had become a genre.

  “It was never meant to be a long-lived project,” sighed Spiegelman, revealing his characteristic angst. “It was meant to be a demonstration of how something could be in a better world, and ended up having its own logic and momentum; it began, more or less, steering us rather than us steering it. And I think that’s still true.” That momentum was generated in part by the RAW artists, who were being given a venue in which to grow and were not eager to give it up. “Once everything was set up,” continued Spiegelman, “it was just as easy to feed it as to kill it.” RAW certainly did fulfill a need. It became a veritable mecca for quirky and visionary artists and storytellers from all over the world. From the initial five thousand print run, subsequent runs increased incrementally to almost twenty thousand by RAW #8, the last of the large-format issues. Among the relative newcomers were Gary Panter, who already had a cult following for his Jimbo strip, which appeared in a West Coast punk magazine called Slash; Charles Burns, who had only ever published spot illustrations before sending his meticulously drawn translations of 1950s horror and love clichés to RAW for consideration; Jerry Moriarty, who was teaching at the School of Visual Arts in New York and barely getting published before RAW picked up his “Jack Survives,” a surrealistic view of the banal; and Mark Beyer, with his art brut tales about depression and death. Other homegrown discoveries included Drew Friedman, Ben Katchor, and Mark Newgarden.

  Spiegelman and Mouly also published the cream of the European comic strip artists, including the brilliantly designed strips of Joost Swarte from Holland and Ever Meulen from Belgium; the explosive graphic fantasies of Pascal Doury and the noir storytelling of Jacques Tardi, both from France; and the seductive comicalities of the Spaniard Javier Mariscal.

  Beach Culture

  DAVID CARSON

  Good magazine design is not simply a process of imposing tried and true formulas, but one of creating formats that complement an editorial viewpoint. Yet much magazine design is tried and true because publishers want to be safe. Advertisers prefer it that way.

  On rare occasions magazine designers rise above the design clichés imposed by marketing experts, and when an intrepid designer does take the plunge notice must be taken. Every so often a magazine captures the Zeitgeist. In the
mid-1970s Wet: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing, with its premiere cover showing two photographs, taken ten years apart, of a mother and her daughters sitting naked in a bathtub, marked a shift from “underground press” politics to cult fetishism. In the early 1980s Emigre, with its alternative cross-cultural coverage and raucous type design, suggested a new wave was about to crest. In 1990 Beach Culture, a journal of West Coast watersports, became the cult magazine of the moment when it surfaced in design competitions and annuals nationwide. Its primary audience was surfers, but it became the benchmark of 1990s design. Its sole designer, David Carson (b. 1956), transformed the magazine into a showcase for radical typography and design tomfoolery.

  Beach Culture was full of design indulgences and technological trickery, but it also included striking photography and illustration by talented artists, such as Geof Kern, Marshall Arisman, Milton Glaser, Matt Mahurin, and Henrik Drescher. As a chaotic pastiche of typographic excess it was often unreadable, but conventional readability was not necessarily a virtue given its context. Beach Culture catered to an audience that was able to navigate the visuals and text. No one ever said a surfing magazine should look mainstream. But neither was there a demand that it be cutting edge. Certainly most other surfing magazines were void of distinguished design. Since surfing is such a specialized activity and writing about it is arcane, one would hardly have expected a surf magazine to be typographically innovative or risqué.

  Beach Culture was full of design indulgences and technological trickery, but it also included striking photography and illustration.

  Beach Culture was born out of a two-hundred-page annual advertorial called Surf Style that included puff pieces about the products advertised therein. Carson embraced the publisher’s idea to make Surf Style into a real magazine. This former design intern at Surfer publications, former art director of Skateboard magazine and Musician, had studied typography with designer Jean Robert in Switzerland and learned about the power of vernacular forms and how type could be made expressive through abstraction. After the premiere issue of Beach Culture many advertisers dropped out, confused by its odd mix of beach and culture, yet enough of them remained to continue publishing. Carson seized the opportunity; following in the footsteps of contemporary design progressives, such as Wolfgang Weingart, Rudy VanderLans, Rick Valicenti, and Neville Brody, he began his own expedition into new—and often illegible—realms of visual presentation. Carson’s spin on typographic anarchy was different than his predecessors. He not only infused his pages with wit and irony, but also accepted that a magazine page is ephemera.