The Digital Revolution in design, based on Chapter 24 of Megg's History of Graphic Design. History of Graphic Design course, Digital Media Design program, Red River College.
3. Susan Kare, screen fonts for the Macintosh
computer, 1984
Sumner Stone, digitized data for
Stone Medium b, 1985. The
outline Bézier curves and filled
laser-printed output are shown.
4. April Greiman
April Greiman, poster for the Los Angeles
Institute of Contemporary Art, 1986
April Greiman, graphic imagery for
Design Quarterly, no. 133, 1987
The new desktop computer technology and the introduction of advanced software, in the 1980’s and 1990’s, expanded the creative potential of the graphic designer by making possible unprecedented manipulation of color, form, space, and imagery for both print and on-screen design. Although there was initial resistance by many designers, digital technology gained widespread acceptance. The Internet and the World Wide Web transformed the way we communicate and access information and led to a period of pluralism and diversity in design. Professional designers are joined by others whose design activities are extensions of their vocational or avocational activities; the widening of the design profession has been ignited through not only the creation of new computer software and the Internet, but also the expansion and increased quality of design education. Graphic designers are also expanding into self-initiated and fine arts-related experimentation, creating a dynamic flux. Time-honored theories and methods of production also continue to inspire and spark innovation.
In the 1980s, Apple introduced the Macintosh computer and the first laser printer; Adobe Systems invented the Postscript programming language, which made page-layout software and electronically generated typography possible; and Aldus, founded by Paul Brainerd, created an early software program called PageMaker, which used Postscript to design pages on the computer screen.
Key individuals of this time included scientist and visionary Douglas C. Engelbart, who, among other innovations, invented the mouse, which turned computer access into a more intuitive experience; Susan Kare, who designed early bitmapped fonts; and Pierre Bézier, whose Bézier curves allowed for the creation of complex shapes and smooth endpoints. By 1990, Apple’s color-capable Macintosh II and improved software had spurred a revolution in graphic design as radical as the fifteenth-century shift from hand-lettered manuscript books to Gutenberg’s movable type.
Early pioneers who embraced digital technology and explored its creative potential included Los Angeles designer April Greiman. . In the first poster, computer output, printed as layers of lavender, blue-gray, red-orange, and tan, overlap and combine into an even fuller palette of color. The second poster is composed of digitized images and was output by a low-resolution printer.
Dutch born Rudy Vanderlans, was a designer and editor of Emigre magazine, which was published in San Francisco between 1984 and 2005. He used fonts designed by his wife, typeface designer Zuzana Licko. Emigre was one of the first publications to use the Macintosh for design and layout, and was a huge influence on other designers adopting desktop publishing.
Many art school and university design and education programs became centers for discourse and experimentation with computer technology, such as Michigan’s Cranbrook Academy of Art, where Katherine McCoy co-chaired the design department with her husband, product designer Michael McCoy.
Detroit designer Edward Fella, whose typographic experimentation influenced a generation of designers, was an inspirational guest critic at Cranbrook and later attended the graduate program before accepting a teaching position in California.
In the early 1990’s, the introduction of Adobe Photoshop and Quark Xpress, along with faster computers, allowed designers to achieve output similar in quality to that achieved by traditional, non-digital methods. At the same time, there was a renewed interest in hand-made and expressionistic lettering. Editorial designers, such as David Carson, began to apply computer experimentation to the pages of their publications. Carson rejected conventional notions of typographic syntax and imagery while exploring expressive possibilities of computer technology.
In 1987, Frank Woodward became art director and Gail Anderson became deputy art director of the semimonthly rock-and-roll magazine Rolling Stone. Woodward sought to create a publication with a handmade look that constantly reinvented itself through dynamic change and computer software allowed designers and illustrators to achieve this goal under Woodward’s direction.
By the mid-1990s, personal computers and the Internet were launching the information age, and the magazine that gave voice to the new “digital generation” was WIRED. The magazine’s design team, John Plunkett and Barbara Kuhr of Plunkett + Kuhr, introduced a postmodern machine aesthetic, with edgy typography and fluorescent inks, which set it apart from other magazines.
To add to the uniqueness, they ordered a custom typeface from Matthew Carter, called Wiredbaum, based on the modern serif type Waldbaum. The “Electronic Word” section, of Wired, used layered form, with text often running over layers of images to express the multidimensional content of the Internet and “shape” the readers’ experience.
In 1995 Kit Hinrichs cofounded @issue: The Journal of Business and Design with the Corporate Design Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the role of design in business. The Corporate Design Foundation recognized the need for (and benefits of) integration of all areas of design—including identity, print design, Web design, “new” media, product design, and architectural design—into brand and business strategy; @issue served as a major vehicle for promoting this vision. A self-described “visual story teller,” Hinrichs’ designs are distinguished by a keen understanding of the narrative and abundant interpretations on a theme; all covers of @issue, for example, explore and reinvent representation of the human face.
In the new millennium, designers continue to push the boundaries of editorial design. Abbott Miller, together with his wife Ellen Lupton, initiated the concept of “designer as author;” they developed a procedure through which content and form evolve in tandem, with one enhancing the other. Miller’s work on 2wice magazine, a biannual publication devoted to the visual and performing arts, further explores his dynamic union of form and written word.
The innovative and cutting-edge work of Martin Venezky is exemplified by his publications for the Sundance Film Festival. He is intrigued by patterns, rhythm, and the structural quality of letterforms. Skillfully balancing handwork with technology, he uses collage material, digital images, and altered or distorted type in his work.
Font design software for desktop computers, such as Fontographer, enabled designers to design and market original typefaces, which led to an explosion of new releases in the 1990s.
Sumner Stone designed the Stone type family while type director of Adobe Systems, a prolific and influential digital type foundry. Two outstanding staff typeface designers at Adobe, Carol Twombly and Robert Slimbach, created digital adaptations of classical typefaces as well as original typefaces, such as Twombly’s Charlemagne, Lithos, and Trajan, and Slimbach’s Minion, Adobe Jenson, and Cronos.
In 1992, Adobe released a new concept in type design, multiple-master typefaces, in which two or more master designs combined to generate extensive variations in weight, width, style, and optical size. Myriad, designed by Twombly and Slimbach, was one of the first multiple-master typefaces.
Small independent type foundries also emerged, and the wide variety in type design led to a division between those who believed traditional values should be maintained and those who advocated experimentation. One of the more successful independent foundries is Emigre Fonts, which was founded by Licko and Vanderlans. In addition to licensing and distributing typefaces designed by others, Licko designed two significant revivals: Mrs Eaves, an interpretation of Baskerville’s eighteenth-century transitional face, and Filosofia, a modern-style face.
Other type designers of note during this period include Matthew Carter.
Gerard Unger and Frank Blokland
Peter van Blokland, Erik Spiekermann, Erik van Blokland, and Ralph Oliver du Carrois.
Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones.
In recent years, there has been great interest in the design of font families that not only include characters from the Roman alphabet, but from Cyrillic, Greek, and Arabic alphabets as well. Type designer Nadine Chahine focuses on congruous relationships between Latin and Arabic scripts. Her typeface designs include Koufiya (a dual-script font family, Latin and Arabic), Arabic versions of Latin typefaces, such as Frutiger Arabic, New Helvetica Arabic, and Palatino Arabic, as well as new Arabic fonts, including Janna and Badiya.
With digital imaging software, seamless image manipulation could be achieved and as a result, photography was no longer considered the undisputed documentation of reality. Boundaries began to fade between photography, illustration, and fine art, as well as between designer, illustrator, and photographer. Woody Pirtle and April Greiman pioneered electronic montages, which were harbingers of the current revolution in image making.
Hypertext, interactive media (also called hypermedia), as well as the Internet and the World Wide Web, further expanded graphic design opportunities. The basic structural methods of interactive media include: linear series, spatial zoom, parallel texts, overlays, hierarchies, matrix, and web structures.
Pioneers of early Web projects included Jessica Helfand, who designed the Discovery Channel’s initial Web site in 1994–1995.
Richard Saul Wurman, who coined the phrase “information architect,” and Clement Mok, an Apple Computer creative director who opened Clement Mok Designs in 1987, which was renamed Studio Archetype in 1996. Mok was an early advocate of the graphic designer’s role in interactive media and promoted design as an integral part of an organization’s overall vision and strategy.
Small firms and individuals were able to communicate with audiences and market products through interactive media, as demonstrated by Bob Aufuldish’s first fontBoy interactive type catalogue. New computer software, the Internet, expansion and increased quality of design education saw a widening of the design profession.
Among other advances in technology, Flash, XML, and JavaScript give designers the opportunity to make any Web site wholly distinctive. Interactive components, videos, and even games can be incorporated.
Erik Adigard, Patricia McShane, and John Maeda of M.A.D. Design are cited as leaders in experimentation with digital media. Adigard explores the possibilities of the digital process in the densely packed montages for WIRED magazine frontispieces, which exemplify the designer as illustrator working with computer applications.
John Maeda, head of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab’s Visible Language Workshop, has been a leader in the shift of graphic design from print to digital media and in the effort to integrate artistic expression with digital technology.
Aaron Koblin’s work focuses on the visualization of data. He transforms social and infrastructural information to portray cultural developments and evolving patterns. Koblin is recipient of the National Science Foundation’s first place award for science visualization and is currently technology lead at Google’s Creative Lab. In these images, flight paths across North America are traced, revealing changing patterns of air traffic and the key superstructures that guide the aviation network.
Design for portable devices is critically linked to the development of portable technology and the devices themselves. The interactivity of the Internet has been joined with location-based, real-time information and demand for intuitive user interfaces.
Apple has been a pioneer in designing portable devices, including the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. The minimalist design of the devices, and the closed system of application development, allow users to interact directly with the information they are receiving and manipulate it according to their interests.
To meet these demands, graphic designers have become part of a team of information architects, developing sleek and intuitive user experiences. As these technologies continue to grow and change, so will the role graphic designers play in the developments of mobile communications.
Imaginary Forces, launched in 1996 by Kyle Cooper, Chip Houghton, and Peter Frankfurt, has become the vanguard in film titles.
The company’s multidisciplinary staff established a new approach through the integration of graphic design, motion, and interactive media. “Everything starts with the words [of the script and/or novel],” says Cooper of his methodology.
In 2000, Karin Fong joined Imaginary Forces and designs and directs motion graphics for advertising, entertainment, art, and installation
Danny Yount, a self-taught designer, freelanced for Imaginary Forces in 2000. Today, he is one of the most influential title designers for film and television; he has designed and directed the opening sequences for many notable productions, including HBO’s Six Feet Under, for which he won an Emmy. Now Senior Creative Director at Prologue Films—a collective of designers, filmmakers, and artists—his focus has primarily been feature film main titles. His opening sequence for Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was described by the Hollywood Reporter as “a title sequence worthy of the late Saul Bass.”
Lisa Strausfeld studied art history and computer science and later she received master’s degrees in architecture at Harvard University and in media arts and sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2002, Strausfeld became a partner at a Pentagram, where her work involves the interaction of actual and virtual space. Her group focuses on digital information design projects including software prototypes, Web sites, interpretive displays, and extensive media installations. Her training as an architect allows her to incorporate the presentation of information into physical surrounds.
For over forty years, Paula Scher has been at the vanguard of graphic design. More recently, her typography has spilled into the streets and onto buildings; requests for typographic treatments in the built environment are steadily increasing.
In 2005 she paired with Lisa Strausfeld on the design of the Bloomberg L.P. headquarters. Together, they incorporated large-scale typographic treatments and dynamic media displays throughout the interior spaces.
In Europe, Ruedi Baur has been involved with identity, information programs, wayfinding systems, exhibition design, and urban design in Paris, Zurich, and Berlin. His recent work includes the integration of typography and in architecture for many prominent institutions and enterprises including the Centre Pompidou de Paris, the Köln-Bonn airport, and the Esisar School at the Grenoble Institute of Technology.
The Dutch graphic designer Karl Martens has designed typographic façades for various buildings through the Netherlands including the Philharmonie in Haarlem and the Veenman Printers building in Ede.
Richardson College for the Environment & Science Complex, University of Winnipeg, Number TEN Architectural Group
The personal computer has enabled contemporary designers to further push the limits of typographic form, as seen in the work of a number of international designers, such as Shuichi Nogami, Shinnoske Sugisaki and Minoru Niijima of Japan.
Other contemporary leaders in typographic design include Ralph Schraivogel and Melchior Imboden.
Paula Scher
Jennifer Morla, Nancy Skolos, Thomas Wedell and John Warwicker among others.
In the midst of the technological revolution, designers using centuries-old techniques and processes are enjoying a renaissance, particularly artisans concerned with preserving the art of letterpress printing. Alan Kitching, an eminent specialist and teacher of letterpress typographic design and printmaking, is internationally renowned for his innovative use of wood and metal letterforms; he skillfully adapts type from the past for modern communication.
Founded by Brady Vest in 1994, Hammerpress incorporates not only type and block printing but also found art and original illustration into their work. The use of many layers of vivid inks and overlapping letters and ornaments also characterize Hammerpress’s work. Experimentation and play are integral to their process, yielding unique, unexpected, and unconventional results.
Founded by Charles and Herbert Hatch in April 1879 in Nashville, Tennessee, Hatch Show Print is one of the oldest continuously running letterpress shops in the United States. For over one hundred years, Hatch has designed posters and handbills advertising entertainment of all forms. Jim Sherradon, Hatch’s chief designer, printmaker, and manager, joined Hatch in 1984. He views Hatch as a working museum, maintaining the philosophy of “preservation through production.” Sherradon takes plates and blocks from the archives and uses them in contemporary work. He does not introduce new typefaces, as he does not want to “pollute the integrity of the original archive.”