The Beauty of the Sun

Nothing I could say can compare with the beauty of these shots from the NASA's Solar Dynamic Observatory.

Still from the NASA's Solar Dynamic Observatory

Modernism vs. Hyperbole

It isn’t a mystery to anyone who has had my History of Graphic Design class that my biggest design influence is the Modernists. One of the facets of modernism that I am really drawn to is the feeling of inevitability in the solutions. Part of the inevitability of those solutions is that the text and the images not only work together, but that the text itself is straight forward and descriptive. The work is presented, “...through objective and impersonal presentation, communicating to the audience without the interference of the designer’s subjective feelings or propagandistic techniques of persuasion.¹”

What made me think of this is that I ran across a page of really silly images called, “If you add drunk people to fitness quotes.” Depending on your sense of humor, the images are incredibly funny, or generally horrifying, but what I thought was that the fact that they could be made at all represents a huge design failure for the fitness companies who are being parodied. Hyperbole, emotional pleas, motivational phrases, and even mission statements are, at their core, manipulative and not tied to specific images or content. They are generic, unmemorable, and ripe for parody. And they are bad design.

Words that are objective, audience focused, and free of hyperbole are inseparable from their context and that is the lasting power of modernist design.

¹Meggs, Philip B., and Alston W. Purvis. “Chapter 18: The International Typographic Style.” In Meggs’ History of Graphic Design. 5th ed. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2012.