anti design

Out of context: Reply #42

  • Started
  • Last post
  • 55 Responses
  • fresnobob0

    "but as society progresses, society needs more sophisticated methods of (aesthetically) separating the wheat from the chaff."

    Correct, and one of these ways is to embrace what is considered to be not sophisticated. This is where the whole deal comes from. "Anti-design" as you are referring to it, being the opposite of what is considered aesthetically pleasing, is what brought aesthetics to where they are now.

    If you want an easy to understand example look at the name Akzidenz Grotesk. Its called weird, odd, and ugly by name, but almost no one now considers it ugly. When sans-serifs were first created they were known as such because the "high design" point of view at the time was that type should have serifs. Cutting that shit off made the letters totally undesirable to most designer dudes at the time, but now its aligned with "sophisticated" design. It was ugly, but things changed and society progressed.

    Anyways, separating the high from the low is the creation of the ego. Having an all embracing point of view (i.e. embracing anti-design as a valid philosophy, embracing the lowbrow as well as the highbrow and using them interchangeably) would be to understand that everything is equal, no matter what. That's the opposite of the I, not the contrary.

    I love "anti-design" because thats what I grew up with. Thats what I saw on a regular basis. Thats what I used to create, photoshop shit with flame filters and drop shadows and flame filters and shitty animated gifs and websites with <blink> tags. Thats what most design is, "bad design." Only where dudes think they know do they not know and their design comes from the ego. Theres no "getting it" because that's what everyone already gets because thats what they are the most exposed to.

View thread