design cliches
Out of context: Reply #44
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Nice thread. I'm getting my own site ready to rock, so the suggestions help.
Well, it's true that designers have to be both the pimp and the whore in this business, so it's always good for us to practice some serious critiquing of the industry. Here is mine:
Someone said something in an earlier postabout PoMo being the death of design. I friggin agree. Postmodernism is really parasitical by definition. The movement isn't so much about innovation as much as appropriation and 'cultural pastiche' (an artfag word if you ever heard one). It was cool like 10-20 years ago when designers could lift interesting cultural elements out of context, smash them to bits, and ressurect them into some new freaky frankenstein monster called ART.
But these days the original source material is starting to lose its meaning (by being distanced from its context- hence the cliches), and in another 20 years there will be nothing left to 'deconstruct'. Soon design will reach the point when it will have swallowed and regurgitated EVERYTHING, when every retro fad will have been done to death, when every cultural meme will be completely trivialized and rendered meaningless. When that time comes, our material civilization will end up schizophrenic and without direction (but then again, maybe some of you think that's cool). That is why postmodernism is on the way out. It is potent only as long as the stuff it rips off is potent.
Of course, I'm not one to preach. I'm always ripping off and restyling old school design like everyone else. The question, I suppose, is how obscure can you go. My (trucker) hat off to any designer whose work may be regarded as truly original in the 21st century. Not many out there.
On that note, I hope people will stop putting heraldric eagles in their logos.