Period Styles with Eric Hu, Lisa Naftolin, and Susan Sellers, moderated by Triple Canopy senior editor William S. Smith
October 2, 2014 7:00pm 155 Freeman Street, Brooklyn, NY
In graphic design, what does it mean for a period to have a style? What does it mean for a style to have a proper period? With Period Styles, Triple Canopy examines how aesthetic movements, technological shifts, social networks, and popular sentiments come together in the creation of dominant styles in certain places and at certain times. For instance, consider the mid-century International Typographic Style associated with the Basel School of Design and Armin Hoffmann; the multifarious, if eventually iconic, work and structure of Pentagram, established in 1972; avant-garde Dutch practices such as Studio Dumbar, whose creations from the 1980s and 90s later filtered into American graduate programs. How have the hallmark changes of the past several decades—the rise of the MFA, the ubiquity of design software, the patterns of producing and consuming that characterize the digital environment—changed the ways in which styles are distinguished, deployed, and consolidated?
Participants will identify today's preeminent styles, discuss their precedents and genesis, and parse their influence and effects. They will also ask if the period style may now be a thing of the past: In light of widespread access to design tools and the incredible speed at which visual identities are formulated and discarded, is graphic design now too profuse and diverse for the period style to be a useful concept? Or, given that period styles tend to reflect centers of capital, esteemed designers, and wealthy clients, how might the period styles of the future be formed or deformed by nascent cultural and geographic orientations?