Graphic Style: From Victorian to Digital
Book by Seymour Chwast, Steven Heller; Harry N. Abrams, 2000

FOREWORD
The first volume of Graphic Style, a survey of graphic design history as seen through the lens of common visual mannerisms, otherwise known as styles, ended with the Post-Modern. At the time, "Post- Modernism" served as a catchall for various cultural phenomena of the late seventies and early eighties. The term was originally coined to distinguish contemporary approaches to literature and architecture from the Modernist ideology that had pre- ceded them. Later, it was used as an umbrella covering all arts and popular cul- ture that more or less veered from ortho- dox Modernism. Yet when "Post-Modern" was applied to graphic design, its impreci- sion was compounded by the fact that some of its common traits, such as the commingling of past and present styles, had been in practice earlier than the period designated by the rubric.

The Post-Modern section of this book was organized highlighting various sub- genres that developed during this period that, at least superficially, possessed enough shared characteristics to suggest a stylistic manifestation. In general the cate- gory worked, although it is a fairly open pigeonhole. Admittedly, it has inconsisten- cies, yet when looking at design as style the tendency toward simplification is inevitable.

Styles are rarely summarily declared to be over, as if by some style-god on the mount; usually, they gradually fade from view, supplanted by "the next thing." The term Post-Modern made literal sense because it supplanted Modern, but with the current return to classic Modernist ideals of clarity and rationality, the time has come for a new prefix. Nonetheless, "Post-Post-Modern" is fairly unwieldy, not to mention vague. Moreover, some of the traits that were lumped together under "Post-Modern" seem still to apply later on in the stylistic continuum. The challenge in this, the first revision of Graphic Style to address the digital age, is how to catego- rize the subsequent period of design endeavor, much of which is derived from roots common or similar to the Post- Modern.

What constitutes the new style? To pick up from where the first edition of Graphic Style left off in 1988, it is obvious that chaos became more popular than neatness, that type dominated narrative image, and that much that was new was inspired and facilitated by the computer. It was a period when styles were frequently appropriated to meet market demands. It was a time when disorder was considered "edgy," and then order even edgier. Edginess became the rallying cry for a rev- olution that really signified adherence to a new conformity.

Rather than use "edgy" or other com- mon buzzwords--"cool," "hot," or "killer"--as a rubric, the added section to this revised edition, covering the period from 1985 to 2000, is called "Digital." This was a period when designers looked backward and forward, invented and mim- icked, cluttered and economized. The rubric is open-ended, but for the purposes of this survey it delineates a convergence of old and new in art and technology that in turn underscores the stylistic manifesta- tions that emerged during the final years of the twentieth century.