New Modernism(S)

Home , Dick Hebdige, Hypermodernism (art), New Sincerity, Remodernism

BEN DUVALL

5 Intro: Surfaces and Signs

13 The Typography of Utopia/Dystopia

27 The Hyperlinked Sign

41 The Aesthetics of Refusal

Intro: Surfaces and Signs

What can be said about graphic design, about the man- ner in which its artifact exists? We know that graphic design is a manipulation of certain elements in order to communicate, specifically typography and image, but in order to be brought together, these elements must exist on the same plane–the surface. If, as semi- oticians have said, typography and images are signs in and of themselves, then the surface is the locus for the application of sign systems. Based on this, we arrive at a simple equation: surface + sign = a work of graphic design. As students and practitioners of this kind of “surface curation,” the way these elements are functioning currently should be of great interest to us. Can we say that they are operating in fundamentally different ways from the way they did under modernism? Even differently than under postmodernism? Per- haps the way the surface and sign are treated is what distinguishes these cultural epochs from one another. We are confronted with what Roland Barthes defined as a Text, a site of interacting and open signs, 6 NEW MODERNISM(S) and therefore, a site of reader interpretation and of SIGNIFIER + SIGNIFIED = SIGN semiotic play.1 This is of utmost importance, the treatment of the signs within a Text is how we interpret, Physical form of an Ideas represented Unit of meaning idea, e.g. a word by the signifier critique and talk about a work of graphic design. But it is equally important that we do not forget the surface. A WORK OF In Metahaven’s 2008 White Night Before a Manifesto, SURFACE + SIGNS = GRAPHIC DESIGN (A TEXT) the nature and current status of surface is explored in Paper, pixels, etc. Text and images detail. Surface itself is not neutral, despite appearanc- A site of reader interaction and interpretation. es. It is the substratum for content, but it also informs based on material properties.2 Currently, we find surface to be multiplying beyond reason, growing expo- MODERNISM (ONE-TO-ONE) nentially and immaterially. Until recently, surface was paper, wood, cloth, metal, the physical world. Now with the advent of the internet, surface is infinite and free. SIGNIFIER SIGNIFIED It is “anorexic, hyper-thin architecture” and it is overlaid with the elements of graphic design: type and im- POSTMODERNISM (SLIPPAGE) age.3 The sign is now displayed primarily in this mode, in the form of pixels on monitors. The new semiotic SIGNIFIED model is that of the hyperlink, beneath a unified front, SIGNIFIED SIGNIFIED exists a chain of varied signifiers that are embedded in SIGNIFIER SIGNIFIED a wide variety of contexts and environs. What we are SIGNIFIED interested in is how this changes the functioning of the SIGNIFIED SIGNIFIED sign–and how surface is a sign in and of itself. Just as the Text offers a multitude of reads, the de- HYPERMODERNISM (EXPONENTIAL) signer is faced with an endless variety of aesthetic choices. These choices determine the tone and conno- SIGNIFIER tations of the design, and are intricately interwoven with era, culture and trend. Design movements during SIGNIFIED SIGNIFIED modernism advocated for a certain usage of the sign, a standardization and clarification of typography and layout that simulated a one-to-one relationship between SIGNIFIED SIGNIFIED SIGNIFIED SIGNIFIED 7 A SEMIOTIC PRIMER FOR GRAPHIC DESIGN SIGNIFIER + SIGNIFIED = SIGN

PhysicalSIGNIFIER form of an + IdeasSIGNIFIED represented = Unit of SIGNmeaning idea, e.g. a word by the signifier Physical form of an Ideas represented Unit of meaning idea, e.g. a word by the signifier A WORK OF SURFACE + SIGNS = GRAPHIC DESIGN A(A WORK TEXT) OF Paper,SURFACE pixels, etc. + Text andSIGNS images = GRAPHIC DESIGN A site of (Areader TEXT) interac- Paper, pixels, etc. Text and images tion and interpretation. A site of reader interaction and interpretation.

MODERNISM (ONE-TO-ONE) MODERNISM (ONE-TO-ONE) SIGNIFIER SIGNIFIED

SIGNIFIER SIGNIFIED POSTMODERNISM (SLIPPAGE) POSTMODERNISM (SLIPPAGE) SIGNIFIED SIGNIFIED SIGNIFIEDSIGNIFIED SIGNIFIER SIGNIFIEDSIGNIFIED SIGNIFIEDSIGNIFIED SIGNIFIER SIGNIFIEDSIGNIFIED SIGNIFIEDSIGNIFIED SIGNIFIED SIGNIFIED HYPERMODERNISM (EXPONENTIAL) HYPERMODERNISM (EXPONENTIAL) SIGNIFIER

SIGNIFIER SIGNIFIED SIGNIFIED

SIGNIFIED SIGNIFIED SIGNIFIED SIGNIFIED SIGNIFIED SIGNIFIED

SIGNIFIED SIGNIFIED SIGNIFIED SIGNIFIED 8

Le Corbusier’s Modulor and Unité d’Habitation, Jan Tschihold’s New Typogra- phy and Beatrice’s Ward’s ideal semiotics. INTRO: SURFACES AND SIGNS 9 the signifier and the signified. This kind of standard is found from Le Corbusier’s Modulor, a standardization of the classical golden mean, to Jan Tschihold’s New Typography, a standardization of the sans serif typeface and grid. In either case, tradition was replaced by rigorous regimentation. The project of reduction to pure form stripped sign/signifier relationships to the bare minimum, any obfuscation or ornamentation created unnecessary noise in this relationship and was therefore eschewed. As postmodernism emerged, designers began to utilize the sign in a dramatically different way. Gone was Beatrice Warde’s concept of typography as a crystal goblet, unadorned and transparent, showing only the message. Replacing it was vernacular and ambiguous typography, “stunt typography,”4 expressing the fragmented nature of sign systems themselves. Postmod- ernism had a different concept of transparency: visual style representing the slippery nature of meaning. As a reaction to modernism’s fascination with the new and the austere, postmodernism took inspiration from non-industrialized sources, the aesthetic of the human hand, not the machine. Postmodernism’s stylistic frag- mentation rejected the totalitarian structures of the grid and limited typographic choices as a critique on the society modernism had wrought. The design ob- ject was allowed to be the visual representation of the Text’s irreducibility.5 Postmodernism has been characterized by an appre- hensiveness about the future and technology, which has been manifested in its penchant for appropriation 10 NEW MODERNISM(S) and plunder of the past. But if postmodernism was a battle between analog and digital, then we can now say with confidence that digital has triumphed and is be- coming a standard in and of itself, now only noticed when it is absent. The internet has created a space for infinitely multiplying surface and the hyperlinking of meaning. Internet phenomena such as the meme en- sure that everyone is seeing variations on the same structure, a net-wide inside joke. In this environment, there is a standardization of chaos, it has a URL, an IP address and an email, but behind the facade is a web of meaning. The Text is at once unified and divided, both holding the grid and exploded. It is this hyper-reality which is documented in projects such as James Bridle’s The New Aesthetic blog, which focuses on “new ways of seeing the world, an echo of the society, technology, politics and people that co-produce them.”6 The internet once referenced the signs of AFK (away from keyboard) life, but now AFK life references the web. It is this degradation, compression, .zip-filing of the sign which characterizes our current lives. If modernism was the standardization of sign systems, and postmodernism was the negation and break down of existing systems and structures, the next cultural movement will be towards a standardization of the hyperlinked sign. It will be compression of the postmodern plurality of meaning into an agreed upon language where each symbol contains an almost infinite chain of signifieds and referents a la the internet–a hypermodernism. Its model will be the computer desktop, universal icons, but varied contents, the sign INTRO: SURFACES AND SIGNS 11 becomes a hyperlink and a work of design a hypertext. It will be both totalitarian and customizable, freedom within new constraints. I am proposing the term hypermodernism not as a creation of my own, or even the only logical step after postmodernism, but rather as a pre-existing term that best describes the changes we are seeing in post-digital art and design. There are no shortage of proposed successors to postmodernism (altermodernism, super- modernism, digimodernism, etc.), but I feel that hypermodernism most elegantly describes some of the major changes we are seeing in graphic design as a medium and microcosm, as well as in culture at large. In this essay, I am examining places where meaning has become hyperlinked in graphic design. This increased speed and frequency of sign systems has become more and more apparent, as designers are now producing work that shows a pivoting away from postmodern ways of working. During modernism, people lived primarily in the architectural space, and the physicality of architecture detected the changes of that world, with the term “postmodernism” itself originally being coined in the architectural context. Now, people are living in a virtual world: the internet. The content of the web is communicated in the language of graphic design, therefore trends within graphic design are the new barometer for epochal change. If architecture was the indicator of the break down of modernism, then graphic design is the “architecture” of the current period, the fire alarm of postmodernism. The intention of this study is not a comprehensive theory of 12 NEW MODERNISM(S) these changes, but rather a contribution to the dialogue about these issues which is already in progress within graphic design and other fields. In Barthes’ words, we must “play” with objects of design as Texts, in hopes of revealing their network of associations and signifiers, leading us to a better understanding of our position as both designers and interpreters of Texts. 13

The Ty pog r aphy of Utopia/Dystopia

The fall of modernism was an attack on the notion of the artist, designer and architect as a heroic fig- ure. High modernism had elevated these figures as constructors of utopias, creating new ways of living radically improved from those of the past.7 As modern utopias repeatedly failed (e.g. the Pruitt Igoe housing project), utopia through standardization bacame less and less appealing. Within typography, this manifested itself as a an attack on the ideal of a universal typeface, a kind of typographic equalizer. To the postmodern designer, this idea of type had become boring and unexpressive. It begged for the hand- made touches and flaws seen in the working-class world. Modernist typography had become to clean, too slick, impossible to humanize. The aesthetic of the un- trained provided a much richer soil for semiotic play and the visuals of pre-Modern culture were appropriated with fervor, as a space outside of the domain of standardization. The emergence of digital design tools in the late 14 NEW MODERNISM(S) 1980s created new possibilities within type design and distribution, and type foundries like Fuse and Emigre exploited these new opportunities by releasing inten- tionally naive typefaces that had built in flaws and failures. These typefaces eschewed the authoritative voice of Helvetica and Univers, challenging them as superficially imposed order which denied the slippery nature of communication, especially written language. Type became both critical and vernacular. The typeface used could say just as much as the content, it was no longer objective. Jeff Keedy, a Cranbrook graduate and CalArts pro- fessor, designed his Keedy Sans typeface as a direct subversion of the expectations of the rational typeface.8 Keedy Sans attacks the dehumanisation of language through typography. It’s imperfections reference the history of written language, which itself is a history of imperfection, both in form and content. As typography evolved away from referencing the handwritten letter, a loss of center occurred.9 The letter became purely symbolic, reaching its ultimate defamiliarization with the sans serif typeface. Helvetica became the most for- eign precisely because it was the most universal, to the Postmodern designer it was too perfect. Keedy Sans re- introduced error into the symbol, inherent in its form and anticipated in its content. Emigre and Fuse typefaces, influenced by Deconstruction theory, which at- tacked the neutrality of signs,10 were designed with the expectation of semiotic slippage. Many of the typefaces reference early digital failure, pixillation and glitch, anticipating the world of misinformation that the in- 15

Emigre’s Keedy Sans designed by Jeff Keedy and Fuse’s Scratched Out designed by Pierre di Sciullo. 16

House Industries’ House-a-rama font family. THE TYPOGRAPHY OF UTOPIA/DYSTOPIA 17 ternet would give easy access to. These fonts were for a new critical kind of reading, designed to the specifi- cations of the Deconstructionist. If Emigre and Fuse catered to the critical and experimental typographer, House Industries was for the nostalgic one. The postmodern penchant for vernacular typography is taken to the extreme in the House collection. These typefaces are rarely used in their original vernacular context, but instead pull their various signifieds along with them into a vast array of computer-created design. Every typeface references something, none of them are aesthetically autonomous. House Industries is a celebration of kitsch and retro, mining the past for type treatments and low-culture inspirations. As they describe on their website:

“Exposure to graphic design came through assort- ed American sub-cultural phenomena from the past few decades, such as the hardcore music scene, skateboarding and video games. It also didn’t hurt to have pinstriping dads who built hot rods and older brothers who collected Mad magazine. Not surprisingly, mimicking Santa Cruz deck graph- ics was incredibly formative, as were the countless hours spent perfecting the interlocking letter forms of Priest and Maiden logos on notebook covers and jean jackets.”11

The handwritten style of many House Industry faces is an all out war on the geometry and measured line of a Futura or Univers. By taking typography back to 18 NEW MODERNISM(S) handwriting, sign-painting and informal scripts, House Industries is an endeavor in the refamiliarization of typography after modernism. Despite the internal con- tradictions of the computer generated brush script, the form is an exercise in critical semiotics, showcasing the conflict of the modern and postmodern: the vision of the past and future. One commonality that all three of these Postmod- ern digital type foundries share is a dystopian view of the future (most prevalent in Emigre and Fuse) and a glorified, nostalgic view of the past (most prevalent in House Industries). In these foundries, typefaces that reference the digital are always fragmented, corrod- ed and illegible, while typefaces of the past are rarely other than pristine. In contrast with modernism, which took an optimistic view of the future, Postmodern typography glorifies the signage that escaped high Mod- ernist standardization, the aesthetic of psychedelia, hot rod culture, Las Vegas and the gig poster. There is an emphasis in lettering as opposed to the typeface, one-off type treatments as opposed to a universally ap- plicable alphabet. Modernism viewed the past as something to be phased out and replaced with clarity and reason. House Industries is visibly and proudly allergic to the austerity of such measures, while Emigre and Fuse question the nature of technological progress. Massimo Vignelli critiqued Emigre as dealing with “subcultures, not cultures.” 12 The postmodern type foundry would not deny this claim, it represents the fundamental shift in values from modernism. Vignel- li’s work operates under the apparatus of a classical THE TYPOGRAPHY OF UTOPIA/DYSTOPIA 19 modernism, viewing the achievements of the 20th century as the heir to the classical tradition of typography. Yet adherents of Emigre would argue Vignelli’s classicism is just as artificial as the aesthetics of hot rod culture or punk rock—even more so since it is further from the human hand. Postmodernism proclaims that there is nothing sacred about modernism, classicism, or any other “ism”, all cultures and subcultures, past and present, are fair game for appropriation. It’s advancement is forsaking classicism, not laying hold of it, recognizing it as one tradition among equally valid others. It is this treatment of the past that literary critic Frederic Jameson pinpoints in his astute analysis of Rankus, Manning and Latham’s video artwork Ali- enNATION, an assemblage of found footage and animation. For Jameson, the mark of its Postmodernity is the way it treats the existing cultural artifact, “reshuf- fling the fragments of preexistant texts, the building blocks of older cultural and social production.”13 It is the plundering of the old and the rejection of the new as an absolute that makes meaning so slippery. In such an environment, the signified is multiplied manyfold, collapsing the meaning of the original with the various meanings and associations of the cleaned-up re- production. Plurality of meaning has replaced fixed meaning, and subjectivity has replaced objectivity. At the same time, the symbols and styles of the past are used in a far more exaggerated and stereotyped way than they were originally. For example, the Con- structivism of Kraftwerk’s XYZ album cover is far 20 NEW MODERNISM(S) more “Constructivist” than El Lissitzky ever was, but it is a shallow and logofied version. 14 It is nostalgic for the feeling of the original movement, a grasp for asso- ciation not substance. The signifiers of Constructivism (a modernist movement in itself) become simulacra, a copy without an original. Even the transparency of materials and production methods of Constructivism are bastardized and stereotyped, creating a false surface from what was meant to be an utterly honest one. Appropriation must be done in an intentional and coded way, the design must only reference, not become. This is also true of the postmodern type foundry. Digital typefaces tend toward a logo-like appearance, even the grungiest or glitchiest font will appear in the same way every time it is typed. Attempts to overcome this through lettering-style ligatures (see House’s Ed Interlock) can only provide a superficial solution at best. The computer proves to be both the fatal contradiction and the enabling technology of postmodernism, you can have every typeface ever drawn, but you cannot escape the machine aesthetic. The contradiction of the personal and technological could not be reconciled before the proliferation of the personal computer. Quirks were from the analog world, idiosyncrasies could only be conceived of coming from the human hand. However, with the explosion of the personal computer, cell phone, and portable digital technology, younger generations have become sen- sitive to digital personality quirks. The mouse and keyboard are the new human touch, and designers who have grown up using them understand how to convey 21

House Industries’ Ed Interlock typeface and Kraftwerk’s Die Mensch-Maschine. 22

RP Foundry’s Fugue designed by Radim Pesko and Colophon’s Raisonné designed by Benjamin Critton. THE TYPOGRAPHY OF UTOPIA/DYSTOPIA 23 human qualities through digital design tools. The new digital foundries solve postmodernism’s contradiction in a modernist way, they are referencing the technology used to create and display type in the digital age. Yet despite digital’s potential for per- fection, this new typography maintains the quirks and flaws consistent with digital technology. Atelier Car- valho Bernau describes their Lyon typeface as such:

“Lyon reflects our convictions about modern digital typeface design: A decisively digital outline treatment that reveals our modern repertoire of tools, and the typeface itself as a modern design tool, paired with a certain Times-like unobtrusiveness in the Text sizes, contrasts nicely with Lyon’s 16th century heritage.” 15

The new digital typeface is designed for the screen, not merely adapted for it. Matthew Carter’s Verdana is a prototype for this kind of thinking. Designed to be legible on screen at small sizes, it was one of the first typefaces to recognize a change in the way most people were viewing typography. Verdana addresses the same problem that Bell Gothic’s ink traps did, but in pixels, not ink. Such adjustments are characteristic of the new hypermodern type design. Progressing from Carter’s Verdana, many current type designers prefer to build in structural quirks and false or naive geometries as formal statements, inde- pendent from function. Several emerging digital type foundries specialize in letterforms which are comfort- 24 NEW MODERNISM(S) able with their state as computer-designed, such as Radim Pesko’s RP Digital Foundry and The Entente’s Colophon Foundry. Both foundries work with designers who have grown up using the computer and are en- gaged in forward-thinking critical work, but a perusal of their type libraries will show that the cutting edge of typography has become rather tame since the days of Emigre and Fuse. If type design is any indicator of the treatment of signs under hypermodernism, then there is a signifi- cant objectivity of the sign emerging in the digital type foundry. The letterforms of these designers cannot be called fragmented or vernacular as the foundries of the 80s and 90s could, and though they reference the computer, its not by pixelated diagonals or glitch-rid- den Franken-fonts. While the typefaces of Fuse and Emigre harnessed a kind of fear of the digital peculiar to postmodernism, this new typography showcases the mastery and precision of its tools. It is a new modernism, but not a satirical one. The lessons of form and balance are well taken, but there is a hint of humanity implied by the digital hand. Radim Pesko’s Fugue references the geometric construction of Futura, but in a optically unadjusted way. The quirks have been left in, but there is a precision to the quirks, a barely perceptible angle in the lower- case l, a 45 degree cut on an otherwise perfectly round G, or a stacked double-decker g. Pesko describes it as “an appreciation of and going-back-to-the-future-and- back-again with Paul Renner.”16 There is both an objectivity and a personality to Fugue, it communicates THE TYPOGRAPHY OF UTOPIA/DYSTOPIA 25 clearly, but invites a second look. It is totally at home being digital, a typeface that “could only be designed on a Mac.”17 Fugue along with Benjamin Critton’s Raisonné, Swiss foundry Lineto’s Replica and a handful of others rep- resent a new generation of distinctive sans serifs that are principled and modern in their construction, a stark contrast from the experiments of Fuse and the vernacular type of House Industries. The new digital typeface references the current state of technology, invisible pixels and precise design tools. The lack of digital grunge in these faces indicates a fundamental change in attitude toward the computer since the late 80s and 90s, it now has the potential of a utopia. The hacker ideal the web of a libertarian paradise is not too far removed from the modernist vision of a physical one to be brought about by architectural projects. Fugue and Replica also are available in monospaced versions, the type style of the programmer, an homage to the builders of network architecture. It is this new kind of architecture of the surface that hypermodernity is concerned with, the “anorexic, hyper-thin architecture” of the web page. Within this there is endless space for communication, a designer’s paradise, but endless potential for accident: the modernist challenge posed in hyperlinks. Yet even the digital type foundry is in danger of being outmoded by the digital and robotic experiments of designers such as Lust and Jürg Lehni. These projects express the familiarity with the computer in an even more natural sense, and can truly be considered post- 26 NEW MODERNISM(S) digital. Is the digital foundry to disappear in the face of projects like Atelier Carvalho Bernau and Lust’s upcoming type generator for the Sandberg Instituut’s website? Such developments threaten type design as graphic design’s last “safe haven” of craft, but again point to a new standardization through digital forms. 27

The Hyperlinked Sign

Under hypermodernism, signifiers themselves are recognizable. Its icons are often the cultural refuse and circulating cyber matter which have developed a meaning of their own, an inside significance to the initiated. As an example, let us look at a collection of graphic design that shares a similar treatment of the sign. The unifying theme of this collection is a rather unlikely one; the icons and typography of Disney. These references have unmistakably become a trend within certain circles of graphic design in the past several years, but perhaps engaging this collection of design as Texts will reveal something deeper than that. As Modernism was the “textbook moment” of design, the era when graphic design as we know it today coalesced and displayed its usefulness most clearly, so animation was a product of the modern period. The Walt Disney Company was founded in 1923, the same year the Weimar Bauhaus began to shift its focus to commercial production. Both early animation and modern art and design of the same period dealt in flat 28 NEW MODERNISM(S) geometric forms, and after color was introduced in animation, flat primary colors. The similarities between early Disney and Bauhaus design, painting and dance are striking. Both are aesthetics of reduction and simplicity, and even the formal and performative aspects of Bauhaus dance bear the traces of shared influences.18 In Oskar Schlemmer’s 1927 dance piece Gestures Dance, three dancers, each wearing a unitard of a primary color, white gloves and gold masks with car- toonish spectacles and mustaches are seated against a black backdrop. The three dancers hold animated, nonsensical conversations, in which they demonstrate their inability to hear one another in exaggerated ways. The casual gestures of a conversation become amplified and absurd, a frustrating attempt at con- veying meaning.19 His most famous piece, Triadisches Ballet (1922), is a geometric fetishization of the natural body. The costumes stylize and systematize representation into exaggerated circles, squares and trian- gles.20 Schlemmer’s costume designs were inspired by marionettes and he often referred to them as “figu- rines,” claiming that the movement of the puppet was aesthetically superior to that of the human, inferring his characters were completely controlled by an over- ruling outside force.21 The antagonism of the Other is a common theme in Schlemmer’s work—there is never a clear antagonist, but always an incessant thwarting of labor and dialogue. There is a hint of the mechanical man, the automaton, expressed with Dada-like absurd- ism, a caricature of the worker and his conditions. Just as Schlemmer’s choreography can be read as 29

Performance and geometry: Mickey Mouse and Oskar Schlemmer’s Bauhaus costumes and choreography. 30

Walter Benjamin and Mickey Mouse circa 1928. THE HYPERLINKED SIGN 31 a commentary (both a glorification and a critique) on factory wage labor, Walter Benjamin observed a Marx- ist element to early Disney animations. In 1931, Mickey Mouse was denounced by the Nazi journal The Dicta- torship as a symbol of “Jewish bamboozlement of the people.” 22 Mickey iconography became a symbol of Nazi resistance among the German youth and for Ben- jamin, a symbol of the rejection of bourgeois culture. The Mickey of the 1930s was a true mouse—a vermin, a trouble maker and an insubordinate member of the proletariate. Benjamin saw the violence and dismemberment of the cartoon world to be a negation of prop- erty relations, writing “here for the first time, one’s own arm, indeed one’s own body can be stolen.”23 Car- toons were an expression of the modern life of the proletariate, an animation of the oppression of capital, yet at the same time a utopia where the violence of these forces was always in vain, a place where the worker had developed an immunity to the alienating affects of labor under capitalism. Interestingly, Disney motifs show up most frequent- ly in the work of designers and design studios that have largely rejected the traditional client/designer relationship and produced work based on critical investigation and speculative practice. This kind of practice is not a new phenomenon, but has recently coalesced under the label of critical graphic design. Drawing from the writings of industrial design studio Dunne and Raby and critical traditions within graphic design, as well as from critical theory and Marxist thinkers, these designers have stimulated debate and 32 NEW MODERNISM(S) discussion in the design community, especially regard- ing the designer’s role as a creator of content. Though these designers address a variety of social, political, economic and technological issues, a unifying theme is a protection of a democratic common space, as found in the writings of Marxist theorists Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri:

“A democracy of the multitude is imaginable and possible only because we all share and participate in the common. By “the common” we mean, first of all, the common wealth of the material world—the air, the water, the fruits of the soil, and all nature’s bounty—which in classic European political texts is often claimed to be the inheritance of humanity as a whole, to be shared together. We consider the common also and more significantly those results of social production that are necessary for social interaction and further production, such as knowl- edges, languages, codes, information, affects, and so forth. This notion of the common does not position humanity separate from nature, as either its exploiter or its custodian, but focuses rather on the practices of interaction, care, and cohabitation in a common world, promoting the beneficial and limiting the detrimental forms of the common. In the era of globalization, issues of the maintenance, production, and distribution of the common in both these senses and in both ecological and socioeco- nomic frameworks become increasingly central.”24 THE HYPERLINKED SIGN 33 Hardt and Negri’s ideas of the multitude and the commonwealth serve as a lens through which to view the graphic designer’s role in economic structures, while proposing new methods of thinking and working critically, often outside the scope of what has tra- ditionally been called graphic design. The designer functions as both content creator and deliverer, uti- lizing the power of the surface in conjunction with original critical thought. In these instances, the work of critical graphic designers has developed an internal semiotic language based on the iconography of Disney, and harnessed it as an engine of critical dialogue. Their Mickey is the res- urrection of Benjamin’s rebellious proletariate version, a critique on the homogenizing and privatizing forces of capitalism by appropriating its most recognizable symbol. As a signifier, it stands for market-driven art, total merchandizing, and the fascistic impulses within capital. These icons serve as a standardized sign, which by harnessing its fractured meaning, becomes shorthand for a breakdown in the democratic common space. Disney imagery is never shown in its completeness or unadulterated, it is always just a fragment, a gloved hand (reminiscent of Benjamin’s reading of dismemberment), circular ears or characteristic Disney script without its auxiliary characters, but the line quality is hardly ever altered from the original, its rendering does not lend it any extra semiotic baggage. In this respect it is Hypermodern Disney, there is no need to alter the expression of the line, because it is the line 34 NEW MODERNISM(S) itself that carries the desired signifying qualities. If Postmodernism was the breakdown of traditional institutions, then media and multi-national corporations were the survivors and successors to the old institutions. Disney, being a multi-national media conglom- erate is the ultimate survivor of postmodernism, an institution of postmodernism, if ever such a thing was to exist. While design operating in a postmodern way would feel the need to visually fracture Disney icons through altering line quality to show his or her opposition, contemporary designers realize that unaltered Disney imagery carries enough associations with it to imply critique. Disney itself functions as a symbol of globalization and American hegemony, and for the designers who use it, most of whom grew up in the 80s and 90s, a symbol of their childhood during the hey- day of the globalizing forces of capital.25 French design group Grapus also utilized Disney imagery in their 1982 exhibition poster, which shared political ideals similar to that of many current critical designers. Interestingly, Grapus’ 1982 poster shares several similarities with Metahaven’s “Clash of Civili- zations” chess illustration from their 2010 book Uncor- porate Identity.26 Both of these pieces sets up a similar juxtaposition of emotionally and politically charged symbols, but displays them in a rather different way, each characteristic of the handling of the sign in their respective eras. Grapus’ poster creates meaning in the symbols, they are rendered in an expressive man- ner with haphazardly applied color. Disney imagery is overlaid with loaded symbols and images, a hammer 35

Grapus’ 1982 exhibition poster and Metahaven’s “Clash of Civilizations.” 36

Designers, L to R: Atlas, Travis Stearns, Zak Group, Grapus, Sandra Kassenaar and Bart de Baets, Chris Seddon, Bureau Mirko Borche w/ Thomas Kartsolis, Martin Falck, Non-Format, Bureau Mirko Borche, Radim Pesko, Helmo. THE HYPERLINKED SIGN 37 and sickle, the French national colors, a Hitler mus- tache and haircut, breast-like shapes and a pubic hair nose.27 The rendering of signifiers clarifies the political message, the more crudely rendered, the more sus- picious we must be of the signified. It implies a veneer being cracked open, the products of modernism’s political facets, the sovereign nation state, commercializa- tion and art itself are all exposed as a fraud. There is a chaos to these signifiers, the signified is unclear, left to the interpretation of the receiver. Communication becomes a risk, the sender has loaded meaning, in a seemingly haphazard way, and the processing of the sign systems are left up to the viewer, who must interpret their renderings. “Clash of Civilizations” treats icons in a much different way. Symbols live within the strict grid of the chessboard, presenting a unified front. The renderings are unaltered from the quality of the originals, none would be out of place as modernist pictograms. Yet despite being rendered completely unemotionally, the viewer perceives a political message (we do not know what yet). The symbols exist on the grid of a larger signifier, that of the chessboard. Metahaven harness- es the nearly universal understanding of the game of chess as a context for these icons, defining their respective meanings more precisely. Any chess player will immediately understand the role of the chess pieces, the pawns do the grunt work, the rooks are power- ful but limited in movement, the knights work together as a precise strike team, the bishops are mobile and subvert the standard angles of movement, the queen is 38 NEW MODERNISM(S) a unilateral agent whose strength is only matched by the opponent’s queen, and the king is to be protected above all. In comparison to the Grapus poster, which gave the viewer freedom of interpretation, Metahaven has reinforced and structured the signifiers, a scripted visual experience. On the other hand, Grapus’ poster is above all messy and chaotic, more akin to the night- marish cartoon-inspired performance of Paul McCa- rthy’s Painter than the bloodless dismemberment of early Disney. The simplicity of these icons tends toward a fixed but hyperlinked meaning. While Grapus exploited the personality of the emblems, Metahaven seeks to make them generic, signifying fixed concepts. The signified is no less thorny, however—entire cultures are summarized in a quick graphic. It is communication learned from the internet, a single icon must compress complexity to a microsecond, the language of the ever-scrolling reader. This kind of read is too rapid to deal with interpretation, it assumes a superficial read and therefore must speak an easily understandable language, a standardized language, created by the multitude, for the multitude, the language of the meme and the desktop icon. Disney has been cemented as an universal emblem of American culture, all entertainment and business practices can now be reduced to a simple shorthand: three circles. This standard signifier carries a tremen- dous amount of information and generalizations, but as in Alan Bryman’s Disneyization of society28 and Baudrillard’s Main-Street-as-simulacra, the gener- THE HYPERLINKED SIGN 39 alizations have become more true than the reality— hyper-real in fact.29 It is no coincidence that many of these designers are functioning as critical theorists as well and are familiar with Bryman and Baudrillard’s writings. Critical design has largely been a reaction to Disneyization, opposing the role that designers have played as creators of theming, merchandizing and homogenization. The designer uses Disney imagery with a semiotic wink, denoting the irony of direct appropriation in the age of copyright infringement lawsuits. As a cultural prop, Disney iconography can be jux- taposed with other similar signifiers (Freemason emblems, Islamic dress, Arabic scripts, Maltese crosses, etc.), or isolated to speak on it’s own. Mickey Mouse’s body parts in particular prove to be extremely versa- tile. They can reference production (the hand, usually open), consent/dissent (thumbs up/down), democracy and suffrage (thumbs up/down again) or entertainment (ears). Again, and not by coincidence, we can draw references to another post-structuralist theorist: Michel Foucault and his ideas of biopolitics and biopower, the state of power extended over both the physical and political bodies of a population.30 By using these visual cues, designers embed generalized ideas to the average viewer, as well as added meaning to the initiated, not unlike the password-protected nature of the internet. The Disney of hypermodernity is shockingly un-sat- ired. Unlike postmodernity which dedicated its efforts to being the most exaggerated and stereotypical, hypermodernity is understated and seemingly straight forward in its representation. Yet the same subver- 40 NEW MODERNISM(S) siveness that Grapus’ posters wore quite apparently is at work in current critical design. As is often the case, the unpublishable moves visual culture forward, but this time, it is for fear of copyright infringement. Yet it is an appropriate voice for the critique of globalization and homogenization, the constructing of an counter-sign system, the defining of a language that can combat the established one, which consists of the logos, flags and trademarks which have proliferated in the postmodern epoch. 41

The Aesthetics of Refusal

The manifesto was a standard component of any modernist art, design or architectural movement, a statement of the revolutionary aesthetic and social aims of the participating makers. The manifesto provided a kind of philosophical transparency, a defined outside/ inside modernist binary used to distinguish the avant garde from the traditional and regressive. It implies a right and a wrong way to make art, whether by speci- fying materials, techniques, subject matter or process. Art sought to be taken seriously, asserting its intellec- tual nature by likening itself to revolutionary political movements, after all, before the 20th century, manifestos were the exclusive domain of political groups. The modernist manifesto highlights the politics of aesthetics—that aesthetic decisions are never solely visual, there is always a politics behind them, whether explicitly admitted or not. A manifesto has built in re- fusals as well as guidelines of making which must be accepted at a personal level by participating artists, while setting a standard of inclusion for non-partici- 42 NEW MODERNISM(S) pant artists. Gregory L. Ulmer posits the manifesto as an alter- native to prevailing practices, a “discourse on method.” 31 It is a prototype for making, a wireframe that guides the creation of future works through rhetoric and poetics. He breaks the manifesto down into five constituent parts: contrast, analogy, theory, target and tale.32 These elements serve to delineate the avant garde and the opposition as well as defining the space for application of revolutionary practice. Ulmer recogniz- es the manifesto as a formula and device of the arts., he provides the examples of Plato’s Phaedrus as the originator of the structure and confirms it in Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto. It is a standard element of aesthetic or theoretical progress, a concise statement of method which usually manifests itself in a particular visual style, politics or both. It is polemical and ideological, communicative and clearly delineated. It creates a standard, a defined inside and outside, and therefore a movement. The logic of postmodernism revolts against the bi- naries generated by the practice of manifesto writing. It views them as empty moralizing and divisive molds. Postmodern design has proven itself rather reluctant to pen definitive statements of any kind as to new strat- egies of making after modernism. From the late 60s to the mid 90s there had hardly been any notable design manifestos written. The most influential manifesto-like document from that period, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown’s Learning From Las Vegas written in 1972, anticipated the very character of postmodernity and 43

A SEMI-EXHAUSTIVE LIST OF RELEVANT MANIFESTOS

Phaedrus, Plato (360 BCE) The True Leveller’s Standard Advanced (First Digger’s Manifesto), The Diggers (1649) A Declaration from the Oppressed People of England (Second Digger’s Manifesto), The Diggers (1649) The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848) The Arts and Crafts of To-Day, William Morris (1889) The Futurist Manifesto, F.T. Marinetti (1909) Ornamentation and Crime, Adolf Loos (1910) Manifesto of Futurist Architecture, Antonio Sant’Elia (1914) Vorticist Manifesto, Wyndham Lewis, Ezra Pound and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (1914) First Dada Manifesto, Hugo Ball (1916) Second Dada Manifesto, Tristan Tzara (1918) De Stijl Manifesto, Theo van Doesburg (1918) Bauhaus Manifesto and Program, Walter Gropius (1919) Realistic Manifesto, Naum Gabo (1920) Towards a New Architecture, Le Corbusier (1923) First Surrealist Manifesto, André Breton (1924) Principles of Bauhaus Production, Walter Gropius (1926) The Non-objective World: The Manifesto of Suprematism, Kazmir Malevich (1926) The New Typography, Jan Tschichold (1928) Second Surrealist Manifesto, André Breton (1929) The Crystal Goblet, Beatrice Warde (1955) Situationist Manifesto, Guy Debord (1957) Fluxus Manifesto, George Maciunas (1963) First Things First, Ken Garland (1964) Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, Robert Venturi (1966) 44

CONT.

Learning From Las Vegas, Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour (1972) Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan, Rem Koolhaas (1978) GNU Manifesto, Richard Stallman (1985) Riot Grrl Manifesto, Kathleen Hanna (1991) 12 Point Manifesto, Dan Friedman (1994) Dogme 95 Manifesto, Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg (1995) Industrial Technology and Its Future (Unabomber Manifesto), Ted Kaczynski (1995) Incomplete Manifesto for Growth, Bruce Mau (1998) First Things First 2000, Adbusters (1999) The Stuckists, Charles Thomson and Billy Childish (1999) Remodernism, Charles Thomson and Billy Childish (2000) Empire, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (2000) Socialist Designers Manifesto, Fabrizio Gilardino (2001) Disrepresentation Now!, Experimental Jetset (2001) An Anonymous Manifesto, Anonymous (2003) Manifesto for the New Sincerity, Jesse Thorn (2006) Free Font Manifesto, Ellen Lupton (2006) The New Aesthetic, James Bridle (2007) White Night Before a Manifesto, Metahaven (2008) Kyoto Design Declaration, Yrjo Sotamaa (2008) Serpentine Manifesto Marathon, Various Artists (2008) a/b: A Kind of Mainfesto for the Evolution of Critical Design, Dunne and Raby (2009) The Wikileaks Manifesto, Julian Assange (2010) What Is Design? A Manifesto for the Gwangju Design Biennale, Project Projects (2011) Metamodernist Manifesto, Luke Turner (2011) Multifesto: A Communal Design Manifesto for NYC, 2x4 (2013) THE AESTHETICS OF REFUSAL 45 became a cultural milestone in its departure from insti- tutionalized modernism. Ironically, Learning From Las Vegas ushered in an end of the manifesto by valuing vernacular, low culture and glitz above studied theory and rigorous adherence to austerity. The architects of modernism had imposed their utopias on the public, a hierarchical relationship that required the validation by theory. Venturi and Brown flipped that relationship on its head by letting mass culture dictate to architects, an intuitive move which was validated by existing vernacular, which they found in the archetype of Las Vegas. Learning From Las Vegas again shows the break up of modernism’s contained sign systems. Venturi and Brown argue that modernism had created build- ings that were one big ornament, a “Duck”, while the model gleaned from Las Vegas was that of the “Dec- orated Shed”, a structure with a profusion of symbols.33 The decorated shed allows for diverse meaning and personality as opposed to modernism’s unyielding monumentality. The break down of architecture’s In- ternational Style and descent into anti-aesthetic frag- mentation and the explosion of standardized sign systems occurred simultaneously. The institutions that had provided structure and coherence fractured into a semi-permanent Dadaism, a stylistic and ideological free-for-all, tending toward both universalism and ni- hilism while pretending to be disinterested in either. Postmodernism eschews purity, both stylistically and philosophically, and therefore cannot be repro- duced according to a manifesto, a document which de- 46 NEW MODERNISM(S) mands utter purity and dedication. Frederic Jameson notes that with the exception of theoretical discourse, postmodernism refuses to produce genres, schools, movements or even avant gardes.34 The manifesto has nothing to produce and aesthetic movement through the creation of defined strategic alternatives halts. Without manifestos, how does aesthetic progress take place in the postmodern epoch? As the moderns produced manifestos, the postmoderns produce subcultures, leaderless, manifesto-less anti-aesthetics, which utilize visually coded or abrasive styles as a means of identification. The manifesto is no longer a written document, but an intertextual pastiche. It is a mood board, if we may appropriate the lingo of the graphic designer, and one which is revolting upon its incep- tion, a purposeful ugliness. But the anti-aesthetic has always been the engine of change in art and design. The early modernists, start- ing with the Expressionists, were decried as ugly, in- accurate and institutionally inappropriate. Le Corbus- ier’s “engineer’s aesthetic” is really a non-aesthetic, a style of form derived from professions where function is the only concern. “The Engineer, inspired by the law of Economy and governed by mathematical calculations, puts us in accord with universal law. He achieves harmony.” 35 Under modernism, these shifts were set in motion by the avant garde, a select group of innovators concerned with progress in form. Wassi- ly Kandinsky originally theorized this kind of progress in his illustration “The Movement of the Triangle.”36 The innovative avant garde is the tip of this triangle, THE AESTHETICS OF REFUSAL 47 moving forward through time, breaking new ground for its followers, but doomed to be lonely and misunder- stood (in typical heroic modernist fashion). Although the rear garde will eventually inherit the innovations of the tip, the avant garde will have long since moved on. Both Le Corbusier and Kandinsky give this vision- ary group a spiritual status, upholding the universality and objective progress of a new classicism. Jean-François Lyotard characterized postmodernism as a mistrust of metanarratives, the comprehensive explanations of historical meaning and experience, which were a hallmark of modernism.37 When these grand narratives of inheriting classicism have broken down, there is no avant garde, and so aesthetic progress is mimicked through the adoption and subse- quent obsolescence of subcultural forms—subcultures being a micro-narrative. Visual form is moved forward by ugliness, by styles that defy co-opting and market- ability. In other words, it is an aesthetics of refusal, a refusal to be the visual creators of the majority. As in Kandisky’s triangle, the majority eventually adopts the products (if not the ideals as well) of the innovators, eventually obsoleting their status as a progressive form. The spiritual is replaced by the spectacle and the medium by mass media. Sociologist and subcultural theorist Dick Hebdige outlines the similar progression of subcultures in his book Subculture: The Meaning of Style. Subcultures “breach our expectancies” obstructing, at least for a time, the normal function of language and communication, and therefore disrupting commerce, politics 48 NEW MODERNISM(S) and spectacle.38 These movements appropriate sym- bolism from the dominant culture (straight culture), by attaching new signifieds to previously “straight” signifiers, a process known as bricolage.39 As with punk, the formerly domestic safety pin became a symbol of rebellion and a critique of a grim future for Britain’s youth. Hebdige identifies two ways in which the dominant culture recuperates the symbols appropriated by subculture, 1) the conversion of subcultural signs into mass-produced objects and 2) the “labeling” and re-definition by dominant groups—the police, the media, or the judiciary.40 In the postmodern era, graphic design has participated on both sides of this tug-of- war (e.g. Carson and Brody’s “authentic” refusal in the form of grunge type eventually adopted by the art directors of major sports apparel brands). The unmar- ketable always becomes the ultimate marketing strate- gy, the weapon of the new. As French philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefeb- vre writes:

“Has not society, glutted with aestheticism, already integrated former romanticisims, surreal- isms, existentialism and even Marxism to a point? It has, indeed, through trade, in the form of com- modities. That which yesterday was reviled today becomes cultural consumer-goods, consumption thus engulfs what was intended to give meaning and direction.”41

The barriers of entry created by difficult aesthetics 49 KANDINSKY

UGLY/DIFFICULT

AVANT GARDE TIME

SPIRITUAL

REAR GARDE (BELATED ADVANCEMENT)

GENERALLY ACCEPTED PROGRESS

HEBDIGE

ORIGINATORS (AUTHENTIC) ABSORPTION TIME

NEED FOR NEW OBSTRUCTS

SUBCULTURAL FORMS

TOTAL SECONDARY ABSORPTION ADOPTERS (CO-OPTED) SPECTACLE (POSEURS) FEEDS

ACCEPTED/RECUPERATED BY MAINSTREAM 50 UGLINESS IS PROGRESS THE AESTHETICS OF REFUSAL 51 are always broken down and eventually co-opted. The aesthetics of refusal discourage universal participa- tion, the message is “this may not be for you,” delin- eating an authentic and inauthentic in the same way the manifesto delineated a progressive and regressive class. This binary, though more loosely defined than previously, creates the high-and-low pressure system that fuels the movement toward a new authenticity and thereby a new aesthetic. It is by means of alienating the majority that new form is achieved. Modernism’s manifestos preached an idealist and utopian universality, an eternal truth behind form-making. A manifesto required every maker to adhere to it’s mandates, the aim is total inclusion, albeit through rigorous philosophies of form. Postmodernism, on the other hand, is more casual in it’s requirements and more fragmented in it’s vision. There can be no avant garde when there is no direction in which to move. Its turn back towards the past precludes and disables Kandin- sky’s future-facing triangle. While modernism was ex- clusiveness in the guise of universality, postmodernism is universality in the guise of individuality. If this is so, what then is left for a hypermodern theory of making? With hypermodernism we return to the anti-aesthetic, but this time in an accessible form, appropriating bad taste—Powerpoint and MS Paint aesthetics, clip art, naive choice of typefaces and stretched typography—into what is effectively the aesthetic of the every- day internet experience. Formally, these designs have more in common with an MS Paint canvas or a Power- point presentation than with their modernist forebear- 52 NEW MODERNISM(S) ers. This is a revision of late modernist thinking about vernacular and materials. Previously employed in physical form, it is now being employed on the internet. As the designer is faced with disappearing print media and an explosion of surface online, the philosophies of transparency take on elements of the user interface, the skin of the working web. The interface visuals and PC novelties have become a reference to the web not as utopia builder, but as regime dismantlement, as shown by the use of social networks in the Arab Spring or Oc- cupy Wall Street. It is the aesthetic of the revolutionary “street,” of Hardt and Negri’s multitude. Where the computer has made modernism too easy, referencing the computer as the instrument of creation has become the new modernism. With guides and snap-to-grid enabled, the perfect Swiss-style poster is just a few clicks away. It is no longer rigorous, no longer a difficult aesthetic, and so it cannot survive digitali- zation. But at the same time, the negation of modernism as the “textbook moment” of graphic design has caused a crisis within design as a practice and profes- sion. The computer ushered in the democratization of the designer’s tools at the same time as it introduced total precision, and effectively placed the professional designer into the precariat, that sector of the working class whose livelihood is constantly threatened by economic downturn and obsolescence through technological advances.42 It is against this backdrop that designers play with the visuals of their own demise, visuals which raise their own questions: Does the graphic designer still exist as a practitioner or professional? Isn’t THE AESTHETICS OF REFUSAL 53 this practice open to anyone with a computer? If Learning From Las Vegas served as the opening salvo of postmodernism, then hypermodernism could just as easily be inaugurated by a Learning From Tumblr (or maybe Reddit or 4chan?), in reference to the sites that have become the “decorated shed” of the internet. Images on these sites are continually re-post- ed, original content is rather scarce, sign systems are agreed upon through likes and reblogs. The microblog becomes the manifesto, the medium is Net-art or me- mes and the ideology is maximum reblogs, likes and notes. Modernism’s manifestos were finely-honed doc- uments produced by an elite few. Today’s are countless and unrefined, the product of anyone from teen- age girls to middle-aged men. The manifesto becomes the appropriation of artifacts of the present, where one image changes hands instantaneously, acquiring signifieds while the signifier remains (visually) un- changed. Whether knowingly or not, the microblogger is curating surface—constantly fulfilling our equation of graphic design and, therefore, theoretically functioning as a graphic designer. So perhaps the defining characteristic of hypermodern graphic design is that there is no designer. The familiar contentious labels ring strangely outdated— designer as artist, designer as author, designer as cu- rator—perhaps what we should be talking about is the designer as ghost. Design has ceased to be a skill-set, and is only recoverable as a way of thinking and seeing. What is an anti-aesthetic when the only thing that separates the designer from the non-designer is his or 54 NEW MODERNISM(S) her “eye?” To adopt the aesthetic of the multitude is to negate the practice of design, but perhaps this is ex- actly the political move that needs to happen. This is “Total Refusal” as spoken of in DSG’s interview with Metahaven: “We suspect this discourse of ethics and selective refusal of work will, in the face of austerity, be replaced with TOTAL REFUSAL.”43 In other words, the refusal to ontologically exist as a form maker. It is the confession of a practice that has everything and nothing left to say, positioning the hypermodern graphic designer as Walter Benjamin’s Mickey, dismembered but surviving, with potential to be either cog or mon- key wrench in the machine.

NOTES 57

1. Roland Barthes and Stephen Heath, Image, Music, Text. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 158. 2. Daniel van der Velden and Vinca Kruk, White Night Before a Manifesto. (Eindhoven: Onomatopee, 2008), 2. 3. Ibid. 4. Beatrice Ward, The Crystal Goblet. (1955). 5. Barthes and Heath, Image, Music, Text, 159. 6. James Bridle, “About the New Aesthetic,” The New Aesthet- ic, http://new-aesthetic.tumblr.com/about. 7. Fredric Jameson. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991), 104. 8. Jeff Keedy. “Keedy,” Keedy Sans Specimen. 9. Ellen Lupton and J. Abbott Miller. Design Writing Research: Writing on Graphic Design. (New York: Kiosk, 1996), 4-5. 10. Ibid, 7. 11. “The House Aesthetic,” House Industries, http://www.hou- seind.com/about/housestory/aesthetic. 12. Julie Lasky, “Massimo Vignelli vs. Ed Benguiat (Sort Of),” De- sign Observer, http://observatory.designobserver.com/entry. html?entry=15458. 13. Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, 96. 14. Rick Poyner, No More Rules: Graphic Design and Postmod- ernism. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 70. 15. “Lyon Text & Display,” Atelier Carvalho Bernau, http://www. carvalho-bernau.com/retailfonts/lyon/. 16. Radim Pesko, Fugue Text Sample. (2010). 17. Rick Valicenti, “The Typographer’s Dream,” Wired, last modified November 29, 2011, http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/11/ff_stevejobs_sidebars/6/. 18. Martin Falck, email message to author, February 13, 2013. 19. “Bauhaus // Gestures Dance,” http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=m40jBghI0To. 20. “Das Triadische Ballet,” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=- 87jErmplUpA. 21. Christopher Wilk, Modernism: Designing a New World. (Lon- don: V&A Press, 2006). 22. Esther Leslie, Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theo- ry and the Avant-Garde. (New York: Verso, 2004), 80. 58 NEW MODERNISM(S)

23. Ibid, 82. 24. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Commonwealth. (Boston: Belknap Press, 2009), viii. 25. Falck, 2013. 26. Daniel van der Velden and Vinca Kruk, Uncorporate Identity. (Baden: Lars Müller, 2010), 265. 27. Rick Poyner, “Utopian Image: Politics and Posters,” Design Observer, last modified March 10, 2013, http://observatory. designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=37739. 28. Alan Bryman, “The Disneyization of Society.” The Sociologi- cal Review. (1990). 29. Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation. (Ann Arbor: Uni- versity of Michigan Press, 1994), 12-13. 30. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduc- tion. (Editions Gallimard, 1978). 31. Gregory L. Ulmer, Heuretics: The Logic of Invention. (Balti- more: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 6. 32. Ibid, 8. 33. Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour. Learning From Las Vegas. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1972), 105. 34. Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, xvi. 35. Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1931), 12. 36. Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art. (Reada- Classic.com, 2010), 12. 37. Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984). 38. Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style. (New York: Methuen & Co, Ltd, 1979), 92. 39. David Muggleton, Inside Subculture: The Postmodern Mean- ing of Style. (Oxford: Berg, 2000), 131. 40. Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style, 94. 41. Quoted in Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style, 92. 42. Guy Standing, “Defining the precariat,” Eurozine, last modified April 19, 2013, http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2013- 04-19-standing-en.html. 43 Metahaven, “Cloud Communism: A Conversation with Deter- ritorial Support Group,” Print, October 2011.