Learn this one WEIRD trick for stunning results
Much of the mental bandwith in my studio lately (when it’s not getting clogged by the force of will required to land the plane of another semester) has been dedicated to thinking through why so much contemporary design looks…kinda the same? I’ll concede that this might simply be a me problem — algorithms exist to feed me slop I’ve volunteered to like, and even in the theoretically more open confines of are.na, the work is reflective of the tastes of a somewhat self-selected cohort, aesthetic, and worldview. I’ll even concede that I’m excluding vernacular and especially normie commercial design, although even those worlds are trending toward visual collapse in a way that’s terrific meme fodder.
What I’ve been thinking about is less big design, and more captial-G capital-D “Graphic Design,” the experimental, conceptually-driven and ostensibly innovative design at the forefront of defining and expanding the field. A wiser critic might call this the avant-garde, I’ll humbly call it “Today’s Hip Shit.” Trends in any field are half mile marker and half gravitational pull; it’s risky business (and, ultimately, deeply navel-gazing) to diagnose the hip shit while hit’s at its hippest. Instead of proposing a tidy answer, I’ll raise a question: why does Today’s Hip Shit — again, ostensibly the most groundbreaking, inventive work — look so similar to itself?
Part of an answer (or, at least something to consider, a piece on the board) is that we’re swimming in a much smaller and shallower pool than we’d like to admit. Graphic Design as defined by Today’s Hip Shit is uniquely defined as a creative discipline by a very tiny alphabet soup of design programs and educational system, both in the work that comes out of these schools, and by the outsized influence they exert on contemporary visual language. Perhaps I’m showing my ass as an educator myself by starting here. But I won’t argue if you wanted to label the style of Today’s Hip Shit as RISD-core, or Yale-core, or Parsons-core, or even MICA-core, if you’re feeling generous. Maybe it’s always been this way!
Instead of throwing eggs at the schools I absolutely couldn’t have gotten into, I’ve found it more productive to think about this question as a result of process, rather than instruction. Put another way: Today’s Hip Shit kinda looks the same because we’re all using the same tools in approximately the same ways. It’s worth noting again: maybe it’s always been this way! Did Letraset feel stifling when it was on every designer’s desk? What about setting up your poster to be photo composed? Who bristled against the grid?
Speaking from my position as a creature of the digital, a generation of designers existing almost purely within a single ecosystem feels fundamentally different than a formalized set of analog tools being the industry standard. Adobe in particular seems to have flattened out many options and methods, and closed a lot of doors to oblique, non-standard, and innovative ways of making. Even the urge to break out of the Creative Cloud and integrate handmade, messy, and distinctly material ways of making into this workflow results in work that…largely looks the same. When process becomes streamlined, standardized, and corporatized, why wouldn’t the work be the same?