Description
The multilayered, fragmented, postmodern style of graphic design revolutionized by desk-top computing has run its course. Anything that could be tried, has been tried.
Graphic design today has entered a new period, one of greater experimentation that often takes place outside the commercial realm and forces us to reconsider what we have taken as a given. What has emerged is a radical body of work that is rapidly redefining the very nature and scope of design.
As presented in this dynamic international showcase of the world's hottest thirty-seven studios, three sensibilities characterize this avant-garde: "Code', 'Generic' and 'Disjunction'. 'Code' looks at the innovative ways designers, tired of using the computer as a tool with applications that are analogous to conventional media, are becoming creative programmers, unleashing the computer's processing powers to discover new worlds of extreme beauty. Designers in 'Generic' confront the ordinary to offer us an off-beat system of signs, symbols and meanings that are still strangely familiar. Finally, 'Disjunction' considers work that appropriates anything to advance its own, often self-interested, aims, whether they be political, social, aesthetic or even personal.
All of these approaches respond in their different ways to the problems facing the graphic designer, and while none endeavours to set out a single systematic solution for design, many suggest unexpected and entirely original ways to communicate images and words. In the ever-shifting realm of contemporary culture, Restart offers a new grid.
With over 600 illustrations in colour and black and white.
