Week 11 Agenda

Tasks Due

• Review Research Project Timeline
• Review Representation and Context
• Review Stereotype in Advertising Media
• Submit Research Paper 2 (draft or final)
• Submit Week 10 Agenda Checklist

This Week’s Topics

• Check-in
• Feedback, Timeline, & Peer Review
• Research Project Planning
• Post Modernism!
• Finding Library Sources
• Reading Response #9
• Work in Class
• Week 11 Agenda Checklist

Check-in

After today, only four classes left!

In honor of our Post-Modernism week, here are some images and video from the Thierry Mugler: Couturissime exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. Great exhibit. I encourage you to go to see it if you are able.

• Collection of images/video taken at the exhibition

Do you have anything to share from your Research Journal? Add a comment to this post with something you’ve added to your Research Journal recently.

Or suggest a track for the playlist on the COMD3504 playlist post.

Feedback & Revisions

As we get closer to the end of the semester and your obligations start to pile up, please take some time to review/revise your Learning Plan and get a sense of what you’d like to accomplish in the remaining weeks.

Feedback: Comments for all work posted on time up until Week 8 should have a comment with notes in Hypothesis or Google Docs. If I missed something, or if you have questions, please let me know.

Revisions: If there are any revisions or late work that you have submitted (and I missed), please send me a note, and I’ll try to get to them right away.

Don’t forget to submit your Weekly Agenda Checklist, indicating the tasks you’ve completed. If you are having trouble keeping track of the required work, this should help.

At this point in the semester, in addition to in-class discussions, you should have completed the following.

• Reading Response #1
• Reading Response #2
• Reading Response #3
• Reading Response #4
• Reading #5 Annotations
• Reading Response #6
• Reading Response #7
• Reading Response #8
• Research Paper #1
• Research Paper #2 Draft (or Final)
• Research Project: outline, bibliography started, presentation script
• Research Journal (In Progress)

Research Project Timeline

By today you should have completed the first four milestones. Review the project guidelines and see below for the next milestones.

• March 15: Define your research topic/question and submit your Research Project Outline
• March 30 : Finalize your topic and start collecting supporting media and sources in an annotated bibliography
• April 13: Finalize your research, supporting media and sources
• April 20: Complete your presentation outline and script based on your research
• April 27: Assemble all graphics and text in a slideshow
• May 4: Share in-progress slideshow presentation with voiceover, get feedback from peers and professor, finalize annotated bibliography
• **May 11: Post Presentation to OpenLab site – follow the guidelines**
• May 18: Review Research Project Presentations in class.
• May 22: Submit one comment on each of your classmates’ presentations

Peer Review (15 minutes)

With a classmate, go through and determine if you are missing any work. Discuss your learning plan and what you’d like to accomplish during the remaining weeks. On a piece of paper write down what grade you expect to achieve in this class and your plan is for the remaining weeks to accomplish it. Submit this after your discussion.

Activities

Below find the information covered in this session. Complete all of the following activities, videos, and assignments.

1. Postmodernism? Style & Subversion (60 minutes)

From about 1970 to 1990, Postmodernism shattered established ideas about design and art. A brilliant mix of theatrical and theoretical, Postmodernism ranges from the colourful to the ruinous, the luxurious to the ludicrous. It is a visually thrilling multifaceted style which so famously defies definition.

V&A exhibition ‘Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970 – 1990’

What the *&%!# is Postmodernism? Even celebrated design leaders of the Postmodernist era have a hard time describing what the term Postmodernism means. And as we shall see, that’s kind of the point. Last week we used Barthes and Hall’s Postmodern lens’ of Structuralism/Post-Structuralism and Cultural Studies, respectively, to explore the idea that meaning is subjective. It can change depending on the viewer and each individual’s life/cultural experience and position of power.

Activity: Take a moment to write down all the qualities of Modernism that you can think of. Think back to the early avant-garde (De Stijl, Constructivists, Bauhaus, New Typography) in the early 20th Century. What were their goals and ideology with regard to Universality in form, truth, society, and meaning? What were they rebelling against? Consider that some of their goals were realized by the mid-1960s when the Swiss/International Style went mainstream.

By the late ’60s and early 1970s, the rebellion begins again. The Postmodernism avant-garde was a direct reaction to mainstream Modernism.

What is Postmodernism? (10 min)

Let’s watch the first few minutes of this video before we go any further. Here we look at some of the design styles seen and heard in the Postmodern era. As well as a younger Paula Scher as she sums up her reaction to Modernism at the time.

“If I think about what Modernism felt like in the Seventies, it deserves a smack”

What is Post Modernism? Paula Scher quote

Activity: As you watch, write down the words that are used to describe this style/era during the 1970s-1990s. How would you describe the visual approach?

Let’s skip to a broader definition of Postmodernism, which influenced not only design but fashion, architecture, theater, fiction, academic theory, and more. Take note of some of the key ideas that some Postmodernists believe. Does any of this relate to Stuart Hall’s theories from Week 10?

• Our reality and interpretation/decoding of signs is influenced by our culture
• Rejection of grand narratives and universality in favor of subjectivity and pluralism
  • Grand narratives are ideas that claim to have access to absolute truth, whether that is in the shape of: Culture (art); Religion; Politics (democracy); Economics (Capitalism); Fashion; Science
  • Universality in design relates to the utopian, modernist aim of creating universal systems or models of communication for all
  • Subjectivity relates to our opinions and experience; Objectivity relates to facts
  • Pluralism is an acknowledgment of additional perspectives that have been suppressed by the dominant hegemony
• Objective ideas are reflections of the dominant groups in society, thus all forms of authority are suspect
• All objective ideas are untrue because there is no truth
• Postmodernists use subversion, humor, and irony to communicate

Aesthetics of Postmodernism (15 min)

In our reading of Steven Heller’s “Underground Mainstream“, we learned how in the late 1960s, mainstream Modernism (universality, simplicity, minimalist, structured, grid-based, corporate, design for all) was rejected in favor of the opposite (complexity, ambiguity, subjectivity, cultural pluralism, personal, experimental).

This was the very beginning of Postmodernism in design. We looked at the hippy counter-culture Filmore posters coming out of San Francisco in the late 60s, and now let’s speed all the way through to the early 1990s anti-consumerist grunge movement in Seattle. In this broad time period with its range of styles, anything goes. The rejection of Modernist minimalism and functionalism and the embrace of personal expression, experimentation, mixed media, layering and remixing styles from other time periods are the hallmarks of Postmodernism.

Pay close attention to the sections on Japanese Design, Punk and New Wave, Low-tech Seattle, and Postmodernism. These were influential trends that we see remnants and revivals today. Note the names of the designers: David Carson, April Greiman, Rick Poynor, Wolfgang Weingart, Katherine McCoy, Rudy VanderLans/Emigre, etc.

Watch from Japanese Design to Postmodernism on LinkedIn Learning via your Library Card. Or view the low-res YouTube video from 1:44:17 – 1:57:58.

2. Finding Library Sources

At this point, you should have collected a large number of sources to support your Research Project topic. You will also want to include at least 3-4 sources from the Library Databases.

This 5-minute video tutorial goes over the basics of using the City Tech Library databases.

To search the library databases follow the instructions below:

• Visit the City Tech Library site (https://library.citytech.cuny.edu/)
• Navigate to Research Guides
• Select A-Z Database List on the right-hand side of the page.
• Then select Academic Search Complete (EBSCO), the largest scholarly, multidisciplinary, full-text database.
• Login to the CUNY SSO (Single Sign On)
• At the top of the search form click the link Choose Databases to select the databases to include in your seach. Then click Save. Depending on your topic, you may need to experiment with the databases you include in your search, but generally the following are a good starting place. These databases include a wide variety of newpapers, journals, magazine and other media.
  • Business Source Complete
  • Communications & MassMedia Complete
  • Regional Business News
  • MasterFile Complete
  • MAS Ultra – School Edition
• Use the form to execute a keyword search.
  • Enter your keywords in the first text box.
  • Select TX All Text from the Select a Field dropdown.
  • If relevant, restrict the search to specific dates using the Publish Date fields.
• Navigate the results to find sources in HTML and PDF or links to sources in related databases.

3. Assignment: Reading Response 9 (<1 Hour)

Katherine McCoy challenged designers to support local cultures by practicing audience-centered design. McCoy was voicing the postmodern disillusion with universal design. “As a Modernist Swiss-school graphic designer in the late sixties,” McCoy wrote, “I knew we were going to remake the world in Helvetica.” Modernism sought a common language built on systems and modularity; in contrast, the postmodernists valorized the special idioms and dialects of cultures and subcultures.

Helen Armstrong

Follow the assignment guidelines and prompts for Reading Response 9 – DUE Wednesday before the next class.

Note the terms/styles: vaporwave, glitch, cyberpunk, zine sensibilities, duotones, glowing grids, pattern clashing, photocopy era, collage,

Following the guidelines, read and annotate the text with your classmates in our Hypothesis group. You will be reading “80s Design is Alive, Well, and Living in 2019”, Nadja Sayej, PRINT, March 6, 2019

80s Design is Alive, Well, and Living in 2019

Refer to Assignment: Reading Response 9 for guidelines.

Resources

• Assignment: Reading Response 9
• Using Hypothesis
• Research Journal
• Grammarly
• Reading Response (Example) post

Work in Class

Based on your Peer Review earlier, tackle whatever you can during the remaining class period, even if that is just making a plan.

Week 11 Agenda Checklist

Below are all of the tasks, big and small, for this week. The due date is Wednesday, 11:59 pm before our next Thursday class. Timely completion of these tasks will contribute to your success in this course.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out.

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