No More Rules [Paperback]

Rick Poynor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 3, 2003

The last twenty-five years have seen profound changes in the field of graphic communication. One by one, the old certainties about the techniques and pruposesof graphic design have been questioned and torn apart. With the international take-up of the new technology in the 1990s, there was an explosion of creativity in graphic design, as designers and typographers reassessed their role, jettisoned existing rules and forged experimental new approaches. Graphic work became more self-expressive, idiosyncratic and sometimes extreme. No More Rules tells this story in detail, breaking down a broad and sometimes confusing field of graphic design activity into key developments and themes, such as the American new wave; punk and its aftermath; deconstructionist theory and design; the digital type revolution; typography grunge; graphic authorship and graphic agitation; retro and the vernacular; and recent new conceptual approaches to design. Each theme is illustrated by significant examples of work produced between 1980 and 2000 that have changed the way in which designers and their audiences think about graphic communication.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

As twenty-first-century design concerns seem to center increasingly on the depiction as well as the use of technology, this new graphic design book, copiously illustrated and thoughtfully written, provides a comprehensive overview of modernism as applied to American graphics and a look at the explosion of creativity ushered in via digital design.

No more rules screams the title in a font reminiscent of De Stijl-ist Germanic modernism as design critic Poynor explains the changes in graphic work both before and after new electronic technologies took hold in the 1990s, with emphasis on the unleashing of creative energies occasioned by computer-assisted design. The last two decades of the twentieth century saw many of the old, tried, and true rules of graphic design abandoned as the idiosyncratic and self-expressive took precedence. Poynor, who founded Eye, an international design journal, provides good overviews of graphics development and issues in the electronic age, including the digital revolution's impact on "fontography" and discussion of appropriation, the visual equivalent of musical sampling. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

Rick Poynor founded Eye magazine in 1990. He is also a columnist for Print magazine in New York and has written about visual culture for Frieze, Domus, Blueprint, I.D., Metropolis, Adbusters and the Financial Times. His books include Typography Now (1991), Typographica (2001), and the essay collection Obey the Giant: Life in the Image World.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Laurence King (November 3, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1856692299
• ISBN-13: 978-1856692298
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,771,235 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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