How is ugly to be defined in the current postmodern design climate where existing systems are up for re-evaluation, order is under attack and the forced collision of disparate forms is the rule?
For the moment, let us say that ugly decision, as opposed to classical design (where adherence to the golden mean and a preference for balance and harmony serve as the foundation for even the most unconventional compositions) is the layering of unharmonious graphic forms in a way that results in confusing messages.
By this definition, Output could be considered a prime example of ugliness in the service of fashionable experimentation. Though not intended to function in the commercial world, it was distributed to thousands of practicing designers on the American Institute of Graphic Arts and American Center for Design mailing lists, so rather than remain cloistered and protected from criticism as on-campus ‘research’, it is a fair subject for scrutiny. It can legitimately be described as representing the current cult of ugliness.
The layered images, vernacular hybrids, low-resolution reproductions and cacophonous blends of different types and letters at once challenge prevailing aesthetic beliefs and propose alternative paradigms. Like the output of communications rebels of the past (whether 1920s Futurists or 1960s psychedelic artists), this work demands that the viewer or reader accept non-traditional formats which at best guide the eye for a specific purpose through a range of non-linear ‘pathways’, and at worst result in confusion.
But the reasons behind this wave are dubious. Does the current social and cultural condition involve the kind of upheaval to which critical ugliness is a time-honoured companion? Or in the wake of earlier, more serious experimentation, has ugliness simply been assimilated into popular culture and become a stylish conceit?
The current wave began in the mid-1970s with the English punk scene, a raw expression of youth frustration manifested through shocking dress, music and art. Punk’s naïve graphic language – an aggressive rejection of rational typography that echoes Dada and Futurist work – influenced designers during the late 1970s who seriously tested the limits imposed by Modernist formalism. Punk’s violent demeanour surfaced in Swiss, American, Dutch and French design and spread to the mainstream in the form of a ‘new wave’, or what American punk artist Gary Panter has called ‘sanitised punk’.
A key anti-canonical approach later called Swiss Punk which in comparison with the gridlocked Swiss International Style was menacingly chaotic, though rooted in its own logic - was born in the mecca of rationalism, Basel during the late 1970s. For the elders who were threatened (and offended) by the onslaught to criticise Swiss Punk as ugly was avoiding the issue.
Ugly design can be a conscious attempt to create and define alternative standards. Like warpaint, the dissonant styles which many contemporary designers have applied to their visual communications are meant to shock an enemy – complacency – as well as to encourage new reading and viewing patterns. The work of American designer Art Chantry combines the shock-and-educate approach with a concern for appropriateness. For over a decade Chantry has been creating eye-catching, low-budget graphics for the Seattle punk scene by using found commercial artefacts from industrial merchandise catalogues as key elements in his posters and flyers. While these ‘unsophisticated’ graphics may be horrifying to designers who prefer Shaker functionalism to punk vernacularism, Chantry’s design is decidedly functional within its context.