A Collection of Essays on Postmodernism

This collection of essays speaks to the distinct conflict between modernity and postmodernity prevalent to designers in the current era. Deciding which influence to follow creates tension for the designer. This publication also seeks to reconcile that imbalance and allow for both modernist views and postmodernist views to share the same page in competition.

The design of this publication promotes the postmodern ideas of pulling from historical references as a means to build a new style. Poyner describes a main need of designers—to absorb traditional rules, but then break away into a new direction. I wanted to take this idea literally, by having the old ideas of modernism be the underlying content for the postmodernist essays.

While the text in the essays speaks about postmodern influence on the design world, the use of a structured layout and a modernist typeface works in opposition to the content, producing a juxtaposition. These two ideas compete for space and importance by having the images from a visual essay break through the plane of the page, with content peeling back out of the way through distortion, blurring the line between primary and secondary roles.

The peeling aims to be entirely digital, with the paper revealing modernist imagery—but simultaneously making a stance in favor of the virtual mode prevalent in postmodernism. Digital technology advanced the experimentation in postmodernism, so I wanted my publication to ignore physical manipulation in favor of digital recreations of the cutting, lifting, and folding process. Postmodernism lives because the structure of modernism provides a solid foundation from which to deviate, and the deviation from a traditional medium into digital speaks to a postmodern influence.

Read them on the blog: The Ultimate Nemesis, the Font | For the Battery Remaining | A Reduction into Amateurism