A climate of cultural change. Cultural diversity a key aspect. Postmodernism challenged the order and clarity of modernism postmodernism sent shockwaves through society. It was the spirit of the decade.
According to Charles Jencks, modernism ended at 3.32pm on 15th July 1972. That was the moment that a huge complex of modern blocks of flats were demolished in an enormous explosion at Saint Louis in Missouri in the States. For Jencks this signalled a loss of faith in the modern style of architecture in particular, and a loss of faith in the modern project in general.
The modern style of architecture was supposed to be THE truly international style - a purely functional approach, supposedly making the best use of new construction techniques to make the most efficient use of limited urban space. The towerblock was the trademark of this style - a huge, imposing structure, made up of repeated squares without any silly decoration or distracting colour. The assumption was that anyone who thought rationally about the problems of architecture would come to the conclusion that this was the only style worth having.
Postmodernism was supposed to be a more fun, creative style than modernism. They wanted to play with the parameters of modernism, injecting life into the style but not rejecting it entirely. Postmodernist designs are much more free, not restricted by the traditional rules of design.
Wolfgang Weingart is credited with developing New Wave typography in the early 1970s at the Basel School of Design, Switzerland. New Wave along with other postmodern typographical styles, such as Punk and Psychedelia, arose as reactions to International Typographic Style or Swiss Style which was very popular with corporate culture. International Typographic Style embodied the modernist aesthetic of minimalism, functionality, and logical universal standards. Postmodernist aesthetic rebuked the less is more philosophy, by ascribing that typography can play a more expressive role and can include ornamentation to achieve this. The increase in expression aimed to improve communication. Therefore, New Wave designers such as Weingart felt intuition was just as valuable as analytical skill in composition. The outcome is an increased kinetic energy in designs.
The adoption of New Wave Typography in the United States came through multiple channels. Weingart gave a lecture tour on the topic in the early 1970s which increased the number of American graphic designers who traveled to the Basel School for postgraduate training which they brought back to the States. Some of the prominent students from Weingart’s classes include April Greiman, Dan Friedman, and Willi Kunz. They further developed the style, for example Dan Friedman rejected the term legibility for the broader term readability. The increase in ornamentation was further developed by William Longhauser and can be seen through the playful lettering used to display an architectural motif in an exhibition poster for Michael Graves (To see poster). Another strong contributor to the New Wave movement was the Cranbrook Academy of Art and their co-chair of graphic design, Katherine McCoy. McCoy asserted that “reading and viewing overlap and interact synergistically in order to create a holistic effect that features both modes of interpretation.”
The complexity of composition increased with the New Wave which transitioned well into computer developed graphic design. Complexity came to define the new digital aesthetic in graphic design. April Greiman was one of the first graphic designers to embrace computers and the New Wave aesthetic is still visible in her digital works.
Designers like Weingart took parts of letters etc and merged them together to create something new- the question is, when does it stop becoming a letter? Despite new wave typographists using letterforms, the end results were almost unrecognisable as letters for the most part.
Weingart didn't want to be restrained by the standards of swiss modernist type. He wanted to challenge typographic norms whilst still proving that typography is an art form. Weingart started to move away from purely typographic pieces and started to experiment with layering images and type to create a new type of poster that had never been done before. He looked at the effects that could be achieved using different lightness/darkness in photos and experimented with points of varying sizes to create these posters.