Ugliness In Graphic Design

The Aesthetics of Ugliness in Graphic Design

Now anti-aesthetic graphical elements in art and design are becoming ubiquitous. Clashing colors, too much or too little spacing in typography, shocking, explicit and distorted imagery- we see it everywhere and they indeed serve a particular purpose in contemporary culture.

In postmodern philosophy ugliness is a part of aesthetics as well as beauty. Artists and designers exploit ugly elements in order to provoke strong emotions, depict real life scenes and grab viewers ' attention. The anti-aesthetics appears as a consequence of mixture of high and low culture and acts like a tool of conceptual communication.

To understand what the ugliness is in the contemporary discourse is, we first need to

'

The experimentation of contemporary designers, although proven to be relevant and purposeful, was sometimes highly criticized and accused in unprofessionalism and empty self-indulgency. (Keedy) In the famous essay “The Cult of Ugly”, written in 1993, Stephen Heller provides an example of the “Output”- a publication, created by the graduates of the Cranbrook Academy of Art 'Experimentation is the engine of progress, its fuel a mixture of instinct, intelligence, and discipline. But the engine floods when too much instinct and not enough intelligence or discipline is in the mix. ' He claims the new postmodern ugliness a fashionable style without the relevant grounding, which appeals to only people with bad taste and lack of education. He claims it to be the 'style without substance '. (Bierut) Keedy agrees with him in these terms calling the new approach the 'empty stylistic cliché ' (Keedy) He also mentions that the lack of literature and analysis on postmodern typography results in it being unqualified and not categorized. 'This situation has led some designers to simply dismissing it all as garbage. ' Keedy sates the obsession of the formal features of work the main problem of postmodern graphic designers and argues, that the work can be successful and bring value only if designers will think beyond its form. (Keedy) As well as Keedy, Heller doesn 't find the postmodern graphic design absolutely hopeless. In 2004 as he

(Heller)

In contrast to Heller and Keedy, who claim the intuitive approach to be the wrong one, he editors of “Pretty Ugly” state the contemporary anti-aesthetic graphic design to be educated and self-aware: “This is a highly educated generation of designers using their knowledge to break with what they were given as rules. They use intuition as much as intellect in order to enter new territory that is beyond so called ‘professionalism’.”

Heller states that “Ugliness as its own virtue diminishes all design” and wants designers to think about function first. But if the goal is to challenge the tradition, promote freedom of interpretation and turn everything upside-down, than we can say that 'ugly ' designs fulfill their function.

The use of ugliness in postmodern graphic design can be justified by the necessity to transmit the message in the world where the unified standard of 'right ' method no longer exists and where a strong response needs to be provoked. The anti-aesthetic elements can serve a designer successfully, if they are used in the right context, are chosen purposefully and deliberately. The intention to be 'bad ' and 'low ' is inscribed into the postmodern reality