Lost in Translation: The Emergence and Erasure of 'New Thinking' within Graphic Design Criticism in the 1990s

摘要

This article revisits the early 1990s, identifying examples of critical journalism that introduced the idea of 'new thinking' in American graphic design to a British audience. Whilst such thinking is articulated in terms of postmodern and post-structuralist tenets, it will be argued that the distinct visual style of postmodern artefacts belies an eclectic philosophical constitution. In the process of describing emergent American practices at Cranbrook Academy of Art in this period, for example, Ellen Lupton argues for a distinction to be made between intellectual (post-structuralist) and superficial (postmodern) approaches to visual form. This paper indicates, however, that in spite of this initial attention to distinct methodological concerns, there has been a tendency to oversimplify the postmodern story in graphic design writing and to use historical sources in highly selective ways. Indeed, close examination of texts from the period reveals how new thinking in America is underpinned by a complex range of philosophical ideas, with the (seemingly) contradictory impulse of phenomenology, in particular, making a dominant contribution to the mix. This article argues that it is time to reverse these reductive tendencies in British criticism and to reinvigorate its understanding of this transformative period with a return to these postmodern sources.