Style
In the last decade, there has been an on-going debate concerning the role of graphic design changing from a problem-solving process into one of style-making. The role of graphic design has long been accepted as a problem-solving vehicle; designers try to avoid the position of mere style-making. The American graphic designer Karrie Jacobs wrote in her essay Disposability, Graphic Design, Style, and Waste: “During a panel discussion in New York last year, Neville Brody likened style to a skin cancer. The implication, I guess, is that style is something that, if left unchecked, will spread and eventually kill off the substance that lives beneath the surface. I can see that. I mean style is kind of a glut on the market right now. Everybody’s got some. But without style, would Neville be here? Would any of us be here? I know I wouldn’t.”
If not designers, who else creates the style? The public? Of course not! The public merely accepts and transforms what has been offered. Behind a style stand designers of all kinds. The fear of succumbing to a mere style-making has been artificially created by art-critics and designers themselves. Style has been considered false, shallow and meaningless. Work marked as stylish is dismissed as “empty”, lacking content. Instead of acknowledging and using the power of style, we think of style as something added rather than being an integral part of the whole. But where exactly is the border between form and content, between style and meaning? Style is part of the statement as much as its content. It participates directly in conveying the message. There is no design without style; design is based on it. The function of style is to make an expression recognizable.
A style must communicate immediately. It must express things about the qualities of a particular idea or object. Style chooses its audience and its territory of action. By its expression it repels the nonpreferred audience and attracts a prospective one. Style is changing so fast it no longer has its foundation in theory. Historical graphic art movements have been based on the ideas found in art theories, but today’s art theories cannot keep up with the evolution of style. It is style that leads the progression of culture.
People often unnecessarily complicate things. They try to separate style from content to get a pure essence. But where is the essence? Judging a piece of graphic design is all brutally simple: sense the overall effect, and trust your experience and emotions. Subjective judging is the most true one.
Mistrusting all style, just because style is the surface, is wrong. Style has a crucial role in design. It welcomes the audience. Style works on the surface because we perceive things through surface. It is not used to camouflage things.
Surface is the first thing that communicates to the public. It creates the first emotions. Then it is up to a perceptive public as to how far they will get in discovering deep layers of meaning. In certain ways, style is the most important thing in graphic design. We may judge the society according their reactions to contemporary expression of art.
Form is also significant in design; it is the essence of type design and typography. Without form, letters simply do not exist. Only a designed letter acquires meaning. The designer gives the letter form, and thus function. Before the designer the letters were just crude matter, the shapeless mass waiting for purpose. All letters need to be designed in order to function. Through the act of designing the meaning receives a form. Style, until now called shallow, superficial, and meaningless in design, acquires new meaning: the carrier of value.


Karrie Jacobs
Looking Closer
Critical Writings on Graphic Design
edited by Michael Bierut, William Drenttel, Steven Heller & DK Holland
Allworth Press 1994