How Technology Shapes Design

I watched Graphic Means yesterday (Recommend! Streaming on Amazon Prime) and it’s a history of graphic design production. At every new technique there were people who dove in head first. There were people who were naysayers. And there were people who were reasonably cautious – at certain times, the monetary investment was incredibly huge for the newest technology. None of those folks were right or wrong. Some things never change. But I took away two big things:

1 Style is almost always a result of the prevailing technology.

Take ads from the 40s/50s. Because you would have one person working on the photograph or illustration, one on the copy and one on the typesetting (with the designer directing all) it was easier to have the image, headline and text mostly in separate areas on the page that could be put together at different times. Once you see it, you can't unsee it.

After desktop publishing came in, you see tons of layering because now you can do that. Some designers also used pixelated imagery as the final product. Totally a product of the new technology and also of its limitations. 

Once everything could become shiny and smooth, you see this in the design of the 00s. Remember that time when every logo went three-dimensional and shiny.  

2 Revisions are also a result of technology.

A couple posts ago, I said this:

Do the computers and design software of today save us time over the old paste-ups? Yes and no. Certainly, typesetting became much faster. Research is faster. Elements of the design process became easier. But some of that saved time got reinvested into playing around more with the overall design and layout. When you could move anything anywhere on the page at a whim, you spent more time doing just that. The rest of  it went to revisions 🫠.

And I couldn’t stop thinking about that last part. Revisions have increased greatly in quantity if not quality. So why? My thought experiment is to make an app or program that makes approvals easy – one click. At the same time it makes adding revisions hard – three steps including one of those “Are you sure” pop-ups. Maybe a comment box where you have to explain your reasoning before you're allowed to click “Submit.” Which is basically the opposite of what almost every program with integrated comments or feedback is designed to do today. I would love to see the result, because I think a whole lot of revisions would suddenly become not important enough for three steps. The ones that were important would be worth the effort.

In the documentary, Gerard Huerta motions to one of his illustrations (the Clint Eastwood one here and says that when it was done, it was done, but nowadays you’d have someone asking if the horse could be white. 

We're all a product of the times we are in. Looking back, it's so easy to see it. Looking forward, not so much.