Hip Hop & Design
Alright... I'm back from my road trip and I'll be kicking back into the weblogs full-swing this week. I guess I'll do at least one obligatory hip hop log, but for the rest of the week I'll be focusing on the recent phenomenon of the graphic designer as celebrity. Magazines such as Tokion, Anthem, Mass Appeal, WYWS, and others have shown that graphic designers have the potential to change the way society views and consumes both "high" and "low" art.
For the hip hop log, I will give a broad view of how the business side of hip hop has transitioned from the dominance of majors to the increasing decentralization provided by independent labels. Ultimately we will explore the impact this industry shift has had on hip hop's style demographics.
For the design stuff, first I will give an overview of the different schools of graphic design that are attempting to bring high art sophistication to the masses by amlagamating and integrating elements of graffiti, typography, vector graphics, digital manipulation, and other techniques often thought of as "low art" or simply commercial or corporate art.
Graffiti art has been an integral catalyst in this process and has instilled this movement with a political edge, which draws heavily upon punk ethics, hip hop attitude, and a basic cynicism with the propagandistic tendencies of graphic art. There have been many interviews recently with artists such as Shepard Fairey, Dave Kinsey, and others. We will explore their ideas and discuss the extent to which these artists support or contradict the philosophies they espouse.
Posted by Eric on June 9, 2003 11:29 PM
I am writing an SA on hip hop and how it has influenced design from evereyday clothing to graphics;
Could you please suggest any websites that you know of, or any books that are woth reading on this issue.
many thanks
Jay
Lodown puts out some nice books. Also, 12oz Prophet and other magazines like Life Suck Die. Other than graf, there is no precise connection between hip hop and graphic design. Most good designers have a number of influences.
As far as clothing, I don't think you are gonna find specific connections with hip hop. Even Adidas is an overblown connection. I mean, a lot of hip hop people hype certain brands. But a brand is ultimately just a logo. And a bunch of logos makes not a movement.
At least, that's my opinion.
design shouldnt be confined to certain styles. every time it did (Bauhaus, Art Deco, Pop Art, etc.), something came up to defy it. i never knew who said it, but someone somewhere said "for every movement, there is a countermovement". in my opinion, in terms of design, where at a point where we constantly recycle SHIET. old school letters, vintage images, minimalist layouts, simplified type and logos -- aside from the advancements that computers have brought us (vectors and bitmaps), a lot the stuff out right now has been done already, in one way or another. there is no movement. what? in terms of post david-carson-controlled-chaos-style-jocking, there was some anti-corporate stuff? that went on for a while. then came mock-corporate stuff. then came nolstalgia for past corporate stuff. we've past the peak. there is no movement. only culture vultures, taking bits and pieces from things that have already been done. we are now left with experiment new ways to mess with old things. like i said. no movement. sucks, i know. hopefully, i'm proven wrong soon. by the way, "mistakism" is just something that some upper-middle-class white dudes came up with to make themselves feel better about themselves as modern proprietors of some kind of new renaissance. pat yourselves on the back, folks.
deloy...
First of all, I invented Mistakism. And it is not an "upper-middle-class white dudes" thing... it is an UPPER CLASS WHITE DUDE THANG. Get your facts unstraight.
The only reason I ascribe to Mistakism is that no one need tell me how wrong I am about everything. I can just walk into a party with my Mistakism badge on and everybody will know it is pointless to argue with me. I admit that I am wrong about everything.
I don't see why a movement is necessary. There is nothing at stake. In my world, content is King. Personally, my favorite designs are words in straight lines.
Movements generally achieve their goals by obscuring something. Movements are always bossy and impersonal. Movements have leaders. Leaders have personal agendas. Movements based on personal agendas are wack. The Industrial Revolution and all this technology is a product of people's insecurities. The industrial movement seeks to obscure the fact that materialism is a hoax.
Designers love to talk about communication, but how much can you hope to accomplish in an aftform constrained by aesthetics and mathematical ratios? All strong coherent messages found in the design world are still based on words. The art of using words effectively is called "writing", not design.
All graphic design is advertising and/or propaganda. Same thing with music. Same thing with all art. Oh, how about figure skating and surfing competitions? Underneath pseudo objectivity is a fundamentally arbitrary set of standards.
It didn't come out of nowhere, it arose to satisfy a need. It caters to the need, and advertises to attract the needy.
But, yeah, your assessment of the graphic design industry seems pretty accurate.
Dig this dog..TAG-END AND RAG-IN will affect the consiousness of the majority cult as long as the zerooo keep cuming in. And that's around twenty billion this year...it will be slap-in ass all around this world. I am trained in the classical fine arts but since I an't clock-in 11 million a painting, I'm coming home..need all the love i can get! will pay $100. for a book of hip hop fonts....get back to me on this.
This page has been shut down due to some very strange spam activity.
-mgmt
