Deconstruction in Graphic Design is an approach to thinking. Outlining the difference between text and typography. It reveals the mecognism of how you read, challenging the fact that the alphabet had extra functions that are seen and not heard affecting how we interpret text. This was first throughout in the 1960’s by French philosopher Jacques Derrida.
At the beginning of the human race writing became one of the key ways of documenting life. We evolved into humans that created a whole alphabet able to share our experiences and keep our thoughts forever captured. Writing by hand meant that our thoughts where represented in style of hand writing, the fluid motion, emotion felt in stroke length, the speed of writing, etc all effecting how the audience interacts with the text. Every piece of writing was a complete original.
Then came the dawn of the technological irea. Writing began to be typed and printing in a standard format, fonts were created to suite different moods of text. Deconstruction explains the writing is always secondary to speech, somehow managing to become a copy of speech, a dead document of its intention; it began to deconstruct the relationship.
Deconstruction became about the whole idea of speech Vs writing. The natural flow of originality in speech and handwriting became artificial and a copy of its former self when documented using type. The computer was used as a tool and even if unintentional it effects how the text is read. Infact deconstruction shows us that reading is not neutral; it becomes a fight of power, between the will of the writer and their intentions and the atheistic of the text documented on a page.
A simple fact such as Spacing, tracing or kerning, can affect the whole idea of the text being read. “Tryreadingalineoftextwithoutspacingtoseehowimportantithasbecome.”
A perfect example of how the designer owns the text and idea, therefore creating the valid argument that text is never truly representing the idea.
“Although many books define the purpose of typography as enhancing the readability of the written word, one of design’s most humane function is, in actuality, to help readers avoid reading.”
Designers can influence the writing and often in deconstruction they own the attention, making the atheistic more important than the content.
In other words the reader stops reading, they skim to the ‘important’ information, which shows that the Graphic Designer adds a voice highlighting which information is most important. People became aware of the structure of type and how the possibilities of reading are endless. It gives anybody the power to create your own meaning of the text. The designer became present and very ‘in your face’ creating a new style. This poses the question that in some ways the designer is more important than the author or readers voice.
Deconstruction constantly forces the audience to think about what you wouldn’t expect, often revealing hidden meaning, now the text can have double meanings in a new sense. The text could mean one thing and read in another way; by it’s construction on the page. Through creating abnormal type, that breaks all of the boundaries mostly leading to illegible text, it makes the audience question what is normal? And challenges their ideas about reading, it’s design and layout.
Later on towards the 1990’s Barthes theory of the ‘death of the author’ backed up the idea that the content changes with the change of layout used in typography, the meaning can be completely distorted and different emotions can be voiced. “Typography becomes a mode of interpretation”. Typography then became a battle with every shape and from interfering with the author’s original idea. A struggle is apparent where the question is raised that the how the texts are used becomes more important that what they mean. The audience trusts the layout more, skipping though parts that are ‘lesser’ than others the decision made by the graphic designer.
‘We may play the text, but it is also playing us’.
The expansion of the internet added to the realm of deconstruction, suggesting that the power is now in the readers hands, the generation of skim reading, finding scanning all involving as little time as possible using the attitude ‘I want it now’ commands authority. We now have the power.
http://www.webdesignstuff.co.uk/hp005/2011/01/26/deconstruction-and-web-page-design/
Jeffery Keedy. Emigre Magazine. 1992.
http://www.upvery.com/39713-in-deconstruction-the-words.html
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