Post-Nostalgia
Nika Simovich
All graphic design looks familiar. I do not mean to say that all graphic design is bad, but I do mean to say that I feel like any piece of contemporary design can be linked to a predecessor from the 20th century or before. In today’s society, we have reached a crossroads. We are at the culmination of a digital revolution, and rather than creating a definitive visual language, we are clinging to the past and delineating ourselves with recycled fashions and imagery. It is a school of thought to believe that everything that exists exists on top of something before it. While this may be true, designers should not actively contribute to it. Design is banking on the familiarity of the past to denote a warm feeling towards present design. While this is effective, it fails to fulfi ll the other responsibilities of the designer. Additionally, nostalgic design prevents the designer from creating new ideas, and ignores present-day issues. Design marks the current state in time, and without creating new ideas and themes, we are ignoring today and not contributing to the history of the world. We cannot build a future if we are not accepting the present. While we can figure out post eras, we have nothing to represent our own time. Even though it might be impossible to completely stop referencing the past, I believe it is possible to stop relying on recycled trends and equally important to try. A revolution needs to occur, and this revolution is Post-Nostalgia.