OUGD501 Context Of Practice / Research / The Pretty Ugly

'For hundreds of years new artistic styles have been established through aesthetic upheaval—as the initial repugnance for now seminal works by those such as Picasso or Stravinsky demonstrate. But while art was allowed to be ugly, design had to function. Trends in graphic design and visual communication were, until very recently, all variations on what was generally considered to be appealing. It is only in the last few years that those working in applied creative disciplines started to rebel.


Against this background, Pretty Ugly is a diverse collection of recent aesthetic, methodological, and conceptual rampages by the trailblazers of tomorrow’s design. The variety of examples range from graphic design and visual communication to product design, furniture design, art, and photography. The unusual or negatively perceived forms, colors, and perspectives shown here may still be considered by some to be ugly, but they are already influencing the creative vanguard of the future.'

Examples of work that embrace technology, the above uses the tool (scanner) to dictate form.
A practice common without Contemporary Graphic Design.

Layers of typography are evident.
Away with Modernist principles of white space, gradients are common -
also down to the new ease of applying them introduced with digital print.

Appropriation is incredibly popular in Graphic Design.
Comments are made by the use of such appropriation.

Collage takes it place next to appropriation in Contemporary image making.

Photography has become more evident in design with its development and the introduction of the digital file.
Files can printed without the use of a darkroom; opening the medium to the world.

A fine example of curated works that represent the Contemporary.

The Pretty Ugly

Stretched type, day-glo colours and a flagrant disregard for the rules: are we witnessing a knee-jerk reaction to the slick sameness of so much design or a genuine cultural shift? - by Patrick Burgoyne, 30 August 2007

it may not be a pretty sight

Meiré:

“Yes, I did deliberately set out to break rules with this and yes, it is a provocation – but in the first place to myself! If every magazine or every building or every brand or everybody tries to look appealing by using the same idea of being modern, it becomes interesting to go in the opposite direction, because life has different kinds of beauty to present. If people feel confused by it, it is because we are all so used to this kind of efficient, streamlined, correctness.”

“There are so many magazines out there which pretend to be cool, sophisticated or even culturally relevant. They all look the same,”

Slocombe:

“At Sleaze, Scott wanted to do it in a book-ish style, but this new generation doesn’t read books so that’s not a relevant reference for them. This is the ADD generation. You have just one chance, one shot. Every time they open the magazine they have to get it.

Like nothing and everything you have ever seen before.

TwoTimesElliot:

The Pretty Ugly doesn’t really fight against anything or anyone anymore. It is a new kind of beauty that isn’t based upon pure visual pleasure, it is a beauty based upon context-driven design, being transparent with working methods, tools and materials.

The Pretty Ugly is a movement against the established criteria of what 'good design' is, in order to regain the attention of the audience and explore new territory.

This is a highly educated generation of designers using their knowledge to break with what they were given as rules. They use intuition as much as intellect in order to enter new territory that is beyond so called 'professionalism'.

Pretty Ugly is about doing things with the possibilities you are given. It is about making experiments, producing and distributing them yourself and not about waiting for a client to call you. That this may result in a newly felt responsibility for our actions as designers and citizens is, I admit, a hope we have.

Maybe the definition of what design used to be is experiencing a crisis and design education has to adapt to the new situation where, as we have said, the designer is becoming a co-author of the message.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.