V&A

in 2012, the victoria and albert musem did an exhibition on post modernism entitled; Postmodernism: Style & Subversion 1970–1990. It explored what they determined to be the cream of the crop of post modern design in a lot of fields but sadly missed out Graphic Design. However reading the exhibition preface it has some useful explanations of the terminology and themes behind the movement.

As a movement it shattered the ideas of the past throwing away the conventional and exaggerated on it. To make it more then just a functional piece of design. It was a piece that actually had style, a statement piece.

Post modernism was often controversial, and sometimes over stepped the line of taste.  Even sometimes being so obvious and so self congratulating that it is visually painful.Being self aware of the design decisions that they are making was used to create a sense of irony. This irony and self congratulation became very unstable as it would get very tiresome.

A theme of a lot of post modern is exaggeration. in size, in colours & done sometimes for parody. Now below you can see Mr David Byrne (of Talking Heads fame(left)) in the famous Stop Making Sense suit. It is seen my many to be a  big piece of post modern design because it is exaggerated in size and may very well of been a parody of the 9 to 5 office workers outfit. Grace Jones' dress on the right is also considered a masterpiece of post modern design; it is big, bright and comedic in it's sheer styling. It ticks all of the boxes and is self aware it is doing all of these things.

 

The ever successful rise of post modernism would lead to its decline. It started as a design revolution mainly over the early 1980's but by the end of the 80s it had become commercialized. It just crippled under the weight of it's own success. It can still be felt in the undertones of current design and it's subsequent trends.