OUGD504 - Studio Brief 1 - Identifying the Art Movements and Design Decisions Related to Rave Artwork

Looking back at designs from the 1980's-1990's, I have found a distinct relationship between much of the cultural artwork at the time related to postmodernism and illegal rave movements. Much of this design has connotations of extremely postmodern composition with much of the lettering being hand written and completely unique. Many of these letterforms and designs were very anti conformist which related to the social and political issues being addressed at the time. Much of this youth culture was about retaliation against the law and rules which directly related across into the artwork designs braking all the rules of modernist design. Elements such as grid systems, legibility, readability, cleanliness and objectivity were all cast aside as these chaotic designs aimed to reject adherence to society.
Identifying these issues within the artwork at the time has made me completely reconsider the production techniques and layout when designing my own page structure and book cover. Even though I would usually jump straight to creating clean and legible page designs for my publication, I am now leaning towards evaluating more postmodern design in order to put my production methods in context with the artwork in that era. If I can gather enough 80's-90's primary source material and content for the pages of my publication, then I will possibly reconsider my whole concept and adapt my idea to showcase more retro rave artwork and typography. I personally feel that this has more of a desirability amongst the public as it holds connotations of nostalgia for much of the British population. It also helps me to narrow down on my target audience in order for me to start to consider production cost and other elements which need to be addressed.