"Should one not stop considering writing as the eclipse that comes to surprise and obscure the glory of the word."
Jacques Derrida.(1)
This project primarily uses Jacques Derrida’s theory and practice of deconstruction as method through which to analyse typographic design in print magazine texts of the digital age. Deconstruction is commonly situated within the broader theoretical paradigm of poststructuralism, and has considerable application within design culture.
Poststructuralism critiques the structuralist notion that language is a sign system comprised of a stable balance between the signifier (referent, the visual or audible representational trace of the sign) and the signified (concept, the meaning invoked by the sign).(2) Poststructuralism considers signs to have multiple and ever changing meanings, thus the nature of the signifier takes prominence over the signified.(3) The diverse forms typography can take in the process of digital-electronic production brings it into a signifying play that cannot escape multiple and shifting interpretations. A poststructuralist examination of typography would thus concern itself with revealing such multiple levels of meaning within the visual trace of the typographic sign and the interaction between typographic signifiers and other signifiers such as image, colour and even sound. A poststructuralist attitude towards typographic design has been noted as one that encompasses questioning, parody, quotation and pastiche.(4)
Mark Poster argues that poststructuralism’s interpretive strategy must be appreciated in the context of an emerging and constantly changing social world.(5) Poster describes the emerging social world as consisting of copies with no originals, an unending proliferation of images, and the immediacy and co-presence of electronically mediated symbolic interactions.(6) Poster’s reflections on the late twentieth century are characteristics fostered by digital-electronic technologies. Fredric Jameson argues that the state of contemporary culture is one of pastiche and parody, with the breakdown of meaning from the once fixed signifier and signified (referent and concept), to the stage that "meaning is now generated by the movement from signifier to signifier."(7) Poststructuralist strategies thus take precedence as a methodology for a critical debate on contemporary typographic practice since its understanding of language and meaning reflect the wider socio-cultural changes being influenced by digital-electronic technologies.
It is important here to clarify what is meant by the notion of the ‘text’. Generally a ‘text’ is anything that contains signs and produces meaning. Derrida’s understanding of the text is not content enclosed within the margins of a book, but a fabric of traces that refer endlessly to other differential traces.(8) Roland Barthes, in his later poststructurally influenced work, identifies the "the text without a father-author, of a text that is everywhere and yet nowhere fully present."(9) Ellen Lupton argues that magazines are in fact the commercial precedent for the postmodern text, as they encompass the fragmentation, spurious visual effects and mixed speech that literary critics describe as the features of postmodern texts.(10) For this project, the print magazine, the magazine page and typography in print or digital-electronic manifestations are all texts.
Deconstruction has developed as an important tool for textual analysis across differing disciplines. Walter Ong even goes as far as suggesting that deconstruction is tied to typography, rather than merely writing as its advocates often assume.(11) Deconstruction was developed by Derrida in his text Of Grammatology to question traditional Western logocentrism through deep, fine-grained readings of texts, concepts and practices in a manner that rejects traditional binary and hierarchical constructions. This project primarily draws on Of Grammatology as a background from which to formulate a deconstructive approach to interpreting contemporary magazine typographic practice.
Derrida argues that if "one already suspects writing as ‘image,’ an exterior ‘figuration,’ this ‘representation’ is not innocent. The outside bears with the inside a relationship that is, as usual, anything but simple exteriority."(12) Thus Derrida can be seen as an early advocate in the contemporary revival of the argument that rejects the proposition that form is removed from content to instead argue that form both carries and colours content. William Gibson also identifies typography to be a potent interface for the word. Gibson explains that this interface’s design:
"… has tended, for the past two centuries, to evolve toward transparency, the optimal interface being viewed as one which the reader is least conscious of. To accept this too literally is to rule out designs which allow our awareness of the interface to constitute a major and ongoing aspect of textual pleasure."(13)
The deconstruction of magazine typographic use in chapter 3 will reveal that typography is not transparent by exposing the meanings embedded in a variety of typographic signifiers.
Deconstruction thus has a clearly critical and political dimension, as it is a critique of the cultural systems that produce and underwrite texts. Derrida writes, "deconstruction, as I have often had to insist, is not a discursive or theoretical affair, but a practico-political one."(14) Lupton & Miller, describe Derridean deconstruction as, "a mode of questioning through and about the technologies, formal devices, social institutions and central metaphors of representation."(15) Through design a magazine’s owners and producers appropriate the social, cultural and political ideologies of their audience to attract a readership. However, magazine producers can also construct visualisations of their own institutional and political attitudes to enculturate the audience into a particular way of thinking that is aligned with the institution of the magazine. Ray Gun is a prominent example of the dialectic interplay between manipulating typographic signifiers to visualise the ideologies of the audience and the magazine’s producers and owners.(16) Magazine typographic design is always inhabited by shifting traces of meaning to, from, and between its producers, owners and audience. Therefore through deconstruction, itself a process deeply informed by a practical, political agenda, socio-political and institutional ideologies can be exposed from deep within the layers of texts.
In deconstructing contemporary magazine typographic practice, several key concepts will be utilised. These include the notions: ‘presence’, ‘absence’, the ‘trace’ and ‘intertextuality’.
‘Presence’ and ‘absence’ are generally used in conjunction with each other as they represent a common binary divide in the philosophical constructions of Western culture. Deconstruction however, does not privilege presence over absence on the basis that it is the first term of the binary coupling. Rather, this binary is deconstructed to show that what is absent in a text can be a defining feature of the text, and what is present would not be so, unless for such absences. Within typographic texts, an example of the play of presence and absence can be illustrated through spacing. Derrida writes, "spacing cuts, drops, and causes to drop within the unconscious … This signification is formed only within the hollow of difference: … of the diversion and the reverse of what does not appear."(17) He has further argued that "spacing is not the simple negativity of a lack, but the emergence of the mark."(18) The process of deconstruction thus emphasises that the meaning of a sign can never be found in its full being, by looking at what is physically represented. Sarup draws on the deconstructive perspective to propose that meaning is never fully present in any one sign alone, but dispersed along a chain of signifiers which make meaning from the "constant flickering of presence and absence together."(19) Therefore the boundary between presence and absence, and indeed meaning itself, is fluid in a deconstructionist interpretation.
The understanding that a text is a complex system of traces is closely related to the play of presence and absence. Spivak writes "the structure of the sign is determined by the trace or track, of that other which is forever absent … Derrida’s trace is the mark of the absence of a presence, an always already present."(20) An example of a trace in a typographic context is the use of a typeface reminiscent of the imprint left by a traditional analog typewriter, but produced by a digital typeform.(21) The imprint of the digital typographic form is a trace to the authentic manual typewriter and its texts, an absence traced from the presence of the digital typographic signifier. The notion of the trace can be simply expressed as the point where one sign leads to another sign and so on indefinitely.
The endless nature of the trace is not problematic for deconstruction as it resists the closure of meaning and subsequently opens up the process of continual questioning. Derrida’s concept ‘sous rature’, translated as ‘under erasure’ is a practical consideration that is used to determine the traces of the signifier, through its flickering play of presence and absence. Spivak explains, "the sign must be studied, ‘under erasure,’ always already inhabited by the trace of another sign which never appears as such."(22) Bennington writes that, "presence is made possible by the trace, which makes pure presence impossible."(23) By putting a sign ‘under erasure,’ the deconstructionist puts it into constant questioning, recognising that there is always a trace to an absent sign that allows the present sign its meaning and the future sign a more open possibility.
Intertextuality is the idea that a text is comprised of references to other texts, as well as simply traces to other signs. Julia Kristeva is noted as having coined the term ‘intertextuality’ in the 1960s, although the premise of intertextuality has a much deeper historical presence.(24) The notion ‘intertextuality’ acknowledges that texts are not closed systems, as both the writers and readers of texts have previously experienced texts that will in turn cross-fertilise their interpretation of new texts.(25) WIRED magazine makes extensive use of intertextual practices. The alluring pixelation of computer and television screen texts are often found in the printed version of WIRED.(26) This could illustrate either a trace to the digital-electronic screen or an intertextual reference to a specific computer or television text. Typographies themselves can also contain intertextual references. The typeface’s Thought Police Regular" and "Thought Police Unarmed, are intertextual references to the magnetised bar codes of consumer society in the late twentieth century.(27) These typographies also reveal traces of meaning to the political and economic surveillance of society, a process that underpins every bar-coded text.
Closure is not particularly a goal or result of the deconstructive process. Spivak writes, "by inaugurating the open-ended indefiniteness of textuality … a further deconstruction deconstructs deconstruction."(28) The deconstructionist’s text can itself be deconstructed in a manner that represents the continually evolving and fragmenting patterns, like those produced by a Mandelbrot Set.(29)
Caputo notes that Derrida conceptually argues the ‘letter’ of writing itself to be resistant to closing a question down. Caputo writes, "the letter, by its very structure, is repeatable, disseminative, public, uncontainable, unfettered to any fixed meaning, definition, destination or context."(30) This analysis is most fully realised when considered in the context of the digital age where one letter can be easily represented in many different typographic styles which each having its own meaning inflection. Thus the digital letter releases multiple and unlimited traces to meanings and interpretations that resist closure and subjectivise the process of typographic meaning making.
Deconstruction has been taken up within design culture both as a design method and critical questioning technique since the 1980s. Lupton & Miller explain that deconstructive ideologies surfaced in relation to design to describe and analyse "chopped up, layered and fragmented forms often imbued with ambiguous futuristic overtones."(31) In the mid-1990s, deconstruction was used casually to label design work that favoured complexity over simplicity and dramatised digital production techniques. Darren Tofts says that Ray Gun’s typographic design reveals a, "fascination with letters, their shape, sculptural malleability and overall arrangement in typographic space," an idea that is also shared by McLuhan and Derrida.(32) McLuhan and Fiore’s The Medium the Massage, An Inventory of Effects (1967) and Derrida’s Glas (1990) play with typographic design to enhance, manipulate and create plays on meaning.(33)
Deconstructive theory has most notably infiltrated design culture through the American design schools, Cranbrook Academy of Art and CalArts (California Institute of the Arts). Darren Tofts describes the works of these institutions as representing a deconstructive urge to simulate the "MTV-quick-cut-barraged-by-information-all-at-the-same-time-society."(34) This notion describes the visual and perceptual orientations of contemporary society, which is continually bombarded with media texts and signifiers at an ever-increasing rate. Mark Poster argues that deconstruction anticipates the changes bought about by computer writing through its rejection of fixity, meaning, and the position of the author.(35) Deconstructionist design and typography is thus intimately bound up with the layering capabilities of the computer.
The nature of David Carson’s typographic work suggests that he partakes in the theoretical engagements of deconstruction, however Carson does not label himself a ‘deconstructionist’. Blackwell says that although Carson has come to be seen as the "dean of deconstruction art direction," he would not accept such a title.(36) The rejection of classification or labeling however, can itself be an identifiably deconstructionist stance. John Griffiths puts forward the idea that "artists labeled ‘Deconstructionist’ are merely so because they conjoin fashionable forms provoking and sifting dangerous dreams."(37) David Carson’s work provokes and sifts "dangerous dreams" in that it identifiably attacks, questions and parodies tradition in a manner that destabilises the representation of the word. Neville Brody has also been considered as a ‘deconstructionist’ for his ‘cutting-edge’ style of typographic design for The Face magazine in the 1980s.(38)
Typographic design that is referred to as ‘cutting edge’ is also known interchangeably as ‘Postmodern’ and ‘Deconstructive’ typography. Such typographic practice is usually comprised of complex layered designs that draw strongly on theories developed in the work of Derrida and others of a similar ilk as has been described earlier. Steven Heller describes this typographic movement and its style in more detail. He writes:
"Wed to certain avant-garde linguistic theories and influenced by mass media, "decon" or "PM" typography was not only concerned with busting Modern strictures, but developing codes that would "resonate" with various audiences by drawing them in through multiple levels of visual/verbal data, not unlike computer/video games that push the player through increasingly complex levels of stimuli."(39)
Heller writes in the past tense of the deconstructionist movement in typography, however in his larger argument he does not indicate whether it has been superseded by another design orientation. However, it is evident that the abrasive deconstructionist typography of the mid-1980s to mid-1990s is in a notable recess at the close of the twentieth century. The redesign of Ray Gun this year marks the final phase of its gradual move back to ‘tradition’ since David Carson’s parting in 1996.(40) It seems then that deconstructive typography has been subsumed by our capitalist-consumer culture that has tired with and exhausted the ‘newness’ of the deconstructive style, and has temporarily moved back to a conservative or more traditional design style until something more appealing or ‘cutting edge’ comes along.
Deconstruction can be traced far beyond its most exemplary manifestations in graphic design of the 1980s and 1990s, and even far beyond the work of Jacques Derrida. The artists and works of Cubism, Dada and Surrealism can be seen as active forebearers to the contemporary deconstructive movement as they also critiqued and exposed the foundations of traditional Western philosophy through representation.(41) However, the intensity of the deconstructive tendencies of these art movements became weaker once consumed by mainstream capitalist culture, in the guise of the art gallery. Felski, discussing Dada and Surrealism, says that they:
"… seek to break down barriers which surround the work of art as a hallowed cultural object … rather than dismantling the category of the aesthetic, the works of the avant-garde themselves become exhibits in the museum, assimilated into the infinitely flexible ‘institution art’."(42)
Avant-garde artists and their works are appropriated into the mainstream as cultural tastes tend towards ‘new’ practices of representation. David Carson and Neville Brody’s typographic work, like the works of the early twentieth century art movements noted above, have been institutionalised into the mainstream with the aid of their catalog of multinational advertising portfolios which has weakened the ‘avant-gardness’ and ‘cutting edge’ nature of their design practices.(43)
The representational practices of design and typographic culture are inextricably underpinned by political, economic, socio-cultural and technological factors. However, in the wider society there is a significant absence in the recognition that such ideologies and agendas are embedded in the visual representation of typographies. This project uses the methodological strategies of deconstruction to trace and expose the deep meanings and functions of typographic practice and the nature of the digital age itself. The deconstructive analyses within this project do not attempt to propose a conclusion that closes this research down, but rather to open up a path where further analysis and continued questioning can take place. Chapter 1 begins the practical engagement with deconstructionist interpretative methods through an examination of the notions ‘analog’ and ‘digital’.
FOOTNOTES
2) For a structuralist understanding of language as a sign system see F.de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics, eds. C.Bally & A.Sechehaye, trans. and annotated by R.Harris, Open Court, La Salle, 1986.
3) M.Sarup, An Introductory Guide to Post-structuralism and Postmodernism, Harvester Wheatsheaf, New York, 1988, p.3.
4) E.Lupton & J.A.Miller, Design, Writing, Research, Writing on Graphic Design, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1996, p.61.
5) M.Poster, Critical Theory and Poststructuralism, In Search Of A Context, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1989, p.5.
6) Poster, 1989, p.9.
7) F.Jameson, Postmodernism, Or The Cultural Logic of Late Capatilism, Duke University Press, Durham, 1991, p.16-17 and 26.
8) R.Young, ed. Untying The Text, A Poststructuralist Reader, Kegan & Paul, London, 1981, p.28.
9) R.Barthes, ‘From Work to Text,’ in J.V.Harari, ed. Textual Strategies, Perspectives in Poststructural Criticism, Methuen & Co., London, 1980, pps.73-81.
10) E.Lupton, Mixing Messages, Graphic Design in Contemporary Culture, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1996, p.127.
11) W.J.Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologising of the Word, Routledge, London, 1988, p.129. Walter Ong makes this point after a discussion of ‘concrete poetry,’ which is a visual form of poetry that manipulates typographic words, letters and space with the interaction of sounded, oral words.
12) Derrida, 1976, p.35.
13) William Gibson, ‘Foreword,’ in D.Kuipers & C.Ashworth, eds. Ray Gun, Out of Control, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1997, unpaginated.
14) J.Derrida, The Post Card, From Socrates to Freud and Beyond, trans. Alan Bass, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1987, p.508.
15) Lupton & Miller, 1996, p.3.
16) Ray Gun’s ‘Brian Ferry’ spread in Chapter 3 actively reveals this dynamic dialectical relationship between the audience, producers and owners.
17) Derrida, 1976, p.69.
18) J.Derrida, ‘Signature, Event Context,’ in J.Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, trans. with additional notes by Alan Bass, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1982, p.317.
19) Sarup, 1988, p.35.
20) G.C.Spivak, ‘Translator’s Preface,’ in J.Derrida, Of Grammatology, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1976, p.xvii.
21) See Rolling Stone’s Hunter S. Thompson spread in Chapter 3 for a further deconstruction of the presence and absence of typewriter typography in the digital environment.
22) Spivak, ‘Translator’s Preface,’ in Derrida, 1976, p.xxxix.
23) G.Bennington, ‘Deconstruction Is Not What You Think,’ in The New Modernism, Deconstructionist Tendencies in Art, ed. A.C.Papadakis, Academy Group Ltd, London, 1988, p.6.
24) See Julia Kristeva’s essay, ‘Word, Dialogue and Novel,’ in J.Kristeva, The Desire in Language, A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1980.
25) M.Worton & J.Still, eds. Intertextuality, Theories and Practices, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1990, pps.1 - 2.
26) WIRED began as a printed publication in 1993 but since then it has developed its own digital version on the Internet @ http://www.wired.com.
27) The typefaces cited here are, ‘Though Police Regular’ and ‘Though Police Unarmed’.
28) Spivak, ‘Translator’s Preface,’ in Derrida, 1976, p.lxxvii.
29) Leaving aside the mathematics of fractal geometry, the Mandelbrot Set is a good way to describe the way in which the deconstructive reading of texts takes form, as an increasingly complex and deepening of fragmentation that can go on working infinitely. See B.Mandelbrot, The Fractal Geometry of Nature, W.H.Freeman & Company, New York, 1983.
30) J.D.Caputo, ed. Deconstruction In A Nutshell, A Conversation With Jacques Derrida, Fordham University Press, New York, 1997, p.59.
31) Lupton & Miller, 1996, p.3.
32) D.Tofts & M.McKeigh, Memory Trade, A Prehistory of Cyberculture, Interface Books, Sydney, 1997, p.38.
33) See J.Derrida, Glas, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1986 and M.McLuhan & Q.Fiore, The Medium is the Massage, An Inventory of Effects, Bantam Books, New York, 1967.
34) Tofts & McKeigh, 1997, p.38.
35) M.Poster, The Second Media Age, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1995, p.70-71.
36) L.Blackwell, The End of Print, The Graphic Design of David Carson. Laurence King Publishing, London, 1995, unpaginated.
37) J.Griffiths, ‘Deconstruction Deconstructed,’ in The New Modernism, Deconstructionist Tendencies in Art, ed. A.C.Papadakis, Academy Group Ltd, London, 1988, p.18.
38) R.Poynor, ‘Alternative By Design?’ in D.Kuipers & C.Ashworth, eds. Ray Gun, Out of Control, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1997, p.231.
39) S.Heller & G.Anderson, Typeplay, Nippan Shuppan Hanbai, Dusseldorf, 1994, p.12.
40) See Ray Gun inclusive of and after Issue 66, April 1999 for the latest design change towards traditional formalism.
41) Rene Magritte’s Surrealist work critiqued traditional perceptions of forms and space; Salvador Dali’s work likewise proposed reconfigurations of time, space and memory; and Marcel Duchamp’s Dadaist work deconstructed the traditional placements of high art and mass art through producing ‘high art’ pieces that made use of trash and ordinary items.
42) R.Felski, ‘Feminism, Realism and the Avant-Garde’ in A.Milner, P.Thompson & C.Worth, eds. Postmodern Conditions, Berg Publishers, New York, 1990, p.67.
43) David Carson’s advertising catalogs consist of; Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Sega, Levi’s, American Express, Hallmark Corporation, Burton Snowboards, Citibank and Nike. Neville Brody’s movement from The Face about ten years before Carson’s explosion from ‘avant-garde’ to ‘mainstream’ consists of major advertising campaigns for Nike. See Blackwell, 1995 and L.Blackwell, David Carson, 2nd Sight, Graphik Design After the End of Print. Laurence King Publishing, London, 1997 for Carson’s movements into advertising, and J.Wozencroft, The Graphic Language of Neville Brody 2, Thames & Hudson, London, 1994, for Brody’s advertising work.
