Mutable Canon

The thing about a canon is that there is none. It's everchanging. It's Mutable™️.

Written and compiled by Rocio González Batallánez, Sung Hyun Hwang, Lucy Gengler, Emma Hopchet and Dans Jirgensons during the Shaking The Habitual workshop from the 8th - 11th September, 2020 led by Rosen Eveleigh and Amy Suo Wu at the KABK and Microsoft Teams in Den Haag, The Netherlands. All rights reserved. All of them.

The Design Canon™️ is completely open ended. It's mutable – it is liable to change like a living organism. Anything can influence it.
The fact that "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is totally true. This beauty is mutable, as what is perceived is different for each person or entity. Therefore, anything can be re-categorized infinite times.

Trends are important variables in graphic design.
New ones begin, old ones die. But then come back again...

When technology had started to get really advanced, the global graphic design community mostly disregarded the idea of anything analog. Everything digital had to be better. Now, years later humans are starting to miss real life experiences and feelings — that is also reflected in today's graphic design, where graphic designers are seeking for inspiration in real life situations, especially irregularities (see NYC WALKWAY photo). The use of more analog and 'real' printing techniques has become really popular, such as riso printing and silkscreen printing. The use of film photography instead of digital photography is also extremely noticeable.

TREND 002

FUTURISTIC DESIGN / CYBERPUNK

Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting that tends to focus on a "combination of low-life and high tech" featuring advanced technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cybernetics, juxtaposed with a degree of breakdown or radical change in the social order.

Primary figures in the cyberpunk movement include William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling, Bruce Bethke, Pat Cadigan, Rudy Rucker, and John Shirley. Philip K. Dick (author of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, from which the film Blade Runner was adapted) is also seen by some as prefiguring the movement. Blade Runner can be seen as a quintessential example of the cyberpunk style and theme.

Video games, board games, and tabletop role-playing games, such as Cyberpunk 2020 and Shadowrun, often feature storylines that are heavily influenced by cyberpunk writing and movies. Beginning in the early 1990s, some trends in fashion and music were also labeled as cyberpunk. Cyberpunk is also featured prominently in anime and manga (Japanese cyberpunk), with Akira, Ghost in the Shell and Cowboy Bebop being among the most notable.

TREND 003

DISRUPTIVE DESIGN

Weird typefaces, stretched typefaces, ugly typefaces, illegible typefaces. ‘Disruptive Type’ is the experimental use of typefaces as a core design feature. Some love it. Some hate it.

Disruptive design goes hand in hand with brutalist type of design. Every time someone describes something as “brutalist,” another person will jump in and say “that’s not what brutalism is.” Whatever the exact definition, brutalist designs tend to look purposefully raw and unpolished with harsh colors and non-traditional layouts.