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The central social function of graphic design is to embody identity through visual forms. Design creates a visual personality for institutions, products, audiences, and for designers themselves. Over the past fifteen years, design for corporate identity has come to favor open, flexible languages over rigid systems. Corporate logos and brand images have generated a literacy of the eye, a commercial alphabet of symbols and styles familiar to consumers. Activist groups have used design to publicize specific issues, from feminism to AIDS, while designers working within the subcultures of rave, hip-hop, skateboarding, and snowboarding have evolved visual languages that mix styles and symbols from the mass media and the urban underground. In the 1980s, the design profession--itself a subculture--experienced an identity crisis, as practitioners challenged the profession's authority and looked outside its established walls for aesthetic inspiration and social models.
© Copyright 1996 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum
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