The design program there was jointly headed by graphic designer Katherine McCoy and product designer Michael McCoy from 1971 through 1995. Although the McCoys began their work at Cranbrook as committed modernists, by the mid-1970s they had joined the rebellion against rational problem-solving in favor of expressive formalism. In the 1980s Katherine McCoy and her students developed a model of "typography as discourse." They argued that by layering and juxtaposing words and pictures, designers construct compositions that demand to be interpreted on their own terms, beyond their objective content. Influenced by post-structuralist literary theory, McCoy rejected the traditional distinction between reading and seeing, arguing that designers should actively mix these categories of experience: a picture can be read, while written words can be objects of vision. Weingart, a frequent lecturer at Cranbrook during the 1970s and 1980s, helped infuse the program with the expressionism of the new typography. To Weingart's minimalist language the McCoys added ideas from the architectural theory of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. These architects had legitimized the "commercial vernacular" of suburban shopping districts as an indigenous expression of American culture. McCoy encouraged her students to mix the austere vocabulary of modernism with elements from mainstream media. Around 1984 the Dutch designer Gert Dumbar brought another revision of European modernism to Cranbrook. Studio Dumbar complicated the Swiss vocabulary with references to classical typography and Baroque painting, using dramatically staged still-life photographs as a ground for finely wrought typographic compositions. Trips to the Netherlands by young American designers began replacing journeys to Switzerland, while Dumbar and other Dutch designers lectured across the United States. [back] © Copyright 1996 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum

Typography as Discourse Poster, 1989, offset lithograph Designer: Allen Hori (b. 1960) Publisher: Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan Collection Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Gift of Katherine McCoy Typography as Discourse Poster, 1991, offset lithograph Designers: Andrew Blauvelt (b. 1964), James Sholly (b. 1965), and Laura Lacy-Sholly (b. 1965) Publisher: Art Director's Club of Indiana, Indianapolis Collection Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Gift of Andrew Blauvelt De Nieuwe: An Exhibition of Recent Graphic Design from the Netherlands Poster, 1987, offset lithograph Designer: Lucille Tenazas (b. 1953) Publisher: American Institute of Graphic Arts, San Francisco Chapter Collection Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Gift of the designer