cartoon moderne

Its just a phase. But it will never totally go away…

by Art Chantry (art@artchantry.com):

Every graphic designer I know goes through a ‘game box’ phase. specifically, there comes a point in every young designer’s development when they trip across an old board game package of their childhood and flip out. I’ve seen this happen many times (TOO many times). it’s always a turning point for them in their careers, too.

AC:then there's all that atomic stuff done for the nuclear industry and the defense business back in the 50's, too. lots and lots of territory to explore in this style. good stuff everywhere you look. how it all fits together is still being worked out. people have defined sections, but can't seem to fit the whole together yet.

There’s something about the odd period style of most of these boxes that really grabs us. of course, there’s all those tv show tie-in board games like ‘gilligan’s island’ or ‘mr. ed’ board games (the monkees, man from uncle, the munsters, batman, etc.) that can grab that ‘retro’ nostalgia hook in just about all of us. but, there it’s also a peppy early 60′s graphic style that is at play here. it’s a cheerful, upbeat, innocent, optimistic language of image, shape and form and color that really speaks to a lost future we once all dreamed about. you know the one – the future where we all had little jet cars that flew to work in and robot maids named rosie?

This style is still developing a name, even though it’s 50 years old. it’s a sort of future nostalgia style often referred to as ‘cartoon moderne’ or ‘atomic postmodern’ or ‘googie’ or even just plain ‘jetson’s”. so far the label that has stuck to it the best is ‘cartoon moderne’. it just seems to fit. there have been books written about this, but like I said, it’s still being pinned down by the academics. eventually, they’ll write a huge treatise on what it all means and we’ll all buy into whatever they say as gospel. that’s how we do it – we let those nerds in the ivory towers explain us to us (like we don’t know already.)


But, for now, we all see this stuff and absolutely LOVE it. nobody hates cartoon moderne. it’s like hating puppies and kittens or hating candy. you can’t do it.

So, when some graphic designer pal of yours suddenly one day completely shifts his style to look exactly copycatting cartoon moderne – don’t get freaked. it’s just a phase. granted, it’s a phase that will never totally go away. that young designer will learn a great deal about how graphic design actually works when they go through this period in their development. It’s like early childhood all over again.

It’s where they get to re-learn the utter pleasure and sheer joy of this weird visual language we work with. after getting all that fun beaten out of them in their academic training boot camp called ‘design school’, this is the stye of the future past that reminds of why they got i


this stuff in the first place.

like martha stewart sez: “it’s a GOOD thing.”

——————————————————–
From Henry Jenkins website (http://www.henryjenkins.org/)

The ACAFAN.  On a cultural level, there’s the sense that “academic”  connotes consideration, rigor, thoughtful. And “fan” connotes passion, ” all in”, excitement. the battle between the street and the school, between high culture and low-fi. Will it ever get resolved? It’s all arguments about consumption, status and invidious comparisons anyway…

Drew: This gets to the heart of it for me, I think acafan includes a more self-reflex look at what you’re doing. Like Nick notes (in referencing Derrida) it could collapse into a mess of relativity where everything is cool (which isn’t cool). And then you have the other end of the spectrum which is elitists who dictate canon

Corvus: Right. I didn’t mention him by name, but I hope it was clear that I was talking about Ebert in my opening statement in regards to the elevation of subjective taste as objective assessment. I think he really helped establish this as a school of criticism, while the other movie critics at the time he began his career weren’t so blatant about it.

Nick: He’s by no means alone in doing that. But to return to sports for a second, I think that sports is the border case that’s telling. If I’m a serious fan of baseball, and I love the Mets, I can objectively say that the Mets suck this year, for reasons objective to sports, and still love the Mets. So, is the educated sports fan the ideal acafan?

Drew: I like this tact, and even thinking beyond sports (in how to be critical (and still feel the love) this is where aesthetics (in a classic sense) come into play for me. It’s how I work through my impressions and ideas to articulate my “judgment” of an experience. For example, take a movie like, The 5th element. Referencing Arnold Isenberg, to make an aesthetic judgment, you make a verdict, give a reason and cite a norm. So, to make a verdict (aesthetically) is to look at the movie in terms of the expression of its form and function. And the reason would be a detailed articulation of the experience how that related to the verdict. And finally, citing a norm would be placing it in the spectrum of movies in general or in specific (e.g. it’s a scifi action flick). Thinking this through helps me then make the claim that I appreciated The 5th Element (even though it had a rather rote plot) because of it’s art direction, set design and sense of fashion. (or something like that).

Nick: That makes sense as a methodology, but it sounds a lot (no offense) like elitist fandom.

Drew: Well what’s problematic (for me at least) is how negative the concept of “elite” has become. You “earn” an expertise by being well read (or well played even).

Nick: Oh, I agree 100% about that. I’m not ashamed at all about being snobby about good work. Why should I like crap?

Corvus: Well when you combine these two loaded pejorative terms (elitist fanatic) do they cancel each other out?

Nick: No, they resonate into something even more powerful.

Corvus: I’m going to immediately change my self-descriptor on all my social networks. But seriously, those are both the problematic ends of a spectrum of consumption, right? So to embrace both ends is to stretch yourself to cover the entire spectrum, and that has to be a good thing. For example, “I only eat the best” and “I only eat this one thing.”

Drew: From sports to food, talk about some great territory for this discussion. “Let me tell you about the best place to get a burger in the world,” can start a heated deep conversation.

Nick: I think where we’ve been evolving is to say this – Academic thinking has some claim to an objective standard. Or at least an intersubjective standard that’s formed from rigorous exposure to a history of a medium. And fandom is support for a particular entrant in the medium. And to your earlier point Corvus, that is different from the enthusiast, who just likes the medium. If the above definitions apply, there is nothing mutually exclusive between fandom and academic approaches to work. And you can certainly be fanatic about that. Only eat whole-grains or non-pasteurized cheese. Only read Martin when you read fantasy. Only play RTS by Blizzard….

Read More:http://www.henryjenkins.org/

Related Posts

This entry was posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Marketing/Advertising/Media, Modern Arts/Craft and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>