Eric Hu: Form Upon Platform, Platform Upon Form
Immaterial Materiality
"For the sake of establishing a common vocabulary to be used throughout this discussion, a medium is the vague intermediary vessel where it can be either reduced to a surface (e.g. screen) or become a platform (e.g. Instagram) once provided with an additional layer of context. The surface is what actualizes a work of graphic design. A printed poster cannot exist without a physical surface for the work to be displayed, and a website cannot exist without a web browser and server."
- Hu's essay is confusing, and multilayered, however he brings up the relevant point of design viewed on a screen, and working across various platforms, both printed and digital. This is how we design and view design today, and so is this process in itself postmodern? Or post-postmodern? It could mean a new discourse that should be talked about more, and could predict the way contemporary postmodern graphic design is going.
"Content is becoming more mutable, and at the same time, the methods and channels that act as proxies between user and content are becoming more varied and overlapping with each other. Books are viewed on desktops as PDF files, websites contract and expand responsively as they slip through multiple views from laptop to mobile phone. Highly complex infrastructures housing data and information are given ambiguous metaphorical euphemisms such as “the cloud,” that favor accessibility over transparency—when in reality these terms ultimately serve to hinder users from intimately understanding their relationships to these networks. The boundaries between digital and physical manifestations of graphic design are also dissolving."
- We may live in a fast turnover culture where trends dictate how we design, and the the everyday use of technology contributes to this mutual feeling of designing in the slipstream.
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