The year is 1980. Some Mormons are having a genealogy event called The World Conference on Records in Salt Lake City (where else?). One woman is about to change the world. Marielen Christensen is here to display her 3-ring binder albums full of fun, colorful layouts of family photos. She went on to open the first scrapbooking store and that business just exploded. She was the Kim K. of scrapbooking. Stores across the country. Magazines. Catalogues. Girls just wanna scrapbook. Marielen Christensen is an inspiration.
You've likely seen Barbara Kruger's work. Found black and white photography with big bold red-and-white copy across it. The palette Her work interestingly asks the viewer to consider their relationship to consumerism, feminisim, classicism, and other fun topics. One of her most famous pieces proclaims "I shop therefore I am". It was her background in graphic design that gave her the ability to make text so impactful. She was actually into the femmage scene of the 1970s before she really got into her niche.
But actually in 2017, she responded to a lawsuit where a popular skatewear brand called Supreme was accusing another brand of imitating their brand. Red background with white text. Which is already so obviously directly stolen from Kruger's work anyway. So Kruger did a pop-up shop in SoHo skatepark to flex on Supreme. A magazine asked her to comment on the whole thing and Kruger just sent them a Microsoft Word document titled “fools.doc”. The attachment read: “What a ridiculous clusterfuck of totally uncool jokers. I make my work about this kind of sadly foolish farce. I’m waiting for all of them to sue me for copyright infringement.”
Ok so April Greiman is the reason im still doing graphic design ok? So in 1984, Apple releases the Macintosh personal computer. And all the whiny baby designers were like "Ugh, we cant use this for design! Everything gets all pixelated and weird :(" But April Greiman was like y'all can get rekt. So she used the Macintosh MacDraw program to design a 2’x6’ poster for Design Quarterly. This one poster took multiple floppy disks to store all the data. As you can see above, the poster, called "Does it Make Sense?" depicts her own naked body surrounded by images and text. She also ended up not liking the way one of her bosoms looked so she duplicated and flipped her other bosom. Who needs Photoshop when you have 1984 MacDraw? So with that, April Greiman basically invented digital graphic design. Yes, a freaking queen.
Zines are short magazines that are self-published with few copies made. They are believed to have been around since the 1930s, but gained popularity with the accessibility of photocopying machines. Much like mainstream magazines before computers were available, type and imagery were laid out IRL. In the 80s, Letraset made DIY typography easier than ever with sheets of transferable letters. Zine-makers used this new technology to create interesting layouts. The customability of Letraset matched the aesthetic of the punk scene. And zines were a huge part of being punk. In the 1990s, the Riot Grrrl movement was all about encouraging girls to let their voices be heard in a very punk sort of way. Because of this Riot Grrl zines became popular, some of which were featured in Seventeen. So yeah, Collage is very punk.
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