Design Literacy: Understanding Graphic Design

people get the joke or understand the basis of it—I hope they do—that’s
the fun for us [Scher and then-partner Terry Koppel], and one reason why
we both love to design.” They acknowledged Matter in a credit line at the
bottom of the ad.
Historical reprise has been a mixed blessing. At once it serves to
educate designers about history, making them more open to learn about
past eras and epochs, but also sanctions easy formal solutions devoid of
originality. While some critics argue that overt borrowing from the past
tends to trivialize both past and present by promoting rote design, others
argue that the introduction of these reprises serves to enliven the field by
offering more creative options. Where history is intelligently absorbed the
results are invisible. Where history is used effectively as a model, a sense of
appropriateness is usually apparent. But where history is just a cut-and-
paste procedure, the result is almost always a cliché.