Design and Counter-Culture
Counter-cultures are an interesting part of how, generally, the youth of the past have come together to try and create change. As a result of this, they have worked their way into the mainstream and influenced wider design movements and society as a whole.
In Easy Rider (1969), it is said “They’re not scared of you, they’re scared of what you represent… freedom.” This represents the idea of counter-cultures clashing with mainstream society, too comfortable and controlling to change.
Counter-culture is about coming together to communicate ideas and do something about them. The underground press enabled this and really showed how designs could exemplify this as well as words. They broke away from the Swiss Style and differentiated themselves by breaking all the design rules in the book.
I do not believe you can truly class Hipsters as a counter-culture as part of counter-culture historically is identity. Every movement is proud of who they are and fight for their beliefs, like the Black Panthers who fought for their rights with pride. The Hipsters instead use irony to make themselves feel like they are different from the mainstream but refuse to identify themselves as part of a movement, except through fashion like beards and flat white coffees. By not willingly coming together and communicating their ideas, they cannot really fight for their beliefs; exemplified by McGuigan (n.d.) as “It’s so much easier to knock things down than to hold something up yourself.”.
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Easy Rider. (1969). [film] Directed by D. Hopper. Raybert Productions, The Pando Company.
McGuigan, S. (n.d.). Hipsters! The contemporary counterculture, and how it isn’t one.. [ebook] Burnaby, p.6. Available at: https://moodle.napier.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/1832647/mod_resource/content/1/Hipsters_The_contemporary_counter-cultur.pdf [Accessed 17 Oct. 2018].
