Rick Poynor's 'Transgression' Examines Postmodern Graphic Design

Rick Poynor's book 'Transgression, graphisme et postmodernisme' (published by Pyramyd Editions) explores postmodern graphic design over the past thirty years. The critic examines a wide range of designers including Peter Saville, Tibor Kalman, Neville Brody, Jonathan Barnbrook, Jeffery Keedy, Edward Fella, David Carson, Bruce Mau, and collectives like The Designers Republic, Tomato, and the magazine Emigre. Poynor organizes the work under chapter headings such as 'Deconstruction,' 'Appropriation,' and 'Opposition,' linking recent graphic experiments to concepts of illegibility, détournement, imperfection, and dismantling—which he argues define the postmodern moment in opposition to modernist rules of readability and geometry. The book acknowledges the role of digital technology in challenging foundational graphic design principles. However, reviewer Alexandre Laumonier notes that the book suffers from a lack of clear definition of graphic discourse registers, and that practices like détournement and plagiarism have long existed, making it difficult to attribute them solely to postmodernism.