My update to the Vignelli Chart of Ideological and Design Changes

by javier on 8/08/2010

I made a personal update to the Schematic Chart of Ideological and Design Changes from the 60s to the 80s by Massimo Vignelli. I decided to add a column named “internet times” suggesting that the internet is bringing a set of values to the way we understand creation, specifically designing and more specifically designing for the internet.

Mine is a personal interpretation of what that fourth column should be, if there should be a fourth column. I encourage you to make your interpretation too, filling the blanks with what you consider more appropiate. I’m sure there will be some common points.

Here is the original Schematic Chart of Ideological and Design Changes from the 60s to the 80s by Vignelli:

And here’s my interpretation. It’s a Fireworks PNG file for your editing convenience:

Now come and do yours, or at least help me out with rows 1 and 3.

There are 9 comments in this article:

  1. 8/08/2010Tweets that mention The Cosmonauts: My update to the Vignelli Chart of Ideological and Design Changes -- Topsy.com says:

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Javier Cañada, Javier Cañada. Javier Cañada said: I made a personal update to the Vignelly Chart. How would you do yours? http://www.vostok.es/blog/updating-vignelli-chart [...]

  2. 8/08/2010Miguel says:

    I’ll try to help you with the third row: what about bipolarity?

    And about the last one, don’t you think they were convinced they were using the right amount?

  3. 8/08/2010Olga says:

    I love it, would you mind if I use it on my classes?

    My try for the first row: constant tech. innovation?

  4. 8/08/2010Javier says:

    Thanks Miguel but… Why bipolarity?

    Olga, feel free to use it, of course. Where do you teach? And what specifically?

  5. 8/08/2010Olga says:

    I teach UCD at the UEM. Your diagram shows how people and design are different in different times, so that’s why is important to know the very basics of sociology.

  6. 30/05/2011Ale Muñoz says:

    one concept that comes to my mind for the first row is “customization/personalization”

    not sure about the third row, though…

  7. 30/05/2011Ale Muñoz says:

    (for third row) maybe datasets / realtime data hose / everything?

  8. 30/05/2011Javier Cañada says:

    Thanks Ale,

    I agree on the first one but I don’t quite understand what you mean for the third one. Could you elaborate, please?

  9. 3/06/2011Ale Muñoz says:

    Sure,

    it seems to me as if the third column refers to a quality of the information a design artifact communicates.

    Think about a newspaper as a fictional example.

    The 60s ideal would be a very neutral, very ‘just the facts’ paper.

    The 70s ideal would be a very generalist, all-inclusive paper.

    The 80s ideal would be a very opinionated, very editorial paper.

    In the internet era, where you can mix various information sources, I think the ideal would be some media that taps into a stream of realime data (which is affectively called a “data firehose”) in the hopes of communicating some form of “statistical” truth (think Wikipedia on steroids, where thousands of edits end up shaping a very true-to-truth content).

    Thus, the concept of “everything” as “build your own point of view” : )

    (BTW: your blog needs a “Subscribe to comments” thingie. I almost missed your followup : )

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