Desconstrução

Abstract

This paper attempts to characterize, historically and critically, the European and North American graphic design in twentieth-century's last three decades. Exceptionally rich in changes, this period was frequently characterized by a principie whose origins were in the field study of literary and philosophical theory - deconstruction. The concept surfaced on mass media during the '80s but its usage was often different and hardly ever coherent with the meaning that was originally given by its author. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida introduced the term in his book De La Grammatologie (1967) and described it as a questioning concept about the power of writing as a representation system which supports western culture. This criticai principie frames in a wider philosophical current - Post-Structuralism - that analyses the role of historically validated cultural conventions in our own relation to reality. In this context, the principie hás been used to justify and characterize several creative practices which tend to question and subvert the conventional system of any discipline. By exploring the relationship between deconstruction and graphic design, this paper discusses this principle's effectiveness as a conceptual argument and demonstrates how it hás been used as description in contemporary graphic design. Therefore, the link between deconstruction and graphic design in Postmodernism cultural context