{"id":49422,"date":"2018-04-19T06:32:35","date_gmt":"2018-04-19T13:32:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/creativemarket.com\/blog\/?p=49422"},"modified":"2024-04-17T06:23:40","modified_gmt":"2024-04-17T13:23:40","slug":"mid-century-modern-graphic-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/creativemarket.com\/blog\/mid-century-modern-graphic-design","title":{"rendered":"Design Trend: Mid-Century Modern Graphic Design and Beyond"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mid-Century Modern design, which is seeing a comeback of late, was in style from approximately 1933 to 1965, when it took over multiple disciplines like graphic design, architecture, interior design, product design, and even urban development. Today, it’s even moved into web design<\/a>, making it a truly long-lasting design trend that can adapt to the times.\nAs with many trends in the history of design, Mid-Century Modern was a response to other styles that had come before. In fact, it can be seen as the uniquely American interpretation of and response to design trends like the Bauhaus movement<\/a> that had heavily impacted Europe just years earlier.\nThe reason that this movement endures to this day is found in its design touches. Whether it’s the clean lines or natural and soft curves that are its hallmarks, Mid-Century Modern espouses that timeless look that designers and decorators enjoy working with. Here’s a look at how the style has impacted graphic design and related disciplines.\n

<\/span>The History of Mid-Century Modern Design<\/span><\/h2>

\nWe can’t look to this style without understanding what big design trend immediately came before it. In this case, it was Art Deco<\/a>, that machine-influenced, geometric style that was at once simple and excessive. While Art Deco was flashier, Mid-Century Modern opted for more minimalistic and timeless design touches, though the latter did retain some of Art Deco’s standout features, such as its treatment of angles and lines.\nWhen we look back at the touchpoint that gave life to this design movement, we have to look at the state of America after World War II. While this style technically dates back to the 1930s, it wasn’t after the end of World War II—when so many soldiers were returning home, starting families and needed new housing, and the U.S. economy was booming—that this movement really took off.\nIn the 1940s, post-war America was typified by hope, optimism, and prosperity. With the war won, Americans could focus on the building their lives at home. One of the first catalysts that would provide the spark for this boom, called the Post-World War II Economic Expansion<\/a>, was the need for new homes for returning soldiers. The West Coast was the starting point for Mid-Century design, with new homes being built in a style designed to rival Europe’s Bauhaus — with a uniquely American spin.\n\"\"\nBecause of this new golden age of capitalism, relatively stable peace, and absence of notable financial crises, society was able to focus on ideation. Designers, as just one group that benefitted from this peace, had the chance to come up with new approaches that influenced the interior design and architecture of its day.\nOne of these ideas was tract or cookie-cutter housing<\/a>, which is when a lot of similar-looking homes are built on a tract of land that’s then subdivided into smaller, individual lots. Such housing developments were and are still common on the formerly rural edges of towns and cities in the U.S. and other countries. This style of housing was minimalist in design<\/a>; because it didn’t take as much effort to build these houses, construction was faster than with other styles of homes. This approach fed the need for the plethora of new homes for returning soldiers and their new families after the war.\nIt was at this time when this new approach to housing was catching fire that designers began to experiment with design characteristics that would become hallmarks of this design. Many of these new houses featured the simplicity one expects of minimalism: clean, horizontal and well-defined lines, geometric shapes, and open flows.\nThe rise of the American automobile in those early, 20th<\/sup>-century decades was also a contributing factor to how these homes were constructed in the Mid-Century Modern motif. Since more and more families were buying and owning cars, garages and car ports were accordingly becoming a common sight in these new tract houses.\nMid-Century design also influenced graphic design<\/a>, particularly when it came to postcards and signage of the time. It became increasingly popular for postcards to feature these new architectural and interior design transformations that were touching every aspect of American life. In this way, postcards of the age almost became a sort of media documenting these changes in pop culture.\n\"\"\nWhile this design style started out transforming how homes were built, it also ended up greatly influencing interior design because new ways of designing furniture had to be devised to accommodate these stripped-down, airier spaces. The result was product design for furniture that was typified by characteristics like:\n<\/p>