Dada was one of the biggest Post-Modernist movements, it came about in the time in-between the two world wars where there was huge social and political unrest. When the dust settled after the first world war people were trying to settle back in to a new life, which at the same time artists were beginning to question their traditions and started to cautiously experiment. This experimentation quickly snowballed out of control and outrageous and absurd art was being created, the artists behind this work aimed to disturb the traditions and anger those who narrow mindedly stuck with the outdated ideals and art forms. Some Dada artists did not make art however to be a piece of art as we know it, they were simply expressing their disgust with the current state of the world. They used their outrageous art to then kick up the leaves and disturb the water of the old ways of thinking.
Dada is freedom, it is spontaneous, it is chance, it is anti everything, it is the religion of truth and feelings .
Dada did not just challenge other artists work, they often ridiculed themselves. They recognised how outrageous their work was and how they were often seen as silly and idiotic, so they pondered on this too and fed it back into their work. This new look on art refreshed the art world and also seeped into graphic design. It disturbed the Modernist Swiss Style and enriched it with a whole new world of visual communication. One of the biggest influences Dada had on graphic design was their approach to typography. They questioned the role of typography, they de-constructed its semiotic structure and played around with each part. They often removed the function of type and used it purely as a visual tool and not a communication tool. This questioning is still carried on today and there is still a feud between those who use type for communication and those who use it for visual meaning. Dada typography was eruptive and usually had no meaning, it greatly upset the Modernist dominated graphic design.
Dada graphic design was often random and had no rules or structure, there was a certain disharmony with each piece. They pushed typography to its absolute legible limits, they violated the canon of graphic design in each way they could. They would even go further to question the norm of language and logic that was already in place, everything that made design was put into scrutiny. They did not want to do what other had done before, their work was truly expressive and so original.
The story behind how Dada was named Dada is quite intriguing too. The founders all gather with the aim to name their social movement. And to deviate from the normal naming methods where they name would have some reference to the cause, the artists tool a dictionary and stuck a knife in it, and the word it landed on happened to be Dada. They liked the word because of how nonsensical it was, it was meaningless and silly and so it was perfect for their work.
