Archive
The 1980s: AIDS & Computers 'marching in'
Two phenomena mark this decade. HIV/Aids came as a many-headed monster, a plague that would affect the lives of millions and proved extremely difficult to combat. It took several years to develop the first Aids treatments, and these were and are far too expensive for poor countries and poor individuals.
This inheritance from the 1980s would be here to stay for quite some time – if not forever.
The other keyword, albeit of a completely different nature, was computer technology. The fax machine and the word processor married with the computer were the harbingers of a changing professional practice. The design computer was still an extremely scarce commodity in the 1980s. A Dutch invention, the Aesthedes computer, was a bulky, expensive hunk of furniture, with a control panel that required long arms. Before the decade was out, it was already being seriously threatened by early versions of the Apple Macintosh, which rapidly equalled or exceeded the tricks of the Aesthedes. The term ‘desktop publishing’ was attributed to Paul Brainerd, founder of the Aldus Corporation. The ‘desktop’ is a metaphor for a virtual desk provided by the computer equipment. You could use it to design publications, initially on a smal scale, at a ‘home’ level. Typographical tours de force were not yet possible, giving amateurish horrors all the more rein. Publishers used fairly simple layout programs. Lithography underwent major developments.
Sony introduced the Walkman. NASA launched space shuttles. Aids was diagnosed. The Mir space station became permanently inhabited. The Russian cosmonauts stayed away for seven months at a time. The Titanic was rediscovered. The Polish formed the protest movement Solidarity.
Gro Harlem Brundtland became the first female prime minister of Norway. Prince Charles married Diana. The UK experienced miners’ strikes, hooligans and yuppies. The Eastern Block boycotted the Los Angeles Olympics. Fatal attacks on Archbishop Romero of San Salvador and the Beatle John Lennon. President Reagan and Pope John Paul II were injured in attacks, but lived to tell the tale. For an attack on a mosque in Mecca, 63 people were beheaded. General Sharon ordered slaughters in Lebanese refugee camps. In Bhopal an industrial gas leak at Dow Chemical cost the lives of 2,500 people and thousands went blind; twenty years later, fury at the disaster is still raging. 1986 saw the explosion in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The effects were dramatic, long term and covered a vast area. Aeroplane hijackings remained numerous. Accidents at sea and in the air affected hundreds of travellers. There were massive volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, particularly in Mexico and South America.
Meanwhile, in the world of the mighty and their peoples: Rhodesia became independent, thereafter to be known as Zimbabwe. Egypt and Israel opened the border alongside the Sinai. The Israelis invaded Lebanon. Iraq and Iran started a terrible war with enormous losses to troops.
François Mitterand became president of France. Israel destroyed an Iraqi nuclear power plant and went on to annex the Golan Heights. Egypt’s president Sadat was assassinated. A state of siege in Poland. Argentina invaded the Falklands and Margaret Thatcher answered with war. Egypt regained possession of the Sinai. Helmut Kohl became the German chancellor, Daniel Ortega president of Nicaragua. Reagan began a second term of office as US president. The British and the Chinese signed an agreement for the future of Hong Kong. Reagan and Gorbachev met in Iceland.
The Swedish premier Olaf Palme was murdered; the culprit will forever remain untraceable. Duvalier (Haiti) and Marcos (Philippines) were forced to leave the political stage. Corazon Aquino became president of the Philippines. After a second ballot, Kurt Waldheim became president of Austria, but his evil war record later brought him down after all. Willy Brandt retired as chairman of the SPD, Hu Yaobong as China’s party leader. Gorbachev launched his Glasnost and Perestroika politics.
George Bush Sr. was elected as American president. The Voyager probes set off to explore space. A cocaine war was raging in Colombia. A civil war broke out in Lebanon. Chinese students, protesting in Tiananmen Square, discovered that the eternal peace implied in its name did not exist for them. A major earthquake hit California.
Eastern Europe began its advance towards the end of Communist dictatorships. Protests and strikes undermined the failing power of the regimes in Prague, East Berlin, Sofia and Bucharest. The DDR leaders resigned, the Germany-to-Germany borders were opened, the Berlin Wall was smashed to pieces and sold as souvenirs. The Americans invaded Panama. The Romanian dictator Ceausescu and his wife, the inhabitants of the second largest building in the world, were executed. Gorbachev visited the Pope. Playwright Václav Havel became president of Czechoslovakia.
Euphoria in the Western world. To many, the bankruptcy of the ideologies and accompanying dictatorships in Eastern Europe felt like a hopeful beginning to world peace and prosperity. The hard, greedy, Western economic model, however, was at odds with an equally necessary improvement in North–South relationships. Religious tensions, flaring up everywhere, were to quickly form an expanding replacement for the melted East–West icebergs and the related fear and apprehension.
In international audience followed the protracted goings-on in Dallas, a ‘role model’ of the might of Texan oil magnates. Windsurfing was a new sport. Princess Grace of Monaco suffered a fatal car crash. Gandhi won 8 Oscars. Spielberg produced ET. Madonna started her career. It was goodbye to Christopher Isherwood, Bernard Malamud, Benny Goodman, Otto Preminger, Henry Moore, Danny Kaye, Andy Warhol, Rita Hayworth, Andrés Segovia, Primo Levi and Fred Astaire.
Gae Aulenti created the magnificent Musée d’Orsay. Norman Foster built Stansted Airport and the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank. Atlanta gained Richard Meier’s High Museum, Frankfurt am Main its Museum für Völkerkunde. Germany further enriched itself with museums, such as those in Mönchen-Gladbach (Hans Hollein) and Frankfurt (Ungers: the Architecture Museum). In Paris, Bernard Tschumi and Adrien Fainsilber worked on the great scientific and cultural project, La Villette. Jean Nouvel built its Institute Arabe, Paul Chemetov executed the largely underground project Les Halles. Venturi, Rauch & Scott worked on London’s National Gallery. A fatwa was issued, condemning writer Salman Rushdie and declaring him an outlaw. Athlete Ben Johnson (Canada), world record holder for sprinting, admitted to taking drugs and lost his record and medals. Issey Miyake was much talked about, as were Versace and Paul Smith. The miniskirt was back. The streets were full of colourful mohican hairdos. Comme des Garçons and Ralph Lauren’s Country Style appeared on the catwalks.
Graphic designers stood by and watched, going with the flow and sometimes making a highly concerned comment.
Ben Bos, Amsterdam, 2006
Essay taken from 'AGI: Graphic Design Since 1950' by Ben & Elly Bos