Key Quotes
'Style has many directions, dimensions, surfaces and gestures.'
''Style' is like politics - there's no escaping it... Inevitably not standing out, being unstylish is inescapably stylish. 'Normality' is a 'style'. First lesson of style - it's a paradox.'
'Like many ideas which have social, psychological, economical and artistic power, it's more productive to consider not what 'style' is, but how it functions, is used and deployed. There's Swiss Style, International Style, Lifestyle, all the styles which pursue the universal, the utopian and the aspirational - 'style' as the aspiration in becoming something else, to becoming different. There are ways in which style is portrayed, ways in which 'style' is discussed, ways in which 'style' is worn, ways in which 'style' is used as an instrument of power, ways in which 'style' is used to order and police expression, and ways in which 'style' is used to escape and create.'
'While educators worry about the impact of context-free images via blogs and social sharing on the work of students, and young graduates worry about needing to find a style that's identifiably theirs for commercial reasons, 'style' as an issue for commercial creatives is often regarded as an irritant. In the early 1990's designer Stefan Sagmeister famously hung a sign in his office - "Style = Fart". He says, "It was the headline of a theory that style and stylistic questions are just hot air and meaningless. I discovered that this is simply not true. Through experience I found that if you have content that is worthwhile, the proper expression of that content, in terms of form and style is actually very important. It can be a very useful tool to communicate that content.'
'Fashion is flat, 'style' (derived from the Latin 'stylus', a writing instrument) has a point.'
'Tom of Finland transformed the iconography of 1950's muscular, heterosexual masculinity whereby invisible, oppressed gay men could become visibly gay through turning up the volume, amplifying a particular 'style'. In this instance, amplifying 'style' creates a way of inhabiting different kinds of personal and social relationships.'
'Does the lack of critical debate on 'style' in illustration, for example, mean that illustration is merely mannerist, aping artistic techniques? Is illustration a theatrical, seductive copyist?'
'If this is true, it's partly because some Brands and clients often demand this, they want illustrators and photographers with a 'style', rather than sensibility, they want something that is 'on-trend'. It's the idea of 'style' as a 'look', where 'style' crosses into fashion. Which doesn't make it wrong, or bad, or immoral. It only becomes that when this kind of illustration practice is the only option for illustrators.'
''Style' is all too oppressive as possibility, as a limited palette, as an off-the-peg choice. when 'style' becomes something like an impossible task for a creative it becomes seriously compelling. When 'style' is a matter of discovering your authorial voice feels like an exercise in vanity rather than art. "Commissioned images have begun to feel overly 'authorial' and self-consciously 'styled' to the exclusion of finding new ideas and new ways of thinking about illustration and how it could work. When illustration escapes the 'style' it has been allocated, things begin to move.'
'Ina Blom for Art Forum: "a real account of style must move beyond the tendency to always see style as an attribute of something else and instead see it as a transitive quality or as a form of being always in the making, acting of its own accord and not on behalf of some other project or quality."
'Does the lack of critical debate on 'style' in illustration, for example, mean that illustration is merely mannerist, aping artistic techniques? Is illustration a theatrical, seductive copyist?'
'If this is true, it's partly because some Brands and clients often demand this, they want illustrators and photographers with a 'style', rather than sensibility, they want something that is 'on-trend'. It's the idea of 'style' as a 'look', where 'style' crosses into fashion. Which doesn't make it wrong, or bad, or immoral. It only becomes that when this kind of illustration practice is the only option for illustrators.'
''Style' is all too oppressive as possibility, as a limited palette, as an off-the-peg choice. when 'style' becomes something like an impossible task for a creative it becomes seriously compelling. When 'style' is a matter of discovering your authorial voice feels like an exercise in vanity rather than art. "Commissioned images have begun to feel overly 'authorial' and self-consciously 'styled' to the exclusion of finding new ideas and new ways of thinking about illustration and how it could work. When illustration escapes the 'style' it has been allocated, things begin to move.'
'Ina Blom for Art Forum: "a real account of style must move beyond the tendency to always see style as an attribute of something else and instead see it as a transitive quality or as a form of being always in the making, acting of its own accord and not on behalf of some other project or quality."
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