The concept of avant garde is to be advanced, in front of the rest. To be something new and to create art that breaks away from the norm. To create art that is progressive and modern and to be a leader. It is a term that has very much lost it's meaning today.
When looking at avant garde in graphic design, it is quite hard to find. There is new and progressive forms of design, but whether they break from tradition and the norm is something else, as graphic design was made to communicate. To be avant garde in design, it would need to reject communication. However, two examples that could be discussed as avant garde are Mark Farrow's design for the 'Spiritualized' album packaging and Stefan Sagmeister.
Both challenge the normal form of graphic design, lacking in great communication skills. They seem to ignore the social reasons and needs of being a communicator, as both designs are hard to read and it is hard to recognise what they actually are. Farrow's album design, although not intended to be, is 'art for art's sake' – rejecting the ideal way to present a CD and making it entirely inaccessible. Once listeners remove the CD from it's 'drug package' album case then all art is lost. To own this album case is to own a piece of art that goes completely against the purpose of owning a music album.
Sagemeister's design has lost their shock and uniqueness, but at the time of producing this work, it would have been seen as something very progressive and modern. Working with type in a completely new format and denying it of it's function – to actually communicate. A sporadic typeface giving the impression that it was scratched into the skin is definitely something progressive, especially at a time where graphic design was mainly seen to come from computer generated images.
Stefan Sagmeister, Sagmeister Aiga Detroit poster
http://www.sagmeister.com/taxonomy/term/7#/node/5
Mark Farrow, 1997, 'Spiritualized Ladies and Gentlemen we are floating in space' CD packaging
http://sunnychanorg.blogspot.com/2006/07/spiritualized.html
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