Modernism has most definitely become the standard for graphic design and is the style that most clients will hire us to imitate. From my personal experience, it seems that everyone is looking for a poster, logo, or flyer that looks like everyone else. The reason being is that modernism is shoved down the throats of the non-designer in everyday life. While it is true that repetition is powerful, the amount that this certain style of commercial modernism is used truly shows how much of a grip it has on our society. This, in turn, creates an endless cycle of designers producing stale modernist work, large corporations taking notice, and then hiring more designers to produce even more bland work. While this does have a negative effect on the connotation of the term modernist, I do believe that there are still some great things to explore within. When we designers explore different styles and designs for ourselves, rather than for clients, we can discover many new directions to take the modernist style.
Although people will mention how “everything has been done”, the limits of design are unimaginable, and there are always new things to test. Design has so much power in a post-modern society, the only question is who calls the shots? Is it the large corporations who hire out designers to make crappy modernist work, or is it the small, freelancers, who work every day to keep exploring different attributes of design? Or maybe it is the design firms who seem to consistently pump out the same designers with the same styles.