Virgule ( / ) An oblique stroke, used by medieval scribes and many later writers as a form of comma. It is also used to build level fractions, to represent a linebreak when verse is set as prose, and in dates, addresses and elsewhere as a sign of separation. In writing the Khoisan languages of western Africa, it is sometimes used to represent dental or lateral clicks. 1

The virgule, most commonly known as the forward slash or simply a slash is a ubiquitous sign used in many communications media. It is visible on posters, books, flyers, tv, websites and mobile phones. However – and not surprisingly so – this icon has recently turned into a hip graphic device through which graphic designers affirm their graphicness and book a ticket to the “inspirational” typo-graphic blogs that grant them instant glory.

The overuse of the slash in graphic design during the last decade is a sign of the times: quick road to style, to visual fasting forward, to edginess. This formal trend seems to relate to the current cooperative/ collaborative/ performative (see what I mean?) modus operandi of graphic design. Talking with students and colleagues, it is common to hear: I’m a designer slash artist slash publisher slash musician. Presently, slashes galore in almost any description of a designer or design studio as much as in printed matter.

Design collective Åbäke illustrate very well this tendency. Their collaborative work often dilutes into events involving (in no particular order) film, dancing, eating and cooking and teaching. They describe themselves as also being singers, painters, photographers, members of bands, furniture designers, curators, fashion designers and djs.Now that the designer as authority (Modernism) has fallen, Post-Modernism buried and that the designer as slash (Altermodernism/ Relational Design/ Confusion) is beaming more and more practitioners, it is perhaps time to acknowledge the inconsequent Slashism around us.
Historically uniformed, we arrived at a time when it is a given fact that until the end of last century, graphic designers didn’t collaborate, were confined to their studios and were not flexible.

Thus, it is important to wittily present yourself as a designer working mainly with furniture, products, cities, factories, systems, key cutters, locality, Christmas trees, collaborators and friends. Or, as a designer working mainly with print, people, communities, bananas, exhibitions, installations, puddings, light sabers, unicorns and rainbows.
This culture of describing one’s activity with as many words as possible, creates the fake feeling of some kind of Da Vincism that truly doesn’t exist. If the aforementioned puddings are not good, the installations look amateurish and redundant, and the singing is weak, then the answer is almost invariably the same: we’re just designers. When this is announced, what it is possible to observe, is an attempt to return home. This return is doomed to fail as designers are increasingly incited and taught methods of production over methods of critical reflection and to travel instead of how to research during their journeys. Alienation arises.

The focus on these long descriptions of tautological nature, appears to put more emphasis on the reverberation of presupposed control over multiple disciplines and media, than on the intention, pertinence, quality and effect of the actual work.

Communications Agency Digital Kitchen, produced in 2007 a video spoof of this reality, titled Designer Slash Model. During this short film, it is possible to read: Designer/ Animator/ Compositor/ Editor/ 3d Artist/ Producer/ Director/ Model. By raising a trend to ridiculousness, this film offers a funny perspective of this tendency applied to advertising agencies, while allowing us to constantly make extrapolations and observe the ironic suitable presence of slashes and 50º angled motion graphics.

The word slash is also undeniably connected to former Guns N’ Roses lead guitarist Saul Hudson, who was nicknamed as such while still a young boy by a family friend because he was always in a hurry, zipping around from one thing to another.

Marvel Comics, too, houses a superhero called Slash (also know as Sister Agony). Slash wields razor-sharp metal claws, but because her mental age is that of a child, she is often easily defeated.

Razor-sharp is exactly the (cool) effect that the slash produces when applied on the background of a poster or when slicing a logo or an image. The intentions are varied. The most obvious are to illustrate the word and or to simulate a cut or division. Others follow, such as connecting two blocks of information, decoratively filling an empty area or most commonly just because, well, it looks nice.

Some institutions, such as DesignMiami/ Basel use the slash for obvious reasons, although its application reflects more of a trendy positioning of a modish brand than that of complicity between the two cities. Others, such as Breda’s Graphic Design Festival use it for purely decorative purposes (I call it graphicky). Regarding logos, it is possible to point Slice’s logo designed by Manual Creative, using the slash for a perceivable reason. The recent Harvard Art Museum logo designed by 2×4 has an even more evident voguish approach, even though they defend that the slash is a typographic device that signifies the connection between the core and the component.
The strokes (or slashes), normally have a 50-70º angle, generating the idea of exquisiteness, refinement and cutting-edge. They are a fierce, cool, and sexy option. And options are what the slash offers, by presenting multiple possibilities.

On this note, on issue 340 of Idea Magazine, it is possible to read the following text, which focuses on emerging design studios:

While widely varied due to cultural context and social/ environmental differences, all have a kinship in unique approaches to developing formal options for clients. The use of the word “option” as applied here is perhaps the most relevant key point for the latest wave of graphic design from abroad – perhaps the “solution” as an end result of graphic design as a process is a dead methodology. What are instead offered are graphic “options” in lieu of “solutions” – inquiries answered with inquiries, questions answered with questions. The work featured offers playful, tentative answers instead of cold, hard end results.

While at first it may seem forced the comparison between the slash as formal out-of-context cliché with pseudo neo-renaissance design as slash, it is simply a metaphor for stylistic inconsequence. On the rush to add another definition to one’s practice, following a swanky option (not solution) seems to be inevitable, as Andrew Blauvelt pointed out on Emigre 64 (2003): The fundamental principal of pluralism asks not in what style we should design, but rather that we design stylishly.

On the web, graphic design blogs appear to naturally replicate the selection of a certain slashy style. More than ever, they play a pivotal role on a designer’s education, its influences and references. They have a subtle – yet strong – power, not only over eager young design students but also over designers who, like little Saul Hudson “Slash”, are always zipping around from one thing to another. When time is scarce, instead of putting periods, it’s always easier, safer and let’s face it, cooler, to leave slashes/ options.

Digital Kitchen’s t-shirt slogan has been offering the most popular choice: hotness is always the tiebreaker/


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1  Bringhurst, Robert. The Elements of Typographic Style. Vancouver: Hartley & Marks, 1996. pp. 286