The reaction to the increasing severity imposed by modernism and minimalistic movements such as the Swiss Style on graphic design was slow but inexorable, resulting in new typographic investigations and trends. Compounding this was the disillusionment that designers and art director's increasingly felt towards the requirements and bland approach of the advertising sector by which they were largely employed.
An important point was reached in graphic design with the publishing of the First things first 1964 Manifesto which was a call to a more radical form of graphic design and criticized the ideas of value-free design. This was massively influential on a generation of new graphic designers and contributed to the founding of publications such as Emigre magazine. The First Things First manifesto was written 29 November 1963 and published in 1964 by Ken Garland. Today we may not understand the significance of the document which at the time caused consternation. It was backed by over 400 graphic designers and artists and also received the backing of Tony Benn, radical left-wing MP and activist, who published it in its entirety in the Guardian newspaper. Reacting against a rich and affluent Britain of the sixties, it tried to re-radicalise design which had become lazy and uncritical. Drawing on ideas shared by Critical Theory, the Frankfurt School and the counter-culture of the time it explicitly re-affirmed the belief that Design is not a neutral value-free process. It rallied against the consumerist culture that was purely concerned with buying and selling things and tried to highlight a Humanist dimension to graphic design theory. It was later updated and republished with a new group of signatories as the First Things First 2000 manifesto.