Innovation and Persuasion

Visual Culture and Avant-Garde Design

By the beginning of the twentieth century there was an amazing variety of different typographic and visual styles and materials that were available for editorial and advertising design.  The mechanical production techniques gave designers enormous freedom and print media thrived as a result.  Photographs were becoming widely accepted while illustrations persisted, enhanced by color and new printing techniques.  It wasn't until the early twentieth century did the artists and designers exploited and revealed the true potential of the technical inventions of the nineteenth century.  Although there were no radical changes in technology, the designers did have to find a way to visually translate the social meanings.  They readopted a more functional and anti historical approach to design.

The Graphic Impact of Futurism and Dada

Almost overnight a new movement developed where artists felt compelled to define their work by the dramatic rejection of all inherited aesthetics an values.  In 1909 the Italian poet Filippo Martinetti exploded into the spotlight with his Futurist Manifesto.  He attacked the decorative typography of the old-fashioned.  The modern meant new, which meant machine made or at least something the looked machine-like.  

1.  A cubo-futurist painting by Kazimir Severinovich Malevich.  This was a short lived movement lasting perhaps a year or two.  It was a combination of French Cubism, Italian Futurism, and Neo-Primitivism.  

However, not all avant-garde art was influenced by Martinetti's futuristic ideals.  A second movement emerged and called themselves 'Dada'.  This symbolized the outrageous attitudes of their movement.  These publications and performances appeared in Germany, France, and even the United States.  The Dadaists were comprised of a curious group of people including pacifists, anarchists, and radicals.  Their behavior shook the citizens of Zurich and later other major cities in the world.  

2.  The Dada movement was based on the principles of anarchy, cynicism, and rejecting the laws of social organization and beauty.

Propaganda and Mass Communication Studies

In the beginning of the twentieth century many of the avant-garde's internationalism stemmed from social uprising.  Political shifts caused large groups to move across nations and fostered artistic exchange.  Technical advancements in communication provoked the revisions of traditional beliefs and values.  World War I was happening during the 1914-1918 and it killed and traumatized millions of soldiers.  The Great War ruptured and destroyed all that defined modern life and also promoted the development of mechanized military technologies.  Propaganda developed because it could reach wide audiences and was tremendously effective with the use of vivid flat colors and bold lines.

3.  UK World War I propaganda.

Graphic Persuasion and Its Effects

While the public relations campaigns were essential to maintain an effort to win the war, it also included a new form of communication: information graphics.  The new information campaigns in a post revolutionary Russia included the task of educating the working class.  At the same time in the United States, the women's suffrage movement launched their own campaigns to allow women to have the right to vote.  Images were created for propaganda for both the supporters and opposers of women's rights.

4.  Images of the women's suffrage for both sides of the argument used as propaganda.  

Institutionalizing Graphic Design

Probably the most enduring legacy of the early twentieth century came from institutionalizing graphic design.  Institutions were training young designers in accordance to the Constructivist principle and major figures of the prewar avant-garde sought new ideals and reforms.  The Bauhaus could arguably be the most legendary of the new institutions for graphic design (established in 1919).  The Bauhaus style characteristics included formal reduction, dynamic asymmetry, and a systematic structuring of the graphic design elements.  

5.  Laszlo Moholy-Nagy described typography as a "tool of communication" type must be clear, legible, and communicate its message.

Glossary

Bourgeoisie - a social class between the aristocracy and the proletariat that enjoys a ertain amount of material wealth and status and benefits from the status quo.

Duplicating Machine - mechanical devices that produce more than one copy of an image or text.

Futurism - an artistic movement of the early twentieth century that called for a radical break with the past and all tradition sin the name of creating an art for the future.

Suprematism - a name coined in 915 by Kasimir Malevich to describe experimental art that aimed to transcend the limits of all past art and create works that were concerned almost entirely with geometric forms.

Works Cited

"The Bauhaus." History of Graphic Design. 5 Nov. 2008.

"Dada art period, Dada paintings, Dadaism, Dada artists, and Dada history." Dada Movement, Dada Art Pictures, Neo Dada, Dada Period, Dada History. 5 Nov. 2008.

"The Futurist Manifesto." The Futurist Manifesto. 5 Nov. 2008

"Kazimir Severinovich Malevich: Taking in the Harvest (1911-1912)." Malevich: Harvest. 5 Nov. 2008

The National Archives. 5 Nov. 2008

"UK WWI Propaganda Poster." Listphile Beta. 5 Nov. 2008

The Culture of Consumption

 

Designing the Modern Lifestyle

The polished image of the modern lifestyle was in part the creation of the graphic designers.  The production of each new product was the result of planned obsolescence on the part of the manufacturers.  However, not all was progress was as it appeared.  European countries were still recovering from the devastating effects of World War I and in the United States, uncontrolled financing contributed to the decline and subsequent economical crisis of the late 1920s.  Electricity was now available and reliable as well as petroleum products which now changed work routines, production parameters, transportation, communication, and entertainment habits.  Prior to the crash of the stock market in 1929, advertising campaigns equated style with currency and currency with success.  It became a new culture of consumer capitalism where cool, streamlined, and sophisticated images thrived.

1. Example of a 1920s fashion ad where the emphasis is on streamlined yet sophisticated looks, even in fashion.

Modern Style in Graphic Design

The previous movements had left an imprint on European graphic design.  Many of the characteristics was carried forward into the modern movement such as: asymmetrical typography, abstract forms, heave rule, black and red inks, strong shapes, and striking arrangements were just some of the innovation left by the previous designers.  European designers also used photography in many of their work making it a hallmark of modern design.  While the legacy of Constructivists was carried on in many of the cosmopolitan centers of Europe, the Russian counterparts had become isolated in their increasingly totalitarian regime.  The dream of the utopian socialist state disappeared in the mid-1930s because faith in this conviction had begun to wane.  

In America, the field of graphic design was being defined by a high profile innovator, William Addison Dwiggins.  His published works and lectures talked about the rules and elements of design.  Dwiggins helped bridge the gap and linking the technical aspects to the aesthetics and philosophy of design.  Many European designers emigrated to the United States and the advertising executives quickly hired them to provide the sophistication of European style.  

Consumer Culture

Graphic design promoted consumption as an ideal, not just something practical.  Advertising presented products as the solutions for problems that might have been emotional or social.  The visual metaphors of the American dream invited the vision of prosperity even during the Great Depression and while this fantasy may have been ironic, it provided a powerful image.  The notion that graphic design had a mission soon crept into the profession.  The designers were charged with a task of creating an aura that had little to do with the practical issues, rather the promotion of lifestyles as self realization and expression.  The fantasy channeled consumption into market driven patterns and the consumer was a concept, a generic figure who followed the trends with personal interest.

Glossary

Consumer capitalism - an economic system based on assumptions about the widespread development of markets, rather than on earlier models of production.

Moderne - a French term for a style that became popular after the 1925 Exposition des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris.  Associated with the cool, streamlined look of the 1920s in which the elaborate motifs of an earlier era were banished in favor of more industrial forms.

Planned obsolescence - a strategy for increasing sales by designing products that will quickly need to be replaced, either because they wear out or because they are surpassed by more effective or stylish models.

Public Information Campaigns and Information Design

Public Interest and Education

Designs for public interested was already a well established category of visual communication by the 1930s.  Promotion of public safety and personal hygiene was a feature of the early 20th century, spreading the middle class assumption and values.  Moral virtue was aligned with physical hygiene and cleanliness in the domestic and work environments in order to control the spread of disease.  The presentation of this information rode a fine line between informing the public and prescribing conformity.

From 1936-1943 President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Works Project Administration (WPA) with brought graphic deign into a new relation with the public.  Over 2000 posters were created across the country.  Several thousand artists, designers, photographers, and writers earned weekly salary for working for the WPA.  Although this was a new program in America, Soviet Union artists had been state workers since the revolution in 1917.  The two countries had two very different styles: American imagery still featured the heroic individual while Soviet graphics drew attention to the importance of the designer's place in the larger social system.  Education and literacy was important for Soviet designers to cultivate a trained labor force therefore newly formed clubs encouraged participation in reading and discussions. 

Photojournalism and Documentary

By the 1930s documentary photography had become an important and powerful instrument of political and social commentary.  The WPA established the Farm Security Administration which commissioned photographers to document the lives of America's rural poor.  Perhaps one of the most famous photos from this period is Dorothea Lange's photo "Migrant Mother".  Other photographs of this time included Walker Evans, Gordon Parks, and Margaret Bourke-White.  Other images from the FSA can be seen here.   

1.  Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother".

As photographic printing technologies improved, reproduction became more affordable and more efficient for use in magazines and other publications.  The integration of documentary photography was brought into the mainstream by major modern photographers during this time.  Many photographers with established careers as fine artists or journalists also had successful careers in fashion photography.  

2.  Life magazine built its reputation and audience based on photographic work.

Wartime Propaganda and Information

As World War II broke out in Europe, graphic media were used to mobilize sentiment and action on all sides of the conflict.  Government agencies and programs utilized graphic strategies to raise awareness and support.  Women were also encouraged to volunteer and enlist for military service and other war related work.  These designs often included more realistic imagery to leave strong and lasting impressions on the viewers.  However, flat and bold imagery were equally strong with clear and symbolic messages.  The directness of these images implied that action was required and could not be delayed.

During the war, official diagrams and charts were used to deliver important information.  Both the British Ministry of Information and the US Office of War Information hired designers of stature and skill to create educational posters and develop signage.  It was imperative that the dense amounts of information was displayed in a well organized fashion while maintaining a high level of aesthetics.  

3.  War time propaganda using bold shapes and colors to convey a sense of urgency.

Glossary

American Regionalism - an artistic movement that focused on rural or local imagery and often expressed agrarian cultural values as an answer to the modern world of industrial and urban development.

Informatics - the study of data or knowledge represented in a form that can be stored or manipulated by digital or computational means.

New objectivity - an approach to photography and other arts of the 1920s that valued (an emulated) the rationalism afforded by new technologies capable of replacing subjective rendering and that rejected the mystical, pseudo-primitive, and emotional aspects of Expressionism.

Works Cited

"Dorothea Lange." Wikipedia. 23 Nov. 2008

"Photographers of the FSA: Selected Portraits." Portrait Sampler -- FSA Photographer. 23 Nov. 2008

"WWII Propaganda Posters." WWII Propaganda Posters. 23 Nov. 2008

Corporate Identities and International Style

Image and Identity Systems

By the 1950s the entire way business was conducted had changed.  Business now had multiple divisions and activities.  These corporations hired graphic designers to help with the branding so that they could be recognizable in different nations across the world.  A unified image allowed the corporation to exude authority and reliability.  The work of the graphic designer did not only include layout, composition, and style choices but it now also included slogans, catch phrases, logotypes, and other compact messages that the corporation needed.  There were many more opportunities for the graphic designers to show off their work: corporate reports, annual financial achievements, and other materials were not the responsibility of the graphic designer.

International Style

The Swiss style used clean and neutral forms which were perfectly suited for the nature of the new business patterns and models.  There was emphasis on the grid structure as well as the use of objective photography and sans serif type.  The aim was to create clean, direct, and clear images.  Some critics found this new style to be too formulaic and predictable.  However the International Style proved to be durable and functional in many different situations.  

1.  A manual designed with International Style.  Clear grid system is applied.

Technology

As technology evolved, many of the graphic designers began to utilize more of the photographic means of production.  Still graphic designers were trained to hand letter type and create thumbnails with pencil and ink, however, handwork became a sign of eccentricity.  Individualism vanished in the photographic production of type, images, and layouts.  American TV and film industry blossomed in the 1950-1960s and new markets for graphic designers opened.  Graphic work entered a new time based media and no longer confined to the page.

Industrially produced elements such as the transfer type, screen patterns became available for the graphic designers.  Also phototypesetting offered lower costs and yielded more flexibility than traditional metal type.  Designers were now beginning to experiment with the possibility of electronic type as well.  There was a newfound freedom with phototype.  No longer were designers constrained with the metal lines any longer.  

Other improvements with the photographic technologies allowed images prepared photographically to have finer details and tighter registration.  Process color became common and high quality, low-cost color printing was widely available.  Photo offest was becoming the norm and graphic possibilities seemed liberating compared to earlier relief printing methods.

2.  A phototypesetter's work station.

The Profession

As the corporate and civic organizations created their in-house design teams, the role of the designer continued to broaden as well.  Charged with coordinating campaigns, designers no grappled with the intangible but essential concepts.  The formulaic publications relied heavily on the cover designs to attract the attention of potential readers at the newsstand.  Branding often included single word typography as well as designing for gender, interest, and activity defined by the publication.

Glossary

Functionalism - an attitude according to which the effective operation of an object, space, or communication is of paramount value in its design; a principle of early twentieth-century movements that applied art to design problems and ran counter to art-for-art's-sake's embrace of purposelessness.

Identity - a unique profile for a group or enterprise, designed to be established in the public mind or marketplace through formal devices, such as logos and slogans.

International Typographic Style - an approach to design premised on the conviction that formal choices and effects could be governed by rational principles that transcended historical and cultural frameworks.

Logotype - two or more letters cast as a single graphic on the same block.

Universal language - the idea of a form of expression that could be understood by all people regardless of their native tongue and that would accurately encode knowledge in a systematic way.

Universal style - an approach to design based on the presumption that the truth of certain formal principles do not depend on history or culture but is shared by all human societies and could be articulated as a logical ideal.

Pop and Protest

Pop Culture and Style

Although the International Typographical Style continued to prevail during this period, hip graphic approaches transformed the world of advertising, editorial, and packaging design.  To be sophisticated meant a style that was cutting edge, smart, self-reflexive, and openly sly.  Consumers assumed they were being manipulated and instead of hiding that fact, designers flaunted it in campaigns.  Graphic design became chic, designers became hip, and the profusion of images increased.

1.  Perhaps one of the most famous pop art images created by Andy Warhol of Marilyn Monroe.

Self-Conscious Graphic Design

In the 1960s, chic graphic style became desirable and graphic designers became self-conscious and also developed a sense of humor.  Editors and advertisers realized that the consumer had outgrown the 'message' mode of graphic design and successful marketing techniques had been grounded in analysis and profiling.  Cutting-edge publications pushed the envelope of what was permitted.  

Counterculture and the Alternative Press

The underground press thrived in the 1960s as inexpensive offset printing provided a platform for a range of expressions aimed at establishing communities of opinion and belief.  Independent presses established a widespread network of alternative publishing though they rarely had economic success.  the fantasy of mass distribution for independent artistic expression resulted in a new surge of interest in artists' books and magazines.

Revolutionary Culture and Protest

In the United States, protests against the Vietnam war intensified during the 1960s.  Organized resistance to official policies produced an enormous output of graphic images.  Many professional designers did pro bono work for the antiwar movement.  No movement utilized graphic imagery as efficiently and effectively as the antiwar movement although many have tried since that time.

2.  Anti war movement posters in the 1960s.

Changes in the Profession

Type cast in hot lead became and outmoded technology, replacing it was phototypesetting which had been adopted by the end of the 1960s.  There was capabilities of phototypesetting seemed to have every advantage.  Letter could be drawn using almost any graphic approach or technique.  It would have been physically impossible to overlap letters with metal type but there were no such limitations with photo fonts and overlapping text became one of the hallmarks of photocomposition.  

Glossary

Counterculture - any movement or group, whether formally organized or not, that promotes values opposed to those of the mainstream.

Establishment - the mainstream bulwark of power, institutions and individuals aligned with traditional values and maintenance of the status quo.

Mail art - an artistic movement that used the postal system, both as a means of distribution and as an element of the work itself (in the form of cancellations stamps and other official notations).

Op art - an artistic movement of the late 1950s and 1960s that explored and manipulated optical effects, especially of geometric patterns.

Postmodernism in Design

Postmodern Styles

The first signs of postmodern graphic design appeared in the late 1970s and early 1980s.  Postmodernism entered the built environment, and a dialogue developed in which architecture and graphic design were mutually influenced.  A generation of young designers seemed to be parodying their modern teachers and disregarded the rules of International Style.  Not only did they dispense with adherence to formal organization, they also seemed to throw out legibility as well.  Postmodern formal manipulation was often anti functional and deliberately chaotic.  The postmodernism period did not comprise of a single unified graphic style, rather the characteristics were all conspicuous trends.

Retro style was superficial in its relation to historical sources.  Techno style had a streamlined, metallic quality, hard-edged and robotic, almost electronic.  Punk style took Pop nonconformism and pushed it to extremes.

1.  Retro style posters

2.  Punk style poster.

Postmodern Consumption and Conservatism

A period of economic depression followed the end of the Vietnam War in the early 1970s and smaller, more conservative governments shrank benefits and programs that had been considered central to the social contract in earlier decades.  The 1980s were fraught with boom and bust economic cycles, oil shortages, and global tensions.  

Critical Theory and Postmodern Sensibility

Postmodernism was an attitude toward origin and change.  Utopianism was gone along with the unwavering faith in progress that had been characteristic of modernity since the industrial revolution.  The suspicion that everything had already been said, drawn, photographed, written, recorded, or thought stood in contrast to the modern enthusiasm for innovation that had dominated in the early part of the century.  Postmodern design seemed largely a matter of style, but in reality postmodern designers questioned assumptions about representation and communication that had been the basis of graphic design since its origins.

Postmodernism and Activism

A flexible sense of history and a free association of styles made postmodern design feel like it had no rules or restraints.  critical analysis of social conditions and the rise of cultural studies had an impact on the graphic design industry, offering tools for thinking, intervention, and change.

Changes in the Profession

Technological advances were on the horizon in the 1970s, but early postmodernism design was a photomechanical production, not an electronic one.  The use of photographic negatives to layer and manipulate content preceded the desktop computers by 10 years.  By the 1980s, graphic designers were not only working in advertising, packaging, and editorial, but it also involved special effects, animations, films, and television.  Many designers also combined their roles as teachers and critics while their design work shed the last vestiges of modern decorum, their teaching and writing took on critical issues.  Designers often expressed ideas graphically without a full appreciation of their theoretical implications.

Glossary

Deconstructive - of or pertaining to a philosophical method of interpretation premised on the idea that texts and images do not reveal truths but create fields of signification and that reading their signs through a play of difference produces meaning that is always shifting.

Grunge -a word meaning dirt achieved through neglect, appropriated to describe a style of music identified with a nihilistic or self-consciously apathetic attitude that originated in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.

Hybrid - an organism produced by mixing genetic material

Hyperreal - of or pertaining to appearances in which it is impossible to distinguish reality from illusion, either because a representation is so believable or because conditions of perception or cognition do not allow for distinctions between real and imagined phenomena or experience.

Postmodernism - a cultural moment at which modernism's claims for universal, formal, and autonomous qualities in works of art or design were replaced by notions of relativism, contingency, and play within sign systems.

Punk - a rebellious counterculture movement that began in Britain and the United States, whose harsh sound and abrasive lyrics attached the pretenses of middle-class culture and conservative politics.

Retro - of or pertaining to rhetoric, the art of persuasion or effective presentation.

Sign systems - finite networks within which symbols circulate and gain their value.

Simulacra - illusions that pass for reality.

Techno - of or pertaining to a style that uses the imagery and motifs of contemporary technology not as functional forms but as elements of an aesthetic.

Digital Design

Digital Technology: From Punch Cards and Plotters to Desktop Computing

In the early 1960s, electronic computing was still limited to mainframe computers with no graphical user interfaces.  Such technology appealed to only a very limited community.  Output was usually produced by a plotter pen, like a robotic arm that traced a path dictated by mathematically specified coordinates.  Conceptual artists took an active interest in information processing and interaction with early monitors was conducted through a command-line interface.  Graphic designers played a role in visually interpreting and packaging the new technologies.  The development of affordable printers and the establishment of industry standards for outputting film  from digital files closed the loop between desktop and print production.  Many designers picked up new tools as useful extensions of what they already knew and did.

Media Transitions: Type Design and Publications

The digital typeface design introduced philosophical questions as well as aesthetic challenges.  There were limits on output questions of scalability, and the differing demands of screen displays vs print quality.  Print publications remained important venues for the promotion of digital design.  For most graphic designers, digital design initially meant manipulating type, vector graphics and pixel-based images in the display space of an application.  However, interactivity soon became a part of the focus of design.  The practice of design for print changed.  The designers now had to be responsible for things that had previously been specialized, such as: prepress tasks, detailed knowledge of screen percentages, dot angles, and ink colors.

Fluidity and Functionality

The basic characteristics of the digital environment made boundaries among formats fluid, overturning material distinctions that had been rigidly enforced by earlier print technologies.  Early digital design programs were clumsy, hampered by limited memory and processor speeds.  As the programs developed, they proved well suited to the sophisticated layering and collaging of images and texts that had been characteristic of design in the 1970s and 1980s.

Glossary

Algorithm - from the name of ninth-century Arab mathematician al-Kwarizmi, a set of step by step instructions for calculating or problem solving.  The basis for accomplishing any task in a computational environment.

Analog - of or pertaining to forms (information, expressions, or representations) stored in, or rendered by, media that have continuously variable values, such as photographic film or magnetic tape as opposed to values coded in discrete or digital units.

Bitmap - a means of describing the position and value of pixels in a display.

Command-line - a text based interface to a computer's operating system.  The actual line through which a command is typed and entered.

Desktop - a computer environment, modeled on the physical analog, in which icons act like objects they represent, so that folders contain files, and a trash can is a place to throw away (delete) files.

Digital - of or pertaining to anything composed of a code of discrete units.  Now usually with reference to the binary code underlying computational calculations or the representation of information in such a binary code.

Fonts - originally, a complete set of characters for a particular typeface in a certain size cast in metal.

Mechanicals - finished artwork (including text, images, layouts, and so on) that has been prepared o be photographed for reproduction.  So called perhaps, because they were made using a straight-edge and other precision instruments.  

Pixelated - of or pertaining to an image or graphic that shows the basic units of its digital display (pixels), usually because the resolution of the file or screen is not high enough to render a smooth line or image but also, sometimes, as a deliberate aesthetic effect.

Telematic - of or pertaining to the processing of information at a distance, often using wireless technology.

Transparency - the quality of a text or image whose meaning seems to be perceptible without being mediated by the material or format of its representation or delivery.