This is another book which again is quite a broad book on the concept of advertising in American culture and it's importance wrapped around useful facts everyone should read - it posed a few questions and lines of enquiry for me especially in regards to, on the surface, how advertising and brand orientated, celebrated American graphic design is. Compared to a more european aesthetic, for example a Swiss poster for an exhibition by Josef Muller-Brockman. It'll be interesting to find out why clients of famous work was different post-WWII, with research into the dawn consumerism and a product driven society.
Below are notes which although some may be unrelated on the surface, most I feel paint a good picture of the American graphic design and communication scene from the 50's onwards and allowed me to gain a better understanding of American culture and client needs from George Louis, one of the grandfathers and icons of American advertising in the 60s onwards.
= Quote
= Comment/Analysis
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Notes
Social impact on design and social responsibility of communicators in America post 'Nam. and relevant to post-WWII/ 'Cultural Provocateur'.
"My experience as a young G.I. fighting in an army committing genocide on an Asian culture led me, indeed forced me when I came home to live a life as a graphic communicator determined to awaken, to disturb, to protest, to instigate, to provoke."
"At every opportunity I have attempted to speak truth to power - to fight the "authorities", unjust courts, police harassment, the consistent loss of our civil liberties, a government that benefits the wealthy at the expense of the poor and powerless, and America's unending wars - by creating graphic imagery and organising battles against ethics, religious and racial injustice, always standing against a conservative indoctrinated and racist society, and playing a conscious role...as a cultural provocateur."
Provoking and triggering culture.
Understanding culture + Changing culture
"Great graphic and verbal communication depends on understanding and adapting to the culture, anticipating the culture, criticising changes in the culture and helping to change the culture." - p16Idea of graphic design being a representation of the culture, an adaption of the culture and also vice versa the importance of graphic design in changing and criticising the culture - all these factors can be research into in terms of factors and intentions in regards to Swiss and American graphic design post WWII.
Consumerism and selling
"We live in a timid age when students and young professionals are "taught" to believe that a commercial or an ad should not be seen or experienced as an ad... People enjoy being sold products." - p20
Fighting visual disease. Professionalism and social responsibility of a designer in America. Less self-expressionistic than now?
Similar to Massimo Vignelli
"If you're a creative in any business, think of yourself as a doctor giving a patient medicine that will save his life. I'm dead serious." - p41.
* The Advertising Creative Revolution of the 50's *
Importance of historical studies and inspiration for progressive design - as mentioned in Dem Lec.
"The secret of all effective advertising is not the creation of new and tricky words and pictures, but one of putting familiar words and pictures into new relationships." - p77
David Ogilvy - The Man in the Hathaway Shirt - classic example of selling a lifestyle and consumerist graphic communication in America.
"The Man in the Hathaway Shirt stiffly but elegantly posing, ad after ad, wearing an overly crisp Hathaway shirt and an eye popping, aristocratic eye-patch, and ordained with the name Baron Wrangell (some sort of English wit, I gathered).
similar to modern advertising for clothing and bicicyles etc, buying into the lifestyle more than the product itself. Todays society looking backwards more than ever? In terms of lifestyle and a rejection of technology
Who are classic graphic designers in terms of traditional graphic design for print? Not just advertising and corporate branding (all for selling a service, instead of an experience)
SOCIAL IMPORTANCE + POWER OF VISUAL COMMUNICATION
"This ad was the opening salvo in waging a Guerrila war to free the innocent 'Hurricane". I visited Ruben Carter in Trenton State Prison to tell him what I was planning. A few days later, I ran it in the news section of the New York Times. Within a week I enlisted 82 dinstinguished citizens...with Muhammad li as the chairman.
The ad kept millions of people in America from swallowing their toast that morning as they were reading the Times." - p85
Society, commentary and design as one
"I came to the realisation in my late teens that an hour spent each morning reading The New York Times kept me informed on, and inspired by the zeitgeist of the times."
"Radio, television and the internet can't come close to the visceral, informative, investigative and analytical power of the worlds great newspapers."
Power of print!
Enquire: The graphic design and advertising scene in America post WWII and during the Vietnam war, did it change or continue on its path? Why did it change, did it change to a more consumerist society. Broadly how did psychoanalysis play a part in it.
What overall cultural and societal factors played a part in my understanding of the American graphic design modernist style of the 50s onwards.
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