This Week’s Topics

Wrap Up

Congratulations on your accomplishments this semester!

Take a moment to look back at all the work you’ve completed this semester in this course (and others). Even if there were things you wish you could have changed or improved upon, I hope you will feel good about your accomplishments and learn from your disappointments.

In this course, we looked at the formative theories that help us better understand the “how” of visual communication and explored the critical theories that may explain the “why” within historical, cultural, and social contexts. When we look at philosophical, ethical, political, and aesthetic questions in the field of design, our ability to think creatively and critically expands.

Through this critical practice, my goal for you by the end of this course was to start to include the question “why” within your own design practice and begin to see how your own aesthetic influences connect to historical lineages in the field of design. And also to see how important your voice is to the future of the communication design field.

I hope you will be able to apply some of the practices we covered in this course in your design projects here at City Tech and in your future creative career.

Best wishes for a safe, relaxing break, and a productive Spring semester. Please stay in touch!

Activities

Below find the information covered in this session.

1. Knowing Your Design History is Crucial to Aesthetic Innovation

Here is one last optional reading which underscores one of the aims of this course: to be an innovative designer, learn how your own aesthetic influences connect to historical lineages in the field of design.

Cerulean blue pigment is an expensive pure blue pigment. It is opaque and bright due to its highly refractive particles. It was quickly adopted by artists, including the Impressionists, because of its hue, permanence and opaqueness. It was particularly useful for skyscapes and can be found in the sky of Monet’s 1877 La Gare Saint-Lazare, the pointillism of Paul Signac, and in Édouard Manet’s 1878 Corner of a Café-Concert.

The color has earned widespread popularity. In 1999 it was nominated by Pantone as the color of the millennium. According to Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, “Psychologically, gazing at a blue sky brings a sense of peace and tranquillity to the human spirit.

Surrounding yourself with cerulean blue could bring a certain peace because it reminds you of time spent outdoors, on a beach, near the water – associations with restful, peaceful, relaxing times.”

The Devil Wears Prada- The Blue Sweater Scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL-KQij0I8I

In this essay, Kristen Coogan examines how “Knowing Your Design History is Crucial to Aesthetic Innovation.”

It’s a helpful reminder for designers and design students today: if you borrow from a certain style, it’s important to know where that style came from, as well as the social and cultural contexts that gave that style its rise.

KRISTEN COOGAN, EYE ON DESIGN, JUNE 22ND, 2020

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This Week’s Agenda is brief. This week you will be completing your final coursework and reflecting on your learning experience.

• Your Research Project & Presentation post is due on Tuesday, Dec. 14th by 11:59pm.
• Your Research Journal is due by Sunday, December 19th, at 11:59 pm.
• Comments on your your classmates’ presentations are due by Sunday, December 19th, at 11:59 pm.
• Any additional work that you’d like to revise or that you’ve missed can be submitted up until the last class, Sunday, December 19th, at 11:59 pm.
• Your Grade Survey is due by Dec. 19th, at 11:59 pm. Your learning reflection and the grade you believe you have earned for this course will be factored into your final grade.

If you want to schedule any last-minute meetings about your research project, contact me to meet on Monday or Tuesday or email with any questions or concerns: jspevack@citytech.cuny.edu.

Are you missing any assignments or discussion posts? Take a look all of the agendas for this semester on the Schedule page. Submit any remaining work in before Sunday, December 19th!

Activities

Below find the information covered in this session. Complete all of the following activities and assignments.

1. Research Project Presentation

You have 3 DAYS left to complete your Research Project & Presentation. Your final post is due on Tuesday, Dec. 14th by 11:59pm

Review the project guidelines to make sure you are clear about what the expectations are for the Research Project & Presentation. Specifically, take note of the requirements for Your Annotated Bibliography and Your Presentation Format.

Here is an example Research Project Presentation Post for reference!

Some students had issues with copyright when uploading their videos to YouTube. If that happens to you, you can upload your video to Google Drive or Dropbox and link to it in your post. See the Research Project & Presentation > Tools & Tips.

For tips on composition:  how to write a great essay

Milestones

By today  you should have completed the first four milestones. Your final milestone is May 24.

1. 1. Submit Presentation to OpenLab site – follow the guideslines
   2. Submit at least one comment on each of your classmates’ presentations

2. Research Journal Due

Your Research Journal is a place for collecting ideas, freewriting, images, links, videos, and other media to help you develop your ideas and formulate your research topic. It can be organized or sloppy or anywhere in between, but it should demonstrate who you are as a creative, curious individual and your research process in this course.

May 17 is the last day to contribute any work other than the Final project. If you have notes and ideas in other places, take photos and/or copy them over to your Research Journal. These could be photos of your sketchbook, other notebooks, etc. Show your work and your creative/research process.

No need to create a new post, simply make sure the link in your Midterm post is still working.

3. Give Research Project Presentation Comments

Begin adding comments to your classmates’ Research Project Presentations posts. View all the posts by navigating to Student Posts > Research Project.

Give at least 1 comment per presentation. Your comment should be supportive AND helpful!

This is NOT a helpful comment:

“Great presentation, I like it”

A helpful comment is one that offers support, a critique of the content, and delivery of the research material, as well as suggestions for improvement:

“Great presentation, NAME. I enjoyed your exploration of XXXX and XXXX. I was especially excited to learn about XXXX and XXXX. I was intrigued by your discussion of XXXX because you presented it by exploring XXXX and contrasted it with XXXX. However, I would have liked to have learned more about XXXXX. Have you considered expanding on XXXX and XXXX? Here are some links about XXXX that I think would be helpful for your future research.”

4. What did you learn? Grade Survey

Look over your Research Journal, the Weekly Class Agendas, and the Discussions. Take a moment to look again at the grading policy. Consider all of the ways in which you have, over this semester, engaged your sense of curiosity about Communication Design Theory.

Consider the following:

Do you now look at advertisements, social media, or your favorite video games with a critical eye for connotated or denoted meaning? Do you see the types of signs used in the world around you? Can you pick out the signifiers and signified? Are you able to identify influences from design history like Constructivism, the International Style, and Post-Modernism in subways ads? Do you think more about the photographic, illustrative, color, or typographic choices in your work, and consider how they will be received, what meaning they might convey to your audience, or how they might persuade your audience to think or feel a certain way? Do you feel like your reading and writing skills have improved? Have the skills of close-reading and annotation given you the confidence to read more challenging texts, if you choose to in the future? Will you apply the research and analysis skills used in this course to your creative practice?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, hey, that’s good news!

What grade do you think you have earned in this course?

Use the Grade Survey to submit the grade you believe you have earned in this course. This may not be the final grade you receive but your evaluation of your own learning experience and effort is extremely important and will be considered.

• • Grade Survey

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Activities

Below find the information covered in this session.

1. The Digital Revolution & Social Responsibility (90+ minutes)

As one millennium ended and another began, digital technology fundamentally transformed graphic design. Old avant-garde issues of authorship, universality, and social responsibility were reborn within society’s newly decentralized networked structure.

HELEN ARMSTRONG

The Digital Revolution – 1980s-1990s Design History (3 min)

In 1984, Apple released the Macintosh computer.  It would revolutionize the entire industry. I was in art school in the early 1990s and we used the first release of Photoshop 1.0. It was slow, clunky, and honestly painful to use (we would run a filter and go out for coffee!) but the results were nothing like we had ever seen before.

Let’s watch this video from Graphic Design History on LinkedIn Learning to gain an overview of the time period, the advent of the personal computer, and its effects on the design industry. Watch from 1:57:58 – 2:01:49 on LinkedIn Learning via your Library Card or the YouTube video below.

Activity: As you watch, take note of the dates and designers who experimented with these new tools. Also, note how once again changes in technology radically altered the field of design and the role of a designer.

The Internet (7 min)

At the turn of the 20th Century, photography and printing revolutionalized communications. At the turn of the 21st Century, the new digital technologies of the computer and the internet change the field of communication design again.

In the early years of the internet, graphics were limited and the design standards that we know and use today were often ignored. It was the wild west. After many years, designers began to see the importance of user experience. A focus on universality, the grid, visual/information hierarchy, and minimalism drove much of the design aesthetic in web design because it allowed designers to put content and the user experience first. Today anyone anywhere can make a website and this has changed the role of the designer once again.

Activity: As you watch this video, note that it’s from 2012. What has happened to mobile/app development in the few short years since this video was produced? And looking back at our exploration of the effects of social media on society, how has the optimistic utopian vision of the internet changed?

The Digital Design Revolution – THE LONG VIEW (44 min)

For a detailed background on the history of the digital age in design take a look at this video that takes you from the early 50s room-size computers to the present day.

Activity: Again, as you watch, take note of the dates and designers mentioned. Consider your own experience as a consumer and a creator. Many of you grew up with the internet. How has your use of the computer and the web changed in your lifetime? Do you have nostalgia for the “old days”?

Authorship & the Social Responsibility Movement of the New Millennium

…Designers who devote their efforts primarily to advertising, marketing and brand development are supporting, and implicitly endorsing, a mental environment so saturated with commercial messages that it is changing the very way citizen-consumers speak, think, feel, respond and interact. To some extent we are all helping draft a reductive and immeasurably harmful code of public discourse.

There are pursuits more worthy of our problem-solving skills. Unprecedented environmental, social and cultural crises demand our attention. Many cultural interventions, social marketing campaigns, books, magazines, exhibitions, educational tools, television programmes, films, charitable causes and other information design projects urgently require our expertise and help…

FIRST THINGS FIRST MANIFESTO 2000

In a 1994 essay in Eye magazine, Andrew Howard reminded designers about the 1964 manifesto entitled ‘First Things First’ signed by British designer Ken Garland and a group of 21 colleagues. The manifesto’s aim was to “reject the ‘high pitched scream of consumer selling’ and omnipotent lure of the advertising industry in favour of what was defined as socially useful graphic design work.”

Several years later, thirty-three designers renewed the original call for a change of priorities and published ‘First Things First Manifesto 2000‘ in Adbusters, Emigre,  Eye, Blueprint, Items in the Netherlands, and Form in Germany.

In 2014 – on the 50th anniversary of the manifesto – over 1600 designers across the world renewed their commitment to the manifesto.

In 2020 an updated version, FTF 2020, was published online and included a focus on the climate crisis and racial justice. “Our time and energy are increasingly used to manufacture demand, to exploit populations, to extract resources, to fill landfills, to pollute the air, to promote colonization, and to propel our planet’s sixth mass extinction.” 

Check out this short 2:30 min video of David Berman, author of Do Good Design. Berman’s main thesis is: “Rather than sharing our cycles of style, consumption, and chemical addictions, designers can use their professional power, persuasive skills, and wisdom to help distribute ideas that the world really needs: health information, conflict resolution, tolerance, technology, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, human rights, democracy …”

2. Evaluating Online Sources

When searching for sources for your Research Project, it’s important not to take all sources at face value. Think critically about the sources your find online, the context in which the sources are created, and the context in which you are using the source.

Watch this interactive 5-minute video tutorial created by the City Tech Library which goes over how to evaluate online sources.

When evaluating sources, ask the following questions:

1. What kind of source is this? Be as specific as possible.
2. Is it a reliable source? How can you tell?
3. What is the purpose of the source?
4. Is the source biased?Do you think the author was paid to write this source? Why or why not?
5. Do you think you’d have to pay to read the full text of this source? Why or why not?
6. If a text is free to read, but an author is paid to write, where does the money to pay the author come from?

3. Research Project Presentation Planning

You have 20 DAYS left to complete your Research Project & Presentation.

Review the following milestones. By today May 3 you should have completed your outline and script. Your next milestone is May 10th.

1. 1. May 3: Complete presentation outline and script
   2. May 10: Assemble all graphics and text in slideshow
   3. May 17: Share in-progress slideshow presentation with voiceoever, get feedback from peers and professor
   4. May 24: Submit Presentation to OpenLab site

4. Presentation Tips & Tools

Review the project guidelines to make sure you are clear about what the expectations are for the Research Project & Presentation. Specifically, take note of the requirements for Your Annotated Bibliography and Your Presentation Format.

Below find some helpful links for tips and tools you can use to assemble and record your Research Presentation.

• • Review ‘TED’s Secret to a Great Public Speaking‘ (8-min video)
  • Use Powerpoint, Google Slides, Preview PDF slideshow, Prezi or any other method to assemble your slidedeck.
  • Use Zoom, Vimeo Record, Prezi, Screencast-o-matic, or any screencapture app to record your slidedeck presentation with voiceover. Remember to save your recording to your desktop to edit or upload direclty to YouTube or Vimeo (depending on the which app you are using.)
  • Make sure your slide deck is set to FULL SCREEN when your record.
    • Here is a screenshot of a fullscreen presentation.
    • Here is a screenshot of what not to do and how to enter fullscreen mode.
  • Follow these guidelines to upload your finished Research Presentation video to YouTube. Set your video as Unlisted and copy the Video Link to paste into your OpenLab Post.

5. Reading & Discussion: Week 12 (2 hours)

For this week’s reading and discussion be sure to review the section above on Graphic Authorship & the Social Responsibility Movement of the New Millennium. We will take a look at Rick Poynor’s essay The Evolving Legacy of Ken Garland’s First Things First Manifesto, examine the updated FTF 2020, and consider how technology and graphic authorship have influenced social responsibility in design.

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This week we will take a look at Post Modernism. What is it?! Well, that’s always up for debate. We’ve already touched on this movement/theory/era over the last two weeks without actually identifying it. See if you can recognize some of the postmodernist approaches and theories from the last two classes in our studies this week.

Activities

Below find the information covered in this session. Complete all of the following activities, videos, and assignments.

1. Postmodernism? Style & Subversion (90+ minutes)

From about 1970 to 1990, Postmodernism shattered established ideas about design and art. A brilliant mix of theatrical and theoretical, Postmodernism ranges from the colourful to the ruinous, the luxurious to the ludicrous. It is a visually thrilling multifaceted style which so famously defies definition.

V&A EXHIBITION ‘POSTMODERNISM: STYLE AND SUBVERSION 1970 – 1990’

What the *&%!# is Postmodernism? Even celebrated design leaders of the Postmodernist era have a hard time describing what the term Postmodernism means. And as we shall see, that’s kind of the point. Last week we used Barthes and Hall’s Postmodern lens’ of Structuralism and Cultural Studies respectively to discover that meaning is subjective. It can change depending on the viewer and each individual’s life/cultural experience.

Activity: Get a scrap piece of paper and pen/pencil. Take a moment to write down the qualities of Modernism that you can think of. Think back to the early avant-garde (De Stijl, Constructivists, Bauhaus, New Typography) in the early 20th Century. What were their goals and ideology with regard to Universality in form, truth, and meaning? What were they rebelling against? Consider that some of their goals were realized by the mid-1960s when the Swiss/International Style went mainstream.

By the late ’60s and early 1970s, the rebellion begins again. The Postmodernism avant-garde was a direct reaction to mainstream Modernism.

What is Postmodernism? (12 min)

Let’s watch this video before we go any further. Here we look at some of the design styles seen and heard in the Postmodern era.

Activity: As you watch, write down the words that the designers use to describe this style/era and the work they produced during the 1970s-1990s.

Graphic Design History – Rejection of Modernism in late 60s-1990s (20 min)

In our reading of Steven Heller’s “Underground Mainstream”, we learned how in the late 1960s, mainstream Modernism (universality, simplicity, minimalist, structured, grid-based, corporate, design for all) was rejected in favor of the opposite (complexity, ambiguity, subjectivity, cultural pluralism, personal, experimental). This was the very beginning of Postmodernism in design. Let’s take a look back starting with the hippy counter-culture posters coming out of San Francisco in the late 60s, all the way through the 1990s anti-consumerist grunge movement in Seattle. In this broad time period with its range of styles, anything goes. The rejection of Modernist minimalism and functionalism and the embrace of personal expression, experimentation, mixed media, and styles from other time periods are the hallmarks of Postmodernism. Pay close attention to the sections on Punk and New Wave, Low-tech Seattle, and Postmodernism. These sections will be important to the Reading Response and Discussion.

Discuss

Watch from Filmore 1:34:40 to Postmodernism 1:57:58 on LinkedIn Learning via your Library Card or the YouTube video below.

Punk Pop & Post Modern – Graphics of the Big 80s (38 min)

This video looks at the 1980s, “the decade of shredding, remixing, tagging, overdubbing and deconstructing” and the Postmodern lineage from the late 1960s and 1970s.

2. Finding Library Sources

At this point, you should have collected a large number of sources to support your Research Project topic. You will also want to include at least 3-4 sources from the Library Databases.

This 5-minute video tutorial goes over the basics of using the City Tech Library databases.

To search the library databases follow the instructions below:

• Visit the City Tech Library site (https://library.citytech.cuny.edu/)
• Navigate to Research Guides
• Select A-Z Database List on the right-hand side of the page.
• Then select Academic Search Complete (EBSCO), the largest scholarly, multidisciplinary, full-text database.
• Login to the CUNY SSO (Single Sign On)
• At the top of the search form click the link Choose Databases to select the databases to include in your seach. Then click Save. Depending on your topic, you may need to experiment with the databases you include in your search, but generally the following are a good starting place. These databases include a wide variety of newpapers, journals, magazine and other media.
  • Business Source Complete
  • Communications & MassMedia Complete
  • Regional Business News
  • MasterFile Complete
  • MAS Ultra – School Edition
• Use the form to execute a keyword search.
  • Enter your keywords in the first text box.
  • Select TX All Text from the Select a Field dropdown.
  • If relevant, restrict the search to specific dates using the Publish Date fields.
• Navigate the results to find sources in HTML and PDF or links to sources in related databases.

3. Research Project Presentation Planning

You have ONE MONTH left to complete your Research Project & Presentation.

Review the project guidelines to make sure you are clear about what the expectations are: Research Project & Presentation

If you need help finding sources, organizing your ideas, or help with technical issues don’t wait until the last minute.

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Last week we  learned about how the design of persuasive social media “massages” us and how that change/manipulation has lasting effects on society. As current consumers and future design leaders, your opinion and actions matter. 

The topics we will be covering this week will build on our reading of Roland Barthes’ essay “Rhetoric of the Image.” We will explore representation, context, and the use of rhetoric in advertising, specifically concerning the perpetuation of ethnic and gender biases. The work we engage in today will inform your second and last research paper and hopefully also your Research Project/Presentation.

Activities

1. Representation and Context (90+ minutes)

Last week we examined Marshall McLuhan’s ideas about media. We learned that the medium is integral to the message and how we receive it. This week we will look at representation and context by exploring the use of stereotypes in media (print, radio, television, and online advertisements). In your second Research Paper, you will use the terminology and approaches that we cover this week to deconstruct a historical or contemporary advertisement that uses coded cultural message(s) of racial, ethnic, and/or gender stereotypes.

We will return to Saussure (sign, signifier, signified) and Peirce (symbol, icon, index) to refresh our understanding of early semiotics. We will incorporate the terms we learned in the last reading of Barthes (connoted, denoted, iconic messages, linguistic messages) and explore additional terms such as encoding, decoding, polysemic, myth, and naturalization. Lastly, we will look at Jamaican-born cultural studies scholar and activist Stuart Hall who explored how the dynamics of media representation reinforce societal power structures.

Terminology

Before we go any further, let’s make sure we all understand the semiotic terms we will need to deconstruct an advertisement.

Ferdinand de Saussure

• • • Sign: A sign is anything that creates meaning composed of a signifier and a signified.
    • Signifier: A word, an image, a sound, anything we see, speak or hear to refer to the sign.
    • Signified: The concept that our mind conjures in relation to the sign.

Charles Sanders Peirce

• • • Icon: signifier resembles the signified
    • Symbol: arbitrary learned relationship between the signifier and signified
    • Index: signifier is caused by or linked to the signified

Here’s a graphic to clarify these terms:

Roland Barthes

Building on Saussure and Peirce, Barthes argued that when we construct a sign (encoding), its reception (decoding) does not take place in a vacuum. Our individual experience, society, and culture impact its meaning and how it is interpreted. In our reading last week, we looked at Barthes’ close-reading of the Panzani advertisement. Take a look at this breakdown of “Rhetoric of the Image” by Lesley Lanir where he covers some of the following terms.

• • • Encoding: creating a message for transmission (i.e., creation and distribution of an advertisement)
    • Decoding: the process of interpreting a message (i.e., watching and interpreting an advertisement)
    • Connotation: symbolic or cultural meaning (a coded message)
    • Denotation: Literal meaning (a message without code)
    • Linguistic message: words used to convey meaning
    • Non-coded iconic message: an image with literal meaning
    • Coded iconic message: an image with a coded message
    • Polysemic: a sign that has multiple meanings
    • Myth: a widely accepted meaning of a sign
    • Naturalization: in a society, the repeated use of signs shapes its meaning

Here’s a 9+ minute video that takes us through some of these semiotic terms from a film perspective. Advertising takes a similar approach.

Stuart Hall

Stuart Hall was a Jamaican-born British sociologist, cultural theorist and political activist. He looked at the power of mainstream media (advertising, TV, film, etc) to understand the representation of race, gender, class, ethnicity, and religion. Here are some of the theories and terms associated with his work.

• • • Reception Theory: This theory asserts that advertising and media are encoded and decoded. The creator encodes messages and values into media which are then decoded by the audience. Audiences will decode the media in different ways and not always in the way the creator intended.
      • Dominant, or Preferred Reading: how the creator wants the audience to view the advertisment or media.
      • Oppositional Reading: when the audience rejects the preferred reading, and creates their own meaning. This can happen when content is controversial or when the audience holds different beliefs or is of a different age or culture.
      • Negotiated Reading: a compromise between the dominant and oppositional readings. The audience accepts some of the creator’s view, but also has their own views.
    • Representation Theory: There is not a true representation of people or events in media. Designers/creators try to ‘fix’ a ‘preferred meaning’ through ideology or stereotyping. Historically, this is driven by people in power.

This 6+ minute video explains Hall’s Reception Theory:

This 3-minute video breaks down Hall’s Representation Theory:

This 7-minute video gives a bit more detail and context to Hall’s Representation Theory:

In this 55 minute documentary from 1997, Stuart Hall offers an extended meditation on representation. Take a close look at 36:00 he speaks about representation in advertising. Note that this video was created is prior to social media and the internet era that we live in now. Consider if the power structure has changed and why/why not? Make sure you are logged into CUNY SSO (single sign-on) to view.

2. Stereotype in Advertising Media (1+ hours)

The use of stereotypes to communicate meaning and sell products has a long history in advertising media and visual communications.

As we observed in our readings on the lack of diversity in design, leadership in the field of advertising media and design was (and still is) dominated by white, heterosexual men. And as we see from our recent study of media and the message, and representation above, mainstream media is a powerful force for intentionally or unintentionally reinforcing biases in society. It’s changing, but women and BIPOC designers in advertising are historically limited. That lack of diversity in creative leadership has allowed widely-held biases to continue to flourish.

Here are some sources to get you started in your research for Research Paper 2. If you have already chosen a historical 19th or 20th-century print advertisement that uses obvious and/or documented racial, ethnic, or gender stereotypes to sell the product, review the sources below to support your research. If you haven’t yet chosen an advertisement, browse the references below to find some.

History of racial, gender, ethnic, cultural stereotypes in advertisements

• • • Race and Ethnicity in Advertising
      • African Americans and Advertising – Marya McQuirter, Digital Curator
      • Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans in Advertising :: Full Essay PDF
      • Cultural Transformation and Chinese Figures in Nineteenth Century American Trade Cards – Lenore Metrick-Chen, Drake University
      • European Americans and Advertising
      • Jews and American Advertising – Eli Diner, University of California, Los Angeles, and Hasia Diner, New York University
      • Latinos and Advertising – James Rodriguez, New York University
      • Native Americans and Advertising – Stephanie A.L. Molholt, Community College of Baltimore County
      • Sexuality, Race and Ethnicity in Advertising :: Full Essay PDF
      • South Asian Americans in Advertising :: Full Essay PDF

• • • T. Burns Collection of Racial Stereotypes, 1880s-1983
    • Timeline: Race and advertising in America
    • ‘Ethnicity is authenticity’: how America got addicted to racist branding
    • Blackface and the Birth of the American Stereotype
    • The Racism of 19th Century Advertisements
    • The Real and Problematic History Behind Aunt Jemima
    • “Ethnic Notions: African American Stereotypes and Prejudice” (Documentary 1987)
    • Gender stereotypes have been banned from British ads (some historical ads and context here)
    • Gender Advertisements (1979 book by the sociologist Erving Goffman with analysis of hundreds of US ads for gender roles)
    • Food Is Love : Advertising and Gender Roles in Modern America, Parkin, Katherine J., 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, (Book. Use your Library Card to access)
    • Gender roles in 1940’s Ads (examples from cinema advertisements)

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This Week’s Topics

At the end of this session, students should have an understanding of the following:

• An understanding of the prophetic and influential ideas presented by Marshall McLuhan in the late 1960s, specifically the theories in his book “Understanding Media” and his quote “The Media is the Message.”
• Why these ideas relate to the persuasive technology that we interact with on social media platforms and how they are affecting human society.

Submit your Research Journal for mid-semester review

Each week you should be adding to your online Research Journal, documenting and critically reflecting on your influences, history, culture, likes, and dislikes.
This practice of being curious about your own design aesthetic is a way to gain experience engaging with critical design theory and preparing for your research project.

Twice during the semester, you will share your Research Journal with your professor (and your classmates only if you wish). If there is anything in your journal you don’t wish to share, you may duplicate the journal, remove the parts you want to keep private and submit it for review.

Due Dates

• • Week 9 – Monday, April 25th, at 6pm

Submission Process

1. 1. 1. Get your Research Journal ready to share.
         • Follow these instructions for creating a sharable link
      2. If you haven’t already*, create a post with the following metadata:
         • TITLE: Research Journal – Your Initials
         • CATEGORY: Research Journals
         • TAG: Your Name
      3. Write a brief reflection about your experience keeping this Research Journal.
      4. Below the reflection, create text link called: My Research Journal
      5. Select the text, click on the link icon, paste the sharable link into the link box and press return. Your text link should look like this: My Research Journal
      6. If you’d like to keep your post private, so only the professor can see your Research Journal, choose Visibility > Private when you post.

NOTE: if you have created your journal post previously, make any updates to your post to conform to these guidelines.

Activities

1. The Medium is the Message

Last class we looked at the American version of Modernism as corporate identity design and advertising in the 1950s-1960s began to take shape. This week we will move closer to the Postmodern era and examine Marshall McLuhan’s ideas about media as television was becoming the dominant medium. His theories were radical at the time and have been influential in the study and practice of design and media theory. They are especially important now with regard to the persuasive advertising model used by social media.

Marshall McLuhan was a Canadian professor and philosopher. He is known for coining the phrase “The medium is the message”. This statement first appeared in his book “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man – The Medium is the Message, which was published in 1964. And in his more experimental text “The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effect“, co-created by McLuhan and Quentin Fiore in 1967.

McLuhan died before the birth of the internet, but many believe that his theories about electronic media were prophetic; that he envisioned the internet decades before its arrival. He spoke about communication technologies as having the ability to create a “global village” and the increasing loss of privacy as a result.

McLuhan argued that we should focus on the medium of communication itself and he defined media as a technological extension of the body. He used the term “media” in a very broad sense including the spoken word, the written word, the printed word, telephone, films, radio, television, etc.

There are many excellent interpretations and critiques of McLuhan’s ideas. Let’s watch a few videos to help us to understand his ideas in the context of today’s contemporary media.\

Marshall McLuhan – A film by Daniel Savage

The media has the power to transform human nature and furthermore, no matter how powerful or persuasive the message, it’s the media that has changed our thought patterns and behavior. What does this mean for the “electronic environment” we inhabit? How do we decipher what media is fact and which is fiction? Discerning the difference is crucial now, more than ever.

DANIEL SAVAGE: THE MEDIUM OF THE MESSAGE – ADC LAUREN FESTA

What does “The Medium is the Message” really mean?

“The idea is that the mediums have a far greater impact on the fundamental shape and nature of society than any message that is delivered through that medium. What has had a greater impact on society and the way that we interact with one another, all the content of every Youtube video ever made or the existence of Youtube itself? All the conversations that you’ve ever had, the existence of your cell phone?… How do the mediums that you use help shape the world?”

THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE EXPLAINED BY DAN OLSON

This Is Marshall McLuhan – The Medium Is The Massage (1967)

Created in 1967, this video could be describing the new mediums of today: the internet, social media, online video, video games, virtual reality, etc. Watch from start to 08:23 (or longer if you have time.)

This Is Marshall McLuhan – The Medium Is The Massage (1967)

“The electric age is changing you, it’s changing your family, it’s changing your neighborhood, it’s changing your education, your job, it’s changing your government, it’s changing your relationship to others. These little circuits are making our world go. The electric age is having a profound effect on us. We are in a period of fantastic change that’s coming about at fantastic speed. Your life is changing dramatically, and you are numb to it.”

Social Media is the Message

McLuhan believed that media (in the broadest sense) is an extension of humanity, of the human body, and mind. How does media affect us? Our bodies? Our relationships? Our understanding of the world? Are we being changed right now?

Tristan Harris, the founder of the Center for Humane Technology, believes social media as it exists now “is a simultaneous utopia and dystopia.” The utopia the user experiences is the dopamine hits and efficiency of on-demand everything, and the dystopia of the giant manipulative matrix that we are living in. How do we recognize the Matrix if we don’t know that we’re in the Matrix?

The Social Dilemma

In the documentary, The Social Dilemma, early leaders in social media, like Tristan Harris, have revealed that the medium of the internet, specifically social media, is becoming an existential threat to human society.

While he didn’t foresee the negative effect on society, consider Marshall McLuhan’s prophetic theories about electronic media in the late 1960’s, specifically how technology is an extension of humanity. Think about the current design of social media and the consequences of our growing dependence on it.

What will become of society if the persuasive technology used for for-profit social media advertising is allowed to continue as it is now? We will respond to this and other questions in our Discussion this week.

Clip from The Social Dilemma (45 secs)

• • • • Tech Experts speak about the existential threat of social media

92nd Street Y – Interviews with Filmmaker and Tech Experts (1hr 15 min)

Tristan Harris – A New Agenda For Tech Presentation (54 mins)

Tristan Harris – A New Agenda for Tech Presentation

Activities

Below find the information covered in this session. Complete all of the following activities, videos, and assignments.

1. Representation and Context (90+ minutes)

Last week we examined Marshall McLuhan’s ideas about media. We learned that the medium is integral to the message and how we receive it. This week we will look at representation and context by exploring the use of stereotypes in media (print, radio, television, and online advertisements). In your second Research Paper, you will use the terminology and approaches that we cover this week to deconstruct a historical or contemporary advertisement that uses coded cultural message(s) of racial, ethnic, and/or gender stereotypes.

We will return to Saussure (sign, signifier, signified) and Peirce (symbol, icon, index) to refresh our understanding of early semiotics. We will incorporate the terms we learned in the last reading of Barthes (connoted, denoted, iconic messages, linguistic messages) and explore additional terms such as encoding, decoding, polysemic, myth, and naturalization. Lastly, we will look at Jamaican-born cultural studies scholar and activist Stuart Hall who explored how the dynamics of media representation reinforce societal power structures.

Terminology

Before we go any further, let’s make sure we all understand the semiotic terms we will need to deconstruct an advertisement.

Ferdinand de Saussure

• Sign: A sign is anything that creates meaning composed of a signifier and a signified.
• Signifier: A word, an image, a sound, anything we see, speak or hear to refer to the sign.
• Signified: The concept that our mind conjures in relation to the sign.

Charles Sanders Peirce

• Icon: signifier resembles the signified
• Symbol: arbitrary learned relationship between the signifier and signified
• Index: signifier is caused by or linked to the signified

Here’s a graphic to clarify these terms:

Roland Barthes

Building on Saussure and Peirce, Barthes argued that when we construct a sign (encoding), its reception (decoding) does not take place in a vacuum. Our individual experience, society, and culture impact its meaning and how it is interpreted. In our reading last week, we looked at Barthes’ close-reading of the Panzani advertisement. Take a look at this breakdown of “Rhetoric of the Image” by Lesley Lanir where he covers some of the following terms.

• Encoding: creating a message for transmission (i.e., creation and distribution of an advertisement)
• Decoding: the process of interpreting a message (i.e., watching and interpreting an advertisement)
• Connotation: symbolic or cultural meaning (a coded message)
• Denotation: Literal meaning (a message without code)
• Linguistic message: words used to convey meaning
• Non-coded iconic message: an image with literal meaning
• Coded iconic message: an image with a coded message
• Polysemic: a sign that has multiple meanings
• Myth: a widely accepted meaning of a sign
• Naturalization: in a society, the repeated use of signs shapes its meaning

Here’s a 9+ minute video that takes us through some of these semiotic terms from a film perspective. Advertising takes a similar approach.

Stuart Hall

Stuart Hall was a Jamaican-born British sociologist, cultural theorist and political activist. He looked at the power of mainstream media (advertising, TV, film, etc) to understand the representation of race, gender, class, ethnicity, and religion. Here are some of the theories and terms associated with his work.

• Reception Theory: This theory asserts that advertising and media are encoded and decoded. The creator encodes messages and values into media which are then decoded by the audience. Audiences will decode the media in different ways and not always in the way the creator intended.
  • Dominant, or Preferred Reading: how the creator wants the audience to view the advertisment or media.
  • Oppositional Reading: when the audience rejects the preferred reading, and creates their own meaning. This can happen when content is controversial or when the audience holds different beliefs or is of a different age or culture.
  • Negotiated Reading: a compromise between the dominant and oppositional readings. The audience accepts some of the creator’s view, but also has their own views.
• Representation Theory: There is not a true representation of people or events in media. Designers/creators try to ‘fix’ a ‘preferred meaning’ through ideology or stereotyping. Historically, this is driven by people in power.

This 6+ minute video explains Hall’s Reception Theory:

This 3-minute video breaks down Hall’s Representation Theory:

This 7-minute video gives a bit more detail and context to Hall’s Representation Theory:

In this 55 minute documentary from 1997, Stuart Hall offers an extended meditation on representation. Take a close look at 36:00 he speaks about representation in advertising. Note that this video was created is prior to social media and the internet era that we live in now. Consider if the power structure has changed and why/why not? Make sure you are logged into CUNY SSO (single sign-on) to view.

2. Stereotype in Advertising Media (1+ hours)

The use of stereotypes to communicate meaning and sell products has a long history in advertising media and visual communications.

As we observed in our readings on the lack of diversity in design, leadership in the field of advertising media and design was (and still is) dominated by white, heterosexual men. And as we see from our recent study of media and the message, and representation above, mainstream media is a powerful force for intentionally or unintentionally reinforcing biases in society. It’s changing, but women and BIPOC designers in advertising are historically limited. That lack of diversity in creative leadership has allowed widely-held biases to continue to flourish.

Here are some sources to get you started in your research for Research Paper 2. If you have already chosen a historical 19th or 20th-century print advertisement that uses obvious and/or documented racial, ethnic, or gender stereotypes to sell the product, review the sources below to support your research. If you haven’t yet chosen an advertisement, browse the references below to find some.

History of racial, gender, ethnic, cultural stereotypes in advertisements

• Race and Ethnicity in Advertising
  • African Americans and Advertising – Marya McQuirter, Digital Curator
  • Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans in Advertising :: Full Essay PDF
  • Cultural Transformation and Chinese Figures in Nineteenth Century American Trade Cards – Lenore Metrick-Chen, Drake University
  • European Americans and Advertising
  • Jews and American Advertising – Eli Diner, University of California, Los Angeles, and Hasia Diner, New York University
  • Latinos and Advertising – James Rodriguez, New York University
  • Native Americans and Advertising – Stephanie A.L. Molholt, Community College of Baltimore County
  • Sexuality, Race and Ethnicity in Advertising :: Full Essay PDF
  • South Asian Americans in Advertising :: Full Essay PDF

• T. Burns Collection of Racial Stereotypes, 1880s-1983
• Timeline: Race and advertising in America
• ‘Ethnicity is authenticity’: how America got addicted to racist branding
• Blackface and the Birth of the American Stereotype
• The Racism of 19th Century Advertisements
• The Real and Problematic History Behind Aunt Jemima
• “Ethnic Notions: African American Stereotypes and Prejudice” (Documentary 1987)
• Gender stereotypes have been banned from British ads (some historical ads and context here)
• Gender Advertisements (1979 book by the sociologist Erving Goffman with analysis of hundreds of US ads for gender roles)
• Food Is Love : Advertising and Gender Roles in Modern America, Parkin, Katherine J., 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, (Book. Use your Library Card to access)
• Gender roles in 1940’s Ads (examples from cinema advertisements)

3. Assignment: Research Paper (3+ Hours)

Follow the assignment guidelines and prompts for Research Paper 2 – DUE Sunday, November 14th, at 11:59 pm

Working off of your reading response and research from last week on Roland Barthes’ 1977 essay, “Rhetoric of the Image,” select a historical 19th or 20th-century advertisement that uses obvious and/or documented racial, ethnic, or gender stereotypes to sell the product.

In your paper, you’ll critically examine and deconstruct your historical advertising image in a manner similar to Barthes’ approach and include references to Saussure, Peirce, and Hall’s theories covered in today’s agenda.

Refer to Assignment: Research Paper 2 for guidelines.

Resources

• Assignment: Research Paper 2
• Research Journal
• Grammarly

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This Week’s Topics

Research Project

• Initial topic ideas are due next week
• Project outline and proposal are due in 2 weeks

https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/childers-comd3504-d063-sp2022/2022/03/15/research-project-presentation/ ‎

Consider these questions.

• • How do we change the commercial design field to include a diversity of voices and visions?
  • What will the commercial design field and the study of design history look like in 20 years?

Idea: We need the best possible designers, and won’t get them if they only come from selected areas of society.

Definition: Stultify

Idea: In that sense, Vocal Type’s fonts and platform are a radical act—not just because they’re different, but because their excellence transcends their historical minority voice.

Activities

Silas Munro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGqfvb1iTs0

Living on the Grid

Tre Seals

Introduction: Next Week’s Topics

Discussion: Mainstream America

At the end of this session, students should have an understanding of the following:

• • How the Avant-Garde movements of rebellion and rejection of the past (Futurism, Construcivism, Desjil, etc), culminated in the Bauhaus and were further refined in Swiss Typography/International Style found the mainstream in the capitalist version of Modernism in the American corporate identity design.
  • How advertising has influenced society and culture.

At the end of this session, students should have an understanding of the following:

• • How the Avant-Garde movements of rebellion and rejection of the past (Futurism, Construcivism, Desjil, etc), culminated in the Bauhaus and were further refined in Swiss Typography/International Style found the mainstream in the capitalist version of Modernism in the American corporate identity design.
  • How advertising has influenced society and culture.

1. Mainstream Modernism + American Corporate Identity

Last class, we saw the evolution of influences from the Constructivists, De Stijl, New Typography, and the Bauhaus that led to the mainstream adoption of the modernist International Typographic Style/Swiss Style in the mid 20th Century. This week we look at the American version of Modernism as corporate identity design and advertising in the 1950s-1960s began to take shape.

Modernism in the United States showed a commitment to “less is more” and a strong reliance on images and geometric forms. The approach was impartial and direct. Corporate identity design came into being during this time and favored a simplification in visual approach. Simple, sharp, and clean, designers developed cohesive brand identities. Commonplace today, designers like Paul Rand, started to used acronyms for logos and corporate brand identity. The identity manuals used today for fully branded company identities came into being.

Below are a series of videos that take you through the history of advertising, corporate identity design, and mainstream designers that influenced the field.

The New York School

Watch the Graphic Design History section on The New York School on LinkedIn Learning (this is the best option to view the work clearly!).

Or, if you must, watch the YouTube video below. NOTE: In the following video, watch from 1:18:14 to 1:18:55

American Corporate Identity

Watch the Graphic Design History section on American Corporate Identity on LinkedIn Learning (this is the best option to view the work clearly!).

Or, if you must, watch the YouTube video below. NOTE: In the following video, watch from 1:25:45 to 1:30:32

Paul Rand

Branding and Belonging 

Discussion

Review Debbie Millman’s AIGA Lecture about the history of branding and respond to the prompt

Watch Debbie Millman’s AIGA Lecture “The Complete History of Branding in 20 Minutes” about the history of branding and respond to the prompt below.

• • • If branding is how we designate meaning through language, symbols, and words, how do the brands (in the broadest sense) that you affiliate with connect you others and what is the meaning behind them?

for 2 weeks:

1. Watch the presentation for Week 8: Media as Message
2. Leave at least one question or comment on that post. You are also encouraged to respond to your peers’ comments
3. Watch the Final Presentation Guidelines Video
4. Comment on that Post with any questions or concerns that you may have.

Assignment / Homework
5. Read the PDF attached in this week’s Assignment
6. Respond with a new Post, following the instructions on that assignment
7. Comment with any questions you may have, and feel free to comment on your peers responses

Our next reading will be from the media theorist Marshall McLuhan. For this reading, you have two options. Please read one of the following:

Chapters 1 and 7 from McLuhan’s influential 1964 book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. This is a fairly straightforward text. Here is a PDF:

-or-

Selected paged from The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effect, co-created by McLuhan and Quentin Fiore in 1967. This is an experimental text that relies heavily on image-text interactions. Here is a PDF:

Please take a look at both, to get a sense of the material, then choose one or the other to really focus on.

Please consider the following:
McLuhan describes technology and media as “extensions of man.” How do media extend human beings, or humanity in general? What hazards might technological progress bring for individuals and society? If “the medium is the message,” what role can artists and designers play in creating new messages? How is the work of a designer subordinate to the media they use to create or distribute information?

You also have two options for this response. You can write 3-4 paragraphs. Or you can create another visual or “typophoto-graphic” response, combining images and text in the style of McLuhan and Fiore’s collaboration.

3 weeks

Our next reading is from a 1981 essay by the cultural theorist, Stuart Hall. In this article, entitled The Whites of Their Eyes, Hall examines the ways in which mass media have perpetuated racist ideologies. Here is a PDF:

Hall_Whites-of-Their-Eyes_1981Download

https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/comd3504-ol69-spring2022/files/2022/03/Hall_Whites-of-Their-Eyes_1981.pdf

Your post for this reading will be a little different. Instead of writing 3-4 paragraphs, please identify and document 3-4 advertisements in recent magazines, web pages, posters, billboards, etc. where race, ethnicity, gender or cultural identity play a role in shaping a brand’s message.

Note that race, gender and identity can be used in a positive, embracing way, or in a cynical, negative manner; or it may be difficult to tell. The most interesting ads are probably the most subtle.

Post ads that you encounter this week, after completing the reading. And please note that they do not need to be racist or sexist per se. We’ve all seen some of the widely publicized missteps from companies such as H&M, Dove, Sony, etc. …These are all very obvious. They really don’t require critical examination and we really don’t need to see them again. Do not post them.

Look for nuanced ads in which it is clear that the advertising is aware of identity and representation. Try to find ads that show diversity in a productive and celebratory light.

Post phone pics, scans or screenshots of your selected ads with short captions describing the image and the source from which the image was found.

Here are three examples of ads that I have found recently, which I think are very interesting…

The above image is a spread that I came across in The New Yorker. I believe Tiffany & Co. is embracing the idea of blackness, in a positive way, through this ad, and ultimately attempting to reach a broader audience.

This image is a screenshot from a promotional email that I received from REI Co-op. I believe the choice to use two women, a man, and a woman of color as models was a very deliberate one. As a company REI seems to be making efforts to be more inclusive.

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At the end of this session, students should have an understanding of the following:

• Evolution and adoption of the International Style and influence on the current design field.
• Guidelines and due date for the Week 7 Discussion
• Expectations and due date for Research Project Outline
• Prompt and due date for Reading Response 6

Activities

Below find the information covered in this session.

Consider

• • In 1930, Beatrice Warde, a publicist for the leading typeface corporation, Monotype, gave a lecture called The Crystal Goblet, or Why Printing Should Be Invisible.
  • In it, she uses a metaphor of optimal typography as a crystal goblet, beautifully built yet transparent, allowing for the clarity of words and ideas to be shared without distractions.After reading the writings from Jan Tschichold, “The Principles of the New Typography” pg35-38, Karl Gerstner, Designing Programmes pg55-61, Joseph Muller-Brockman, “Grid and Design Philosophy” pg62-63 in our main text Graphic Design Theory: Readings From the Field by Helen Armstrong. And watching the documentary “Helvetica” consider the following…Is Helvetica invisible?When answering this question, reference the theories presented by Tschichold, Gerstner, and Muller-Brockman and any of the opinions presented in the documentary that resonated with you.

1. Typography and International Style Evolution (1.5 hours)

The early European avant-garde designers like the Futurists, Dadaists, and Constructivists changed the way we use typography. Today we may use typography, not just to communicate information or data, but as a compositional element to communicate a tone, feeling, or idea.

In the readings this week we were introduced to the ideas of three designers who shared a passion for typography and layout that was clean, efficient, and structured. Influenced by the Dutch De Stijl and Bauhaus movements their work aimed to achieve a universal method for visual communication.

This evolution of influences from the Constructivists, De Stijl, New Typography, and the Bauhaus led to the mainstream adoption of the modernist International Typographic Style or Swiss Style in the mid 20th Century and beyond.

New Typography

Swiss designer, Jan Tschichold was influenced by the Dutch De Stijl movement and the Bauhaus. In his book “The Principles of the New Typography” in 1928 Tschichold promoted dynamic asymmetry, san serif fonts, and many of the tenets of the Bauhaus. He believed that typography should never distract from the goal of relaying information as efficiently as possible. Layout was based on mathematical calculations to promote visual hierarchy, but he also valued beauty and spirituality.

With the volume of information and data shared today, clarity in typography and layout is as important, if not more important as it was when Tschichold formulated his ideas.

Rewatch the Graphic Design History section on New Typography on LinkedIn Learning or in the YouTube video below to refresh your knowledge of this movement. NOTE: In the following video, watch from 44:02 to 48:09

Swiss Style / International Typographic Style

The next generation Swiss designers and pioneers of the Swiss Style, Karl Gerstner, and Joseph Muller-Brockman created and spread their systematic approach to design across Europe and America. The typographic tools for layout and typography that we use today in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, etc. grow out of the structured grid and typographic methods of the Swiss Style. Web design also relies on the grid for clear communication.

Watch the Graphic Design History section on Swiss Typography on LinkedIn Learning or in the YouTube video below to refresh your knowledge of this movement. NOTE: In the following video, watch from 1:21:57 to 1:25:45

Confoederatio Helvetica  = Switzerland (in Latin)

Originating from the early Avant-Garde, the Swiss Style / International Typographic Style (and the modernist aesthetic in general) reaches its height in the 1950s and 1960s. In America, it transforms corporate advertising.

In preparation for our look at corporate identity design and advertising next week, let’s look at the ultimate Swiss Style typeface “Helvetica.” Designed in 1957 it became a hallmark of the International Typographic Style and one of the most popular typefaces of the mid-20th century.

Watch this documentary “Helvetica” from 2007. Note the mention of MySpace and other dated references. Also note that the documentary, which focuses on a typeface that was intended to be a universal typeface, is lacking a diversity of voices.

You will need to Log into the Citytech Library

2. Research Project Outline (30 min)

Review the Research Project & Presentation guidelines again and create a formal outline of your research project due Sunday, October 17th, at 6pm

Create your Research Project Outline in Google Docs with the following content:

1. Introduction
Explain in detail the topic you are examining and why it is significant.

2. Background/Review of the Literature

Include a summary of the basic background information on the topic gleaned from your literature and sources review (you can include information from the readings and class, but the bulk should be outside sources).

3. Rationale

A description of the questions you are examining and why you are exploring this topic.

4. Method and Design

A description of how you will go about collecting resources/data and how you plan to present the information in your presentation.

5. References

List the resources and references you have found so far. Include all references in MLA style.

Create a new post following the guidelines below.

• • TITLE: Research Project Outline – Your Initials
  • CATEGORY: Research Project
  • TAG: Research Project Outline
  • TAG: Your Name

3. Assignment: Reading Response 6 (2+ Hours)

Follow the assignment guidelines and prompts: Reading Response 6 – DUE Sunday, October 17th, at 6pm

You will be reading and annotating three essays written by Madeleine Morley, Silas Munro, and Alice Rawsthorn looking at the lack of diversity in the design field and design history. Refer to Assignment: Reading Response 6 for prompts.

Read and annotate

Celebrating the African-American Practitioners Absent From Way Too Many Classroom Lectures by Madeleine Morley, Eye on Design, 2018,

Typography as a Radical Act in an Industry Ever-dominated by White Men by Silas Munro, Eye on Design, 2019

Design Gets More Diverse by Alice Rawsthorn, NYTimes, 2011

As before, after annotating the text, create a rough draft of your response in your Research Journal.
Your response should be about 200 words and checked for spelling and grammar errors.
Publish your finished response on the class site, using the guidelines provided.

For help, look at the Reading Response example

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Discussion

 What is design?

The objective for this discussion is to compose your Design Manifesto.

Use short declarative statements to define the philosophy, intentions and requirements for the designer of today.

State the social, political and ethical questions that are necessary for a designer to consider.

Identify the technological concerns that designers must embrace or reject. Don’t shy away from poetics or abstraction.

Feel free to re-write passages from the Futurist and Constructivist manifestos that we’ve read.

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After reading the writings from Walter Gropius: The Theory and Organization of the Bauhaus (1923), László Moholy-Nagy; Typophoto (1925), and Herbert Bayer; On Typography in Graphic Design Theory: Readings From the Field and reviewing the videos from the Week 5 Agenda, consider the following.

The avant-garde designers were looking for universal methods of communication, often searching for ideal ways to reach the masses using new technologies and modalities.

• • • Photography and film were the new techologies in the age of the Bauhaus. Combined with typography László Moholy-Nagy stated that Typophoto was the “visually most exact rendering of communication.”
    • Herbert Bayer is often credited with modernizing typography in the Bauhaus with his creation of the Universal alphabet. He also speaks of “text-picture integration” and the use of “square span,” short grouping of words for universal communication.

Today we have multiple modes and methods of instant, mass communication. Consider the rise of “deep fakes“, the short, concise messages we send via Twitter, or the lack of subtlety and tone in email, text, or emojis. Is the ability to communicate truthfully, accurately, and effectively helped and/or hindered by technology today?

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Video

1. The Futurism Manifesto and Movement

Marinetti, along with a group of young Italian artists, declared their ambitions in opposition to the traditional values dominating Italian art and culture of the time and focused on the dynamism, speed, energy, and power of the machine and the vitality, change, and restlessness of modern life. Key ideas:

• • • Motion, movement, technology, speed, dynamisim, unification of culture, industrialization, war, violence, machismo, extreme, distruction of the past, revolution.
    • Political leanings, initially fascism, anti-feminist, anti-democratic, but years later rejected those ideas to focus more on technological advancement, specifically aviation.
    • Here is the full manifesto.

Watch the three videos below to learn more about the key ideas that define Futurism and the lasting visual elements that resulted. Does anything in the visual or ideological aspects of this movement inspire or repulse you? Why? NOTE: In the following video, watch from 29:38 to 31:33

• • • • Italian Futurists – Graphic Design History (Watch from 29:38 to 31:33): https://youtu.be/OS8rZ8iwcJM
      • Futurism in 9 minutes: https://youtu.be/9fy_cHtHR-U
      • Italian Futurism Jeffrey Hoover – 00:00 to 16:10 NOTE: There is a disturbing scene in the next video at 17:35. You only need to watch up to 16:10. https://youtu.be/YFPIP9NxU30

2. Constructivism

The Russian Revolution of 1917 offered hope for a new society in which workers would replace the aristocracy as the ruling class. The Constructivists, led by Aleksandr Rodchenko envisioned a new form of art that would replace traditional painting and sculpture with new forms of mass-produced graphics and engineered objects for the common citizen. Key Ideas:

• • • Geometry, clear lines, abstracted shapes, photomontage, san serif fonts, bold primary palettes
    • Rejected decorative stylization in favor of the industrial assemblage of materials.
    • Applied these ideals to architecture, urban space, clothing, theatre, graphics and social activism.
    • Political leanings, intially Communism, artists/designers later emmigrated to USA.

MOMA – Russian Avant-Garde: https://youtu.be/uUSkidTIqSM

3  Influence on Contemporary Design

Futurism, Constructivism, and the avant-garde in general, as we shall continue to explore, had a profound impact on the evolution of graphic design, advertising, fashion, industrial design, architecture, theater, and more.

Born from the political and societal influences of the time, we can see how the concepts of universality, authorship, and social responsibility are present in manifestos we’ve read and most importantly WHY!

By now you can start to see how some of the graphic styles of these two movements that we’ve explored still linger in the design we see today.

As we explore the next step in our design lineage in writings from the Bauhaus, see if you can find the influences from the Futurist and Constructivist movements.

Check out How the Imagery of the Russian Revolution Married Ideology, Politics + Progressive Graphic Design by Emily Gosling, Eye on Design. May 1st, 2017

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Please note: your first 2-3 page paper is due on March 15.
Start thinking about this assignment.

First Paper – Due March 15

Question and requirements:

Select a design or design object created after 1972 in which the influence of the theories considered thus far can be seen.

Begin with a brief description of the object, the designer who created it, and the historical circumstances under which it was made.

Considering these factors: examine the ways in which the creator was responding, directly or indirectly, to theories related to linguistics or semiology, avant-garde art movements or the psychological perception of forms (ie. any of the ideas that we’ve covered).

Discuss the manner in which the design you’ve chosen embodies these theories. Provide direct references to relevant passages from our readings. Locate additional writings using library resources to substantiate your comparisons.

Your goal is ultimately to provide a critical examination, not an account of historical details.

Criteria:

Submit a 750-1000 word typewritten paper, double-spaced in 12 pt. Times New Roman.

Include images of the work under consideration and any other relevant illustrations.

Cite all materials researched for historical context, any related writings, and image sources.

All sources, references and quotations should be cited in MLA format.

Research Paper 1 Prep

Select a design or design object created after 1971 in which the influence of the theories we’ve studied so far can be seen. In your Research Journal, add an image and begin with a brief description of the work, the designer who created it, and the historical circumstances under which it was made. Considering these factors, examine the ways in which the creator was responding, directly or indirectly, to theories related to semiotics & signs, ways of meaning, models of communication, avant-garde art movements (ie. any of the ideas that we’ve covered). Discuss how the design you’ve chosen embodies these ideas. Provide direct references to relevant passages from our readings and locate additional writings using library resources and other sources to support your comparisons.

You will be providing a critical examination of the object and its relationship to the theories we’ve discussed, not an account of historical details. These should be your observations, your ideas supported by published sources.

Use the links provided under Help > Course Resources > Design Collections to find your design source (advertising, graphic design, industrial design objects, motion graphics, etc.) for your paper.

Research Project Prep

The first paper is a jumping-off point for your research project. You don’t have to lock yourself into a topic yet, but your should by now have started to define your aesthetic and theoretical interests based on the ideas we discussed so far. If nothing has piqued your interest yet, ask you self “What do I feel passionate about?” “What do I love to talk about?” “What makes me feel angry, sad, depressed?” “If I could be doing anything right now that would make an impact on the world, what would it be?” “How could I use my skills as a designer to change the world?” “What graphic style, design movement, decade, or typeface is my favorite?”

Visit the Grading Policy page for an overview of the Research Project.

Today’s group discussion will build from last week’s discussion (What is design?), and from the readings for this week. The objective for this discussion is to compose your Design Manifesto.

Use short declarative statements to define the philosophy, intentions and requirements for the designer of today.

State the social, political and ethical questions that are necessary for a designer to consider.

Identify the technological concerns that designers must embrace or reject.

Don’t shy away from poetics or abstraction.

Feel free to re-write passages from the Futurist and Constructivist manifestos that we’ve read.

COMDTheorySp21_4_Manifestos

Previous

Varvara Stepanova, Textile Design, 1924

(Click to view in lightbox.) Filippo Tommaso Marinetti After the Marne,1915

Giacomo Balla 1912, Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash

The City Rises by Umberto Boccioni 1910

Umberto Boccioni 1913 Dynamism of a Cyclist

Umberto Boccioni 1913, Synthesis_of_Human_Dynamism)

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti Les mots en liberté futuristes 1919

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti Zang Tumb Tumb 1914

Aleksandr Rodchenko Book Cover “Pro eto” by Vladimir Mayakovsky 1923

Aleksandr Rodchenko Cover design for Journal of the Left Front of the Arts, 1928

Aleksandr Rodchenko, Poster for Lengiz, 1924

El Lissitzky.Proun.1922-23

ElLissitzky. Figures3D Design Electro Mechan Show 1923

El Lissitzky The Announcer 1923

Varvara Stepanova Unisex Sport Clothes 1923

Varvara Stepanova Gosizdat Textbooks Poster c. 1925

Red Army Poster

Nikolai Suetin Teapot c. 1923

Gustav Klutsis Archtectural Study 1920-21

Gustav Klutsis Memorial to Fallen Leaders 1927

ElLissitzky TheNewMan 1923

Alexandra Exter “Guardian of Energy” (costume design for the film “Aelita” by Yakov Protozanov) 1924

Varvara Stepanova, Textile Design, 1924

(Click to view in lightbox.) Filippo Tommaso Marinetti After the Marne,1915

Giacomo Balla 1912, Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash

The City Rises by Umberto Boccioni 1910

Umberto Boccioni 1913 Dynamism of a Cyclist

Umberto Boccioni 1913, Synthesis_of_Human_Dynamism)

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti Les mots en liberté futuristes 1919

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti Zang Tumb Tumb 1914

Aleksandr Rodchenko Book Cover “Pro eto” by Vladimir Mayakovsky 1923

Aleksandr Rodchenko Cover design for Journal of the Left Front of the Arts, 1928

Aleksandr Rodchenko, Poster for Lengiz, 1924

El Lissitzky.Proun.1922-23

ElLissitzky. Figures3D Design Electro Mechan Show 1923

El Lissitzky The Announcer 1923

Varvara Stepanova Unisex Sport Clothes 1923

Varvara Stepanova Gosizdat Textbooks Poster c. 1925

Red Army Poster

Nikolai Suetin Teapot c. 1923

Gustav Klutsis Archtectural Study 1920-21

Gustav Klutsis Memorial to Fallen Leaders 1927

ElLissitzky TheNewMan 1923

Alexandra Exter “Guardian of Energy” (costume design for the film “Aelita” by Yakov Protozanov) 1924

Varvara Stepanova, Textile Design, 1924

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1. The Futurism Manifesto and Movement

Marinetti, along with a group of young Italian artists, declared their ambitions in opposition to the traditional values dominating Italian art and culture of the time and focused on the dynamism, speed, energy, and power of the machine and the vitality, change, and restlessness of modern life.

Key ideas:

• • • Motion, movement, technology, speed, dynamisim, unification of culture, industrialization, war, violence, machismo, extreme, distruction of the past, revolution.
    • Political leanings, initially fascism, anti-feminist, anti-democratic, but years later rejected those ideas to focus more on technological advancement, specifically aviation.
    • Here is the full manifesto.

Watch the three videos below to learn more about the key ideas that define Futurism and the lasting visual elements that resulted. Does anything in the visual or ideological aspects of this movement inspire or repulse you? Why? NOTE: In the following video, watch from 29:38 to 31:33

• • • • Italian Futurists – Graphic Design History (Watch from 29:38 to 31:33): https://youtu.be/OS8rZ8iwcJM
      • Futurism in 9 minutes: https://youtu.be/9fy_cHtHR-U
      • Italian Futurism Jeffrey Hoover – 00:00 to 16:10 NOTE: There is a disturbing scene in the next video at 17:35. You only need to watch up to 16:10. https://youtu.be/YFPIP9NxU30

2. Constuctivism

Key Ideas:

• • Geometry, clear lines, abstracted shapes, photomontage, san serif fonts, bold primary palettes
  • Rejected decorative stylization in favor of the industrial assemblage of materials.
  • Applied these ideals to architecture, urban space, clothing, theatre, graphics and social activism.
  • Political leanings, intially Communism, artists/designers later emmigrated to USA.

NOTE: In the video below, watch from 24:42 to 29:19

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