Graphic Design: A Medium for the Masses

Cave paintings and paintings that depict religious scenes demonstrate the earliest indications of visual communication to an illiterate world.

John Everette Miallais paints an image of a boy blowing bubbles; fine art. But when text is added by Pears’ soap, does it become graphics? Graphic design is a recent term for a concept that has existed throughout history.

The square paintings on the wall resemble a comic strip.

Images with block colour indicate they have been produced for mass production as it’s cheap and easy to copy. LNER poster & other UK design follows a different fashion to the mainland.

Graphics & Advertising
Herbert Spencer mechanises art in Europe. Paul Rand claims a strong link between graphics and advertising because the designer is trying to persuade and inform. Eskilson challenges this by saying that advertising originates from capitalism.

Birth of views Cabonel- Fantasy Love Godess. Fictional.
Olympia Manet- realistic representation where Manet shows a class divide. This is an early origin of graphic design.
Courbet- Origins of the World 1886- crude and impersonal with no face.

Art & Power: Europe under the Dictators

Abram Games, Saul Bass, Paul Rand (ABC logo, IBM logo)

Savile Lumley was a pioneering British WW1 propaganda designer.

Julius Gipkens challenges tradition in war posters (like the Alfred Leete & Montgomery flag) in Germany by producing ‘Trophies of the Air War’ in 1917. Odd angles, block colours and unsymmetrical designs characterise the new modern designs. Lissitzky depicts the Russian Revolution with ‘Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge’ in 1919.

Graphic Design Later
The Great Bear- Tube Map. Link between art and design illustrations rationalisation.

Under the Nazis, the Bauhaus moves out of Germany. Hitler rejected modern values and reverted to tradition, stalling progress in design- at least in Europe. There is a lack of ambition.

Graphic Design: An art that responds to social & political views.
Advertising: A divisive tool that gets people to buy more & more.

Postmodernism in Graphics
Hipgnosis in the 1970s began the period of postmodernism. A meaningless and detailed (ie not minimal) image on a record cover marks this.

Neville Brody, David Carson, John Lydon

Hard-Fi used their cover art to illustrate the expensive black and white images used on many CD covers. Spiritualised album by Jason Pierce was disguised as a packet of tablets.