Commodification of subversion

Commodification of subversion:

• not just protest songs always about the power of the individual
• emphasis on their economic power & lifestyle
• Run-DMC secured a million dollar deal with Adidas after getting their audience wave their Adidas shoes in the air
• increased Courvoisier sales
• young black consumers now account for approx. 60-85% of Hennessy‟s US sales
• Busta Rhyme ft. P-Diddy ‘Pass the Courvoisier: Part II (2002)

Subverting subversion:

• in 1999, TIME reported that hip-hop was America's top- selling music genre, with sales of 81 million CDs
• in 2000, hip-hop sales constituted 13% of all music sales
• Roc-A-Fella (owned by Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter), which
• straddles fashion, music and film, in 2001 was worth $300 million
• Source: Billboard cited by Ta-Nehisi Coates in „Hip-hop‟s down beat‟ in TIME (17 August 2007)

Culture Wars

Cultures of Resistance: Hip Hop

Three distinct elements:

• Music/ Lyrics (dj-ing/ rapping)
• Dance (break-dancing/ b-boys)
• Graphic (graphing/design)

Use of mixing/ sampling/ subverting makes hip-hop the epitome of postmodern practise.

Afrika Bumbataa and the zulu nation

Subverting = to destroy/ ruin/ overthrow completely

Graffiti

'The superhill gangs - rappers delight'

N.W.A.

• ‘F*** Tha Police’
• (1989)
• FBI contacted record label about album contents
• 1990 – court in Tennessee judged it “obscene”Ice T‟s Body Count
• ‘Cop Killer’(1991)

Other Incident

• 1991 - Rodney King arrested & beaten by four white LAPD officers
• 1992 – despite the beating being videoed, three police officers were acquitted (jury made up of x10 white, x1 Hispanic, x1 Asian)
• LA riots started the evening after the verdict
• 53 people died
• election year in US
• Bush/Quayle campaign targeted violent
• hip-hop as a causal factor!
• bomb threats against record company

Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany

• total control of all media formats
• total “branding” of a people
• Paul Joseph Goebbels: Reichsminister of Propaganda,1933 to 1945
• revolutionised propaganda e.g. ‘The Eternal Jew’ (1940)
• employed the entertainment industry e.g. ‘The Triumph of the Will’ (1935) dir. Leni Reifenstahl

Designers:

Walter Heck:

graphic designer

designed the Schutzstaffel

(SS) insignia Dr. Karl Diebitsch:

Artist

Together designed the all-black SS uniform, introduced 1932

Swastika:

• good luck symbol in Indo-European culture
• Sanskrit "svastika“; means "good to be"
• Hitler responsible for it‟susage by the Nazis:
• "I myself, meanwhile, after innumerable attempts, hadlaid down a final form; a flag with a red background, a white disk, and a black swastika in the middle. After long trials I also found a definite proportion between the size of the flag and the size of the white disk, as well as the shape and thickness of the swastika.“
• Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf (1926)

NB: Resistance within Nazi Germany :

• „The White Rose‟
• pacifist, intellectual group
• students and a professor form Munich
• University
• leaflet campaign
• The Edelweiss Pirates‟
• working class activists

Posters Continued:

Food and Consumption

Safety

Posters

Morale (UK poster campaigns)

Security (UK Poster campaign)

Protest Graphics 2

Roger Fenton's 1855 photo of the Crimean war

War and Subversion:

“Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to the totalitarian state.”

Noam Chomsky (2002) Media Control, pp.20-21

World War II

• 1939-1945 UK

• National Service (Armed Forces) Act 1939

• all men 18-41 liable for conscription

• National Service 1941

• unmarried women between 20-30 called up

• birth of modern propaganda techniques

  used to generate public support for war

  used to mobilise non-combatants i.e.

• civilians, in support of the “war effort”

Posters for Recruitment:

Trademarks

Bass Red Triangle:

• Bass & Co Brewery was established by William Bass in 1777
• pioneer in international brand marketing
• Red Triangle for pale ale; Red Diamond for their strong ale
• first trademark to be registered in Britain in 1876

Bar in den Folies-Bergère by Edouard Manet (1882)

• a brand is a product + its trademark, name, reputation and the associations built up around it via advertising, product placements, etc
• brands function to associate human values with corporations & their products
• in order to associate themselves with a specific identity, corporations often
• shows the type of person that uses their products
• brands are supposed to personify what a corporation stands for; its ideology
• corporations generally produce so many diverse products that brand identities are a way to unify & solidify their presence in consumers‟ lives
• if you‟ve had a good experience with a brand before you‟re more likely to try something new by the same brand

• many blamed the Great Depression (1929- 1939) on corporate greed & mismanagement
• in an attempt to restore people‟s faith in corporations, “corporate social responsibility” (CSR) appeared in the 1930s
• different to the philanthropy of preceding eras, where land (parks), libraries, hospitals, art, etc, was gifted to the nation or local area by the wealthy
• corporations endeavour to market themselves as invested in society & responsive to consumer needs
• however, corporations cannot be concerned with “externalities” unless they impact on profit
• “The corporation‟s legally defined mandate is to pursue, relentlessly and without exception, its own self-interest, regardless of the often harmful consequences it might cause to others.”
• Joel Bakan, Professor of Law, University of British Columbia

Culture jammers - subvert and interrupt the language of branding

Adbusters are : “a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new socialist activist movement of the information age. [Their] aim is to topple existing power structures and forge a major shift in the way we live in the 21st Acdebnutustreyr.s”

adbusters.org

“Adbusters is an ecological magazine, dedicated to examining the relationship between human beings and their physical and mental environment. We want a world in which the economy and ecology resonate in balance. We try to coax people from spectator to participant in this quest. We want folks to get mad about corporate disinformation, injustices in the global economy, and any industry that pollutes our physical or mental commons.”

adbusters.org

History

History Continued:

• mid-19th century, politicians & business leaders changed the law to limit shareholders‟ liability to the amount they initially invested in company
• “limited liability” allowed people of all classes and incomes to invest in corporations & the stock markets
• the potential loss of money was restricted to the amount of the initial investment, while potential gains were unlimited
• investors were able to invest in ethically questionable enterprises & walk away relatively unscathed if it went bust
• “limited liability” became law in UK in 1856
• by the start of 20th century, corporations often had 1000s, if not 100s of 1000s of shareholders
• the investors‟ power became so dispersed that they are unable to influence managerial decisions as individuals
• shareholders effectively disappeared from the running of corporations
• law required that someone assumed the duties & legal rights necessary to operating in the economy, e.g. employ people, pay taxes, buy assets, be subject to the law, etc.
• managers are employees, so the Corporation itself became a legally recognised “person”
• separated from the real people who owned or ran it
• advances in communication technologies has meant that corporations are no longer tied to their original home
• can look to other countries for cheap materials, labour & production
• international trade tariffs were gradually reduced after the introduction of the General Agreement on Tariffs & Trade (GATT) in 1948
• this increased influence of corporations on governments & their economic policies
• countries need to “attract” corporate investors & have business-friendly policies

Protest Graphics

Brands, Consumerism and Graphic Agitation

Making sense of American Influence:

Rise of consumer culture

Birth of modern capitalism

Rise of the corporation

Branding

Transnational corporations

Graphic Resistance

History:

• Industrial Revolution started in England in the late 18th century (late 1700s)
• James Watt invented the steam engine in 1769
• start of large scale industry in UK & US (e.g. railways, mining, textiles, etc)
• needed more money than partnerships could raise
• corporations have only existed for approx. 500 years
• started to gain real power in the last 2-300 years
• they are neither “natural” nor inevitable
• they are an integral part of contemporary capitalism
• Traditionally businesses owned & run by limited no. of people who pooled their resources & profited or lost out according to the business‟s success/failures
• a corporation‟s strength comes from its ability to combine the capital & hence the economic power of an unlimited no. of people
• early corporations were constructed so that the individual investors were “personally liable” for the business‟s debts
• just owning one share meant that they were liable without limit!
• stockholding was not popular until that risk was removed

1940's America

World war II

Americas allied forces

War/ Propoganda

Office of war information

Herbert Bayer

Charles coiner art director

Advertising culture, direct public appeal

Pictoral Realism

Bayer: Bauhaus

Jean Carlu :

Working around 1941, work was pictoral realism with influences from constructivism, synthetic cubism. Joseph Bunder - Austrian.

Advertising Culture:

The Rhetorics of American design - direct appeal, hard sell, in your face. Container corporation of America. Designers were being used to promote values. Problem solving design in the 1940's.

American Designers were developing modernist thinking. However, pyhsco-analysists werer beginning to find out why people wanted to buy things. The physcology behind advertising, is it brain washing?? What effect is this having on the public/ consumers. Marketing comes into advertising, things start to become more negative, realising that its manipulating peoples fears and thoughts.

Conclusion:

Modern Design is transformed in America.

Avant Garde critique becomes Avant Garde style.

The ‘new vision’ becomes a ‘look’.

Big Idea Approach is popular design method.

Big Idea Approach is tied to Pragmatic philosophy but also tied to Consumer Culture (and big business).

Dominance of Advertising Rhetoric ... even in Public Relations Work

American Ad Design

Going on in the Background:

1930s- Depression, war

1929 - wall street crash

Shift from advertising to public information

Public projects/ government commisions - the new deal was to have economic growth

focusing money on certain areas

Adertising Rhetorica applies to information design

President Roosevelt

Rural electrification administration

9/10 americans without electricity

Dam building project

Rural regernation

Universal Visual lift

American Ad design of the 1930's:

Pictoral Illustration

Naturalistic

Charles coiner joins ayer & son comisions avant garde cassandre.

'applied good taste is the mark of good citizenship'

'Ugliness is a form of anarchy, ugly lines produce ugly citizens'

Lester Beal

Was self taught, moved from town to the city. In graphic design he was pioneer, an experimental designer who saw farther and more daringly then his contemporaries. Good at bringing colour into this very drab world. High impact, being obvious and not assuming his audience knew everything.

Fifteen years ago, Lester Beall spoke at a conference. One of his observations then epitomizes the man and the enduring spirit of his testament: "As graphic designers of today's printed page, long dependent upon means of communication, we should envision ourselves as the inevitable architects of future revolutionary systems of communication."

Photography played an important part in documenting these rural communities in America. To get peoples sympathy. Hicks children, country folk whom had too many children. Heroick, not hick.

Publishing

Cipe Pineless

Brodovich

Richard Avedon

Lillian Basman

Fehmy Agha

1930's - editorial design - can make beautiful images and the world of the magazine

Man Ray - did work with layouts working for magazines such as Harpers bazaar.

Magazines of that time were very much focused on looking at the relationship between photography and type, photography being the main feature!!. The conversation between type and layout, he thought of them not as pages but as a photographic frame looking at cropping/ scale, playing around with proportion. Every detail is showing the attitude and classiness of the magazine.

The magazines were also influenced by film noir, they were about high contrast. Black and white, close-ups, drama!!

Dr Mehemed Fehmy Agha b 1896 - vogue

Born to Turkish parents in the Ukraine in 1896, Agha left behind the Russian revolution to find work as a designer in Europe. He came to the US in 1929 after being recruited from German Vogue in Berlin by Condé Nast. Nast made Agha the art director for Condé Nast Publications." He encouraged his designers to plunder the treasures of 'the temple of Constructivism.' and had full understanding of photographic techniques.

Agha introduced the use of double page spreads ("rather than a sequence of single pages"), Constructivist compositions, bleeds, and the use of famous illustrators and photographers in advertising. He was also a designer of cultureal intermediary - modern art as training for art director, mixing up the cultures.

very different to subcultures - metrosexual, metropolitan part of an elite, aspirations, after their taste, emulate encouraged to copy your heros, who they know.

Cipe Pineless - seventeen

A female designer that i came across whilst researching into agha, (1908-1991) was one of the most prominent designers of the twentieth century and one of the first female art directors to work at a major magazine. She served in that capacity at Glamour, Seventeen and Charm. was working with Agha on the design of Vogue and Vanity Fair, where she learned how to be an editorial designer. "Agha was the most fabulous boss to work for," Pineles reported later. "Nothing you did satisfied him. He was always sending you back to outdo yourself, to go deeper into the subject." He told his staff to visit galleries and museums and bring back new ideas.

Alexey Brodovich - harpers bazaar

Images above of type/ photo. An avant garde modernist who studied in paris known for his passion for white space and openness of the page. Was the art director at harpers bazaar working alongside photographers such as Richard Avedon and Lillian Basman (assistant). He studied in paris (flamboyant), cassandre and man-ray, with his background being in fine art, but then emigrated to america in 1930. Rythmic, typo-foto.

Art direction = "The economic interdependence of magazines and advertising was reflected in the similar design of the editorial and advertising pages. Each had headlines, text columns and some kind of illustration. As journalism and advertising depended increasingly on images—the 'art' element—their reproduction and the layout as a whole became the responsibility of an 'art director.'

In America, art direction proceeded the profession of graphic design. Americans looked to Europe for modern culture and sophistication." The influx of European art directors and artists would greatly influence graphic design.*

* From Richard Hollis, Graphic Design, A Concise History, Thames and Hudson, 2001, p 99.