Reading Graphic Design in Cultural Context

✍ Scribed by Grace Lees-Maffei; Nicolas P. Maffei

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
• Year: 2019
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 259
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Reading Graphic Design in Cultural Context explains key ways of understanding and interpreting the graphic designs we see all around us, in advertising, branding, packaging and fashion. It situates these designs in their cultural and social contexts.
Drawing examples from a range of design genres, leading design historians Grace Lees-Maffei and Nicolas P. Maffei explain theories of semiotics, postmodernism and globalization, and consider issues and debates within visual communication theory such as legibility, the relationship of word and image, gender and identity, and the impact of digital forms on design. Their discussion takes in well-known brands like Alessi, Nike, Unilever and Tate, and everyday designed things including slogan t-shirts, car advertising, ebooks, corporate logos, posters and music packaging.

✦ Table of Contents

Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
Reading graphic design in the expanded field: An introduction
Graphic design: A professional field
Graphic design and design history
Reading graphic design in the expanded field
The structure and contribution of this book
Conclusion: Mutuality in history, theory, practice
References
Part One: On message and off message
Chapter 1: Branding as sign system: Semiotics in action
Introducing semiotics
Semiotics and structuralism
Semiotics, structuralism and graphic design
Branding as a sign system
In focus: Unilever
Conclusion
References
Chapter 2: The responsive brand: Uniformity and flexibility in logo design
Fixed ideas: Brands as unifying
From modernist universality to corporate personality: What AEG taught IBM
Challenging the logo: The postmodern consumer and Nike reinterpreted
Gap’s gaffe and the birth of the responsive logo
Conclusion: Flexible uniformity, co-created balance
References
Chapter 3: Whose wall? From posters to digital displays and the colonization of public space
The progressive response to outdoor advertising
Twentieth-century reformers’ response
The First World War posters and billboards
Highways and buyways
Shell Oil’s English landscape
Post-war United States: Regulation and expansion
Post-feminism and female pleasure: Wonderbra’s ‘Hello Boys’ billboards
São Paulo: ‘Clean City’
Out-of-home electronic displays and billboards
Conclusion
References
Chapter 4: Slogan T-shirts: Billboards of identity politics
A brief history of the T-shirt
Che Guevara: Revolution or commerce!
Barrio art T-shirts: montage of Chicano resistance
Slutty or sassy sexuality: From Grrrl power to Hurricane Katrina
T-shirts as group belonging: Kwakwaka’wakw tribe and Manchester United Football Club
Ethical T-shirt consumption and the developing world
T-shirt futures: Business models and new technology
Conclusion
References
Part Two: On legibility and ambiguity
Chapter 5: Seeing clearly? Legibility, word and image in postmodern print design
Modernisms
Modernism and legibility: Herbert Bayer at the Bauhaus
Clarity: Beatrice Warde’s Crystal Goblet
Uniformity: The international influence of Swiss typography
From modernisms to postmodernism
What is postmodernism?
Postmodern graphic design
Conclusion: After postmodernism
References
Chapter 6: Signifying orientalism, chinoiserie and japonisme: Fashion photography in Vogue as a case study
Design and national identity
Orientalism in design: Theories of East, West and somewhere between
Magazines and desire
Orientalism, chinoiserie and japonisme in fashion: Vogue 1970–2000
Orientalism in fashion magazines: A typology
Postmodern pastiche
Conclusion: From exotic to everyday
References
Chapter 7: A good read? Corporate literature and brand stories: Alessi SpA as a case study
Corporate identity: Origins and development
Case study: Alessi SpA
Mediating Alessi: Marketing the brand
A brand story: From stainless steel to plastic via psychoanalysis
Alessi, italianità  and Family Follows Fiction
Family saga
Italian crafts
Design history
In theory
Marketing an origin myth: Mysqueeze and Juicy Salif
Conclusion: A happy ending?
References
Chapter 8: Information overload: Negotiating visual complexity in a data-rich world
The rhetoric of information graphics
Historical precedents
Isotype: Modernist ideology visualized
Infographics and journalism
USA Today
Information visualization
Visual complexity
The quantified self movement
Conclusion
References
Part Three: On paper and on screen
Chapter 9: How to? Visual techniques of persuasion in guidebooks and manuals
Introduction: Words and graphic design
The advice genre: Information, education, entertainment and persuasion
Designing domesticity: Visual techniques of persuasion
Modes of authority
From rational to fanciful: Text and subtext
Conclusion
References
Chapter 10: Driving sales: Print and TV advertising of cars to women drivers
Sex sells, gender buys
Women driving
Representations of women drivers
Car design
Gender bending/genre bending: Advertising cars to women
Cars advertised as accessories
Conclusion
References
Chapter 11: Picturing music: The rise and fall of music packaging
The essence of music packaging: Reuniting sound with image and object
From sound to image: Before the 12-inch LP
Approaches to album cover analysis: Gender, national identity and art history
The cassette threat and the rise of the CD
Shaping identity: Collecting sleeves
Conclusion
References
Chapter 12: E-Book, iBook, weBook, youBook: Declensions of digital design
The death of the analog book?
Hypertext and the end of books?
The sensual book: Challenging the form
Are books social media?
The printing evolution: Marrying print and digital
Conclusion
References
Index