Advertising
The Mother of
Graphic Design
Essay written by Stephen Heller
Maybe the title should be
Advertising, the mother of graphic
design ?
The word ‘advertising’, like ‘commercial art’, makes graphic
designers cringe. It signifies all that sophisticated
contemporary graphic design, or rather visual
communications, is not supposed to be. Advertising is the
tool of capitalism, a con that persuades an unwitting public
to consume and consume again. Graphic design, by
contrast, is an aesthetic and philosophical pursuit that
communicates ideas. Advertising is cultural exploitation
that transforms creative expression into crass propaganda.
Graphic design is a cultural force that incorporates parallel
world views. Advertising is hypnotically invasive. Graphic
design makes no such claim
Though graphic design as we know it originated in the late
nineteenth century as a tool of advertising, an association
today with marketing, advertising or capitalism deeply
undermines the graphic designer’s self-image. Graphic
design history is an integral part of advertising history, yet
in most accounts of graphic design’s origins, advertising is
virtually denied, or hidden behind more benign words such
as ‘publicity’ and ‘promotion’. This omission not only limits
the discourse, but misrepresents the facts. It is time for
graphic design historians, and designers generally, to
remove the elitist prejudices that have perpetuated a
biased history.
Questioning the relationship
between graphic design and
advertising
Ken
Garland
1964
Eye
Magazine
Milton Glaser’s 12 Steps to
Graphic Design Hell
Metropolis Magazine 2002
Graphic Design
Advertising
Often graphic design and advertising conflict as ideas
What is ‘good’ graphic design?
What is relationship between
Advertising and Graphic design?
The two most important 20th -21st
Century design movements
Heller suggests;
advertising begins before
modernism
therefore
graphic design is a practice that
evolved to serve advertising before
it serves other , more noble causes
But which comes first?
Graphic
Communication
may have begun before
verbal
communication
Typography begins 1000’s of years ago
AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts)
definition of Graphic design
‘Graphic design is a creative process that combines art
and technology to communicate ideas. The designer
works with a variety of communication tools in order to
convey a message from a client to a particular
audience. The main tools are image and typography.’
Advertising gives birth to graphic design as a recognised
practice
Industrial Revolution/Mass production
Creates
Mass produced
goods
And the
Consumers for
Mass produced
goods
Theodor Adorno
The Culture Industry (1944)
Pseudo-individuality
The car for the suburban
couple
The adventurers car
The Role of Graphic design in Advertising
Not to sell stuff-but to sell
pseudo-individuality
to sell
identity
individuality
exclusivity
belonging to the right group
Abraham Maslow
A Theory of Human
Motivation (1943)
The Hierarchy of Needs
Advertising
sells us
needs
Pre-modernist advertising and graphic design
Playbill for Barnes and Finley's booth, Smithfield Fair, London, 1701. V and A
Sizes that we’re more used to
Black and Red printing
Theatre Royal playbill
Drury Lane, London
1718
Theatre Royal playbill for William
Shakespeare's Cymbeline
Covent Garden Theatre, London
5 May, 1779
19th century advertising posters
Mainly woodblock type – large letters were much cheaper
Jules Chéret develops a three stone
lithography process which allowed for
artists to print with multi-colours
1891
1895
1896
Modernist graphic design in advertising
Plakatstil (poster style) Germany 1905-
Lucian Bernhard (1883 – 1972)
Reductive type and
image
1905
Typeface - Bernhard Antiqua
Alexander Rodchenko
Constructivist style and philosophy
(posters for social purposes to serve the state and people)
Bold
block
type
Use of
few block
colours
Type as part of the image
Battleship Potemkin film posters
1950s
The
Swiss
Is this Graphic Design Perfection? Modernism at its purist? ADVERTISING
A World of Mid-Century Modernism
At the same as the Swiss were reducing
design to its simplest forms and Helvetica
type
there were those who were free forming in
their design
like Jazz was doing with music and
Jackson Pollock was doing in art
Jim Flora
Commercial
illustrator/graphic
designer
a key figure in
mid-century modernist
design
Alvin Lustig
books and book
jackets,
magazines,
interiors, and
textiles
died in 1955
Paul Rand
one of the most famous of
modernist graphic
designers.
David Klein
1950s became the art
director for Clifford Strohl
Associates, a theatrical
advertising agency.
Famous for his 1950s/60s
posters for broadway shows
and for airline
TWA
Lemon /Think Small (The Add That Changed the World of advertising )
Think Small was an advertising
campaign for the Volkswagen
Beetle, created by Julian Koenig at
the Doyle Dane Bernbach agency
in 1959.
It was ranked as the best
advertising campaign of the 20th
century
William Bernbach wrote;
"Let us prove to the world,
"that good taste, good art, good
writing can be good selling."
manifesto for the creative revolution (1949)
Good graphic design is not just
graphic design that is liked by other
designers
but fulfils its function
Not great design – but fulfils its function
Heller suggests many feel this way;
‘Advertising is the tool of capitalism, a con
that persuades an unwitting public to
consume and consume again.
Graphic design, by contrast, is an aesthetic
and philosophical pursuit that communicates
ideas.’
‘It is time for graphic design historians, and designers
generally, to remove the elitist prejudices that have
perpetuated a biased history.’
if advertising is not the mother of graphic design ….
….It is a very important element of
graphic design
…but it is also true that there are
so many other areas of graphic
design practice
so advertising is not the only
career path
Perhaps, rather than mother and child
they will always be
argumentative siblings ?