Chapter 11 keynote
Chapter 11 key points:
- Depression-era programs and wartime dictates pressed designers into large-scale, publicly funded information campaigns that also exposed a broad audience to cutting-edge visual trends.
- Documentary photography became a mainstay of mass-circulation publications and established a general perception of photojournalism as a source of unbiased records.
- Information design emerged as a powerful means of condensing large quantities of complex data into highly legible forms, and designers aligned themselves with engineers in the belief that statistical graphics could communicate with objective rationality.
- Graphic designers began to think in terms of programs and systematic approaches to the flow of information, borrowing the metaphors and technology of electronic information management.
- Information design relied on an appearance of fact-based objectivity to present arguments as if they were simply empirical statements, rather than graphic forms of persuasion
Study Questions:
How was Photojournalism perceived:
What contributed to graphic design’s role in service of states:
About how many posters were designed as part of the Works Progress Administration projects?
What was the weekly salary for artists, designers, photographers and writers working for the WPA?
While American posters often showed the laborer as a hero, Russian posters usually focused on what?
Who were propaganda posters were designed to communicate with:
Otto Neurath and Gerd Arntz created a system rooted in modern logic called what?
The first electronic computers developed in the 1940s and 50s were used for what?
What was an excellent example of systems design during this period?
What is Meta-design?