The New Advertising

Key People and Events:

• Paul Rand – Understood value of invented forms for both symbolic and communicative ends, through skillful analysis of the context. Tempered systematic design for modern American design.
• Systematic design – how to run businesses. Graphic design was the means, but there was a new practice that emerged where the corporations took over the design.
• Besides branding products with promises, identity systems became the means of making complex organizations seem like a single entity with distinct personas.
• Branding was seen as a major way to shape a reputation for quality and reliability through “brand promise”. This became the idea that the reputation for quality was carried through every aspect through the design program, from the environment where the products were sold to the design of the letterheads.
• Simplicity enables the viewer to interpret the context immediately. The form and essence of a message – as well as playful symbolism.
• Bradbury Thompson – “All visual forms carry history”. Essentially he was opening a door for future designers to work in the vernacular, using the untrained artists as models for his design.
• Ivan Chermayeff & Tom Geismar - “Early Design Office”. They were against the idea that there should be no humor and curiosity and visual riddles, no hand of the artist. Their designs were technically a form of cubism. They saw it as a way not to be so driven by product but more by the process.
• Design was not a clinical activity, it could be gestural and fun also. Sculptural as well as communication vehicles.
• Vignelli Associates – Unigrid system. They developed the standards for format sizes, typography, grid systems, paper specifications, and colors. They also realized tremendous economies in material and time. Very outspoken in the field of graphic design, adopting the processes of engineers.
• Designers embraced the ahistorical universalism of the international style that preferred abstract form over figurative references.
• Corporate design sees its zenith with American design for a global marketplace in the 70s and 80s, which happens because the Corporate world appropriates all the avant garde and cutting-edge ideas. This sets the stage for what will become a backlash against corporate design -- something which is still seen today, where this anti-corporate strategy seems useful. The idea of Corporate design has been debunked as too impersonal; the hand of the artist, the humanist aspect, has been distilled out of it. These cold shapes and messages have little to do with the consumer and even confuses them – what is this Corporation and what are they doing behind closed doors?
• Television is a new media that is just being explored. Not only for advertisement but also as a branding media. To understand what happened to Modernism you have to understand that this brief period of Pop Art – just like Art Nouveau –was a bridge between two distinct styles, in this case the movements of Modernism and Postmodernism.
  
• No longer confined to a static image, pioneers of motion graphics used timing and sequence in tandem with graphic forms, typography, and photographic image.
• Saul Bass – Designed from motion pictures to design programs as well as famous corporate identities. Essentially developed a new cinematic language.
• Visual statements used simple images, talked intelligently to their audience, and focused on the benefits of a projduct. No longer just a photo of a product, the viewer had to dig down and see the big idea about what the company was or stood for.
• Conceptual strategies for typography were unified with photography by locking text or display tightly into the photographic image.
• George Lois' most innovative concepts grew from his ability to understand and respond to the people and events of his era. Staying in touch with his times was vital. He made a point to challenge, shock, and provoke the audience – even going as far as to undercut established values.
• Leo Burnett isolated individualism; an overriding theme of the 60s era, by creating myths and stereotypes. Message and image are inseparable within the layout. Opportunity and responsibility intermix – products of a complex system of representation. Lived experiences are replaced by symbolic expression of ideas.