...

A Mouse, a Poster, and the Corporate State

Cinema scholars believe that when sound was introduced on movies it interrupted the development of the cinematic language as a purely visual art form. I often think about that and how graphic design can be expressive without words.

This poster was created for the undersign project with that in mind. Let the image speak for itself. Mickey+Big Corporations+Nazi Propaganda. Thanks to Art Spiegelman and Bansky for the inspiration.

[General characteristics - define the concrete materiality of the object: the poster is a printed sheet of paper put up in a public space to convey information; hence it is a printed object without a verso, only a recto (a peculiarly one dimensional character, like a photocopy); then speak of printing, and thus of pigments, inks and techniques, but also discuss the format, weight and nature of the different kinds of paper; refer to their sequential passage in time, i.e. history, between reproducibility of text and image. Stress the specific relationship between figure and ground (in the context of the street, the city, outside the city, the enviroment and so on) as well as the perceptual "distraction" that it entails (forms of vision and interpretations of space, i.e. relationship with architecture and the enviroment; reexamine, from this standpoint, the German literature of the late 19th-century: Schmarsow tactile mobile visual space; Hildebrand tactile-proximal vision, kinetic or dynamic Bewegungsvorstellung, optical-distant Fernbild; Raumscheu or horror vacui of Riegl and his friends0; reflect on a printed form of mural art, in relation to the cultured as well as vernacular tradition of wall decoration (epigraphy, frescoes, stained-glass windows, murals) stressing the differences]

I've taken this paragraph from Sergio Polano and Pierpaolo Veta's Book "ABC of 20th Century Graphics" because, first of all, it's about poster. and also because it has this interesting tone, reminding me how writing/thinking about design can be "scientific" or "academic" sometimes.

posted by undersign @ 8:35 PM