Blog Post 4

The most interesting thing I found in this reading was in the chapter about propaganda. It talked a little bit about how effective propaganda was used to affect the people of the countries involved in war but then it got into the design of the propaganda itself which is where I found my interest. The book had talked about how the advancements of photography had changed the effectiveness of propaganda and gave it a much more visceral feeling. Instead of using primarily drawings and illustrations as they did for propaganda in WWI, much of the propaganda in the WWII era used black and white photography on top of colored posters.
Image result for keep em rolling poster"
Lionni, L. (1941) 'Keep 'em Rolling!' Retrieved from https://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/420557003/ on 5 Feb, 2020.

This is an example of such a poster from the textbook where seeing the people themselves in a poster as opposed to an illustration creates more of an emotional connection making the propaganda more effective.

The following chapter is focused on the designer and the art director and what I found so interesting about this part of the reading was how this chapter discussed how important it can be for a designer/art director to establish a sort of identity through their design. An example I liked of this was when the text talked about Henry Wolf and when he became the art director for Esquire magazine, he took something that was already establish for the design of the magazine and how he changed it to more suit his own design style. The first image is what Wolf manipulated the design to be to suit his own style and the second image was that same face stylized by a different art director before Henry Wolf came to the position.

Image result for henry wolf esquire cover"
Wolf, H. (1955) Esquire magazine cover. Retrieved from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/301811612497828360/ on 5 Feb, 2020.

Image result for henry wolf esquire cover"
(1954) Esquire magazine cover. Retrieved from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/423549539927552053/ on 5 Feb, 2020.

Comments

  1. Peter DFebruary 5, 2020 at 2:48 PM

    As you point out, it is quite fascinating how the Lionni utilized the juxtaposition of color and greyscale. It is common today to find a color image imposed on a black and white one in order to draw attention from the rest of the poster to it, but it is far less common today to see a black and white image on a colored one. In its own way, this strategy is an effective means of making the greyscale image pop out from the larger one, and while the larger use of color draws attention to the poster as a whole and catches the eye, the black and white usage better allows readers to differentiate that part from the rest as the colors aren't ultimately all blending together.

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