Design Literacy: Understanding Graphic Design

and corruption. This was Heine’s reason for designing a somewhat comic bulldog mascot instead of a more frightening graphic icon ...

In its day Heine’s Simplicissimusposter was a radical departure from typically fussy placards layered with excessive ornamentati ...

Neue Jugend John Heartfield The Malik Verlag was established in March 1917 in the critical period before the fall of Imperial Ge ...

banned in the autumn of 1916 , and Weiland Herzfeld was coincidentally called to the Western Front. While he was away, in the sp ...

the leaders of the new Weimar government superimposed—is a classic dada document. Two ongoing sister publications,Die Pliete( 19 ...

Nie^9 Tadeusz Trepkowski Tadeusz Trepkowski’s ( 1914 – 1956 ) 1953 Nie (Polish for “no”) was the first Polish poster to make an ...

Are artists inspired by the idea that visual language can subvert the tunnel vision of the state? The Polish posters that surfac ...

Paper Bombs It is usual in modern warfare for aggressors to drop leaflets warning civilian and soldier alike to capitulate befor ...

they might expect under real conditions. The leaflets on these pages were among those produced for extended maneuvers involving ...

which is used by the U.S. Army). Overall, the look is designed to scare on the one hand, yet offer a certain solace on the other ...

The Peace Symbol There was probably no more galvanizing or polarizing emblem during the 1960 s than the peace symbol—an upside-d ...

Few who wear the peace symbol as jewelry today are probably aware of its legacy as a once-controversial emblem. Rather, it seems ...

Signs and symbols are easily transformed to mean good or evil depending on how they are sanctioned and applied over time—and who ...

Mushroom Clouds Spectators described the first atomic bomb blast on July 16, 1945, at the Trinity Site in Jornada del Muerto, Ne ...

Dreading the unthinkable was underscored by knowing the real. Everyone was taught about the historic shock-and-awe displays laun ...

shipped to a U.S. airbase for its final Tokyo destination until President Harry S Truman, citing despair over the enormous numbe ...

Early in the atomic age the mushroom cloud also devolved into kitsch. Government and industry promoted “our friend, the atom” wi ...

fictional “doomsday machine” triggered when only one bomb falls to earth. Although this chain reaction is not real, it plays to ...

Black Power/White Power Tomi Ungerer From time to time circumstance fosters the climate for a radical cartoonist to emerge from ...

and peripatetic wanderer allowed him to see through the artifice of American politics and society, and underscored his vision. B ...