Lecture 9: Chronologies 7: Communication & Mass Media

• Mass Media is a means of public communication reaching a large audience and of communication that reach large numbers of people in a short time, such as television, newspapers, magazines and radio
• The mass media are diversified media technologies that are intended to reach a large audience by mass communication. The technologies through which this communication takes place varies. Broadcast media such as radio, recorded music, film and television transmit their information electronically. Print media use a physical object such as a newspaper, book, pamphlet or comics, to distribute their information. Outdoor media is a form of mass media that comprises billboards, signs or placards placed inside and outside of commercial buildings, sports stadiums, shops and buses
• In the art school context, it is known as communication design/visual communication and graphic design (Typography, Branding, Advertising, Propaganda, Printed Media, Packaging, Social Commentary/Activism, Signage)
• Areas for consideration are the origins of Graphic Design, and its relationship to fine art, advertising, capitalism, political tool (Especially when its used for social awareness and symbolisms of capitalism), postmodernism and social conscience

• The Bison and Horse cave painting documents how visual communication goes far back enough to the stone ages

• Giotto di Bondone, The Betrayal, done by 14th century painter Fresco, the visual form allows a form of communication for the illiterate
• The artist occupation was seen as important as they are made to communicate visual messages to others

• John Everett Millais, Bubbles, 1886, when inserting text into an image, does it turn a piece of fine art into a form of advertising or graphic design?
• The term Graphic Design was introduced in 1922, William Addison Dwiggins (A successful american designer) quotes: "In the matter of layout forget art at the start and use horse sense. The printing-designer's whole duty is to make a clear presentation of the message - to get the important statements forward and the minor parts placed so that they will not be overlooked. This calls for an exercise of common sense and a faculty for analysis rather than for art."
• Alternate names and definitions of the term are "Mechanized art', "Visual Communication", "Graphic Design is the business of making or choosing marks and arranging them on a surface to convey an idea.", "… graphic design, in the end deals with the spectator, and because it is the goal of the designer to be persuasive or at least informative, it follows that the designer's problems are twofold, to anticipate the spectator's reactions and to meet his own aesthetic needs."
• "Whatever the information transmitted, it must ethically and culturally reflect its responsibility to society." ~ Josef Muller-Brockman

• Edouard Manet(1832-83) captures modern society, with socializing advancing as week as leisure activities
• British design progresses as seen in the update of the London Undeground Map
• Oska Schlemmer, the Bauhaus logo was created around the same year the term Graphic Design was coined, the logo sets the standard for logo designs
• Kandinsky shows how images and text need not be arranged on a perpendicular strange line
• Links between Graphic Design and different disciplines, e.g. Fine Art, Advertising are arguably becoming increasingly blurred
• Although born out of consumerist/capitalist interests, Graphic Design is arguably becoming increasingly concerned with social issues