Reading Graphic Design in Cultural Context

by Grace Lees-Maffei, Nicolas P. Maffei

Overview

Reading Graphic Design in Cultural Context explains key ways of understanding and interpreting the graphic designs we see all around us, in advertising, branding, packaging and fashion. It situates these designs in their cultural and social contexts.

Drawing examples from a range of design genres, leading design historians Grace Lees-Maffei and Nicolas P. Maffei explain theories of semiotics, postmodernism and globalisation, and consider issues and debates within visual communication theory such as legibility, the relationship of word and image, gender and identity, and the impact of digital forms on design. Their discussion takes in well-known brands like Alessi, Nike, Unilever and Tate, and everyday designed things including slogan t-shirts, car advertising, ebooks, corporate logos, posters and music packaging.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780857858016
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	03/21/2019
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	7.40(w) x 9.60(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Grace Lees-Maffei is Professor of Design History at the University of Hertfordshire, UK. She is the editor of Iconic Designs (Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2014) and Writing Design (Berg, 2011), co-author of Reading Graphic Design in Cultural Context (Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2019), and co-editor of Made in Italy (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013) and The Design History Reader (Berg, 2010, second edition forthcoming). She is also co-editor of Bloomsbury's Cultural Histories of Design series.

Nicolas P. Maffei is Senior Lecturer on the Graphics courses at Norwich University of the Arts, UK.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Contents
List of Illustrations

Reading Graphic Design in the Expanded Field: An Introduction, Grace Lees-Maffei

Part One: On Message and Off Message
1 - Branding as Sign System: Semiotics in Action, Grace Lees-Maffei
2 – The Responsive Brand: Uniformity and Flexibility in Logo Design, Nicolas P. Maffei
3 – Whose Wall? From Posters to Digital Displays and the Colonization of Public Space, Nicolas P. Maffei
4 - Slogan T-shirts: Billboards of Identity Politics, Nicolas P. Maffei

Part Two: On Legibility and Ambiguity
5 - Seeing Clearly? Legibility, Word and Image in Postmodern Print Design, Grace Lees-Maffei
6 - Signifying Orientalism, Chinoiserie and Japonisme: Fashion Photography in Vogue as a Case Study, Grace Lees-Maffei
7 – A Good Read? Corporate Literature and Brand Stories: Alessi SpA as a Case Study, Grace Lees-Maffei
8 – Information Overload: Negotiating Visual Complexity in a Data Rich World, Nicolas P. Maffei

Part Three: On Paper and On Screen
9 - How To? Visual Techniques of Persuasion in Guidebooks and Manuals, Grace Lees-Maffei
10 – Driving Sales: Print and TV Advertising of Cars to Women Drivers, Grace Lees-Maffei
11 - Picturing Music: The Rise and Fall of Music Packaging, Nicolas P. Maffei
12 - EBook, iBook, weBook, youBook: Declensions of Digital Design, Nicolas P. Maffei

Index

Editorial Reviews

Readers (and not just students) interested in looking contextually at the history of graphic design will surely benefit from Grace Lees-Maffei and Nicolas P. Maffei's latest book. It offers much food for thought, a gold mine of relevant historiographical literature, a wide range of worthwhile subjects and thoughtfully maps approaches to graphic design in relation to culture, whether through theory or the historical study of genres of graphic design practice.” —Journal of Design History

“Includes an excellent historical framing of the discipline's transformations, both as a professional field and as an object of scholarly research ... The “expanded field” approach allows first for a richer and more complex understanding of design processes, liberated from the mere concern of commercial constraints and objectives and aesthetics ambitions and successes ... [The book is] a perfect match of graphic design in all its diversity, a clever analysis of the multiple interfaces that structure the back and forth movements between design and society, and a smart example of good writing ... An excellent springboard to further analysis and an invitation to return to traditional examples whose interpretation is still confined to strictly commercial or essentially art-historical schemata. The iconography is well-chosen, and the central full color section is a pleasure for the eye and the mind.” —Leonardo Reviews

“In this critical yet accessible book, Grace Lees-Maffei and Nicolas P. Maffei shift the popular perception of graphic design from surface treatment to complex cultural practice.” —D.J. Huppatz, Associate Professor of Architecture and Design at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia

“Reading Graphic Design in Cultural Context is a refreshing and insightful contribution to design history and a valuable resource for teachers, students, and scholars of visual communication. This engaging set of historical case studies expands the discipline to consider such topics as the colonization of public space in both print and digital media; the relationship between legibility and ambiguity in modern and postmodern design; gender, race, and desire in fashion photography and advertising; wide-ranging information graphics from maps and sign systems to the “quantified self”; slogan t-shirts; music packaging; corporate brand identity; concerns for environmental sustainability; visual techniques of persuasion in guide books and advice literature; and the evolving medium of the book. It offers a clearly written, accessible, and compelling argument that semiotics continues to provide a dynamic, flexible model for making sense of a world increasingly saturated by visual signs today.

It is an excellent critical guide, the best written thus far, to the study of signs, which emerged in structural linguistics and anthropology of Ferdinand de Saussure and Claude Lévi-Strauss in the early twentieth century, and which evolved in the work of Charles Peirce and Roland Barthes. Students as well as general readers will appreciate this clear and concise overview of a topic that can easily confound even the sharpest thinkers.” —Rebecca Houze, Professor of Art and Design History at Northern Illinois University, USA

From the Publisher