Ok, so this is a small description of what we discussed last lesson in Design Theories.

Well we had a long talk about Graphic Design in the Post WWII era.

As you know, the war left half (or more) Europe destroyed, highly in debt and untrustful of each other.

The 50’s started to be the time of the consumer, when women stayed at home doing chores and required new products to prepare food and stuff. This brought a whole new consumer era, where industrial designers had a lot of work, but so did Graphic Designers, since they had to start promoting those new products ad their brands.

Switzerland gave birth to a new design movement, called the new graphic design movement. You can find great pictures of it clicking here.

Unlike Bauhaus where simplicity and the search for the origins of the form is the strongest influence, this movement’s contribution to the design world is the emphasize of clarity, readability and elegance in design. You can see how so many of these designs are ahead of their time, and even current. Some tv channels like VH1 rely on these design for their animations.

Talking about America

The US were one of the heroes of the war. Not only they helped with massive amounts of soldiers and equipment to free places like France or Italy, but they also represented for many Europeans a hope for a better life. Big, spacious homes, beautiful white wives with impossible waists, 8 cylinder immense cars contrasted with a new Europe that was starting to re build and had poverty and lack of space as a constant.

American values of course rose high among North Americans themselves, and this created really interesting forms of communication, such as warplane-inspired Cadillacs, or Pepsi advertisements with a handsome Marine and his beautiful wife.

I can recommend you some interesting links like this about Pepsi advertisements, both in representation techniques and in portraying Americans’ dreams and aspirations back then.

Hope this was useful!