7 august - The Reykjavik Grapevine

48
The Violent
Outburst of
Graphic Design
Liberal economist Thorvaldur
Gylfason recently mentioned that
once upon a time, and until quite
late, history had been saturated with
politics. Yes, from his words one
could gather that history had once
even been political history, pure and
simple, whereas this would no longer
be the case. What history consists
of today, he did not mention,
but certainly graphic design is a
prominent candidate. One might
even risk declaring the precise point
where it, not so secretly, took over.
At the beginning of the 20th
century visuality entered a new era
with the arrival of the camera. In a
civilization founded on texts, where
the rule of law has been the rule
of the word, the arrival of direct
visual testimony to the universe and
habitat of humans was loud, even
violent. The most violent response
to the new visuality may be found in
Nazism, which can, quite cynically,
be seen as strictly centred on graphic
design: to make humanity stylistically
coherent.
Of course, bringing Nazism up
in any context is usually a rhetorical
suicide. So this should be clarified
and qualified a bit: things have
been made to look this way or
that way for a long time, for many
different reasons, aesthetic or
pragmatic. But it was only after the
birth of the photocamera, and the
subsequent birth of cinema, that
propaganda on the scale of Nazi
Germany became possible. And
Nazi Germany is not merely the
most infamous manipulator of those
recent visual powers, but the first to
employ visuals so fully for conscious
mobilization and manipulation of
people. What is more, the visual
aspects of Nazism reached much
further than propaganda, and can
be interpreted as its aim: people and
their habitat were supposed to fit an
overall design concept.
Adolf Hitler was stopped, as
no graphic designer should be that
powerful – and he was probably
caught in an incoherent thought
anyway: the main conclusion of the
20th century might be that you don’t
need to make the world fit an image,
you can simply ignore the world
and make an image fit the image.
Subsequently, reality has now left the
planet and landed in Photoshopland,
possibly declaring the only actual
winner of the wars of the 20th
century: the poster.
Graphic designers rule
The influence of Nazi aesthetics
on graphic design is no secret to
graphic designers themselves, who
generally look in awe at the immense
coherence and sophistication of the
work of Leni Riefenstahl and her
coworkers. The principles of Nazi
aesthetics are more easily applied
to Iceland than many other places,
and its influences can be found,
quite clearly in many places. For
example in advertisements for
Icelandic museums that collectively
invite visitors to realize the origins
of Icelanders – showing blonde
samples of, apparently half-naked
natives, in sharp, sophisticated fullpage
profiles. (Subsequently, foreign
visitors have been known to call the
museum tour the Eugenics Tour.)
The designers. They are no
popstars, usually they are rather
timid or shy creatures, often
handsome, well-dressed or in any
case stylistically conscious – but with
Sassy colours
and war
images. What’s
not to love?
a slight grin on their faces. Because
they know. They might not brag
about it, but they know it’s their
world now.
One pseudo-scientific way to
check that statement is the Google
test. “Grafískur hönnuður”, Icelandic
for “graphic designer” gives around
16,000 result pages. “Ljóðskáld” –
poet – gives 850. That’s 20 mentions
of graphic designers for every
poet. “Myndlistarmaður” – visual
artist – gives 3,600. “Blaðamaður”
– journalist – does come close to
the designers with 15,400, but even
“Stjórnmálamaður” – politician – is
far behind, at 4,170. “Nakin kona”
– naked woman, only receives 194
pages. I guess the outcome might be
somewhat different in English, but
as I want to keep my bias, I refuse
to check. On Icelandic webpages,
graphic designers are 800 times more