Lecture 4 - Communtication theory

Traditions of communication theory
-multiple theorys and perspectives shapes the field

Cybernetic theory
Useful for:
-Researching how as a designer your work makes effective communication.
Limitations:
-is is a linear process and is not concerned with the production of meaning itself which is a socially nediated process.

Three levels of communication problems:
Level 1 - TECHNICAL
-Accuracy
-Systems of encoding and decoding
-compatablity of systems/ need for specialist equipment or knowledge.

Level 2 - SEMANTIC
-Precision of language
-How much of the message can be lost without meaning being lost?
-What language to use?

Level 3 - EFFECTIVENESS
- Does the message affect behaviour the way we want it to?
-What cn be done if the required effect fails to happen?

Systems theory
BARB (Broadcastings' Audience Research Broad)

Semiotics - thre basic concepts

Semiantics - adresses what a sign stands for
Syntactics - the relationships among signs
Pragmatics - studies the practical use and effects

Semiotics
Useful for:
-Researching how we make meaning within any given situation
- Teaches us that reality can be read as a system signs and can assist us to become more aware of reality as a construction and of the roles played by ourselves and others in constructing it.

Limitations:
-Prioritises verbal/linguistic structires over embodied knowledge.

No language, even, if its a visual one, is self explanatory. Languages have to be learnt.

The phenomenological tradition
-The process of knowing through direct experience
-Refers to the appearance of an object, even or condition in ones perception.
-Makes actual lived experience the basic data of seality
- A failure in communication can be seen as an absence of, or failure to sustain, authentic human relationships.

The embodied mind
Communitcation seen as an extention of the nervous system. It starts with an awareness of the body. Language is seen as part of that system existing of neuronal pathways that are linked within the brain, the key is a physciological classification of coding and encoding.

- the process of interpretation is central.
-We are interested in what is real for the person

Rhetoric
personification as rhetoric is mostly used to humanise inanimate objects or ideas, such as rhetoric itself. It is a type of 'rhetoric trope' such as
-hyperbole
-irony
-personification

Rhetoric - How do I look powerful, physical
Rhetoric - language being used

Useful for thinking through how you are going to achieve certain effects on the 'reader' or audience.

limitations:
-Only learned through practice. Intervention in a complex syatems involves technical problems rhetorical cant grasp.

Originally used as a rhetorical trope, metaphor enables us to grasp new concepts and remember things by crealing associations.

The sociopsychological tradition
-The study of the individual as a social being
-three key areas
-Behavioural
-cognitive
-Biological

Core process:
RC material - Exposure - Attention - Comprihension - Confirmation - acceptance - Retention - Realisation

Useful for: Deep analysis of the moment of communication

Simple changes in spacing can dramatically change meaning - Gestalt theory

The sociocultural theory
-in defining yourself in terms of your identity with terms such as fathers, catholic etc. You are defining yourself in terms of your identity as part of a group and this group frames your cultural identity.
-looks at how these cultural understandings, roles and rules are worked out interactively in communication.

Context is seen as being crutial to forms and meanings of communication
Sociolinguistics is the study of language and culture

Critical communication theory
-a synthesis of philosophy and social science.
-Critical theory approaches to communication examine social conditions
-postrolonial theory refers to the study of all cultures affected by the imperial process.

Lecture 3 - The gaze

- Call of duty allowes you to chose 1st person or 3rd person perspectives.
Control how much we engage with death and violence.
- Psycocoanalysis is the analysis of the options and controls that we chose.

Laura Mulvey, 'visual pleasures and narrative cinema' (1975)
-Hollywood films is sexist in that it represents 'the gaze' as powerful and male.

-Scopophilia - The pleasure of looking at others bodies as objects.
- Instinctual desire to look
(Freudian theories)

-Narcissistic identification - (for Mulvey, spectators identify with the male hero in narrative films)
- Jacques Lacan - The mirror stage
- projected notion of 'ideal ego' in image reflected.
- Childs own body is less perfect than its reflection

-scopophilia = sexual stimulation by sight
- narcissistic = identification with the image seen.
Cinema thrives on this contradiction

- The male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification.

Extending Mulvey's theory:

Suture
-spctators look through eyes of the actors in the film.
-we are able to follow 'their' gaze without feeling guilty.
-suture can be broken eg. when an actor speaks out to us.
-this form of 'gaze' invites is to be part of the scene.

The spectators gaze
gaze of a viewer at an image.

Intra diagetic gaze
A gaze of one depicted person at another within an image.

Extra diagetic gaze
This is the direct address to the viewer.

Intra diagetic gazes defer our guilt - someone else is hurting that person.
-visual culture employs different forms of the gaze to evoke structures of patriarchy.
-Different forms of the gaze evoke different structure of power.
-we can objectify and identify.

Lecture 2 - Critical positions on the media and popular culture

What is culture?
- 'one of the two or three most complicated words in the english language'
- General process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development of a particular society, at a particular time.
- A particular way of life.
- Works of intellectual are especially artistic significance.

Marx'x concept of Base and Superstructure
Base - forces of production - material, tools, workers, skills etc.
- relations of production ( master/slave etc) - employer/employee, class
Superstructure - social institutions - legal, political, cultural
- forms of consciousness - ideology
'the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles' (Marx, communist manifests)



Determines content and forms of
Base superstructure
Reflects form of and legitimises



The state

' But a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoise' (Marx and Engels - 1848)

Ideology

1. System of ideas or beliefs ( eg beliefs of a political party)
2. Masking, distorting or selection of ideas, to reinforce power relations, through creations of 'false consciousness'.

Raymond Williams (1983) 'keywords'

4 deffinitions of 'popular':
- well liked by many people
- inferior kinds of work
- work deliberately setting out to win favour with the people
- culture actually made by the people themselves.

Caspar David Friedrich (1809)
Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane (2005)
E.P Thompson (1963)

Matthew Arnold (1867) 'culture and Anarchy'

Culture is:
- 'the best that has been thought and said in the world'
- study of perfection
- attained through disinterested reading, writing and thinking
- the persuit of culture
- Seeks 'to minister the diseased spirit of our time'

Leavism - F. R Leavis and Q.D Leavis

'Still forms, a kind of repessed, common sense attitude to popular culture in this country'
-Leavis sees a cultural decline in the 20th century.
- 'culture has always been in minority keeping'
- collapse of traditional authority comes at the same time as mass democrocy (anarchy)

Frankfurt school: Thodore Anorno and Max Horkheimer

- Reinterpreted Marx, for the 20th century - era of "late capitalism"
- Defined " the culture industry":
2 main products - homogeneity and predictability.

- cultural commodities
- Negation = depriving culture of "it's great refusal" = cultural appropriation
ACTUAL DEPOLITICISES THE WORKING CLASS

gAuthestic culture vs Mass culture

Qualities of authentic culture:
-Real
- european
-multi-dimensional
-active consumption
- individual creation
- imagination
- negation
- AUTONOMOUS

walter Benjamin - 'the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction' 1936
Hebidge, D (1979) 'subculture: the meaning of style'
- incorporation
- ideological form
- commodity form

Althusser (1970)
Society = economic, political and ideological

Ideology is a practice through which men and woman 'live' their relations to the real conditions of existance.
Ideology offers false, but seemingly thrue resolutions to social imbalance.
Social authority mantained by:
R.S.A - repessive state apparatus
I.S.A - ideological state apparatus

The media as ideological state apparatus
- a means of production
- Disseminates the views of the ruling class (dominant hegemonic)
- Media creates a false consciousness
- The individual is produced by nature; the subject by culture (Fiske 1992)

Task 1

One aspect of contempory culture that, in my opinion is panoptic is the Census. The Census is an account that holds information about all the people and households in the country. This is collected for the government and local authorities. It is to be taken every ten years and invloves around twenty-five million households. In my eyes the Census is a form of Foucalt's theory of a 'disciplined society'.
Foucalt claimed 'this surveillance is based on a system of perminant registration'. Putting this into contempary context, we are being made to answer personal questions about ourselves and so giving the higherarchy more information to do with as they wish.
We fill out the Census without question even though we have never actually been told the 'punishment' for not doing so. We are self-regulating ourselves. 'power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection'.
The Census is panoptic because we are filling out personal details about ourselves and posting it to the government and not hearing any more from it. They have our details but we know hardly anything about them. Foucalt calls this 'a machine for dissociating the see/being seen dyad'.
By using the Census the higherarchy are keeping track and monerting the population in our country. there is constant surveillance which has been said to be 'the utopia of the perfectly governed city'.

Lecture 1 - Panopticism - Surveillance and society

The Panopticon was designed in 1791.
Michel foucalt (1926-1984) wrote 'Madness and civilisation' and 'Discipline'

The great confinement (late 1600)
'House of correction' to curb unemployment and ideleness, sinlge pregnent women, drunkards etc.
- way of improving thir moral fiber.
- Hid away devience, repression.
- Began to be seen as an error. Everyone corrupting eachother inside, the mad corrupting the sane.
- Asylum for the mad. People were mentally controlled rather than physically controlled.

The emergence of forms of knowledge - biology, mdeicine etc. Legitimise the practice of hospitals, doctors and psychiatrists etc.
- The Pillory - Criminals are visably shown as devient and humiliated.

Discipilinary society and disciplinary power

Discipline is a 'technology' to reform people and make them responsible for themselves = Panoptisism.

- Panoptic prisions in Cuba and London. Guard is sat in the middle with a view of all prisioners as the building is round. Opposite to dungons.

The panopticon internalises in the indervidual the conscious state that he is ALWAYS being watched.
- Self regulation
- Psycological torture?

-Allows scrutiny
- Allows supervisers to experement on subjects
- Aims to make them productive
- Reforms prisoners
- Helps treat patients

Panopticism is the mode of power that controles society.

Panopticism is everywhere - New pubs and bars, google maps/streets, offices.
Survailence cameras everywhere. Always being watched.
Being constantly recorded and monertered makes us constantly react.

Relationship between power, knowledge and the body.

(foucault)
Power relations have an immediate hold upon the body, they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks.

Disciplinary society produces what Foucault calls 'Docile bodies'.
- Self monitoring
- Self-correcting
- OBEDIENT bodies

Panoptic gym.
Regulated health to stay able to work and not become useless to society.
TV = docile meconism - Being controlled, not going out and doing things for ourselves - passive.

Foucault and power

- His deffinition is NOT a top-down model as with Marxism
- Power is not a thing or capacity people have - it's a relation between different individuals and groups and only exists when it is being excercised.
- The excercise of power relies on there being the capacity for power to be RESISTED.
- 'Where there is power there is resistance'.

Facebook is performing for an institutional and panoptic gaze.

Lecture 5 - The Document

- Joseph Nicephore Niepce 1828 ' View from a window at La Gras'
The photo took 8 hours to process



- Frances Frith 1857 'Entrance to the great temple'
This was used to capture one idea of the east by the western eye

The decisive moment

"Photography achieves it's highest distinction - reflecting human condition in a never-to-be-retrieved fraction of a second" - Cartier Bresson


- Henri Cartier Bresson 'Gare saint lazare' 1932
The scene is almost posed. Like the photographer has waited for a moment like this to strike. he refused to manipulate the photograph.

F.S.A photographers 1935-44

- Director: Roy Stryker
- Depression - 11 million unemployed
- Mass migration of farm labourers 'oakies'
- The photograph as both photojournalism and emotive lobbyting tool
- The reality is already pre-recored.


- Dorothes Lange 1936 'Migrant mother'
This photo is very composed. She looks thoughtful in her despare while her child weeps on her shoulder.


-Cesare Lombroso ' Portraits of Italian and German criminals' 1889
He claimed that criminals looked a certain way, that they had small chins or accessively long ones.

Magnum group

- Founded in 1947 by Cartier Bresson and Capa
- Ethos of ducumenting the world and its social problems
- Internationalism and mobility

Ket features of documentary photography

- They offer a humanitarian perspective
- They tend to portray social and political situations
- They purport to be objective to the facts of the situation
- People tend to form the subject matter
- The images tend to be straightforward and unmanipulated

Lecture 1 - Modernity & Modernism: an introduction

- William Holman Hunt, (1851) The hireling shepherd
- Trottoir Roullant (electric moving walkway) - urbanisation

Enlightenment - period of time in the lat 18th Century when scientific/philosophical thinking made leaps and bounds

Haussmanisation
Paris 1850s onwards = a new paris.
Haussman redesigned paris streets from old narrow streets and rundown houseing to large boulevards. This made the streets much easier to police which is a form of SOCIAL CONTROL.
Also the 'dangerous' elements of the working class are moved outside the city centre - the centre became an expensive middle class and upper class zone
.





The big iron bridge shows just how much modernism is beggining to take off.


If we start to think about subjective expericence (the experience of the individual in the modern world) we start to come close to understanding modern art and the experience of modernity.
MODERNISM emerges out of the subjective responses of artists/designers to modernity.









Alfred Stieglitz 'flatiron building' (1903)
This was amazing for the times and this was when sky scrapers started to emerge.











Marcel Dunchamp 'nude decending a staircase' (1912)
This shows how abstract art is taking off as modernisation takes over.

Modernism in design

- Anti-historicism - no need to look backwards to older styles
"Ornament is crime" - Adolf Loos (1908)
- Truth to materials - simple geometric forms appropriate to the material being used
- Form floolws function
- Technology
- Internationalism

Technology

- New materials
- Concrete
- New technologies of steel
- Plastics
- Aluminium
- Reinfoced glass

Mass production

- Cheaper more widely accessable products
- Products made quickly

Internationalism - A language of design that could be recognised and understood on an international basis

Artists who worked with typefaces: Herbert Bayer, Stanley Morison (Times New Roman)

Conclusion

- The term modern is not a neutral term - it suggests novelty and improvement
- "modernity" (1750-1960) - social and cultural experience
- "modernism" - The range of ideas and stles that sprang from modernity

importance of modernism:

- A vocabulary of styles
- Art and design education
- Idea of form follows function

Extra task

Feminist art is much Diversified. It grew in the late 1960's and early 1970's out of the contemporary woman's movement. One example of feminist art is that of Jenny Saville, who trained as a figurative painter in the 1980's. After she established herself, she dabbled into her second passion; photography, however always preferred painting. Saville represents bodies rarely appreciated in contemporary Western culture. She didn't paint any figure however, she focused her work on obease nude female which was usually done by males. Some of her artwrok focused on surgical marks of liposuction, trauma victims, and even transgender patients, which caused much controversy. In a discussion about her surgically marked up woman painting in the Hunter Davies interview she says, "I'm not painting discusting, big women. I'm painting women who have been made to think they're big and discusting; who imagine they're thighs go on forever... i have'nt had liposuction myself but i did fall for that body wrap thing where they promise four inches off or your money back." (Carson,F 'Feminist visual culture' p44-48) She paints her models on huge canvases commonly through distorted perspectives; this thrusts the figure into the viewer's eyes forgetting about sexual desire or notions of idealised femininity.

The way Saville picks her colours is also very in tune to the messages she is putting across. The bright reds and yellowy shades suggest injuries, physical injuries from the dominant male in the house but also it could be representing the emotional injuries the women of that time were being caused. There is no doubt that Jenny Saville is making a bold statement about the female body forcing the viewer to think about their own views and emotions about their own body. There was some controversy about the real reason why Jenny Saville made these paintings. The obvious and most common response was that she was trying to get people to believe large bodies were beautiful again, in contrast to the current western notions. Saville replied to these remarks with, "I don't make paintings for people to say we should look at big bodies again and say they are beautiful. I think that it's more that they are difficult. Why do we find bodies like this difficult to look at?"



Another largely feminist artist is Cindy Sherman. Sherman, instead of using paint to represent her feelings about patrarchy and sexism in society, she has opted for showing this via the lens of a camera. Through a number of different series of works, Cindy Sherman has raised challenging and important questions about the role od women in society and the media. Within her photographs she queries the very nature of representation. Does the photograph that we see give and insight into ourselves or is this just what we want others to believe? Are we creating an illusion for others to devour? She created a set of 69 black and white photos which she started in 1977. She stars herself in her photos; however they could not be classed as self portraits because self portraits portray you as a whole including your personality, whereas she dressed up using clothes and props to create different characters. Fashion is a big part of Sherman's work as she is representing the woman being able to be themselves and look the way they want. She has been quoted saying "I do get inspired by how things are made, by fashion as art form." (HTTP://www.tate.org.uk/magazine/issue5/sherman.htm)

Sherman tries to show herself not as the ideal "beautiful" woman that men love to gaze upon but as real women, an individual. The idea of the art she produces is to bulldoze the image of women that men have constructed throughout the years and show that confident and "unfeminine" women don't have to attempt to look that way to be seen as beautiful. "Cindy Sherman frequently uses, distorts and messes with archetypes and stereotypes of women and their portrayal in the mass media and art. Untitled #92 is a mockery of how women are portrayed in mens magazines." (HTTP://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/feminist/feminist-art-practices.html) Cindy Sherman did not want to use materials such as paints to present her work, as she thought photography was something that everyone could relate to without knowing much about contemporary art. Cindy Sherman herself claims that her work justifies itself and she doesn't wish to preach about Feminism: "The work is what it is and hopefully It's seen as feminist work, or feminist-advised work, but I'm not going to go around espousing theoretical bullshit about feminist stuff." (HTTP://www.tate.org.uk/magazine/issue5/sherman.htm)

The ideas that Sherman introduced with her posed photographs trying to project different and conflicting images of herself with the intention of proving that you dont have to conform with the sterotypes that society expects women to look like. In many ways she was before her time. Modern society has become more image consious as proved by the desire for young people on social networking sites such as MySpace, all trying to create similar perfect images of themselves, with all the individuality removed many of them become clones of the celebrities they admire. (HTTP://www.feministartrevolution.blogspot.com/2008/06-cindy-sherman.html, 02.06.08)

5 point text

The first point that is being made is that of expresionism. He claims that the one thing that expressionism needed is the notion of 'self' from the artist, basicly he needs to be expressing something about himself in his art. he believes that this notion comes from marginalised and neglected places, in new art this incantation was however made under urban circumstances. He says that the expressive devices had to match the real experience and the modern condition pressed down on the avent-garde as the century went on.

The second point explains that cubism, expressionism and futurism were large miles stones for european avant-gardes reception of the modern. he claims that the modern was not yet 'total' and so it could be measured against what was yet to come. Modern was still similar to traditional values.

The third point that he makes is about modernisation, modernity and modernism.
Modernisation is the processes of scientific and technological adnvances. It refers to the growing impact of the machine and chemical industries.
Modernity refers to the social and culteral condition of these changes. He claims that modernity was a form of experience, adapting to the changes and the change in character that it caused in people.

The fourth point was the pesimism that came about with the increase in population and control of human life and machinary. Human beings were becoming imprisioned in what the sociologist Max Weber saw as the 'iron cage' of modernity.

The final point that was made is that there is an impulse to decode and change the modern but there is another argument that art must transform itself.

Harvard Refrence:

• McGuigan, J (1999). Modernity and postmodern culture. Milton Keynes: Open University Press
• Mckenzie, B & Holme, M (2002). Expressionism. London: Heinemann Library
• Piotrowski, P (2009). In the shadow of Yalta: art and the avent-garde in Eastern Europe 1945 - 1989. London: Reaktion Books
• Turner, J (2000). From Expressionism to Postmodernism: styles and movements in 20th-century art. London: Macmillan
• Wilk, C (2006). Modernism 1914-1939: designing a new world. London: V&A Publications

Lecture 6- Postmodernism and the mass media

Modernism is associated with - expressionism
- innovation
- individualism
- progress
- purity
- originality
- seriousness

The postmodern condition is characterised by - exhaustion
- pluralism
- pessimism
- disillusionment of the idea of absolute knowledge

Modernism is an expression of modern life, technology, new materials, communication (postmodernity)

Origins of postmodernism

- 1917 - a German writer called Rudolph Pannwitz spoke of 'nihili stic, amoral, postomdern men'.
- 1964 - Leslie Fielder described a 'post' culture, which rejected the elitist values of modern culture.
- The begginings of post modernism was in rthe 1960s
- Post modernism was established as a term in the 1970s by Jencks
- During the 1980s it became a recognisable term
- between the 1980s to the 90s it was the dominant theoretical discourse.
- and today post modernism is tired and simmering

Uses of the term 'postmodernism'
- After modernism
-The historical era following modern
- Contra modernism
- Equivalent to 'late capitalism'
- Aritstic and stylistic electicism
- 'Global village' phenomena; globalisation of cultures, races, images, capital, products




AT&T building, Philip Johnson NYC 1982



Frank Gehry, Guggenheim museum, Bilbao 1997

JF Lyotard
'The postmodern Condition' 1979
'incredulity towards metanarratives'
metanarratives = totalising belief systems
Results = Crisis in confidence.

Post modern Aesthetics:

Complexity, chaos, mixing materials/styles (brieolage), reusing images: parody & irony




- Roy Lichtenstein 'This must be the place' 1965

At the end of the 1950s the purest form of modernist paintings was FORMALISM theorised by the critic Clemant Greenberg.

"Advertising is the greatest art from of the 20th century" - Marshall McLuhan.

Crisis in confidence
- BUT also freedom and new possibilities
- Questioning old limitations
- Space for marginalised discourse: Sexual diversity & multiculturalism

'Neo TV' - Umberto Eco.
- TV quiz shows about TV shows
- Out take shows
- TV news items about TV celebrities
- 'Reality TV'

Postmodernism

- Avague disputed term
- Post modernist attitude of questioning conventions (especially modernism)
- Post modernist aesthetic = multiplicity of styles and approaches
- Shift in thought & theory investigating 'crisis in confidence'
- Space for 'new voices'
- Rejection of technological determinism?

Lecture 4 The mass media and society

Definition of mass media
Modern systems of communication and distribution supplied by relatively small groups of cultural producers

- "late age of print" this term comes from the media theorist Marshall McLuhan.
- The role of the 'reader' - the electronic book (is it democratic?)
- the reader takes on the role of the author.

Computer Media
The way we read has changed because of hypertext and hypermedia.

Negative criticism of mass media
- Superficial, uncritical, trivial
- Viewing figures measure success
- Audience is dispersed
- Audience is disempowered
- Encourages the status quo
- Encourages apathy
- Power held by the few motivated by profit or social control
- Bland, escapist and standardised
- encourages escapism, seen as a drug which anaesthestises us

Positive criticism of the mass media
- Not all mass media is of low quality
- Social problems and injustices are discussed by the media
- Creativity can be a feature of mass media
- Transformission of high art material reaches a broader audience
- Democratic potential


Artists' use of mass media = a book by John A. Walker 'Art in the age of mass media'

Can art be autonomous? (exist on its own in a vacuum)
Should art be autonomous? (for some yes, by doing so it retains its purity and integrity)

- Roy Lichtenstein - Whaam (1963)
- Drowning girl (1963)

New media is changing the way we consume and read text and images.
Theorists of the mass media have different viewpoints seeing it either as;
a) negative and a threat
or
b) positive, pleasurable and democratic

Much 20th century art has used the mass media, often to be critical of it.
There is a serious question in art theory as to whether art should be autonomous or not.

Lecture 3 - Advertising, Publicity and the media

- 25 million print adverts produced a year
- 11,000 new commercial in the UK each year
- Pop ups target
Karl Marx
Critique of consumer/commodity culture
- We construct our identities through consumer products
Stewart Enwein 'the commodity self'
Judith Williamson author of Decoding Advertisements instead of being identified by the produce
- Symbolic associations - symboliclly associate life traits to a meaningless product.

How does commodity culture perpetuate false needs?

- Aesthetic innovation
- Planned obsolescence
- Novelty
- Makes us believe we need to buy things to feel satisfied in the world

Aesthetic inovation: Look, style
Novelty: something thats new
Planned Obsolenscence: products designed to break. trick to keep us spending/consuming

- Advertising conceals the background ' history' of products. the context in which a product is produced is kept hidden.

Reification
- Products are given human associations

Frankfurt school. Herbert Marcouse author of 'one dimensional man' - commodity culture manipulates us and makes us think one dimensionally.

conclusion:
Advertising makes us unhappy with existing material possessions. it potentially maipulates people into buying products that they dont really need and dont really want.

It encourages addictive, obsessive and acqusitive.

It uses images that encourage us to buy products and brands that have the potential to be unhealthy.

It encourages unnecessary production and consumption therefore depleting the worlds resources and spoiling the environment.

lecture 2 - graphic design: a medium for the masses

- John Everett Millais, Bubbles, 1886, Pear soap advert. Taking original traditional paintings for modern adverts.
- 1922, William Addison Dwiggins ( successful designer )
- Herbert Spencer: 'mechanized art'
- Max Bill and Josef Muller-Brockman 'visual communication' - 'Whatever the information transmitted it must ethically and culturally, reflect its resposibility to society'
- Henry de Toulouse - Lautrec, Aristide Bruant, 1893, poster.
- Alphonse mucha, job, c. 1898, poster for cigarette papers.
- Savile Lumley, Daddy, what did YOU do in the great war? 1915, poster.
Very British with English Symbols all over the image.

- Alfred Leete, Britons (Kitchener) wants YOU!, 1914, poster.
- James Montgomery Flagg, I want you for US army, 1917 poster.
Both very similar, making the viewer feel wanted, aimed at working class/lower middle class.

- F.TT. Stingemore (uk), London underground map, 1931-2
- Henry C. Beck (uk), London underground map 1933
- After Henry beck London underground map Simon Patterson (1967-)

- The great bear, 1992, lithograph on paper.
- Piet Z wart (Dutch), Het beok van PTT, 1938 ( Dutch telephone service book)
- Hans Schleger (German working in the UK), eat greens for health, 1942, poster.
- Helmut Krone for Doyle Dane Berbach, think small, advert for Volkswagen, 1959.
Very simple and tidy.

- 'The word "advertising", like "comercial art", makes graphic designers cringe. Advertising is the tool of capitalism, a con that persuades the unwitting public to consume and consume again'- Steven Heller, 1995.

- F.H.K Henrion, stop nuclear suicide, poster, 1960.
- Jamie Reid, sex pistols, Never Mind the bollocks... sleave design, 19977.
- David Carson, Dont Mistake Legibility for communication. I really like this.

- The coup, party music, withdrawn CD cover, 2001.
Taken off the shelves because it could be classed as too offensive with the two towers in the background.
Time magazine, cover, september 14th 2001

- Barbara Krunger, I shop therefore i am, 1987.
Selfridges bought this in 2006