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Photograph taken by Fabien Barral
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR What is typography? Why does it matter? How does it impact our lives? The Merriam-Webster definition of “typography” is: “the work of producing printed pages from written material” or “the style, arrangement, or appearance of printed letters on a page.” How those letters, words, and sentences are styled and arranged affects how they are perceived. Good typography clarifies content, establishes hierarchy, and presents information in a manner that makes it easier to read, and, therefore, to understand. Good typography is good communication: it can start a dialog or advance an idea or make a difference in the world. Typography is also intertwined with our daily lives—we encounter type in everything from the products we buy, the signage around us, the books we read, the news we consume, and the directions we follow. Typography can be beautiful, functional, persuasive, and inviting. It can also fail, especially when there is a disconnect between how the type looks and what the text says. This debut issue of Counter examines typography and design viewed through the lens of activism and social justice. Topics range from the recent presidential election to ethics within the design industry to the power of the poster as a means of expression and protest. The content was conceptualized, collected, curated, and created by students in Art 338: Typography II at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo during winter quarter 2017. The magazine reflects the diverse interests and talents of the students who brought this project to life. Charmaine Martinez Editor, Instructor and Type Enthusiast
‘HOPE’ ARTIST SHEPARD FAIREY REVEALS NEW POSTERS TO PROTEST TRUMP
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CONTENTS
POLITICS
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CULTURE
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ART
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WHAT WOMEN ARE WORTH
HOW DESIGN CAN END CULTURAL APPROPRIATION
JR & ACTIVISM
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THE ARTIST ON CRUSADE
‘HOPE’ ARTIST SHEPARD FAIREY REVEALS NEW POSTERS TO PROTEST TRUMP
THE AFRO COMB AND AFRICAN CONSCIOUSNESS
THE DRAW OF WAR
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TRUMP VS HILLARY: CAMPAIGN DESIGN
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PUNK YET PEACEFUL POSITIVITY
THE SECRET TO ETHICAL DESIGN?
WHY TATTOOING IS UNIVERSAL
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WALT DISNEY AND WORLD WAR II
ALBUM COVER ART (1960–2015)
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HISTORY’S MOST POWERFUL PROTEST ART
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WHAT
WOMEN WORTH ARE
CHERYL HELLER | MARCH 10, 2015
Cheryl Heller on why women “have a tremendous advantage…from not being the ruling class.“ “What Women are Worth: Money and Power Will Not Come Through Legislation but by Busting Negative Stereotypes,” by Cheryl Heller, originally ran in AIGA’s The Journal in 1992 (vol. 9, no. 4). It’s part of a series in which we invite a new generation of design critics to page through our archives and respond to an article of their choice.
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I was asked to speak at the conference
in Chicago about the fact that women make less money than men. It’s an endless emotional subject colored by centuries of opinions. Following, nevertheless, is one more point of view. I believe that money and power will not come through legislation, although that may give women the confidence to act. It will come through an understanding of how our behavior has been conditioned by stereotypes and how our expectation levels are set and the responsibility we share in setting those expectations. The time has come for this issue of men versus women to end. Too much has been said and written and too much money has been made by those to stand to profit from analyzing the gender gap. The most honest and useful belief we can hold is that the battle we have to fight is an individual battle having nothing to do with gender. It’s undeniably true that women make less money than men, and money is the sign of equality. Women earn less money than men at every level of education. The gap is as large for college graduates as for workers who have not finished high school. Both men and women employers pay their female subordinates roughly $12,000 less than their male subordinates with similar positions. It’s a fascinating statistic. Women pay women less than they pay men. One-third of all new businesses today are started by women, and surprisingly, among the self-employed, the gap in hourly earnings is slightly larger. That means that even when women have their own companies, they pay themselves less than men pay themselves. The facts about the wage gap are relatively uncontroversial, but there’s a lot of disagreement as to why. The first inclination is to
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blame employers, but if employers had the power to control wages, why wouldn’t they drive down the wages of men? They have to face the issues of supply and demand and they pay, to men and women, as little as they can while remaining competitive in the marketplace, and they respond to whoever applies the most pressure. A second definition of discrimination is job segregation, the assumption that women are suited to some jobs more than others or the menial tasks rather than managerial. It’s called sex-role differentiation and there are a million reasons as to why it exists.
The time has come for this issue of men versus women to end. The assumption that we’re not the same has existed forever. Within the original myths of almost every culture, there seems to be a preference for dichotomous thinking, which, as Simone Dabougraur wrote in 1945, “Casts men as the norm and women as the other possessing traits opposing to men.” Not surprisingly, the fact that men have been in power has had an effect on the study of sexual differences. First of all, women had not been considered important enough to study, and the study that has been done has been
directed towards discovering proof of women’s biological inferiority. Men have simply been protecting their turf. We have been considered less intelligent because of our smaller brain size and are unable to perform several tasks simultaneously because of less brain lateralization. We’re believed to be more controlled by our hormones than are men. Edgar Burman, who was medical advisor to the late Hubert Humphrey, warned against women’s participation in public affairs because of their “raging hormones” and U.N. Ambassador Jean Kirkpatrick reported that some White House critics resisted her appointment because of her female “temperament.” We’re believed
to be generally fixed as homemakers and breeders of children through the evolution of hunter-gatherer societies. We’re also believed to be more “social” and more suggestible, to have lower self-esteem, to excel over men at repetitive tasks, to be less analytical, less motivated towards achievement, and more auditorially oriented rather than visually. None of these things is true. What is true; however, is that we’re conditioned to behave in certain ways regarded as appropriate to our gender by our parents, our teachers, and by society. The overwhelming evidence that’s come to light in the last decade indicates that gender differentiation is best explained as a social
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construction rooted in hierarchy, not in biology. It’s been proven that jobs affect behavior tremendously. Recent research found a direct link between the pace complexity, or routinization of a job and the person’s commitment, intellectual flexibility, moral perspective, and competence. In other words a person’s interest and competence turns out to be linked to exposure to new situations and opportunities to learn in advance. We
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actually condition ourselves as we are being conditioned to fit this hierarchy. It’s been discovered that people do “emotion work” on themselves to create feelings that appropriate to their role in society; also, that through anticipatory socialization, men condition themselves to have masculine feelings and women to have feminine feelings. Nora Ephron wrote about this self-fulfilling prophecy: “I adapted willy-nilly. If I was assumed to
be incompetent at reversing cars or opening bottles, oddly incompetent I found myself becoming. If a case was thought too heavy for me, inexplicably I found it so myself. I discovered that even now men prefer women to be less informed, less able, less talkative, and certainly less self-centered than they are themselves, so I generally oblige them. I didn’t particularly want to be good at reversing cars and didn’t in the least mind being patronized by illiterate garage men. But all stereotypes disintegrate when we look at individuals. The fact of the matter is that more men than women do certain things and behave in certain ways and vice versa, but in reality, the world just doesn’t split neatly down that line. What differences there are between men and women turn out to be much smaller than the differences between rich and poor or between managers of small and large companies or old and new companies. They may even be smaller than the differences between old and young people, or those with professional parents and those with working class parents. The concepts of male and female cause the sorting and skewing of perceptions by focusing on differences rather than similarities. Often these distinctions are based on very slim evidence.
passion to be great that carries them through rough times and keeps them focused. They’re clear about what they want. They don’t focus on limitations. They take risks and they have courage. These are qualities shared by both genders. We have a tremendous advantage. We have learned a lot from not being the ruling class. I read once that children always know their parents better than parents know their children. That’s because those with power are studied carefully by those they control. We still have the element of surprise. If you’re not expected to be strong or brilliant, it can work to your advantage. t seems to me that the conflict is to be treated roughly, so you must choose. At a conclusion of A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Wolf wrote, “If we face the fact, for it is a fact, that there is not an arm to cling to, but that we go alone and that our relation is to the world of reality and not only to the world of men and women, then the opportunity will come.” S All art in this article created by Asha Logan.
It was Coleridge’s idea that a truly great mind is androgynous, one that rises above the traps of gender. We create our own opportunities. We must accept responsibility for doing that, and we must accept that we are just as responsible for not creating opportunities. For everyone it’s an individual battle. No organization and no legislation will change enough people. What will help is for each of us to work individually to prove the stereotypes wrong to ourselves and to everyone else. People who are successful have many qualities in common. They have a
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‘H
HOPE’ ARTIST SHEPARD FAIREY REVEALS NEW POSTERS TO PROTEST TRUMP STEPHY CHUNG | JANUARY 2017
Shepard Fairey— the artist behind
the 2008 “Hope” poster depicting then presidential candidate Barack Obama—has produced a new set of images in time for President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration this Friday.
feeling that their needs would be neglected in a Trump administration,” Fairey told CNN.
The three posters feature Muslim, Latino, and African-American women.
Fairey, along with artists Jessica Sabogal and Ernesto Yerena, teamed up with the nonprofit Amplifier Foundation—a self-described “art machine for social change”—to produce works for the organization's We the People campaign.
“We thought (they) were the three groups that had been maybe criticized by Trump and maybe were going to be most, if not necessarily vulnerable in a literal sense, most
It's really about making sure that people remember that ‘we the people’ means everyone, it means all the people,” Fairey said. “I think the campaigns were very divisive, more
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from one side than the other. But (it's) just reminding people to find their common humanity, and look beyond maybe one narrow definition of what it means to be American.” The campaign's objective, as stated in its Kickstarter campaign, is to “flood” Washington with symbols of hope on Jan. 20. “On January 20th, if this campaign succeeds, we're going to take out fullpage ads in the Washington Post with these images, so that people across the capitol and across the country will be able to carry them into the streets, hang them in windows, or paste them on walls,” organizers wrote. So far, more than $1.3 million has been pledged, exceeding the Amplifier Foundation's $60,000 target. Fairey, who has previously depicted him in an image inspired by George Orwell's “1984,” has long been vocal about Trump. “Trump is dangerous,” Fairey told CNN in the lead-up to the 2016 election. “He's a demagogue who's a bigot and
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“TRUMP IS DANGEROUS” is sexist. He really has no respect for a lot of different people, no experience in politics, and is pursuing the presidency out of his own ego rather than a desire to create the greatest good for the greatest number of people.” Fairey is not the only artist making a statement against Trump. Los Angelesbased artist Illma Gore recently revealed a mural painted with human blood to protest Trump, and actress Meryl Streep earned the Presidentelect's scorn when she spoke out against him in a speech at the Golden Globes earlier this month. S All art in this article created by Shepard Fairey
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Trump vs. CAMPAIGN MATT HANSEN | MARCH 2017
Let’s face it, the 2016 pr
pandemonium—an all-out left and the right. In the left 33,000 deleted emails, the u heavyweight, Hillary Rodha weighing in at 6 bankruptci tweets, the reality tv show h bie, Donald J. Trump. Instea candidates sported expens hooks and jabs, they threw and obvious subtweets. Am fighters sparred in the ring, dodging the real issues. Aft full 12 rounds, one fighter fi that, the historic 2016 electi cians left the ring unscathe was riddled with uncertaint
Behind these politicians we their clamorous supporters sleep-deprived team of gra to take an inside look at the the two campaigns—which which one was on the ropes
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. Hillary: DESIGN
residential election was fist fight between the ft corner, weighing in at undisputed wall street am Clinton. On the right, ies and 34 thousand host and political newad of boxing trunks, the sive suits; and instead of negative commercials merica watched as the two , ducking questions and fter battling it out for the finally tapped out. Just like ion was over. Both politied, but the fate of the U.S. ty.
ere their spirited crew, s, and of course, their aphic designers. It’s time e design language behind h one packed a punch and s?
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OTHER CONTENDERS Bold (like Christie) yet forgettable (unlike Christie). —Mike Tyson, Senior Designer, New York
With a name like Bush, Jeb’s team had to come up with a way to minimize the dynastic association. Constraints spur innovation—and the Jeb! mark is proof. It’s simple, succinct, optimistic and active. The logo (if nothing else) gets my vote! —Bret Hansen, Creative Director, NYC
While a pretty terrible logo, it’s interesting that Jill Stein uses different colors than red, white and blue. —Matthias Mencke, Group Creative Director, LA
Marco Rubio’s is bland and uninspired. The only thing it has going for it is that you can read it. —Mike Preston, Associate Creative Director, New York
Sander’s logo is well balanced, has good colors and almost appears happy on top of its little wave. I’m not a huge fan of the star over the ‘i’, but the way they’ve integrated the logo into his website and used it across a range of merchandise shows it’s versatility. Nice one. —Benjamin Starr, Visual News
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THE MAIN EVENT “Obama’s ‘O’ was handled with a certain amount of nuance and elegance and Hillary’s ‘H’ has none of that nuance or elegance, her name is Hillary. We don’t know her as Ms. H” —Steven Heller, design critic and former art director at The New York Times
With a better interpretation of the "TP" monogram, the concept of taking the American flag to construct a logo where the initials take the place of the stars (while not new) is fitting in this case and, if you were (or happen to be) someone to vote for Trump, this is a fairly rallying logo. —Brand New
As you may have noticed, the public can get fired up about almost anything, even graphic design. Forget what Trump said about immigrants, what about his sinful use of tracking and his dull color choices? Regardless of the result of the 2016 election, it’s nice to see the importance placed on good design, a domain that quite often goes unrecognized. With the rapid spread of technology and social media, campaign design will become more
and more significant; it must accurately illustrate who a candidate is and what they are hoping to accomplish—all in one graphic. As we move into future elections, it will be up to the designers of the country to fight for their candidates and design logos that won’t start an uproar. Well, you have four years to come up with something, so you might as well get started. S All art in this article (excludes logos) created by Matt Hansen.
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PUNK YET PEACEFUL POSITIVITY the Secret to Ethical Design? MADELEINE MORLEY | NOVEMBER 18, 2016
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This young Berlin designer walks the line, steering clear of twee
Art director and graphic designer
Marius Jopen’s work first came weo me in the form of a quote from H. G. Wells, written in an off-kilter, cursive style with thick black ShWWarpie. It was hung on the door of my co-working studio, where he was set up for a brief stint. “More than machinery, we need humanity, more than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness,” it read. This hand-written style is a signature of his, appearing across the board on identities and posters that he penned throughout his time working for Mirko Borsche and Stefan Sagmeister. It continues to be a staple, featuring throughout the continual scroll of the young designer’s website and on his work for cultural clients in Berlin and Amsterdam. Having worked for two of Germany’s most in-demand designers and having recently garnered attention as a finalist for the Dutch Design Awards’ young designer category, starting his own studio is the logical next step for the 2014 Rietveld Academy graduate. I’m not one for inspirational design quotes by any means, but this wasn’t
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More than machinery, we need humanity, more than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. what his Welles poster was; the scruffiness of Jopen’s style makes it seem punk, not twee. It has the same effect on client work. For a recent campaign and identity system for the Rotterdam museum Het Nieuwe Institute’s The Body exhibition, Jopen, in collaboration with Berlin-based designer Max Kuwertz, created a system in which clean grids collide with scrawled felt-tip pen. While studying in Amsterdam, Jopen began a project akin to the Daily Drop Cap or poster-a-day craze that has become an almost compulsory exercise for students. For almost two years he created a poster reflecting on the news headlines, printing out a grid he’d put together on InDesign and scrawling across it in felt-tip pen, collaging and illustrating to articulate complex issues with striking simplicity. Eventually he found the routine frustrating, feeling as if he was participating in a merry-go-round of negative news. Perhaps as an antidote to submerging himself in daily disasters, around the same time Jopen co-founded The Love Foundation. The open network of students and artists raises
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money by putting on music nights, using the profits to provide clean drinking water for people in the Busia region of Kenya. Instead of invoking guilt through distressing imagery, Jopen—in line with the sweeping positive news movement—believes design with an optimistic message creates a conducive atmosphere for social causes. In order to connect all members of the foundation together (which now has branches in Amsterdam, Berlin, Dresden, Perth, and Santa Cruz, California), he designed a “Love Logo” of two interlocking rings that have become the only recurring motif for the posters promoting events. This is what Jopen’s work does—it elevates—but its aesthetic is wild, quick, and cut-and-paste enough, so that there’s nothing too sentimental about it. It’s vital to consider the role of ethics for contemporary graphic designers, an area often over looked, and to highlight who is using their skills for ideological or political purposes. Jopen’s approach—as symbolized in that small act of tacking a Charlie Chaplin quote to a door—is one that communicates heart and heft. S All art in this article created by Marius Jopen & Max Kuwertz
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HOW DESIGN CAN END
CANDICE ZAMORA | SEPTEMBER 2015
If you thought our politically-correct
society has eliminated issues of race and stereotypes from advertisements, brand logos, and the fields of web and graphic design, you thought wrong. A more complex and extremely controversial topic is creeping up in American culture: cultural appropriation.
Wikipedia defines Cultural appropriation as a sociological concept which views the adoption or use of elements of one culture by members of a different culture as a largely negative phenomenon. Generally, an assumption that the culture being borrowed from is also being oppressed by the culture doing the borrowing is prerequisite to the concept. The Professional Association for Design (AIGA), which is the oldest and largest professional membership organization for
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design, reports that 86% of graphic designers in the field are Caucasian American. The remaining demographic breakdown is as follows: 2% are Black, 4% are Hispanic/Latino, 6% are Asian/ Pacific Islander, and 2% are “other”. This lack of diversity makes the entire career field less credible- after all, how can graphic design be taken seriously if only a certain demographic is creating everything? The real problem is designers are being denied the chance to advocate for certain viewpoints from the actual source of the information. This increases the chances of appropriation appearing in real life and stereotypes appearing in graphic design work.
IS DIVERSITY REALLY THAT IMPORTANT IN DESIGN? In a word, yes. Technology and globalism make diversity and inclusion more necessary than ever in today’s world. From a design standpoint, diversity and inclusion within the field leads to more innovation— we can’t advance without different ideas from different viepoints. As Americans, we absorb brands, logos, and visual representations into our identities-so they need to be accurate and respectful. It’s important that our culture welcomes expression and participation from all ethnic, gender and socioeconomic populations because their insights and experiences can inform and enrich the lives of our whole society.
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SO HOW CAN WE FIX IT? In order to successfully lead improvement and change, design companies must openly embrace more diverse practitioners and retain them through inclusion. The industry as a whole has a responsibility to foster new talent and create communities of contributors who represent more realistic gender and ethnic ratios in order to give everyone an equal chance succeed. Additionally, designers can take measures to avoid placing stereotypes on other cultures. The chances of this happening decrease when diversity is welcomed; designers then get the chance to understand the history behind certain elements of another ethnicity’s culture. The more designers of different backgrounds know about each other the better they can create intelligent and sensitive expressions and avoid appropriation. America can’t afford to lose the amazing contributions that can be made by misrepresented segments of its population, and reaching out to these populations is the first step toward ending racist designs and cultural appropriation. S
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THE
AFRO COMB AND AFRICAN CONSCIOUSNESS
KATIE DE KLEE FROM DESIGN INDABA
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Nigerian artist Fred Martins shares
his latest collection of politically charged art with Design Indaba. His previous series drew attention to the serious issue of climate change, which was aimed at triggering an emotional response in the viewer—which might then lead to better global stewardship. This new project celebrates African activists, who were jailed for trying to enforce the freedom and fairness for Africans. Using the symbol of the “afro comb,” Martins’ series includes portraits of Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, Patrice Lumumba and Fela Kuti.
TELL ME MORE ABOUT THE IMAGE OF THE COMB? Lately, I started listening to some early 90’s West African highlife music, the nostalgic feeling from that retro world inspired me. Their passé style made me brood on our music and culture and later, on the African struggle for freedom, social justice and fairness. And on those that gave their all, breaking into pieces like a comb trying to liberate the scalp from lice. So I illustrated strong and symbolic images in honour of some celebrated African activists and past leaders that still inspire a lot of people.
WHAT DO YOU THINK IS SO STRONG ABOUT THE COMB AS A SYMBOL? Afro combs were worn in the 70’s by fluffyafroed youths in America as a protest against repression and it goes beyond style and adornment, a comb has a strong historical play for Africans. Combs were connected to both cultural and religious beliefs, even though they were fashionable and also used for combating lice, ticks and fleas. The over
I illustrated strong and symbolic images in honour of some celebrated African activists and past leaders 5500-year-old Afro-combs discovered in Kemet (Egypt) disproves the present theories that denies Egypt its blackness. It connects Africans to their ancestors.
WHY THE BOLD ORANGE BACKGROUND? The orange color is associated to prison. I realized that most of these legendary activists—from Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela, Patrice Lumumba, Fela Kuti to Angela Davis— were at some point jailed for enforcing the African consciousness.
YOUR CHARACTERS ARE NOT ONLY AFRICANS WHO LIVED ON THE CONTINENT, WAS IT IMPORTANT FOR YOU TO INCLUDED THE DIASPORA AFRICANS? Africans for me are indivisible, not even by geography. They are treated as one people across the globe and it does not matter their birth place so they are not limited by global mapping. And for sharing the same goal and struggle they should be uniformly honored. S All art in this article created by Fred Martins
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WHY
TATTOOING IS UNIVERSAL OLGA KHAZAN | JULY 1, 2014 PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRIS RAINIER
A National Geographic photographer explains why many cultures view the body as a blank canvas.
Aspen, Colo.—Tattooing, when you think
about it, is like smiling: Nearly every culture does it, but not always for the same reason.
In a given society, the motivation for covering oneself in paint, ink, or even scars speaks to what the civilization as a whole holds dear. Chris Rainier, a photographer for National Geographic and other publications, has traveled the world in search of cultures he describes as having “one foot in the Garden of Eden.” (He was also Ansel Adams’s last assistant). Speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival, which is organized jointly by The Atlantic and
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the Aspen Institute, he explained how “many cultures around the world believe that the body is a canvas waiting for a story to be told.” From New Zealand's Maori people to Angeleno gangsters, most cultures incorporate some form of tattooing. But “where the skin is too dark to tattoo, there is scarification,” Rainier said. When he would visit African societies that practice scarification, and he would ask locals who they thought was the most beautiful woman or the most handsome man, they would inevitably point to the most scarred. Often, body modifications go beyond vanity, reflecting a necessary part of the transition to adulthood. He photographed one group of
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Papua New Guineans who believe all of mankind originated from crocodiles, and therefore have their young initiates scar their skin to resemble the scales of a reptile. To varying degrees, the same is true even of cultures that practice less extreme versions of tattooing. As Smithsonian wrote regarding Rainier's work, “In New Guinea, a swirl of tattoos on a Tofi woman’s face indicates her family lineage. The dark scrawls on a Cambodian monk’s chest reflect his religious beliefs. A Los Angeles gang member’s sprawling tattoos describe his street affiliation, and may even reveal if he’s committed murder.” “They say, ‘This is who I am, and what I have done,’” Rainier told the magazine. Which just goes to show, the ways in which we mark our skin may vary widely, but deep down we're all the same. S All photography in this articleby Chris Rainer
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JR & ACTIVISM THE ARTIST ON A
CRUSADE
ANA BAMBIC KOSTOV
He started on the houses of Paris
by writing his name on rooftops. After realizing he could make use photography to tell a wider story, he began pasting images he took on walls in numerous illegal sidewalk galleries. When Paris was caught by the riot fire in the mid 2000s, his social consciousness reached a new level of lucidity, and his activist crusade began. His moniker is JR and he is probably the most globally spread street artist. It’s obvious that JR’s art comes from activism, but the manner in which this TED prize winner conducts his affairs is entirely different. He does not focus only on several concrete issues as Keith Haring did, nor does he engage in advocating revolution in style of Carrie Reichardt. JR thinks wider, always bearing a universal picture in mind, even if he focuses on concrete, local issues in any of his continuous travels. Recognized by the art world as a prodigy, JR is today known as an activist for women’s rights, peace and equality, always having one common quality in all his projects—an idealistic belief in humanity.
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JR—ROOFTOP BEGINNINGS The beginnings of JR’s activism stem from his firm convictions that people are often served with wrong ideas about anything ‘other’, while he seeks his subjects in areas where there were no museums, or other cultural institutions. In the Portrait of a Generation project, realized in Paris between 2004 and 2006, JR turned his focus towards the marginal groups of society. Initially, those were kids against whom the prejudice of Parisian bourgeoisie was overwhelming, so pasting posters with their faces across the posh arrondissements of the City of Light had an immense impact. So immense in fact, that the Paris City Hall allowed for JR’s photographs to be wrapped around its outer walls. The word prejudice played the crucial role here, as it did in the next adventure of JR, located in the dangerous West Bank area.
FACE 2 FACE AND WOMEN ARE HEROES Hearing a lot about the Israeli—Palestinian conflict, the artist embarked on a journey
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wanting to experience the situation and, perhaps, help overcome it on some level. Fighting against prejudicial ‘other’, he pasted photographed portraits of Palestine and Israeli people on the West Bank barrier, one next to the other, on both sides of the wall. He called the project Face 2 Face, and as he was looked disapprovingly by some for putting pictures of Israelis or Palestinians in the enemy zone, rarely could those people tell apart which one was which. By confronting two opposites, putting them in the same place and leveling them, JR did the unthinkable in a way, which aided in the understanding of absurdity of their discord. His actions stood for tolerance and acceptance, for peace, suggesting an alternative of friendship instead of clash.
The development of JR’s evolving artistic and socially engaged practice took him in the direction of advocating women’s rights as well. He started this initiative in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, and spread it across places with the highest rate of social distress. Women are Heroes project went from Brazil to Sierra Leone, Liberia, Kenya, India, and Cambodia highlighting women as the most vulnerable and the strongest survivors of any given problem they encounter in the unsettling conditions they live in.
ART TO THE PEOPLE It’s hardly surprising that JR chose public art for his primary expression. The illicit nature of his works is there to emphasize the direct communication with the people, his partners in crime. The response and the reaction if what JR is trying to provoke, while the opinions of the stale elite are of little interest to him. He wants to move the masses,
propagating equality and human values with every step of the way. Even his more sentimental projects, Unframed and Wrinkles of the City, posses a clear critical or empowering tone, fighting for everyman, or the too-frequently overlooked social groups. Still, his latest concept, the one that made him a global phenomenon, is what embodies JR’s activism the best.
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INSIDE OUT CAN CHANGE THE WORLD Already a king of street art, JR decided to involve people in his ideas. When giving his inaugural TED talk in 2011, JR asked a crucial question—Can art change the world? He did not offer a yes or no answer at the time, stating that art definitely can change how people perceive the world, altering the viewing angle, while proclaiming his wish—to use art to turn the world inside out. Then and there, the biggest participatory art project in the world was born—Inside Out Project. As the winner of a million dollar prize, JR started engaging people across the world to make a photographic statement, to stand for their beliefs, to make their mark, The response was (and still is) vast, as the photobooths aiding in photographing people and the exhibitions spread from the USA to China. Using photography as activism, JR achieved in reaching out to millions, who dared in making themselves to be, visible and thus, known and heard. Accomplishments of JR’s artistic engagements have surpassed all expectations. The success and the acceptance they get from local communities testify to the purposefulness of his actions, as he succeeded in changing the dynamics of various, tightly knit, groups of people. Acting locally, they made an impact on the global scene, reintroducing the most universal human values into a over-stratified global society. People have become their own brand, while the artist insists on not having any logos, sponsors or credits on his art, giving it back to the people. Therefore, JR’s anonymity is logical and deliberate, as he is only the vessel of the community. His photographic activism takes him to where he is needed the most, where he endeavors to put an ordinary man on the global map, so that when he is looked at, he can always look back. S All art in this article created by JR.
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The Draw
Wa
w of War
alt Disney and World War Two
In December 1941, Time magazine
was about to print its end of year issue, its front cover carrying a big picture of Dumbo—that loveable elephant with the gigantic ears who had helped The Walt Disney Studio achieve soaring box office figures that year. But on 7 December, Japanese aircraft attacked Pearl Harbour, abruptly bringing America into World War Two—and ousting Walt’s latest creation from the front page. Yet, if the war led to a dip in Disney’s fortunes, it was only a temporary one.
Within just six months, The Walt Disney Studio in Burbank, California, was declared a war plant. Its filmmaking capacity was given over to the Allied effort and its well-loved cartoon characters all enlisted to do their bit for their country—from Donald Duck and Pluto to Mickey Mouse, Snow White and beyond. Through a mix of groundbreaking military training films, features and propaganda shorts, as well as insignia, books, posters, and much more, Disney sought to boost troops’ morale on the frontline and promote government policies on the home front.
Disney artists created a wealth of war-related material for many other federal, state, and local government departments and agencies besides Treasury. This illustration was designed for the War Manpower Commission in 1943, to try and convince employees to stay at the jobs they were trained to do and help ease the critical manpower shortage caused by men being drafted into the military. It appeared in several magazines and was issued as a poster.
Over the course of the war, Disney artists designed more than 1,200 combat insignia for all branches of the US military and for its allies. Besides the famed Flying Tigers insignia, one of the most celebrated designs was made for England’s Royal Air Force. Prior to Pearl Harbor, many American pilots joined England’s Royal Air Force as members of Eagle Squadrons 71, 121, and 133. An entry in a Hearst newspaper insignia stamp album stated, "Walt Disney artists were quick to chronicle the significance of this combat union with an American Eagle ‘on guard.’ Fiercely he advances to contest the fouling tactics of a barbarous and un-sportsmanlike adversary, as he moves in to the attack with his English ‘comrade-at-arms.’”
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The insignia for the USS Escambia (AO-80) fleet refueler was created by famed Disney artist Hank Porter, the man responsible for creating the lion’s share of combat designs at the studio during the war. Escambia, named after a river that flows through Georgia and Florida, fueled ships during the invasion of the Marshall Islands, aircraft carriers as they launched strikes against the Philippines, task forces vessels supporting the invasion of Okinawa, and aircraft flying raids against Japan. This mobile naval gas station was represented by a 50-gallon drum and Jose Carioca, a character made famous in Disney’s two South American films, Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros. Virgil Grier, who served aboard the Escambia said, “Ken Hackett reproduced the insignia on each side of the bridge, where it drew admiring chuckles from the crews of the ships we refueled.”
This 26-page booklet was published by the Aeronca Aircraft Corporation in 1943. The booklet told the story of the Aeronca Grasshopper, a multi-purpose airplane. The Grasshopper was used for artillery spotting, scouting, and air ambulance duties. Disney artists drew all of the illustrations in the booklet, as well as the corporate logo on the front cover. The general public could receive a copy of the booklet by sending 10 cents in stamps to Aeronca’s publicity department. S All art in this article created by Walt Disney.
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album cover a 1 960
WE INSIST! MAX ROACH’S FREEDOM SUITE (1960)
THE LAST POE THIS IS MADN
Photograph: We Insist!—Max Roach’s Freedom Suite (1960)
Photograph: Dougl
The cover of this impatiently-titled, classic jazz record references the sit-in movements of the civil rights movement which started in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1960. As with To Pimp a Butterfly, the confrontational nature of the image is accentuated by the fact that everyone in the frame is staring straight down the camera.
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The Last Poets w ing collective of arose from the la movement. The ery, flame-coate salutes tell the w the cover of thei
art (1960–2015) 1 970
ETS NESS (1971)
las Music
was an amorphous, ever-shiftpoets and musicians who ate 1960s black nationalist staunchly Africanist imaged backdrop and Black Power whole revolutionary story on ir album This is Madness.
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SUN RA SPACE IS THE PLACE (1973) Photograph: Sun Ra
Born Herman Poole Blount in the Jim Crow hotspot Birmingham, Alabama in 1914, Ra maintained he was not of this planet and painstakingly crafted a mythical persona that fused sci-fi ideas and aesthetics with Egyptian mysticism. In his sole fictional film appearance – an adaptation of the album of the same name – Ra plays a seer whose mission is to get the disenfranchised black youth of the day to relocate to the utopian haven of space. Its allegorical take on a blasted, post-civil rights urban America as no place for black people was hardly subtle.
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NWA STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON (1988) Photograph: Ruthless
The forthcoming biopic of LA gangsta rappers NWA, named after their debut LP, illustrates that their influence is far from waning. Straight Outta Compton has one of the all-time great covers—a shot taken from the point of view of a man (very possibly a cop, if the song Fuck Tha Police is anything to go by) about to be dispatched by a gun-toting Eazy-E. The rest of the group glower with a memorable ferocity intended to strike fear into the hearts of white America.
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2000
DEAD PREZ LETS GET FREE (2000)
Among the most politically-consciou outfits of the era (alongside the likes Star and X-Clan), Dead Prez matche thrillingly didactic wordplay with unc mising imagery. The cover of Let’s G represents an open call for armed re and aligns contemporary, capitalist, sive America with colonial-era Africa form of an armed village preparing t Unsurprisingly, the cover was censor many outlets around the US.
us rap s of Black ed their comproGet Free evolution represa in the to strike. red in
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KENDRICK LAMAR TO PIMP A BUTTERFLY (2015) Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly album cover: An Incendiary Classic Article By: Ashley Clark (partial article) | March 11, 2015
On Wednesday morning, Compton rapper Kendrick Lamar posted the cover art for his forthcoming LP, To Pimp a Butterfly, on Instagram, prompting much excitement. To call its vivid imagery confrontational would be an understatement. Shot in striking monochrome with the quality of a vintage Polaroid, it features a large group of mostly shirtless black men and children—plus one baby, cradled by Lamar himself and, possibly, one woman—arranged in a victory tableau on the lawn in front of the White House. S
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HI S TORY’S M OST P OWERF U L
Protest Art BELINDA LANKS | NOVEMBER, 23 2016 Top designers on the images that coalesced movements and compelled change. Get inspired.
Homemade posters can pack a punch. But well-de-
signed images can deliver powerful messages that resonate for decades, as these examples, chosen by prominent designers, make clear. From a gold-swallowing Hitler and babies killed in Vietnam to the “I AM A MAN” posters used by black sanitation workers in Memphis to protest poor working conditions, these images harken back to disturbing moments in history. But they’re also reminders of the progress that we’ve made, the challenges we still face, the dangers of sliding backward, and the vital importance of staying engaged in the good fight. Photograph below taken by Justin Smith
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victory 1945 By Shigeo Fukuda (1942) Chosen by Jesse Reed, associate partner at Pentagram, where he helped design Hillary Clinton’s campaign logo
“The message is clear as day, even if you’re not sure of the specific context. It was designed for the Warsaw Poster Contest in 1975, but is arguably one of the most timeless images ever created. You could call it a graphic rebus, simply implying ‘put down your weapon,’ or even easier, ‘stop war.’”
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Adolf the Superman: swallows gold and spits tin By John Heartfield (1932) Chosen by Amy Nicole Schwartz, design director at Cards Against Humanity
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“John Heartfield was the greatest instrumentalist artist/designer. His activism reached beyond his art, leading him to change his name from Helmut Herzfeld to John Heartfield to further distance himself from German’s Nazi regime. His poster Adolf the Superman portrays Hitler as a heartless puppet who swallows gold and spews junk in return. It’s a striking image, and was only one of many anti-Nazi works he made in his career.”
This is nazi brutality By Ben Shahn (1942) Chosen by Steven Heller, design critic and co-chair of SVA’s Design MFA program
“Without caricature or stereotype, Shahn created a piece of protest journalism that helped inform the world about the horrors that were not being duly covered in the U.S. Ironically, it also suggests something even more contemporary:”
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(untitled) I am a man By Glenn Ligon (1980) Chosen by Steven Heller, design critic and co-chair of SVA’s Design MFA program
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“I worked with Glenn in the past and always found this piece to be so iconic, striking, and utterly visceral. “It’s a representation of the signs used by 1,300 black sanitation workers in Memphis who where striking in protest at bad working conditions (two workers died because of them) and low wages. The wording derives
from the g Ralph Ellis In 1968, th captured t ful black a
“The whol the word ‘ is so stron
great African-American author son’s masterpiece, Invisible Man. he photographer Ernest Withers the protests with this stoic, powerand white photographs.
le fact that the workers omitted ‘invisible’ so that they can be seen ng it makes me want to cry.”
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clenched fists Chosen by Deva Pardue, graphic designer
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“Protest art itself doesn’t create change, but it aims to embolden and galvanize enough people across socio economic backgrounds to mobilize for a cause. In order to do so successfully a call to arms should be immediate, brazen, and most importantly, have soul. It should also be something that can be re-created and shared. That’s why I think the image of a clenched fist in the air is such a successful theme in protest art. It’s
been used by ar Revolution, by A Vietnam war, by Paris Rebellion, and for countles This image is so to such a simple izes perfectly th and the world’s
rtists during the Mexican American students during the y French students during the by the Black Panther Party, ss other causes over time. o universal it can be reduced e graphic form yet it symbolhat the people are mad as hell going to hear about it.� S
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Text layout designed by Joanne Mendoza Typefaces used: Soleil, Essonnes, Bebas Cover photo taken by Mdleaver Photography March 2017