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Persuading
Using design to shape public opinion, advertise products, promote services, and grab attention with a range of visual and production techniques.
Visual communication has been used as a powerful tool for shaping public opinion, spreading information, promoting consumer behavior, and creating desire for products. Designers have employed a vast array of typographic, illustrative, and photographic techniques to grab attention with everything from simple cards and posters to complex multimedia campaigns. As various production and dissemination technologies have developed, from block printing to chromolithography to internet-connected devices, the ability to distribute messages has become faster and with broader reach. These advancements have spurred graphic designers to become more inventive in crafting words and images, expanding the visual language of design. Additionally, social, economic, and artistic movements have changed the way artists and designers think about representation in advertising and promotion.
Topics
- Early printing and the Christian church
- The Industrial Revolution and the rise of commercial culture
- Innovations in typography for advertising
- Wood type and the letterpress poster
- Advertising cards, packaging, and posters
- The rise of American editorial design and advertising agencies
- The advertising poster in Europe
- Posters in Eastern Europe and Russia
- The Bauhaus influence on advertising
- Independent voices in the Netherlands
- New approaches to photography in advertising
- From illustration to modernism in American advertising
- International Typographic Style in advertising
- Advertising at mid-century
- Postmodern design and advertising
- Expanding brands and media