The second project of the semester, is a ten minute group presentation on a specific movement in Communication Design History. We were placed into groups by our lecturer, Kyle, at random and I see it as a great opportunity to meet and work with more members of the class.

We got together as a group for the final half an hour of class and sorted out some vital initial tasks: creating a WhatsApp group to communicate, a shared Google Slides presentation into which to place our work and most importantly, which topic from the six choices we wanted to work on.

We decided to focus on “The Modern Movement in America” as it was the topic that caught our attention as a group and some quick online searches threw up some very interesting work. As I had time to spare, I went to the library to start some very early research into the topic so we could assign roles at a meeting on Monday lunchtime.

My first port of call was a book, suggested in the project brief, Graphic Design, A New History by Stephen Eskilson, specifically the chapter, American Art Deco and the Second World War and this gave some very useful information and names to look into further such as Lester Beall, MOMA Museum Of Modern Art, J Howard Miller, Norman Rockwell and FAP Posters.

Source (https://catalogue.library.ulster.ac.uk/items/1277646?resultsUri=https%3A%2F%2Fcatalogue.library.ulster.ac.uk%2Fitems%3Fquery%3DAmerican%2Bmodern%2Bgraphic%2Bdesign%2B%26old_max%3D5%26old_max%3D5%26max%3D5#availability) Last Accessed 23/10/2022

I also took an image of the chapter introduction page to show the rest of the group the ideas we would be looking at

Whilst in the Library I also found a book called American Modernism Graphic Design 1920-1960 by R. Roger Remington. I thought this book likely to provide a lot of valuable research material for myself and the group so I took it on Loan immediately for this project.

This is much more specific to the topic we are presenting and a lot lighter to carry, and I feel it will be a valuable source of information for our final presentation.

Another somewhat surprising source of research was a post I stumbled across on Instagram from an account @historicalpix of 1930s billboard posters in America,

We can see this particular poster mixes Serif and Sans Serif typography, a mix of the old and new styles, the main tagline is definitely a nod to what is commonly known as “The American Dream” a phrase still used today and this piece is clearly used to demonstrate that “the American Way” is the best way especially at a time in the thirties, during The Great Depression and rising political movements like Fascism and Communism. This billboard is part of a series created for and erected by The National Association of Manufacturers, promoting capitalism. The National Association of Manufacturers were against Labour unions and state intervention and opposed the government policy of the time, these really show how the modern designs were being used for propaganda and the power they had as this quote shows

The National Association of Manufacturers erected 45,000 billboards nationwide which were placed in every city populated with over 2,500, reaching an estimated 65 million Americans daily.

Source (https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/05/08/perfect-american-family-displayed-great-depression-billboards-struggles-ordinary-americans/?chrome=1) Last Accessed 23/10/2022

As a group we have arrange to meet after Friday’s lecture to split the presentation down and decide who will take on each task, we need to complete. I will continue to carry out initial research until then and produce this to the group on Friday, as part of the discussion before we each narrow our focus to concentrate on specific aspects of the presentation.