Demonstrations, Democracy and Design

Barcelona, June 2011: The Plaça de Catalunya has become a carnivalesque village of protest. If the construction of shelters around the square represents a rudimentary form of building — a re-learning of a basic skill in the absence of architects — then the hundreds of handmade banners, signs and messages that cover everything show, just as clearly, an untutored but inevitable need for something akin to graphic design.

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Why the Activist Poster is Here to Stay

The poster — and with it the protest poster — was supposed to be over. But digital communication is infusing posters produced to contest an outrage or support a cause with a new lease of life. This kind of message has two places to attract attention now, out in the world and online, where the urge to make posters has spread like a meme. Since Occupy, there seem to be more posters and poster-like signs on demonstrations than ever.

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John Stezaker: Images from a Lost World

The question that inevitably returns with John Stezaker’s collages is: how does he manage to gain so much traction and resonance from such limited means? Usually one of his pieces will consist of just two found photographs, or a film still and a postcard, and put like that it may not sound like anything at all. The British collage artist, who never takes his own pictures, has just won a major prize for his contribution to photography.

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It's Smart to Use a Crash Test Dummy

The Slovenian band Laibach has just released an album of cover versions that includes its rendition, in doomy German, of the song “Warm Leatherette.” The picture of crash test dummies on the cover of The Normal’s electronic single, now seen as a post-punk classic, captured the humanoid strangeness of these sacrificial test drivers. I know there are plenty of crash test dummy aficionados out there. This one’s for you.

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Rick Poynor is a writer, critic, lecturer and curator, specialising in design, media and visual culture. He founded Eye, co-founded Design Observer, and contributes columns to Eye and Print. His latest book is Uncanny: Surrealism and Graphic Design.

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Uncanny: Surrealism and Graphic Design
Rick Poynor
Moravian Gallery, 2010
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