Okay, I’m a graphic designer (of what skill I leave to others to decide). So the title of the post is a generalization, and not an axiomatic truth.
Either way, in learning the skills and studying the art of typography and graphic design. I like design, printing, signmaking, etc. I read books and watch documentaries on the subject.
From my experience, whenever graphic designers sway into discussion outside of technique, they are some of the most boorish idealistic egalitarians.
This evening I’m watching “Art & Copy” and one of the featured interviewees uttered the most hateful lines I’ve heard at least all day. This child of Greek immigrants had such overwhelming contempt for white Americans and American society that he dedicated his professional life to attacking them when he could.
Wikipedia gives a brief bio: “George Lois (born in 1931, in the Bronx, New York City, New York) is an American art director, designer, and author. Lois is best known for over 92 covers he designed for Esquire Magazine. “George Lois’ Esquire covers are considered among the most memorable propaganda imagery in any medium, and certainly the most provocative in the history of the magazine industry.”, from 1962 to 1972. Lois’s Esquire covers offered a controversial statement on life in the 1960s with subjects including Norman Mailer, Muhammad Ali, Andy Warhol, Germaine Greer, and Richard Nixon. In 2008, The Museum of Modern Art exhibited 32 of Lois’ Esquire covers”
The quote, from the docu. is as follows:
“‘Black Santa Claus (cover of esquire magazine) was me spoofing the whites of america. they would say ‘hey im for negro rights and all , what they’re going a little too far now what with the black panthers and all’. I would say fuck you! The son of a bitch is gonna come down the chimney and cut your balls off.
“I hated the system, I hated the status quo, we were changing the world and everybody respected it. We understood we were changing the culture… I was making graphics statements that grabs at the heart and grabs at your throat. And that’s what i’ve done all my life with my advertising. I was always trying to sell product, but i tried to make a point. I think advertising can be, and should be, and at times has been, revolutionary, subversive.”
He was not being ironic – he entertained fantasies of black hoodlums breaking into anyone’s home who didn’t support every radical black nationalist and racial revolutionary to mutilate their genitals.
Merely one leftist radical cog in a media machine.
Again, from Wikipedia: “George Lois is the only person in the world inducted into The Art Directors Hall of Fame, The One Club Creative Hall of Fame, with Lifetime Achievement Awards from the American Institute of Graphic Arts, the Society of Publication Designers, as well as a subject of the Master Series at the School of Visual Arts.”
