Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Module #8

Reading Assignment: Chapters 18,19 & 20

The International Typographic Style, The New York School & Corporate Identity and Visual Systems


During this week's reading I became interested by Michael Salisbury. There was something familiar about his name and his work for Rolling Stone that got me thinking I knew his work. After five minutes of research I realized this guy was a part of everything. Literally everything. He's one of the most iconic branding masters ever. Just looking at his client list you already know the guy is a big deal. He's the reason Michael Jackson wore one white glove, he was the one who suggested to put Paris in L'Oreal, he helped create the 'The City of Entertainment' branding for MGM Grand, he's done branding for the popular video game Halo and has received a Grammy for his work on an album design. Grammy! It's ridiculous how many things he's been a part of. These achievements are only a fraction of what he's done. Salisbury has created the highest earning re-branding in American business history.

Companies that Salisbury has worked for.
One of my favorite projects of Salisbury's is the branding of Michael Jackson's solo career. After seeing Jackson in the movie, The Wiz, Salisbury contacted Jackson's agent to immediately work with him. Salisbury felt Jackson had everything it takes to be a big star and was anxious to work on anything with him. After looking at some album cover mock ups that looked cheap Salisbury decided to take on the project and had some ideas. Salisbury believed Jackson needed to be presented as a big artist. He felt that fashion would help elevate Jackson to a higher level. So he decided to put him into a tuxedo that would scream "big deal" all over it. 

The agent hemmed and hawed and was just about to dismiss the whole nutty idea when a little, high-pitched voice softly squeaked, “I like it,” and Michael stepped out from behind the drape covering the large office window. "Let's just do it," he said.

So we did.

After the first photo shoot at Griffith Observatory at the Hollywood Planetarium was a bust. 






he genius behind Michael Jackson’s iconic image in black pants, glittery socks, and loafers wearing a single white glove.




Q: What else did you do to create the look that has become engrained in our popular culture?

Salisbury: My wife at the time found an Yves St. Laurent woman’s tux in Beverly Hills that fit Michael. I also told him to get loafers like Gene Kelly wore in An American in Paris. When we went to shoot the photo, I instructed him, “Roll up your pant legs, put your fingers in your pockets and pull your pants up like Gene Kelly—to show off the socks.” The loafers really made the white socks work. By the way, the socks were custom-made for Michael by famous Hollywood costume designer Bob Mackie.



Here, (left) is my first attempt at the photo for the cover of his solo album. After reviewing it, I thought that it didn’t show the real Michael. We were rushed and Michael was just not that into it. I thought he was a little too serious. We needed to shoot this differently. I mean, this album cover was just for him, not him and four other brothers.

I suggested we re-shoot it and when we did, I directed him to be more animated. I suggested he smile and exaggerate the pulling up of his pants and get into it like he was dancing. He was a great sport and agreed to do the re-shoot. We did the second photo shoot against a wall and voilá—“Off the Wall." (Below)



Q: Did you also suggest Michael wear a white glove?

Salisbury: The white socks were so successful in drawing attention to Michael and his dance moves, there was a conversation about doing gloves, too. White gloves. To me, I felt that would start looking literally Mickey Mouse (and of course Michael was a big Mickey Mouse fan). Between the agent and Michael and me, we got it down to one white glitzy glove. Another great move for attention.




Ed Ruscha's painting for West magazine
While working as art director for West magazine (1967-1972) Salisbury commissioned Ed Ruscha to create a cover for the magazine. The cover has the appearance of spilled liquids that form into words.

“My only direction to Ruscha was to use the word west,” recalls Salisbury, who owned the oil after the artist presented it to him as a gift.  “A lot of our covers symbolized the west.  This had the sun going down in a blue sky and the letters forming the word West emerging from the ocean.  It is one of the few pieces of editorial advertising, commercial graphic art that is considered fine art, which is quite an accomplishment,” notes Salisbury.

Ruscha's cover recently sold for over $600,000 in 2009 at Christie’s Post War and Contemporary Art auction at Rockefeller Center in New York. This piece is considered one of the most expensive editorial or advertisement sold as fine art. 

For more information check out Salisbury's official blog: http://www.onehellofaneye.com/

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Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Module #6

Reading Assignment: Chapters 13,14 & 15

The Influence of Modern Art, Pictorial Modernism & A New Language of Form


This week's reading really reminded me of the Nazi Party. I'm slightly obsessed with WWII and Nazi Propaganda. It's just so mind boggling how a group of individuals brainwashed people into thinking genocide was a great idea! So ridiculous. I also know it's a little weird to be obsessed or interested in this topic since millions of Jews were murdered but it's history and I kinda love it. Not the murder part though. The fact that an artist like Ludwig Hohlwein could tarnish his reputation by just being associated with the Nazi Party and Hitler is impressive. His work was brilliant but used in the wrong way. I've researched this topic so many times and each and every time I'm always amazed how simple propaganda could work so well. Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda, didn't create the art behind the posters so much as gave speeches that spread the party's ideas. He did have a great eye for what to look for and put together a great strategy to address the public. I've read that he was quite "obsessed" with Hitler and was in love with him. Weird. Also, he was on the shorter side so he would always wear taller headpieces or gear to give him height at large gatherings. Small man syndrome was clearly in effect here. But all jokes aside here is a little mini lesson on Nazi Propaganda. Enjoy!

The mastermind behind all things propaganda would be the loyal Goebbels who stayed by Hitler’s side till death. Being one of Hitler’s most trusted allies Goebbels had a great eye for propaganda to make it look easy and really acceptable. The trick would be to make the Jews less than human by stripping away all their human rights and dehumanizing them. “The growing distance – social, economic, legal and psychological – between Jew and Gentile helps explain how the Nazis could ‘remove’ a community virtually without protest from the rest of the population – a population which gradually felt, and was gradually persuaded, that it had precious little in common with the unfortunate Jews. The problem ‘they’ (the Jews) faces could be shrugged off as remote, as happening ‘somewhere else’, as ‘nothing to do with us’” (Landau 119). Goebbels position as Reich Minister of Propaganda seemed even more important in Hitler’s rise to power. One of his major accomplishments was screening the public on what they really needed. Now in a sense it could be seen as ineffective because the Nazis made so many rules that when they went out to poll people they could easily throw you behind bars if you did not agree with what they were saying. So all the information was skewed into what the party wanted to hear. Not saying that a lot of people didn’t believe in Hitler but it was wiser to go with the party’s ideas than to stray from the group. By getting a sense of what the people wanted Goebbels’ demands were easier to sell. Listening to the public was the golden ticket and Goebbels intended to maintain control of the public through his advertisements. After all how could a person not be for their wonderful fatherland of Germany, It would be so traitorous of them.

Joseph Goebbels
August 25, 1934

What made the Nazi Party so powerful was their ability to break down Germany’s perspective of Jewish people. Goebbels made it clear to the people that a Jew free world was needed. In a sense the propaganda had a way of desensitizing the Germans to the idea of Jews. Hitler believed that his superior “Aryan” race would prevail and the effective way of instilling his idea would be the proper propaganda campaign. “Hitler saw propaganda as a vehicle of political salesmanship in a mass market; he argued that the consumers of propaganda were the masses and not the intellectuals,” (Welch 11). By targeting large groups the use of propaganda made it easier to accept. If everyone had the same idea of the new Germany than less people would question it. Almost like the bandwagon theory, everyone jumps on and you would look dumb if you didn’t hop on. Sooner or later everyone would jump on the Nazi train to a “new and improved” Germany. Hitler believed that “propaganda for the masses had to be simple, it had to concentrate on as few points as possible, which then had to be repeated many times, with emphasis on such emotional elements as love and hatred,” (Welch 11). He believed that persistence was the most important requirement for success. If he could repeatedly program every German to believe what he thought was right then no one would fight against him. His dictatorship grew strongholds in the German government, as he became the face of the new German society that cared about the people and was for the people.

“Youth Serves the Führer. All 10-year-olds into the Hitler Youth.” (1940)
Membership in the Hitler Youth had become mandatory in 1936.

In the documentary film The Third Reich they discuss children being part of the campaign and how they knew what was going on. The children would create games where some would be Nazis and some would be Communists. They used garbage cans as the headquarters and as the game went on the Communists would get captured and sent to concentration camps. The children even knew which songs to sing and what would happen to the “bad” people. Attack and triumph would be the motto, just like the real Nazis. The children even learned their first mandatory German greeting: Heil Hitler!

Propaganda films also started to focus on the unwanted Jewish genes. They produced movies that showed mental hospitals where people looked insane and unclean. They told lies of the people having dysfunctional genes that were not German pure blood. The films made it seem like these people were the result of a bad mixture of blood. They wanted to show Germans that if the public continued to mix with Jews that it would result in bad blood. The films were effective in convincing people to stay away from the Jews. The public complied to the new laws of not mixing blood with other races or Jews. The Germans would sterilize anyone who had a genetic flaw. At least 400,000 Germans were sterilized for blindness, mental depression, alcoholism, homosexuality, deafness, physical deformity, sexual promiscuity or epilepsy. 

Hans Schweitzer 1934/1944
Translation: "The Jew: The inciter of war, the prolonger of war.”

What made the propaganda of the Third Reich so powerful was the ability to defeat all competition. The Nazi party became so powerful that opposition would only mean death. The ability to create a strong national power was in fact Hitler’s greatest triumph. He had little resistance, he had Goebbels brainwashing the public to think what they were doing was perfectly legal and had the perfect timing to become a savior to the people and guide them to a new Germany, a Germany they could be proud of. Ultimately it was Hitler’s idea to issue the Jewish death warrant. “The extermination of the Jews did not figure among the original Nazi aims,” (Poliakov 110). The moment to move ahead with plans came when the party realized they had gone too deep and couldn’t turn back. They invested everything that they had and knew that the war coming would not end quickly. The Nazi power was at its peak and the gamble to burn all the bridges tying the public to Jews was the next step. Goebbels even mentioned in his diary that the “Jewish problem was so entangled it was impossible to retreat” (Poliakov 110) and plans must progress forward. Goebbels was a huge fan for the extermination of the Jews. In his world it seemed right to due away with the vermin of the Jews. It was only a matter of time until the world caught up with the Nazis. Unfortunately they were able to kill six million before anything was done. The power of the propaganda to brainwash an entire nation was powerful. Hitler became one of the most hated dictators in the world yet loved by so many Germans who just wanted a simpler life.

Sources:
  • Landau, Ronnie S. The Nazi Holocaust. Chicago: I.R. Dee, 1994. Print. 
  • Poliakov, Léon. Harvest of Hate: The Nazi Program for the Destruction of the Jews of Europe. New York: Holocaust Library, 1979. Print. 
  • Welch, David. The Third Reich: Politics and Propaganda. London: Routledge, 1995. Print. 

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