War posters (and more) online

I've been using this resource for a while in my teaching and been meaning to mention it here for some time. So the following message appearing in my inbox today gave me the prod I needed. This site is well worth checking out, not just for the war posters but for the other collections available online too.

There were few more powerful mediums for influencing pubic opinion in wartime Britain and abroad than posters. They were used, most famously, for recruitment - think Alfred Leete's famous design of Lord Kitchener and James Montgomery Flagg's 'Uncle Sam', but also for all kinds of propaganda in general, promoting an official viewpoint and justifying the need for wartime restrictions.

The Imperial War Museum has the largest and most comprehensive poster collection of its type in Britain, documenting the social, political, ethnic and cultural aspirations of warring nations from the First World War to more recent conflicts. The collection includes work by leading twentieth-century designers from Britain and abroad, and is an essential resource for looking at the development of mass communication, propaganda, publicity, commercial art and graphic design.

Over 3,000 posters from this internationally important collection are now available via AHDS Visual Arts. The digital images form part of the AHRC Posters of Conflict project carried out in partnership between the Imperial War Museum and the Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art and Design at Manchester Metropolitan University. The first two-years work of this three-year project are now available online, with more to come...

The Posters of Conflict collection complements other Imperial War Museum collections already available from AHDS Visual Arts including the Concise Art Collection and the Spanish Civil War Poster Collection.

AHDS Visual Arts now has over 60,000 high quality images freely available for use in research, learning and teaching.

visualarts.ahds.ac.uk

Please be kind to the mushrooms

Click on the image for a bigger version

Stupid, stupid, stupid design!

According to The Campaign for Plain English, complaints are flooding in from people after they have been fined for displaying their disabled parking cards the wrong way round in the windscreens.
Take a look and see if you can guess why... (answer at the bottom of this post)

Despite the (rather obvious) problem, nothing seems to be being done about it.













(answer: the front is not the side with the driver's photograph on it, but people are apparently assuming otherwise. You see, contrary to popular myth, being disabled does not lead to the development of a sixth sense.)

Book details changed!

Argh...

It seems the ISBN of my book 'Visual Communication: From Theory to Practice' has changed (to 2940373094), along with the cover. It happened yesterday or today, so I'm not sure what that means for people ordering it through Amazon, as the old version is still there but with a message 'try ordering it used'...

Anyway, here's the UK Amazon link.
The publishers have changed US distributor, which is why it isn't appearing on Amazon.com so if you're in the US you might have to use the .co.uk link to order it. I'm told it will be solved soon, though.

First good review came in last week. A former student, who doesn't hold back on the criticism so can be trusted as objective, said the first chapter had made the concept of semiotics become clear after she'd looked at just about every other book on the subject. Considering the book is aimed at students and not fellow academics, that's good to know. She said that now she can read the other books and they make sense - which was the aim of the book: a quick introduction to complex ideas that can then be pursued in more detail.

Dumbing up, not dumbing down!

Carry on up the charts!

I've just finished with the digital proofs of my book, 'Visual Communication: From Theory to Practice'. No major changes, just a rethink on the biography for the inside flap - I don't know what I was on when I wrote the first one but it's bizarre!
So they should be winging their way back to some Far East printer today for quick amendments then the all-important press of the button.

I just checked out the book on Amazon.co.uk and I've moved over a million places up the charts from a lowly 1,600,000 to 181,634. I can see this becoming obsessive.

Mind you, I reckon you could do that if you only sell three books (I know of at least one sale so far) - how many other titles are also at 181,634 I wonder?
Still, considering it's not even out yet it's not bad I suppose. I bet Dan Brown is quaking in his boots...

Looking for the perfect Christmas gift?

If you're wondering what to buy people for Christmas, could I suggest visiting Heifer International and buying livestock for a family in a developing country? The idea's a marvellous one and you can even stick to your vegetarian principles by buying Honey Bees and the hive to put them in (just $30 - that's £16 to us Brits, and the cost of about eight jars of decent honey).

In fact, at that price you could still buy your loved ones that expensive and short-lived luxury item and do something that makes a difference as well!

Why has no one thought of this before?

One of those ideas you think we should be forever cursed for not thinking of before:

Before:


After:



More details from http://www.hipporoller.org/

Speak Up

I was recently invited to become a contributor to the 'Speak Up' design site - quite an honour for me personally.
Of course the moment I was asked I froze up, wondering what the hell I could write...
In the past few weeks I've started articles, finished quite a few, discarded others and lost notes that I was sure at the time were going to revolutionise the field of graphic design criticism.

Well today I finally submitted my first article: Pizza Flyers: The Height of Good Graphic Design?, which resulted partly from the New Views conference last week and partly from a series of discussions I had with my students yesterday.

It's not a masterpiece by any standards, but it sort of sets out my stall and - I hope - provokes a reaction! I think I might follow it up soon with further 'evidence' that we really should be taking everyday graphic design more seriously.