Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Spreading Doubt to the Masses - Mark Notermann

Article by Mark Notermann for Speak Up

"The Joseph Goebbels Project™ is an onion: The outside skin protects layer upon layer of meaning. Try to slice it up into something simple and digestible, and it might bring tears to your eyes.

At first glance, one sees the familiar components of many branded advertising campaigns: a logo, an image, and a familiar name—Joseph Goebbels. Most of us have heard of the infamous Nazi propagandist, but we probably don’t know his face. Look into this face on a poster and you see it composed of corporate logos instead of halftones. Closer yet and you see that the logos all belong to media giants and builders of the modern infosphere. ..."


read the complete article

Thursday, December 14, 2006

The Anatomy of Design

A feature in the book, "The Anatomy of Design" (uncovering influences and the inspiration of modern graphic design), by Steven Heller and Mirko Ilić.


cover

Goebbels spread
The spread in PDF (1.2 Mb)


Joseph Goebbels ™

excerpt from the essay

Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Germany’s minister of propaganda and enlightenment,
who along with his wife, Magda, and six children committed suicide in Adolf
Hilter’s bunker as Soviet troops besieged Berlin, was the master of word and
image manipulation. Joseph Goebbels™ is an art project in the form of a
commercial advertising campaign that addresses the nature of media and mass
communication at the beginning of the twenty-first century. “Sixty years after
Goebbels,” states author/designer Aleksandar Macasev, “we find ourselves in a
highly developed infosphere—the Internet, twenty-four-hour news, direct
broadcasting, countless nonstop radio, TV, and cable stations, mobile
communications, and so on—that constantly barrages us, its intended
recipients, with messages. ...>

read the entire essay

courtesy of the authors of "The Anatomy of Design"

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Links

A selection of links about Joseph Goebbels TM.

Mark Kaufman blog
I am not sure about the rest of the audience, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Mr. Macasev was an engaging speaker, he actually apologized for the fact that english is not his first language, but he had a better vocabulary than me and was more than up to the task tof articulating a controversial and difficult art/design campaign on contemporary culture. ...

Limited Language
“Why are Jamie Reid, Aleksander Macasev and Steven Heller - three very diverse examples of designers and art directors - all deeply attracted to the swastika and/or other fascist imagery? Is their fascination and repeated return to fascist iconography paradoxical, given designs initiatives for social progress, or, given that Hitler himself is said to have ‘personally’ designed the NSDAP swastika logo-form, is their interest very simply an example of professional admiration?” ...

Why broadcasting the caricatures of Mohammad?
(in French)
Bush's administration and the Zionists are using the same tactics utilised by the Nazis. They lie the whole world about terrorist danger and the Islamic threat. I let to you read this passage of an interview done by Aleksandar Macasev in connection with Goebbels and propaganda ...

Smirking chimp
Inspired by ABC's "the road to 911" artist Aleksandar Macasev has adapted his Joseph Goebbels campaign poster [www.goebbels.info] to portray Joseph Goebbels out of the following logos with the following logos: ABC, Disney, Republican party, FOX, CBN and The Heritage Foundation to symbolize the link between the media and the Republican propaganda machine. ...

Magnews.ru
(in Russian)
Repeated lie sooner or later becomes truth, used to say the minister of propaganda of Nazi Germany, Jozef Goebbels. Some principles of Goebbels' propaganda will lose nothing, if the word "propaganda" is replaced by the word "advertisement".


Aaron's UI design blog
This strikes me as more than a little creepy, but it's an interesting take on the power of media and disinformation in modern society. ...

B92 forum
(in Serbian)
Da li je upotreba imena ciji kult je automatski upisan u znacenje moze da bude provokacija, podcrtavanje ili je ovako bliska istorijska distanca jos uvek prepreka za koriscenje tih imena, pa i u umetnicke svrhe.....

More Like Space blog
found this site on an exhibit by serbian artist aleksandar macasev. the premise is that nazi propaganda minister josef goebbels "is the ideological father of contemporary mass communication". ...

Saturday, December 9, 2006

Seattle documents

Photos from the lecture in Seattle.