Prolific commentator provides roadmap to understanding broader culture

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) June 25, 2010 --

How do popular culture and graphic design influence one another? What are the goals of design? Are they to sell? To package? To entertain? The answers to these questions are complicated and are intimately tied to the effect design has on the overall culture. From the recreation of Yankee Stadium to how one infamous slimy green ogre is connected to the rise of Twitter, POP: How Graphic Design Shapes Popular Culture (Allworth Press, July 13, 2010, $24.95, ISBN 978-1-58115-715-4) by prolific design and culture commentator Steven Heller is the first book to analyze the role of graphic design in the broader culture, as well as the impact of design on other art and entertainment forms.

“Pop culture is often maligned as fleeting, but history shows that sometimes what is pop in one culture has time-honored resonance in later ones,” observes Heller. “This book is an attempt to show that pop culture, especially as seen through the lenses of design, illustration, satiric and political art (and other things), is integral to a broader understanding of who we are and where we are going.”

Focusing on how design shapes the popular cultures of art, entertainment, and politics, Heller addresses such subjects as:
• pop icons

• viral and guerilla advertising
• political satire
• the history of Interview, Monocle, Mad, and other magazines
• art for art’s sake
• design vs. decoration
• the return of hand lettering
• art for the masses

Designed by renowned “bad boy” graphic designer James Victore, POP spans over 150 years during which popular culture has influenced mass perception and behavior. Graphic, product, and interaction designers, as well as fans of visual and popular culture, will be surprised, amused, and intrigued by these powerful observations about how design influences our visual and verbal cultural landscape.

“Pop is the initial spark and the long-term consequence of contemporary public art and design on people like you and me,” says Heller. “For generations snap, crackle, pop has been a kind of alarm, like the sizzling of bacon and eggs in a frying pan, announcing breakfast time! Of course it wouldn’t be as effective without all three words, yet the third note in this melodic triplet is nonetheless the most resonant of all. Pop is an uncontrollable burst of pent-up power and is also the title of this volume of essays. And in this context it refers to a burst that stimulates our collective cultural senses.”

Steven Heller is the co-chair of the MFA Designer as Author program and co-founder of the MFA in Design Criticism and MFA in Interaction Design programs at the School of Visual Arts, New York. For thirty-three years he was an art director at The New York Times, and currently writes the “Visuals” column for The New York Times Book Review. He is editor of the AIGA VOICE: Online Journal of Design and contributing editor to Print, EYE, Baseline, and ID magazines. He contributes to Design Observer and writes the DAILY HELLER blog for Print magazine. He is the author or editor of over 130 books on design and popular culture, including Design Literacy and Design Disasters. He is the recipient of the 1999 AIGA Medal for Lifetime Achievement. Heller lives in New York.