Communication in Mass Media

Communication in mass media can also be known as in an art school context, as communication design/visual communication and graphic design, (typography, advertising, propaganda and printed media).

• A means of communication reaching a large audience, that reach the public in a short amount of time, for example newspapers, television and radio. 
• Todays communication relies on technology and varies with which media it is broadcasted on.
  Print media, that has a physical state, such as newspapers, books, comics are used to distribute information. Lastly outdoor media, billboards, signs, posters, placards. 
• Communication with in art can be seen to have begun in the stone age with cave paintings and Cuneiform symbols. These can be considered a form of documentation of recording events that would have happened during that era. This can also be linked to the Hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt, with the pictorial art that decorated the inside of the tombs. 
  
  
  
  
• Interestingly, in the 14th century, fresco paintings were used to communicate with the illiterate, as everyone had a basic understanding with what images mean. In this era only the rich would be educated, and not the poor, so the majority of the public would rely on this fresco painting of a form of communication with documentations of events. Therefore an artist occupation was seen as important, a means to communicate with visual aesthetics.
• The term Graphic Design was introduced by William Addison Dwiggins,
  "In the matter of layout forget art at the start and use horse-sense.  The printing-designer’s whole duty is to make a clear presentation of the message - to get the important statements forward and the minor parts placed so that they will not be overlooked.  This calls for an exercise of common sense and a faculty for analysis rather than for art"
• Paul Rand: '...graphic design, in the end deals with the spectator, and because it is the goal of the designer to be persuasive or at least informative, it follows that the designer’s problems are twofold: to anticipate the spectator’s reactions and to meet his own aesthetic needs’.
• The Bauhaus Logo was created in the same year as the term Graphic Design was approached; The Bauhaus logo set a standard for other logo designs. 
• Although Graphic design can be interpreted to have been made from the consumerist and capitalist interests, it has arguably become more concerned with social issues. 
• We can see a link between graphic design and other art disciplines, such as fine art and advertising. However there are many interpretations that graphic design and advertising are completely separate, when we merge graphic design and advertising, which does it become labelled with? A piece of graphic design or an advertisement?
• For example, Alphonse Mucha was famous for his Art Nouveau posters and advertisements for consumables, however the design never included a large image of the actual product, it was always Mucha's famous illustrative design of women that would cover the advertisement, with the product drawn small or never shown. This can be interpreted that the consumer is lead through vaintiy for aesthetics, which I believe to be true, the saying "Never judge a book by its cover" is lost and the look of the packaging of the product becomes important. In conclusion, I believe that in this case, graphic design has taken over the advertising label, and in doing so has actually aided in the amount of sales of that particular product.
  
  
  

  

  Mucha - poster for cigarette papers

Important artists in Graphic Design:

• Charles Rennie Mackintosh
• Wassily Kandinsky
• El Lissitzky
• F.H. Stingemore - created the london underground map which was developed by Henry C. Beck in 1933, with Edward Johnson creating the typeface for which.
• Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
• G.Klucis
• Paul Rand
• Saul Bass
• Barbara Kruger