- The first time I was given the assignment
to research graphic design and the Soviet revolution,
I thought, why should I care, I'm not a Communist.
But the way we approach graphic design today
originated during the 1917 Russian Revolution.
Let me set the stage in very simplified terms.
Russians are fighting against the Germans
during World War I.
For centuries, the ruling classes,
the Czar and monarchy, had oppressed the bulk
of the population, mostly living in poverty as peasants.
As the population moves from an agrarian way of life
to the cities, they faced horrible conditions and disease.
When Russia enters World War I,
there were widespread food shortages
and there was tremendous inflation.
People questioned why they were fighting in a war
for leaders, who neglected their citizens.
This disillusionment triggered the explosion of revolution.
In 1918, the people rise up against the Czar,
the Russian Army abandons the war against Germany
and the Soviet state is born.
At the onset of the revolution,
designers with radical new ideas
were welcomed into the movement.
And over the next two decades,
created most of the work we now
know as Constructivist.
These desires rejected the personal expression
of fine art, and viewed decorative ornamental design
as symbols of the aristocracy's oppression.
They created a new style and were determined
to speak to the masses.
Gustav Klutsis's poster, Five Year Plan,
is geometric and bold, using the symbol of a hand
and simple shapes to convey a message,
rather than a representative illustration.
The typography is sans serif, rejecting decorative fonts.
Elements are turned on an angle
to suggest forward movement and energy.
The red background celebrates the Soviet flag.
The popular message to the Russian people
from the Soviet leadership, was that this new society
created equality for all people,
remove the aristocracy and class structure,
and would enable the Soviet Union to move forward
with industrialization.
The hand made was personal and elevated
the individual over the state.
So this was rejected in favor of machine made forms.
El Lissitzky's poster, Beat the Whites with a Red Wedge,
uses an intrusive red wedge to symbolize
the red Bolsheviks in a battle, penetrating their opponents,
the White Army, during the Russian Civil War.
Photography replaced illustration.
As a mechanical process, photography celebrated
the machine and the industrial.
An illustration represented self-expression,
which the Constructivists rejected.
The Constructivist believe that old disciplines
such as drawing, painting and traditional
graphic design were obsolete.
They integrated methods such as photomontage
and overprinting to their posters and publications.
Graphic design was not a form of art.
There was no room for personal expression.
It was a collective discipline on the same level
of culture as industrial manufacturing.
While this may seem harsh to us,
the result was a shift toward function of something,
rather than simply the aesthetics.
Simple tabs, to denote sections in a publication
might appear ordinary now, but they were new
functional tools for the Constructivists.
By the late 1920s, the Soviet political structure
began to move away from strong abstract forms
and photomontage.
They now considered the Constructivists
to be radical intellectuals, and the work
to be a representation of capitalist cosmopolitan culture.
The Soviet government demanded
design be realistic and not abstract.
As the tenure changed, many of these designers
left Russia for Germany and the United States.
We see the influence of the Constructivist today
in graphic design stylistically.
But it is the concepts of functionalism,
design for the common man, abstract geometric symbols,
and the preference for photography,
that are their strongest legacy.