VIEWing our LIFE and TIMES (2006)

A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Media Globalization

Erscheinungsjahr: 2006

Autor: Patrick Rössler

Verlag: Universität Erfurt (ISBN: 3-931938-96-4)

Beschreibung:

The history of magazines - and particularly the history of magazine design in the 20th century can be characterized as a mutual relationship with different media outlets influencing each other in their visual appearance. his brochure focuses on the cross-national dittusion o graphic design and editorial concepts between German and American magazines in an early period of globalization. The explanatory framework for this dynamic is constituted e.g. through emerging 'global players' in terms of publishers acting on both markets, through an orientation on national and international target groups, or through individual artists and art directors migrating between both countries.

As a consequence, innovations in editorial content as well as in magazine layout traveled between both media systems, stimulating an 'international language' of modern magazine visuals. Several chapters give an overview of this process, starting with the first 'golden age' of the illustrated press in the 1920s, and the influence of the 'new typography' developed by the Bauhaus avant-garde and its influence on the popular press. Ditterent sections review German and American tendencies in the areas o news, fashion and movie magazines, with a special emphasis on bi- and multilingual magazines published for propaganda purposes. In all these areas, World War II and the exile ot many intellectuals fleeing from Nazi Germany marked a major rupture in this exchange of ideas and concepts, but at the same time served as a catalyst for the spread of modern magazine design. With the post-war influence of American re-education policy in Germany and the shared language of postmodernist mid-century layout, the impact took a reverse direction.