American Icons: Or How Trade Characters Rule the World

by Steven Heller

“Signs and symbols rule the world, not words nor laws.” —Confucius

In the early 1900s, advertising pundits devised pseudo-scientific assertions rooted in psychology and sociology to convince American industry that an ancient practice—identifying products with distinctive marks—was a modern innovation that would forever change marketing strategies and increase profits. The cited epigram—taken from the title page of The History of Trade Marks by Clayton Lindsay Smith, a 1923 booklet exploring the origins of America’s most familiar commercial icons—is just one of many quotations speciously appended to promotional tracts by early graphic design propagandists seeking to validate their burgeoning, though not yet officially labeled, “branding” profession.

Dredging up those supposed words of wise old Confucius (551–479 BC) was rather gratuitous since his wisdom had little contemporary relevance. However, in this case, he did state the obvious: visual language reigned supreme before the invention of writing and by controlling their communication systems prehistoric image-makers did indeed rule their caves, if not their worlds. Yet certainly by the early 20th century images shared the stage with other mass media. Invention of the printing press had insured that civilization was predicated on “words and laws.” Nonetheless, the thrust of Smith’s treatise—which by all accounts had a sizeable readership and said that signs and symbols implanted messages in the public’s consciousness, thus swaying mass consumption—supported his zealotry and that of other design advocates who sought serious recognition.

Smith fervently promoted image over word, in part because the advertising industry retained a Calvinist adherence to The Word. During the late 19th century, American advertising was largely a Protestant profession, serving Protestant businesses, in a Protestant nation. Pictures were not entirely shunned but words were certainly preferred. Since many American consumers read their bibles, most print advertising pitches were akin to Sunday sermons; strongly worded messages were easier for the public to understand and, therefore, believe. Yet by the end of the 19th century it was clear to advertising and business leaders that the capitalist religion demanded more vivid pictorial proselytizing than old-fashioned, word-based evangelical ads could achieve on their own. With advancements in low-cost black-and-white and color printing, reproduction of images precipitously increased in many nationally circulated periodicals. Businesses that had relied solely on brand names and clever slogans sought new visual icons for salvation. Older pictorial trade characters evolved into contemporary mnemonic logos. Industry turned to signs and symbols, some abstract and others with human characteristics, to gain the public’s trust.

But these trademarks did not simply spring like butterflies from cocoons, happily fluttering into the American consumers’ eyes, hearts and minds. They sprung from centuries of graphic art traditions dating back to antiquity. Like the heraldic signs and coats of arms that represented royalty, the scions of industry sought similar trappings of tradition. Some contemporary marks also owe a debt to those functional though elegant merchant’s brands that were emblazoned on sacks and barrels.

Enter the first official American icon
Uncle Sam, the premier symbol of America’s manifest destiny, is the most recognizable American icon ever created. It began as a quaint commercial trademark around 1812, based on the self-proclaimed “Uncle” Sam Wilson, a real life Troy, New York, merchant, who owned E. & S. Wilson, which supplied provisions to the American army fighting against the British. As legend goes, Troy’s residents assumed that the “U.S.” stamped on his shipping sacks and barrels stood for “Uncle Sam,” and Wilson exploited the illusion because patriotism and profit were happy bedfellows. His trademark portrait, in which Wilson wears a stovepipe hat, both presaged and influenced the typical Uncle Sam image. By the mid-19th century, however, various artists had radically reinterpreted and transformed Sam’s face, so little remained of the original. In fact, during the American Civil War the clean-shaven Sam grew a beard, which bore a curious resemblance to President Abraham Lincoln. Uncle Sam continued to appear in various iterations until 1917, when illustrator James Montgomery Flagg enduringly codified the character with his distinctive rendering for the Army’s “I Want You” recruitment poster (which was a copy of earlier British, German and Russian propaganda poster motifs). Flagg used himself as the model, thus insuring his own immortality.

Aside from the ubiquitous dollar sign (the overlapping initials “U.S.” with the bowl of the U cut off), no other symbol telegraphed the American essence more instantaneously and unambiguously than Uncle Sam. Neither of his two sister icons, Columbia or Liberty, which personified the essential ideals of American life, suggested America’s ever-expanding global diplomatic and military influence. As un-modern as his calcified visage may appear today, Sam’s craggy features and scraggly goatee spoke directly to the American myth of a classless society baptized in the blood, sweat and tears of grassroots pioneers. Sam was also a composite of the U.S. forefathers, and more. Because he was old (or ageless, in a Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel portrait-of-god sort of way) he represented the legacy of Americanism: strength, fortitude and honor. He could also be comical and serious, fatherly and brotherly. Oh, what a guy!

Multinational corporations in today’s global economy pay branding specialists (whom some critics might argue provide the same pseudo-scientific, rhetorical mumbo-jumbo today as they did a hundred years ago) billions of dollars to create icons as unmistakably recognizable as Uncle Sam, and then legally protect them from potential infringements.

Which is why it is so curious that no single government agency or political entity actually owns the trademark registration rights to this valuable American “intellectual property.” Any American—or foreign—business wanting a patriotic pedigree may freely use Uncle Sam in whatever political or commercial, silly or profound, context and for any purpose they desire, legal or extralegal. An unwritten law guarantees free and easy access to democracy’s symbolic trappings to any individual or institution that desires them. If the government held licensing rights, then the profits from royalties they would generate could pay for major social programs. But no one receives a dime from the countless Uncle Sam reproductions once sold through type catalogs, clip art books and printers’ stock catalogs, and now widely available on the internet.

Conversely, when the Nazis came to power in 1933, Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels decreed through the Protection of National Symbols act that reproducing the NSDAP’s logo, the swastika, was limited to state- and party-sanctioned materials. Strict rules were enforced to insure that Germany’s most charged icons were not trivialized through wanton commercial schemes. Adolf Hitler’s image was also prohibited from being used in any commercial enterprises, though his face was licensed for postage stamps from which he received a generous royalty for each and every purchase. Surely this iron fisted retention of exclusive image rights served them well during their reign in power.

While America is no less respectful of its cherished icons, it is more laissez faire when it comes to their widespread usage. The American colors, for instance, have long been an effective and ubiquitous marketing tool. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, red and blue were among the most popular printing inks after basic black. Whatever the image—even if it had nothing directly to do with patriotism—printing it in these primary hues produced an unmistakably American style. Today, red, white and blue, stars and stripes, and the American flag itself continue to be used any time patriotism can generate profit—which is not to imply that red, white and blue does not evoke a real sense of national pride. In fact, using these colors effectively in posters, packages and advertisements exploits that pride. The application of national icons in advertising and design is not only a privilege: it is something of a requisite.

Free for the taking, no matter how silly
Only one resolution ever really governed the American flag’s design. After Independence on July 4, 1776, the U.S. Congress resolved that “the flag of the 13 United States be 13 stripes, alternate red and white: that the union be 13 stars, white on a blue field.” The color symbolism was straightforward: white signifies purity and innocence, red exemplifies hardiness and valor, and blue equals vigilance, perseverance and justice. Aside from a few conventions dictating how a flag must be hung (i.e., it must never touch the ground) and various Army and Navy rituals, the U.S. government has never imposed Constitutional restrictions on how to use the basic form or colors, because every citizen has a basic right to “own” a piece of American style. Even when the South seceded from the Union, launching the bloody Civil War, the same color scheme was used for the Confederate flag. Congress has never even been able to agree on a viable flag desecration act either, because it seems antithetical to democratic principles. While many other nations view as treasonous the desecration of their national symbols, when democracy and capitalism wed, expedience rules. So, as long as Uncle Sam and the stars and stripes are boons to the economy, they will forever remain unregulated.

American business and industry, however, are not as libertarian regarding their so-called trade dress icons. Trade characters, trademarks and logos have long been shielded from misuse by trademark registration and copyright safeguards. Even parody, which is allowed under law, has come under fire by eager, litigious intellectual property attorneys. The Disney Corporation, for example, reflexively issues cease and desist injunctions virtually anytime Mickey’s mouse ears pop up without authorization. Coca-Cola and Nike have their respective waves and swooshes locked up tighter than Queen Victoria’s chastity belt. Moreover, defiling the likes of Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben and Betty Crocker would be tantamount to vandalizing George Washington’s (and even his horse’s) tomb.

In a nation that allows widespread, and often trivial, dissemination of its national symbols this veneration of its commercial ones is a bit paradoxical. It would seem that high visibility of commercial marks only aids popular recognition, and sales. But branding experts long ago realized that controls must be vociferously maintained or they lose legal rights to their cherished marks. Also, to be a bona fide American icon demands that a graphic image is somehow beyond reproach. A couple of decades ago, for example, UPS’s big brown delivery trucks, known as Queen Marys, routinely blocked urban streets, so they did not affix their mark to the backs of these vehicles lest they become publicly reviled for causing annoying traffic jams. Since marks trigger a wide range of responses and memories today they are usually tested and retested to make certain that all the composite elements have positive recognition factors.

Buy American, whatever the cost
“The world is managed and its people controlled by influences—simple, elemental influences—of which we are steadily gaining more knowledge,” wrote Clayton Lindsay Smith in his aforementioned booklet. Although forgotten today it was one of the key documents of its time in the advancement of commercial icons as holy artifacts. “So the trade mark persists and in its modern improvements it has become the World’s Great Salesman,” he continues. “You stop when a red light or red flag commands. A picture of Santa Claus makes you think of Christmas. An arrow points direction and guides you. A striped barber pole asks about your tonsorial needs and bids you enter. And with the same forceful authority the Campbell Kids make you hungry for soup and cause you to buy this particular brand.” (Italics are Smith’s.)

The “forceful authority” of Uncle Sam caused citizens to buy into the American brand of democracy, just as the Campbell Kids caused citizen-consumers to buy into a decidedly American brand. Loyalty to Campbell was by extension loyalty to the American way of life. Hence an American graphic icon had to stimulate national pride and consumer desire all in one fell swoop—and what could be more apple pie than retail consumerism? Of course, the greater the American trappings imbued in an icon, the greater the urgency of the message for Americans.

Yet not every trademark or logo has an Uncle Sam or flag on it, so they had to symbolize American values in other ways. “In the dominion of the mind”—as Smith so quaintly refers to the mass consumer’s cranial cavity—the leading American icons are those that promote the biggest brands, which exemplify American capitalism. Control the “public consciousness,” he continues, “keep [the icons] alive and active in the Buyer’s Memory,” and America, American commerce and Americans in general will triumph.

Uncle Sam’s iconic visage is no longer as viable today as it was a generation ago. His antiquated image has been usurped by a slew of dynamic corporate logos. Nike’s swoosh, the Microsoft Network’s butterfly and McDonald’s golden arches, among others, do not overtly exude nationalism but are rather signposts (even ambassadors) for businesses that provide American services and collect American profits. Nonetheless, vocal “no logo” critics in the United States and elsewhere around the world charge that American commercial icons today symbolize this country’s excessively domineering global reach and, like Uncle Sam, they force materialistic American values down the world’s throat. Others argue this is simply anti-American claptrap. Yet one thing is certain—whether political or commercial, American icons trigger strong emotions and in this way at least one part of that epigram—“Signs and symbols rule the world”—has validity today. Or as wise old Confucius might have also said: “Man who sits on tack gets the point.”

About the Author: Steven Heller, co-chair of the Designer as Author MFA and co-founder of the MFA in Design Criticism at School of Visual Arts, is the author of Merz to Emigre and Beyond: Avant Garde Magazine Design of the Twentieth Century (Phaidon Press). He is co-author of New Vintage Type (Thames & Hudson), Becoming a Digital Designer (John Wiley & Co.), Teaching Motion Design (Allworth Press) and, most recently, Iron Fists: Branding the Totalitarian State (Phaidon Press). www.hellerbooks.com

Source: http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/american-icons-or-how-trade-characters-rule-the-world

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Examining The Printed Picture

By Jerry Kelly

Our methods for reproducing images are in a state of tremendous upheaval. Today, an overwhelming amount of pictures are reproduced using digital techniques, leading to what has been called both “the digital revolution” and “the end of film.” This change has been taking place over the course of at least the last two decades, and by now it is nearly complete. But this is not the first radical change in the method for reproducing images: There have been many such revolutionary periods, including the change from hand-replication of images, such as woodcuts and engraving; through photomechanical methods, which include letterpress, offset and various intaglio technologies; to non-analog systems for interpreting and replicating images. While we may feel that today’s digital revolution is the most dramatic of all changes, it could certainly be argued that the introduction of photomechanical reproduction methods was even more revolutionary.

Each of these new technologies has several subsets, such as daguerreotype and tintype for early photographs; collotype and gravure under the general heading of intaglio; and Iris, laser and inkjet in the category of digital technologies. It can all be rather daunting, and, with the rapid conversion to newer methods, there is the possibility that knowledge of the earlier techniques might be lost. Since many of the technologies for printing images—from salted-paper platinum prints to duotone offset to digital laser prints—have been practiced for the last half century or so, there are some people around today who have themselves actually worked in a wide assortment of these techniques. Perhaps no one has more experience in the various methods of reproducing images than Richard Benson. Benson is a fine-art photographer, who has created prints on hand-coated paper, as well as from various film media and images generated digitally on state-of-the-art equipment.

In the 1960s Benson was a cameraman at the world-famous Meriden Gravure Company, producing camera halftone film for duotones, tritones and color reproduction. As an extension of this technology Benson spent years printing reproductions on his own offset press of the Gilman Paper Company’s collection of fine art photography, resulting in a monumental volume that is probably one of the finest examples of the printer’s art since Gutenberg first worked on practical methods for replication of texts. While at Meriden Benson was able to see the final days of high-quality collotype printing, a now-obsolete gelatin plate intaglio printing process, which wound down at Meriden in 1967. Afterwards he went on to work on the Gilman Paper Photography Collection book and various other printing projects, as well as teaching and becoming the dean of the Yale School of Art. His teaching experience has helped greatly in making The Printed Picture an interesting, informative and understandable account of a very complex topic.

The book is divided into 13 sections, arranged in mostly chronological order, from relief (and earlier) to digital, with each category itself divided into several sub-categories. The sections are logically identified by a simple decimal numbering system, ranging from 1.1 to 13.8, which helps to organize the subjects in an easily accessible and referenced way. Almost every segment consists of a single double-page spread, with explanatory text on the left and a large representative image showing the method in use on the right. Smaller reference figures are printed in the ample left margin, or sometimes on the right-hand page. A few sections are allotted a second spread, if the topic requires further explanation or is particularly pertinent. There is a brief glossary at the end, but the text is so complete and well organized that I found myself not needing the definitions supplied there. (Still, it is a useful tool for quick reference.)

Through almost three hundred pages of such examples and their accompanying explanations one can gain knowledge of all the methods ever developed for reproducing images. This sounds like an extremely large and complex subject, and indeed it is, but surprisingly Benson has made an imminently readable—and I dare say even enjoyable—book of it. Due to his personal experience in printing images by many of the methods he describes, Benson can give first-hand accounts and occasional anecdotes about many of the techniques used. His years of teaching show in the methodic and easily understood language used for the descriptions. In addition, there is a good bit of “color” and even humor in the writing: Who can resist a book in which dye-transfer color prints are compared to a screen siren’s allure? “Dye transfer prints were expensive and rare, and could be as bad as anything else. When they did their job well they were, like Marilyn Monroe, better than anything else around.” He also tells of his memories of his “grade school’s first Xerox—we took great pleasure in scanning unmentionable body parts.” Then there is Benson’s relating of his own personal experience at a shop in the waning days of collotype printing: “On my first visit to the company I was given a tour of the shop, and my guide, the ancient owner of the plant, let me know that it had long since been accepted that collotype could only be practiced by workers of Teutonic extraction. (I’m not kidding about this belief—the three pressmen were named Allendorf, Zande, and Brecklin).”

Unlike many modern authors, Benson is not shy about expressing his opinions, and due to his vast knowledge and experience such subjectivity would be difficult to dispute. He also does not shy away from the occasional personal story, which can illuminate a particular point while adding some flavor to what is essentially a rather technical subject. He shows pictures of his wife on their wedding day, staged at the elegant Bacharach Studios, in two versions: a stern one, as Benson tells us is her true nature, along with a joyful smiling shot, which we are told is not the real Mrs. Benson. On the facing page is a picture taken in the same studio decades earlier, showing Mrs. Benson’s mother with a similar stern expression.

I have often felt as Benson does about color printing: “It’s a wonder that it works at all.” He also reveals that, due to the fact that press proofs for duotones or tritones were often too expensive, printers had to proceed without them (“most two- or three-color printing was done with a nerve-racking mixture of terror and faith that the whole thing would turn out right in the end”). Such candid statements give a lively flavor to The Printed Picture, while helping to inform the novice or uninitiated designer about the travails of the printer. All of this makes for a book that is useful to both the novice and the professional.

One can quibble with a few inaccurate statements made by Benson, especially in regard to the earlier processes such as letterpress printing, which would be less familiar to him. Surely, it is an overstatement to say that “the system [of combining metal type in the same form as woodblock cuts] could never work once the presses ran at any sort of speed.” Indeed, two spreads in The Printed Picture show woodblocks locked up with type for printing on fast rotary presses in the late 19th century. However, no letterpress printer hesitated too much in locking up type metal with woodblocks, especially on horizontal handpresses or flatbed cylinder presses, which did not require as tight a lockup as later vertical platen presses. Even more questionable is the inclusion of a calligraphic manuscript page in the relief printing section—surely there is nothing “relief” about pen writing with ink on vellum. Yet the inclusion of a calligraphic manuscript, as well as cave paintings, sets the stage in an intriguing way for the reproductive processes to come.

In the first page on letterpress printing Benson substitutes the word ‘mold’ for ‘matrix’; they are two different items to a type caster (“punches struck the type mold”—actually, they struck matrices which were then placed in a mold). The use of counterpunches was not as prevalent as he implies (“the stems and curves for different letters were often made with the same punch, ” which would be a counterpunch, and they were seldom used in manufacturing a complete font; sometimes not at all). I also disagree with Benson’s assertion regarding accurate letterpress register: “Even at its best, however, letterpress never achieved the accuracy of photo offset lithography.” I would contend that, at its best, letterpress registration was almost perfect. I know of two letterpress printers who told me of having a small piece of metal type break during a press run, and then running the sheet through again, overprinting the defective letter. The register throughout the run was so perfect that no one ever noticed. Of course such accuracy was less common in letterpress than with today’s highly accurate offset machines, but at its best the registration of a well-run Heidelberg letterpress could be as near perfect as possible. The description of the Monotype casting machine “rapidly creating molds for individual letters that could be cast” is misleading; the molds were not created; a reusable set of matrices was positioned over an adjustable mold to cast, or create, new individual letters. No Monotype caster created molds, or even matrices.

And one could not say in truth that offset “would completely kill letterpress within a couple of decades . . . following World War II.” “Completely” is an absolute word, and yet today—more than 60 years after the end of World War II—letterpress shops such as the Arion Press, Digital Letterpress and The Press of the Bixlers, all in the United States, as well as the Whittington, Old Stile and Incline presses in England, among dozens (if not hundreds) of others, are alive and well.

An interesting subtext to the book is the involvement of the Benson family in the handwork-arts for at least three generations. Richard Benson’s father was John Howard Benson, an important calligrapher and letter-cutter, who created, among numerous other works, the lettering cut in stone over the entrance to the Grace Rainey Rogers auditorium at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York. Though not credited, one of the earliest illustrations in The Printed Picture is of the elder Benson’s calligraphic rendering from the 1950s of his translation of Ludovico Arrighi’s 1522 writing manual, L’Operina. Richard Benson’s brother and nephew, John E. Benson and Nicholas Benson, have continued the work of their father’s shop. Christopher and Daniel Benson appear in the book through various artworks. Richard Benson’s wife and daughters are the subject of several pictures used to illustrate photographic techniques, which brings an immediacy to the material, with Benson showing us family snapshots to make a point, lending a “you are there” feeling.

Benson was awarded a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant,” in recognition of his contribution to the art of the printed picture. His photographic artwork is in the collection of many museums, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Books for which he has worked on reproductions grace virtually every good art library.

There has not been such a comprehensive, informed, yet enjoyable book on the graphic arts for decades. Anyone with the slightest connection to the subject—and who has not taken a “snapshot” or printed an image on their desktop device?—would benefit from the greater understanding this book will give them of the development of the processes they use, perhaps without any thought of the complex and extremely variable process they are taking part in. This thorough and accessible text is destined to become the standard work on the subject for some time.

About author: Jerry Kelly is an award-winning designer, calligrapher and printer based in New York City.

Source: http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/examining-the-printed-picture

All images courtesy Richard Benson © 2008 The Museum of Modern Art

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