Designed to Control: Authoritarian Branding of the 20th Century

Youth may be wasted on the young, but under the totalitarian state they saw naivety and enthusiasm of youth as a particular opportunity. For the state to prosper, youth was treated as a sub-brand of the greater regime that both followed and perpetuated its ideology. Graphic design, typography, officially sanctioned styles and fashions, symbolism and signs played a huge role in transforming children and teenagers into functioning fascists, indoctrinated in stages according to their age and level of cognitive development. Young people were given daily doses of visual, written, and verbal propaganda. The goal for the youth was to graduate to a higher rank within the system until compliant boys turned into loyal statesmen, soldiers of the realm, and promoters of the regime and girls into the mothers of the next generation of fascists. 

In honor of the exhibition The Future Was Then: The Changing Face of Fascist Italy, prominent design historian Steven Heller will present a survey of this charged topic and address the design methods used to enforce conformity to various regimes’ authoritarian agendas.

Steven Heller is the cofounder and cochair emeritus of MFA Design at the School of Visual Arts and editor-at-large at Printmag.com, where he writes The Daily Heller. He is a former contributing columnist to the New York Times Book Review where he was also the senior art director. Heller is the author and/or editor of more than two hundred books on graphic design, illustration, and political art, including Iron Fists: Branding the 20th Century Totalitarian State; Merz to Emigre and Beyond: Avant Garde Magazine Design of the Twentieth Century; and Growing Up Underground: A Memoir of Counterculture New York.

Accessibility Note: Masks and clear masks are available free of charge at the museum. Assistive listening devices and stools are available. ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation or a CART (Communication Access Realtime Translation) is also available upon request. Please contact access@posterhouse.org or (914) 295-2387 to request interpretation services and to address any other accessibility needs. For other event-related questions, please contact info@posterhouse.org.