Let’s start with a short quiz. Which scenario(s) is/are true?
1. McDonald’s debuts in Johannesburg, South Africa, with an American-style parade and local youth chanting “Viva Big Mac! Viva Big Mac!”
2. Chick-fil-A decides to take advantage of India’s sacred cows by tossing sandwich boards over their backs that read “Eat Mor Chikin.” The ad space costs significantly more than a billboard, but ad execs declare that “slow but mobile” is the next big thing.
3. Avon saleswomen aggressively attempt to sell beauty products door-to-door in rural Brazil to impoverished and ageing wives, widows, and mothers with the promise of age-defying beauty.
Answers: If you guessed 1 and 3 are correct, you’re the winner. Number 2 is a product of my sick sense of humor but, given the competition, not that unreasonable a possibility. If you got number 1 wrong, don’t feel bad. South Africans chanting the Spanish verb viva is a bit of a curve ball; chalk it up to Elvis’s B-movies.1 If you got number 3 wrong, you have obviously never met an Avon sales rep.2
RESPONSIBILITY
So now, dear reader, you may be asking, given the theme of this book, if I’m implying that graphic designers share responsibility for such absurdity and corporate arrogance? And, if so, how has this come to be? What are the repercussions? What are the depth and position of our complicity and, therefore, our transnational responsibilities? Like Avon ladies trudging hopefully yet haplessly through the Brazilian night, you are relentless, and so I will do my best to answer your questions.
HISTORY, OR BRIEF PAUSE FOR STATION IDENTIFICATION
Dichotomies, and other opposed forces which may seem irreconcilable, abound in society, foreign policy, commerce, and—if we have the nerve to admit it—within our own belief systems. Hence the absurdity. What route can we take through absurdity? Nobody has all the answers. But the path I cut in this essay is determined to offer some manner of lucidity: an alternative to the “natural” state of confusion and seemingly inevitable uses of design we rarely stop to consider, let alone critique.
With that said, criticism isn’t hard to write, it’s hard to deliver. When design educators write or make statements critical of the design field, practitioners decry their ignorance of the “real world.” When practitioners, like Tibor Kalman, offer up critique, graphic designers of all stripes denounce their complicity. And when design educators and practitioners unite in a common cause, designers of butt-toner labels lament the revived critical dimension of a field they could always rely on for its comfortable passivity.
SYSTEMIC PROBLEMS
Our society has a unique means of dealing with complex problems: we make bumper stickers. If the issue can be reduced to a bumper sticker, it can be resolved: “Shit Happens,” “Welcome to the South, Now Go Home,” “United We Stand,” “Rush is Right,” “Charlton Heston is My President,” “My Kid Beat Up Your Honor Student,” and so on and so forth. Like our constituents, we designers like to have a firm grasp on communication. We analyze our methods, materials, aesthetics, precedents, and trendsetters. But how much of this dialogue really provides a better grasp of the systemic problems swimming in and around graphic design? I’m specifically questioning the graphic designer’s role in globalization, largely in the form of branding initiatives for transnational corporations. Yes, many designers do create informative and educational materials, but corporate branding, on the whole, and in all its ancillary manifestations, consumes the greatest amount of talent and time from our field’s practitioners.3
PROPERTY
The most important piece of property in the globalization race is the brand. In 1996, the International Trademark Association (INTA) testified to the House Judiciary Committee that the value of Coca-Cola’s mark was $39 billion, IBM’s was $17 billion, and Kodak’s was $11 billion.4 For clarity, these are not valuations of real capital assets, but the “worth” of brand identities alone. Put another way, purchase price minus corporate assets equals brand equity (also termed brand valuation). Brand equity is further defined as business “good will,” or the monetary value positive public perception ascribes the corporate entity. It’s completely intangible.
What does brand equity/valuation actually do for a corporation? Well, as INTA explains, corporations need brand valuation to secure loans, encourage investors, attract new buyers, and rally joint ventures. Brand valuation is also a useful tool in planning mergers and acquisitions, litigation, tax strategies, marketing budgets, and new product and market development. The corporation exists off this intangible asset.5
True to the nature and concept of property, brands seek to be maintained; and they desire permanence and growth. Brands therefore rely on an estimation of long-term profits. Transnational corporations want every assurance that their brand equity will not be adversely affected by “foreign” competition.
Graphic design, through its overemphasis on corporate servitude, is very much involved in this power play for permanence. Ironic, since we generate so much ephemera. This power play maintains the status quo in order to preserve the lifestyles of the world’s wealthiest residents: those growing fat off free trade.
Free trade drains natural resources from developing nations by heavily favoring extraction over conservation. Free trade also places little to no restriction on corporate raiders, monopolies, and partnerships that lock out competition. It mandates, through coercive powers of the World Trade Organization and the World Bank, that nations set aside higher health standards, environmental regulations, and local investors in favor of WTO import/export standards and international investors. Importantly, Free Trade is free from public accountability, also thanks to the World Trade Organization.
The alternative concept of fair trade seeks equal opportunities for local and international interests. But the individual nation-state would maintain control over its health standards and natural resources. Fair trade could also facilitate higher-paying, higher-skilled jobs in developing nations by equitably managing import/export quotas.6
In late August of 2001, INTA lent its voice to the latest free trade proposal: Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Speaking specifically to intellectual property rights, INTA wrote suggested revisions to the FTAA plans. INTA argues that signs and symbols belonging to indigenous peoples, local communities, and African Americans should not be entitled to any form of intellectual property protection. Quoting their report: “[INTA] has also expressed concerns regarding proposed protection for the words and symbols of New Zealand’s indigenous people, the Maori.” INTA spokespeople cite the undesirability of such protection partially on the grounds that “The terms ‘indigenous’ or ‘afro-American’ communities would require careful definition, and would be subject to great potential controversy. The term ‘local community’ is such a broad and indefinite term that it has the potential to allow almost any city, village, or group to claim rights in signs that may have been used commercially for years, by others.”7
Once co-opted, always co-opted. Obviously the groundwork is laid for greater corporate colonialism, further enhancing corporate dominance over ethnic majorities and developing nations. And the “legitimating” factor: the brand, the trademark, the very symbol of our field’s “professionalization.” Again with the absurdity! I can’t wait to see Kwanzaa Korn Puffs, Earl Grey’s Aboriginal Dream Time Tea, Maori Tattoo Barbie, or McDonald’s Bacon McHopi Biscuits. Despite my injection of humor (such as it is), INTA is a serious and powerful organization. Its statements—whether testimonials before Congress or amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefings in civil lawsuits—carry tremendous weight.
As their name implies, the INTA membership of 3,900 is largely made up of transnational corporations who want to “protect” their interests around the globe. INTA maintains status reports related to trademark legislation on nearly every developing nation in the world. Each brief summation is written strictly from INTA’s perspective, never taking into consideration the indigenous methods of exchange, valuation, communication, or conceptions of property rights.8
In reference to indigenous property rights, INTA states, “We urge the rejection of this or any other proposal that provides special ‘interest’ protection.”9 Compare this statement to the fact that trademarks, under US law and World Trade Organization multilateral agreements, may last indefinitely. INTA’s goal—akin to that of free trade globalization—is to form a centralized and homogenized system where trademarks and positive brand recognition—and World Trade Organization multilateral policy thereunto—take precedence over language, custom, and culture.10
INEVITABILITY
Free trade, the mechanism of choice for globalization, purports to be a natural state of progress. It promises material wealth and economic prosperity for all. Never mind that Third World deprivation is owed to colonialism and unforgiven World Bank debt. In other words, we still need a route that will get us out of this vicious circle of conquer-colonize-deprive-conquer.…You get the idea.
In the dominant Euro-American establishment, the proponents of globalization are seen as heroic visionaries with an enviable fortune. Meanwhile, the media—which is owned by this establishment—portrays antiglobalization protestors as fringe anarchists.
Truth is, the Anti-Globalization Movement, or the Fair Trade Movement, or the Pro-Democracy Movement, or the Living Democracy Movement, or whatever the heck you want to call it, does not advocate anarchy or mass fornication at nearby intersections. Their influential members are highly respected and educated people with plenty of ideas about fair trade. Furthermore, millions of people have protested free trade from France to Thailand and from Switzerland to Brazil before and after “The Battle of Seattle.”11 This may very well be the biggest humanitarian movement our new millennium will see. Where are the heated debates of the ilk we knew in the late 1980s and early 1990s? Graphic design is once again faced with unprecedented quandaries that deserve attention.
It is accurate, as Loretta Staples points out in a letter to Emigre, that designers tend to shy away from political discussions: that we instead personalize our work.12 On the whole, corporate design is discussed in relation to project briefs and client satisfaction. Johanna Drucker also conveys the need for designers to question their complicity in the “nexus of corporate power” in her writings on design education.13 As well, I respect Ellen Lupton and her contributions to the field. Her exhibition and book, Mixing Messages, is a terrific visual vessel, yet the vapid comments from the featured designers disturb me.14
Somewhere in the 1990s graphic design lost its thirst for ideological debate. Globalization, on the other hand, is replete with ideological riptides. We need to start navigating these currents before our students’ futures truly are defined by inevitable free trade corporate servitude. This is not to say corporations will rule our every outlet—though expert predictions lean that direction—rather corporate propaganda will only strengthen as globalization gains greater ground in developing nations. The repercussions will manifest as design curricula and professional hallmarks that exude corporate transnational ideology. Is this what we want? How will textbooks read five to ten years from now?
Only through an enhanced understanding of the mechanisms that control and utilize graphic design and graphic designers can we hope to change the course. Debate will be key; more of us need to come to the table.
IDEOLOGY
Globalization subscribes to the ideology of competition and greed. Americans are told that this is capitalism, and that capitalism is our way of our life. Globalization is global capitalism, free of many of the tax burdens and legal restrictions faced domestically. Globalization, it may seem, is the sharing of our country’s success and freedom. But in actuality it erodes indigenous property rights and restricts developing nations—through threat of legal action and sanctions—to accept a foreign system of values.15
The designer’s ideology is, to detrimental ends, all too often that of the client and the client’s network. In this way we become part of the dominant system and are complicit in its dealings.
So what is the viability of individual and unique cultural, political, or religious ideology in this mix? These intangibles are negligible factors in the sphere of brand and corporate hegemony.
In his novel Immortality, Milan Kundera questions the reader by asking her, “Are you objecting that advertising and propaganda cannot be compared, because one serves commerce and the other ideology? You understand nothing.”16 He goes on to explain that the rise of Marxism is owed to propaganda: simplifications upon simplifications of Marx’s ideas until nothing but a small collection of unrelated slogans remained. This byproduct, Kundera maintains, can hardly be called an ideology. Instead he terms it imagology and demonstrates that the same process applied to Marx’s theories is applied by advertising in its depictions of our “reality.” Imagology therefore supersedes both ideology and reality. Imagology is, in short, our brand reality: an ontology which is becoming decidedly more difficult to tell apart from “The Real Thing.” “IT” is just it. “Coke Adds Life.” “Soylent Green Is People.”
PROPAGANDA
Propaganda comes in different shades. During World War I, the Wilson administration established the Criel Commission (formally known as the Committee on Public Information) to motivate public support for America’s entry into armed combat. The commission’s successful propaganda mechanisms provided the cornerstones for what we know today as public relations.17
Propaganda is also a key component of psychological warfare (psywar). Every branch of the military and several government agencies were involved in psywar leading up to the Korean War. Central control over psywar initiatives became a priority under President Truman, reaching still greater executive command under President Eisenhower.18
Striking parallels exist between the history and nature of psywar and the history and nature of US, and global, commerce, particularly where the protections for intellectual property rights are concerned. Psywar is about convincing the enemy to behave differently, do the things you wish, see from your perspective and yours alone. Of course psychological warfare involves more than just these simple objectives. Strategies, the theory, and tactics, the implementation of theory, form a system of ever-changing objectives and applications.
The overarching mechanism pulling all of the various initiatives together is centralization of control: consolidation. After World War II, this mechanism was once again turned on “mainstream” America in an attempt to educate a postwar class of consumers who, it was hoped, would now identify more with brands than with ethnic origins or Depression-era experiences.
In our present-day scenario of globalization, it is once again hoped that cultural differences will be overcome by the power of the brand. In fact, distinctive local cultures are considered a barrier to free trade. As David Korten—former Harvard professor and lauded humanitarian—explains, “The need to respect local tastes and cultural differences as a condition of gaining consumer acceptance greatly complicates global marketing campaigns. The dream of corporate marketers is a globalized consumer culture united around brand-name loyalties that will allow a company to sell its products with the same advertising copy in Bangkok as in Paris or New York.”19
INTA’s global strategy is identical in nature to that of psychological warfare, as evidenced in this US psywar textbook lesson describing postcombat consolidation:
The conquered people are left in the private, humble enjoyment of their old beliefs and folkways; but all participation in public life, whether political, cultural, or economic, is conditioned on the acceptance of the new faith. In this manner, all up-rising members of the society will move in a few generations over to the new faith in the progress of becoming rich, powerful, or learned; what is left of the old faith will be gutter superstition, possessing neither power nor majesty.20
Andrew Blauvelt, in Emigre 33, attributes global consolidation to the “traffic in signs.” “The corporation’s identity is protected through its status as a registered trademark as it makes its way through the global marketplace asserting its uniqueness, its difference, in the face of utter homogenization—illustrating a basic premise of consumer promotion, the first principle of advertising: how to be a unique individual while being like everybody else.”21 Blauvelt then goes a step further to admit that graphic design’s existence—in large measure—is indebted to dominant interests.
Andrew’s latter point is proven accurate by Plumb Line Enterprises Company, LTD. Based in Hong Kong and offering a cornucopia of graphic design and promotion services, Plumb Line states on its website, “Call us right now and be a part of the march towards full globalization.” Plumb Line’s two hundred mainland China factory laborers will place your brand name on just about any trinket you can imagine.22
In a much different league from Plumb Line, “enterprise architects” offer “globalization strategies” as part of their service package. Globalization is now a service offering! Well, freeze my head; Disney was right, it is a small world af-ter a-l-l. These businesses provide the organizational structure, the proprietary systems, the branding, and the globalization strategies required to form a transnational corporation.23
CONTROL
Powerful groups of people, none of whom hold public office, strongly influence the legislature, judiciary, presidency, the United Nations, and the World Trade Organization on matters of free trade and brand enforcement. The drive to psychologically control an audience, and the singularity of perspective applied, as well as the growing centralization of control empowering these individuals and corporations, have never been stronger.
Principal, but not popularly known, among this group of free trade and brand enforcers is the aforementioned International Trademark Association (INTA).24 INTA’s history is closely tied to post–World War II consumerism. The organization was instrumental in obtaining passage of the Trademark Act of 1946, more commonly referred to as the Lanham Act. The Lanham Act still provides the judicial backing for brand valuation. This is a crucial point because without the rapid accrual of debt by businesses and consumers, and brand-equity-instigated investment, the US economy could not have grown by the leaps and bounds demanded in the Cold War race for economic superiority.
Setting the stage for postwar consumerism, the US Supreme Court wrote the following statement in 1942:
The protection of trademarks is the law’s recognition of the psychological function of symbols. If it is true that we live by symbols, it is no less true that we purchase goods by them. A trademark is a merchandising short-cut which induces a purchaser to select what he wants, or what he has been led to believe he wants. The owner of a mark exploits this human propensity by making every effort to impregnate the atmosphere of the market with the drawing power of a congenial symbol. Whatever the means employed, the aim is the same—to convey through the mark, in the minds of potential customers, the desirability of the commodity upon which it appears. Once this is attained, the trademark owner has something of value.25
Defenders of graphic design’s integrity argue that design is about informing, not persuading. Under media, judicial, and transnational corporate control, how can we find the line between information and persuasion? Persuasion masquerades as information in both propaganda and corporate branding. The complicity and interdependence of design and advertising are clear. The line between persuader and informer—the division that supposedly distinguishes graphic design from advertising—becomes moot on this topic of brand hegemony and globalization. And if we could successfully proclaim that corporate graphic design is about informing, should this assessment shield our information products from critique? Would, if it were true, the fact that we are informers dismiss our complicity? The informer/persuader distinction is merely academic in this, the context of our field’s largest segment of production.
Trademarks were also originally intended to inform by distinguishing a company’s products from those of an unscrupulous competitor. Trademark law protected the consumer from harm or fraud. By the mid-1900s, however, as we can see from the Supreme Court narrative, the shift from guarding consumers to protecting corporations—so prevalent today—was fully initiated. This inequity plays out on the web as well, where corporations hire “watching services,” ostensibly to protect their trademarks from competitors and market confusion, to search for “virtual” infractions.
The web is now patrolled by private “police” who search for actual or potential trademark infringements. While it is certainly valid for corporations to protect their trademarks from unscrupulous competitors, these domain name and metatag searches can also net corporate critics who should have just as much right to “market” their dissent but legally do not.26 Corporations are protected at the expense of our civil liberties. Corporate proponents could counter my argument by saying that the protection of brand equity is the provision of job security. From this corporate standpoint it is OK to mute criticism and free speech for the sake of perceived security and financial gain. I agree that cyber squatting is a problem; but until provisions for dissent and parody are amended to trademark laws, corporate freedoms will continue to far outweigh legal mechanisms for critique, First and Fourteenth Amendments notwithstanding.
DEMOCRACY
Beyond the matter of corporate control are the multilateral institutions that represent, and further empower, corporate hegemony. Founded by representatives of forty-four nations who met in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944, the three organizations are referred to as the Bretton Woods institutions. They are the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)—established at a separate meeting and renamed the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995. They are “special agencies” of the UN, but they function independently from it—and from public view.
The objective of the 1944 meeting was to establish a mechanism for global prosperity that would dissuade future armed conflict. US global economic leadership development, facilitated by the country’s access to the world’s markets and raw materials, is a key component of Bretton Woods.27
That our citizenry, or any other populace, was not offered a referendum in the Bretton Woods agglomeration was not unprecedented. Labor movements before and during the Great Depression became, for our “democratic” leadership, further affirmation that public assembly and the “common man’s” intelligence were not to be trusted. This was an unfortunate conclusion, but not a new opinion by any means.28 The very fact that the World Trade Organization, an institution responsible for global trade—which as such affects the lives of every citizen as it erodes the relevance of nation-states—can shut out the public from its meetings is untenable. We have an absurd form of democracy—predicated on the superiority of wealth—that carries only the image of egalitarianism. This is not news. But the effect of this condition must be considered as a determinate factor in our field’s apolitical stance and dependence on corrupt corporations. In other words, I believe we consider ourselves powerless as designers because we feel powerless as citizens: revisionist history tells us so.
So we must remember that our clients, particularly transnational corporations, are not part of a democracy. The people and organizations with decision-making authority to enforce the brands we create were not elected by any citizenry, and certainly not by the world’s poor.29
POVERTY
Globalization, as described by its proponents, will save the Third World by sharing the wealth of developed nations through unlimited and unfettered trade. As wealth spreads, so too better living and working conditions for the world’s poor. “They” will—the free traders hope—become more like “us.”
Michael Kelly, editor of the Atlantic Monthly and columnist for the Washington Post Writers Group, declares the promise of global wealth sharing a “fat herring of the reddest hue.” Kelly maintains that globalization, nearly synonymous with free trade, is not about democracy and justice for all, but about profits. In a recent news article, Kelly discusses George W. Bush’s unscripted perspective on Free Trade of the Americas: “Bush said the agreement certainly must not contain ‘codicils to destroy the spirit of free trade.’ He added: ‘While I understand that some unionists are interested in making sure there’s labor protections, I don’t want those labor protections to be used to destroy the free trade agreement.’”30 Well I guess as long as we’re not protecting indigenous rights we as may as well not protect indigent laborers working in sweatshops.
Kelly goes on to point out that this is a problem for US laborers too. As higher-paying jobs migrate to lower-paying markets—through mergers, downsizing, and job exportation—the cost to the nation in unemployment may be severe.
The odds, however, least favor developing nations. The World Trade Organization exerts the tremendous coercive force of financial penalties and trade sanctions over the Third World. This is a cost that developing nations, heavily indebted to the World Bank, can ill afford. Brand enforcement, as outlined and promulgated by INTA, comes with the consequences of these WTO penalties. Korten states, “Cases may also be brought against countries that attempt to give preferential treatment to local over foreign investors or that fail to protect the intellectual property rights (patents and copyrights) of foreign companies. Local interests are no longer a valid basis for local laws under the new WTO regime. The interests of international trade, which are primarily the interests of transnational corporations, take priority.”31
The WTO does not prevent monopolies or corporate takeovers, or require higher safety or quality standards in exports/imports. The WTO only enacted more stringent intellectual property agreements.32
BEYOND AND BEHIND
Graphic designers have argued convincingly for our field’s continued relevance in the wake of the Macintosh and the World Wide Web. But the alliances we formed before, during, and after these “crises” warrant closer analysis and debate. There are various corequisites to this agenda. For instance, we need to stop “greening up” polluters, putting a socially conscious face on sweatshop owners, and using healthy-looking images for chemically preserved and/or genetically engineered foods. Our audience is more than just a target market. Hopefully our discussions will examine the sociocultural milieus that surround our practice. Such initiatives will enable us to see beyond and behind the client.
I am not saying, however, that we need to step out of the realm of doing business with corporations. I’m saying we need to know that these transnationals will do business fairly. We can ensure this goal by supporting corporate and small business advocates of fair trade. We can also look for new outlets: alternative entrepreneurial ventures and programs for civil society entities, e.g., nonprofits. Adversarial design is also coming to the fore in curatorial ventures, like Kenneth Fitzgerald’s recent traveling exhibition, Adversary, which features new voices of dissent within the field.33 While I laud these efforts, many more strategies for effecting change reside outside our purview. Members of the Pro-Democracy Movement, such as David Korten and contributors to New Internationalist magazine, take great pains to not only describe the problems but suggest specific, peaceful methods for their resolution. Your local peace and justice center will also have this information. Graphic design does, however, possess problems posing and solving strategies that can be used to establish new responses in conjunction with antiglobalization initiatives.
Social activism now equals global responsibility. What we do as designers is becoming more and more a global act, whether we’re talking about web or brand design for transnational corporations. Importantly, our productions are not limited to the bounds of any one given nation-state or cultural milieu. We can tell ourselves that we’re just one small piece of the puzzle—in which case we need a good look at the picture on the box.
Rick Poyner, in Emigre 51, discusses a prior call to question the use of design skills for brand development: the “First Things First” manifesto, originally published in 1963. He points out that Ken Garland, the manifesto’s author, admittedly was not trying to change “the underlying political and economic system.”34 Garland did not see this as a feasible task. Obviously, though, we cannot successfully change our position within the system without analyzing systemic problems and advocating for their abolition. Just like the advertising industry censured by Garland and his fellow signatories, there is nothing “natural” about globalization, and hence there is nothing inevitable about it either. Likewise, there’s nothing natural about our servitude to questionable corporations, and there’s nothing inevitable about it either.
Incidentally, Poyner mentions that the “First Things First” manifesto debuted at a point of increased confidence in graphic design’s growing professionalization.35 Its reissuance, by Rudy Vanderlans over three years ago, came at a time of design’s strengthening global reach.
Our students need to be critical thinkers more than ever. They should consider, as Johanna Drucker so aptly states, “in whose interest and to what ends.”36 They need the skills to uncover the gears behind the curtain. And they need the self-determination, confidence, and nonfatalistic vision to choose the best-tailored career.
When opposing interests, viewpoints, and ideologies come into contact, absurd things occur. One side of the dichotomy, for instance, may not even be aware of the other to any meaningful extent. Peacefully and equitably acquainting opposing forces is not something the human race does well. We tend to get that one wrong more times than not. Through responsible and reasoned attention to such absurdities, we might just be able to make some sense.
[1] News item selected from Suzanne Leclerc-Madlala, “Here’s the Beef,” New Internationalist no. 280 (1996), https://newint.org/features/1996/06/05/endpiece.
[2] News item selected from David C. Korten, When Corporations Rule the World (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc. and Kumarian Press, 2001), 156–57.
[3] Rick Poynor, “First Things First Revisited,” Emigre 51 (summer 1999): 3.
[4] US House Committee on the Judiciary, The Patent and Trademark Office Corporation Act and the United States Intellectual Property Organization, report prepared by the International Trademark Association, March 8, 1996.
[5] International Trademark Association (INTA), TM Basics: Brand Valuation (2001), http://www.inta.org/basics/ip/valuation/shtml.
[6] Tony Clarke, “Rewriting the Rules,” New Internationalist no. 320 (2000), http://www.oneworld.org/ni/issue320/rules.htm.
[7] INTA, Free Trade of the Americas Draft Agreement: Chapter on Intellectual Property Rights, prepared by the FTAA Subcommittee (2001), 6–9.
[8] INTA, Developing Countries: Compliance with the TRIPS Agreement, prepared by the TRIPS 2000 Subcommittee, Treaty Analysis Committee (1999), 8–19.
[9] INTA, Federal Trade Area of the Americas Draft Agreement, prepared by the FTAA Subcommittee (2001), 10.
[10] Trademark laws also pose serious threats to US civil liberties. For an excellent and succinct discussion of the problem, see Jennifer B. Reiter, “Trademark Anti-Dilution Laws as Cultural Censorship” (1997), https://fedsoc.org/commentary/publications/trademark-anti-dilution-laws-as-cultural-censorship. See also Michael Schmidt, “Operation Snowstorm: How Brands Ate the World,” News of the Whirled no. 3 (2001): 60–67.
[11] Korten, 4–5.
[12] Loretta Staples, “Less is More 2000 (Or ‘Who Needs Design?’),” Emigre 52 (fall 1999).
[13] Johanna Drucker, “Talking Theory/Teaching Practice,” in The Education of a Graphic Designer, ed. Steven Heller (New York: Allworth Press, 1998), 85.
[14] Ellen Lupton, Mixing Messages: Graphic Design in Contemporary Culture (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996).
[15] Korten, 167.
[16] Milan Kundera, Immortality (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1991), 113.
[17] Noam Chomsky, Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, ed. Greg Ruggiero and Stuart Sahulka, Open Media Pamphlet Series (New York: Seven Stories Press), 7–9, 17–18.
[18] William E. Daugherty and Morris Janowitz, A Psychological Warfare Casebook (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1958), 138.
[19] Korten, 155.
[20] Paul M. A. Linebarger, Psychological Warfare, International Propaganda and Communications Series (New York: Arno Press, 1972), 13.
[21] Andrew Blauvelt, Emigre 33 (winter 1995): 5.
[22] Editorial note: Plumb Line Enterprises Company Ltd. dissolved in 2008.
[23] See http://www.sapient.com.
[24] In 1979 the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)—a specialized agency of the United Nations—made INTA a nongovernmental observer. According to INTA literature (INTA, History [http://www.inta.org/History/Pages/History.aspx]), “This status has allowed INTA to participate in diplomatic conferences and meetings of committees of experts as well as smaller, less formal meetings. More recently, INTA has taken a more active role in WIPO studies and activities in order to significantly influence WIPO’s trademark-related initiatives.” Year 2000 INTA board members were from Shell Oil Company, Warner Brothers, and Kraft. Year 2001 officer listings were pulled from their website at the date of this writing. INTA reinforced its influence in 1999 by officially deciding to declare itself a US Political Action Committee.
[25] Mishawaka Rubber & Woolen Mfg. Co. v. S.S. Kresge Co., 316 US 203 (1942). This passage was used in one of INTA’s 1996 statements to the Committee on the Judiciary of the US House of Representatives. House Committee on the Judiciary, Trademark Provisions Act: Hearings on H.R. 2740, 1996. The case docket is available at http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/casefinder/casefinder_1926-1948.html. To review testimonies before the House Judiciary by INTA and other like-minded organizations, see http://www.house.gov/judiciary/4.htm.
[26] Law firm of Graham & Dunn, PC. http://www.grahamdunn.com/whatsnew/articles/4a/right.htm.
[27] Korten, 161–62.
[28] Chomsky, 17–18.
[29] While the WTO may operate in secrecy, trade advisory groups, like the International Trade Association, must make their dealings with WTO public due to the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972 (Korten 169). By walking through a few back doors, it is possible to learn a great deal about WTO initiatives.
[30] Michael Kelly, “Secret Is Out: Globalization Is about Profits, Not Democracy,” (Memphis) Commercial Appeal, April 26, 2001, 9(A).
[31] Korten, 168.
[32] Korten, 172.
[33] Daniela Marx and Tuan Phan, recent graduates from CalArts, are included in the Adversary exhibition. Their work is both parasitic and virulent in its attack of unscrupulous corporations. They have also constructed course curricula for socially conscious design. Daniela Marx and Tuan Phan, interview by author, Memphis, TN, spring 2001.
[34] Poynor, 3.
[35] Poynor, 2.
[36] Drucker, 85.