Meaning of Pop Culture and Graphic Design

January 3rd 2021

I wrote my intro some time ago, but that is as far as I’ve gotten with my essay. So, today I want to at least get my whole intro and explanations done... Everything that comes before the body content. Seems kind of dumb that I am trying to find a proper way to define popular culture. My teachers used to always say "answer exams, essays, questions, etc. as if the person reading is totally dumb" but I think even people with below average IQ still know what popular culture is. But okay, lets do this.

Suddenly looking for definitions of pop culture does not seem so dumb anymore. Pop culture is more than just pop culture as we know it. When anyone says pop culture, they only think of pop culture now (music, movies, trends, etc) and maybe, for anyone art inclined, pop art, specifically Andy Warhol, of course but I have just found out pop culture is more than just that. Folk culture is.. was?.. considered as pop culture.

According to Raymond Williams, a Welsh Marxist theorist and novelist, ‘popular’ can have four meanings, ‘liked by the majority’, ‘made by the people for the people’, ‘work with the goals of being liked by the majority’ and ‘inferior kinds of work’. And culture can be defined with three different meanings. Two of those definitions is generally what is used to define popular culture. These would be ‘a particular way of life’ and ‘the works and practices of intellectual and artistic activity'. Generally, ‘popular culture’ can be explained as the way of life and the works that are liked by the majority. Popular culture doesnt have to be good, it just has to be known by the majority.

Why are there so many theorist theorising about absolutely anything? They really spend their whole lives just trying to dissect life and society and perfecting their theories, do they not get tired or done with life? Anyways, reading up on these are actually really interesting, I always manage to learn something new, doesn’t usually help me in everyday life but it is interesting to know. After all, knowledge is power. This reminds me of how there are some people who don’t realise that 'pop' in 'pop music' actually stands for 'popular'.

I really spent my whole day reading and writing and I am reminded of how much I disliked essay writing in high school... And that was way easier compared to this. My brain is tired. But in all honesty, I think I am doing better than last sem's train wreck of an essay, so that’s cool.

A Draft:

Changing pop culture with graphic design— the 60’s and the 90’s
Graphic design is everywhere and in everything people see, hear, and touch. It affects music, film, art and much more, which all happen to be the few main pillars that pop culture is built on (Delaney, 2007). Graphic design is a tool of communication that is instrumental to culture and graphic designers help in the building of culture (Heller, 2012). Graphic design and pop culture, individually, have gone through a lot of changes over time. Based off the history of art timeline from Invaluable (2019), 1960s was a great decade as it was the decade where several art movements overlapped— pop art happening to be one of them. With all the art movements that took place in the 60s, pop culture and graphic design, art in general, was bound to go through a lot of change as well. ‘The most dynamic and icon shattering decade of the 20th century’ is often used as a description of the 60s (Monteith and Halliwell, 2008). The 90s, the end of the 20th century, was another great decade, the world went through plenty of change. It was the age of information with the growth of digital technology (Harrison, 2010).

Understanding exactly what graphic design is, is crucial to identifying how and where graphic design has impacted anything, in this case, pop culture. Graphic design is oftentimes seen as a means for advertisement and some argue it is simply a form of art, Malcolm Bernard, author and a senior lecturer in the history of art and design, debates that graphic design is communication (Barnard, 2005).

Pop culture can be defined and analysed in many ways, for simplicity, the words may be broken down to its core meaning. ‘Popular’, according to Raymond Williams, a Welsh Marxist theorist, academic and novelist, can have four meanings. ‘liked by the majority’, ‘made by the people for the people’, ‘work with the goals of being liked by the majority’ and ‘inferior kinds of work’. (Storey, 2018). On the other hand, culture can be defined with three different definitions according to Williams. Two of those definitions is generally what is used to define popular culture. These would be ‘a particular way of life’ and ‘the works and practices of intellectual and artistic activity’ (Williams, 2018). Putting these different definitions of both the word ‘popular’ and ‘culture’ together, may be confusing but in simplicity, and generally, ‘popular culture’ is understood as the way of life and the works that are liked by the majority (Storey, 2018). 

Extra Notes From Lecturer:

- Explaination can be just one paragraph. Merge it.

- Never start a sentence with 'With'.

Bibliography:

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