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McLuhan, Fuller, Agel and Fiore: An Inventory of Electric Information

Scott Boms
August 04, 2012

McLuhan, Fuller, Agel and Fiore: An Inventory of Electric Information

During the mid-1960's, journalist and PR man Jerome Agel, and designer and typographer Quentin Fiore produced several highly influential mass market paperbacks based on the heady, radical, yet prescient ideas of Marshall McLuhan, Buckminster Fuller, Carl Sagan, Herman Kahn, Jerry Rubin, Stanley Kubrick, and others.

This brief talk focuses on how Fiore and Agel radically changed the landscape of publishing through the use of expressive, kinetic typography, increasingly complex layouts and structures, paired with photography reflecting the culture of the time, the past, and the future.

What these unique books help reveal is that artists and designers are keys to a future not entirely focused on the rearview mirror, where past artifacts become art.

Scott Boms

August 04, 2012
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Transcript

  1. View Slide

  2. McLuhan
    Fuller
    Agel
    Fiore
    An Inventory of Electric Information

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  3. The artist is always engaged in writing
    a detailed history of the future because
    he is the only person aware of the
    nature of the present.”

    — Wyndham Lewis, “Understanding Media” p 65

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  5. Marshall McLuhan

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  9. Quentin Fiore

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  11. Jerome Agel

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  14. 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
    1966 – 1975

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  15. 1960 1970 1980
    1962
    The Gutenberg Galaxy
    The Making of Typographic Man
    Marshall McLuhan
    Published by U of T Press
    1964
    Understanding Media
    The Extensions of Man
    Marshall McLuhan
    Published by McGraw-Hill

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  16. 1960 1970 1980
    1962
    The Gutenberg Galaxy
    The Making of Typographic Man
    Marshall McLuhan
    Published by U of T Press
    1964
    Understanding Media
    The Extensions of Man
    Marshall McLuhan
    Published by McGraw-Hill
    1967
    The Medium is the Massage
    An Inventory of Effects
    Marshall McLuhan
    Published by Bantam Books
    1968
    War and Peace
    in the Global Village
    Marshall McLuhan
    Published by Bantam Books
    1970
    I Seem to be a Verb
    R. Buckminster Fuller
    Published by Bantam Books

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  17. 1960 1970 1980
    1962
    The Gutenberg Galaxy
    The Making of Typographic Man
    Marshall McLuhan
    Published by U of T Press
    1964
    Understanding Media
    The Extensions of Man
    Marshall McLuhan
    Published by McGraw-Hill
    1967
    The Medium is the Massage
    An Inventory of Effects
    Marshall McLuhan
    Published by Bantam Books
    1968
    War and Peace
    in the Global Village
    Marshall McLuhan
    Published by Bantam Books
    1970
    I Seem to be a Verb
    R. Buckminster Fuller
    Published by Bantam Books
    1973
    Herman Kahnsciousness
    Herman Kahn
    Published by Bantam Books
    1975
    Other Worlds
    Carl Sagan
    Published by Bantam Books
    1970
    Do It!
    Jerry Rubin
    Published by Bantam Books

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  18. McLuhan

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  19. 1960 1970 1980
    1972
    Take Today
    The Executive as Dropout
    Marshall McLuhan & Barrington Nevitt
    Published by Hartcourt-Brace
    1968
    Through the Vanishing Point
    Space in Poetry and Painting
    Marshall McLuhan & Harley Parker
    Published by Harper-Collins
    1969
    Counterblast
    Marshall McLuhan & Harley Parker
    Published by Hartcourt-Brace
    1970
    From Cliché
    to Archetype
    Marshall McLuhan
    with Wilfred Watson
    Published by Viking, NY

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  23. Our obsession with the book as the
    archetype of culture has not even
    encouraged us to consider the book
    itself as a peculiar and arty way of
    packaging experience.”

    — “Counterblast” p 93

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  24. The printed book had encouraged
    artists to reduce all forms of
    expression as much as possible to the
    single descriptive and narrative plane
    of the printed word.”

    — “Understanding Media” p 54

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  27. The Medium
    is the Massage
    An Inventory of Effects

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  28. a
    e
    M ssage

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  29. a
    e
    M ssage

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  30. a
    e
    M ss age

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  31. a
    e
    M ss age

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  52. war and
    peace
    in the
    global village

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  83. TODAY

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  84. Microserfs
    Douglas Coupland (1995)

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  88. The
    Brand
    Gap
    Marty Neumeier (2005)

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  93. WHATEVER
    YOU THINK
    THINK THE
    OPPOSITE.
    PAUL ARDEN, author of the
    world’s bestselling book
    Whatever
    You
    Think…
    Paul Arden (2006)

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  95. BACK TO THE FUTURE.
    7' 41⁄4
    " THE OLYMPIC RECORD 1968
    7'
    6'
    5'
    4'
    3'
    2'
    1'
    0'
    5' 8" THE OLYMPIC RECORD PRE-1968
    NTIL the Mexico Olympics of
    1968 the customary way for a
    high jumper to cross the bar was
    with his body parallel to it, in a
    technique known as the Western
    Roll. But that was about to
    change.
    A little-known athlete approached
    the bar, which was set at a world
    record height of 7ft 4¼ inches. He
    took off, but instead of turning his
    body towards the bar, he turned
    his back on it.
    He brought his legs up and ipped
    over the bar backwards.
    His name was Dick Fosbury, and
    his method of jumping became
    known as the Fosbury Flop. It is
    still used today.
    He jumped higher than any man
    before, by thinking the opposite
    from everyone else.
    This example is just a technique
    for thinking, but here the technique
    for thinking became a technique
    for jumping, turning a op into a
    success.
    U
    7

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  96. WHAT’S YOUR POINT OF VIEW?

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  102. When faced with a totally new situation,
    we tend always to attach ourselves to
    the objects, to the flavor of the most
    recent past. We look at the present
    through a rear view mirror. We march
    backwards into the future.”

    — “The Medium is the Massage” pages 74–75

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  103. The Electric
    Information
    Age Book
    By Jeffrey T. Schnapp
    and Adam Michaels
    Introduction by Steven Heller

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