A Study Of The Visual Rhetoric Of Poster Design In The Federal Republic Of Germany (1949-1990)

This dissertation traces the threads of the visual rhetoric of poster design in the Federal Republic of Germany from the perspective of the history of graphic design,tracing and extending it around the potential question of how the poster,as a persuasive visual text,was influenced by the cultural conditions of the post-industrial society of the Federal Republic of Germany,and how this rhetorical action of pictorial space was effective in the communication of popular culture.This dissertation begins by giving a macro-historical structure of poster design in the Federal Republic of Germany based on a chronological division model.The chronology of posters reveals that,under the post-World War II market economy and the general trend towards economic globalisation,poster design in the Federal Republic of Germany effectively enhanced the country’s commercial communication and mass consumption,while producing an international image of modern German pacifism.At the same time,with the widespread rise of social-critical movements in the 1960 s and 1970 s,the Federal German posters,based on the moral stance of the New Left,on the one hand questioned the legitimacy of the mainstream social consciousness of consumerism and showed the critical spirit of youth culture;on the other hand,they criticised and reflected on old and new ethical issues such as environmental pollution,nuclear proliferation and the Nazi past.Thus,the commercial discourse oriented towards mainstream consumers and the critical discourse oriented towards social contradictions simultaneously constituted the historical theme of the posters of the Federal Republic of Germany until the reunification of the two Germanies in 1990.At the same time,this dissertation examines the rhetorical grammar,rhetorical discourse and rhetorical culture of representative cases of posters from the Federal Republic of Germany between 1949 and 1990,based on a ’visual rhetorical analysis model’.The analysis of rhetorical grammar provides an intuitive understanding of the formal and semantic inner structure of the Bundesrepublik Deutschland posters,as well as of the semantic-graphic relationship between headlines and illustrations.The analysis of rhetorical discourse further explores the patterns of meaning,the phenomena of metaphor and metonymy,the imagery,the iconography,the frames and the ways in which pictorial arguments are embedded in the visual rhetoric of the Bundesrepublik Deutschland posters.The analysis of rhetorical culture enables the deeper logic of power and politics in the poster images of the Federal Republic of Germany to be deciphered.The dissertation extends the evolution of poster design from macro chronological narratives to micro case narratives of poster visual rhetoric.The visual rhetoric of the Federal German posters is thus found to encompass the unity of the aesthetic,critical consciousness and consumer culture of the times.