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Socialist art in IT marketing |
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Marketers of Technology are turning to cold war socialist and communist images to promote their products. Associations are particularly strong in the open source community, but larger, older companies are following the trend. Compare the glorified, muscular Dutch Worker with the hammer-wielding red-aproned smithy of the Activestate website.It's a renaissance in socialist and communist art in the high-tech sector. In stark contrast to the 3d animated gifs which abounded in the late 90s, today websites are turning to thick lines, flat colours and artistic styles which haven't been popular since the early days of colour printing. Not only style, but content is tending toward older socialist designs. Is it accident that the hammer, symbol of labour, also appears in the OSDN (open source development network) sourceforge site? The factories in the background of the Mozilla homepage may be homage to the cathedrals of the workers. Red Hat, perhaps making an intentional link to the red flag, uses red extensively throughout it's packaging and promotion. Again the poster-style of large areas of solid colour is used. The Anti-Microsoft site KMFMS (kein mitleid für MicroSoft) has helped popularise artists like Brute. Brute's style combines elements of poster-printing of the 40s and 50s with comic art and wartime imagery.  The links are obvious even in more traditional companies. Notice the heroic poses of the characters adorning the cisco web site. It's difficult to miss the similarities to this Russian propaganda poster. Throughout the cisco site, the heroic poses of The defenders of Sebastapol are echoed.Perhaps this revival indicates a new interest in socialist principles; a revolution lead by the technologically elite. On the other hand, this may be an example of one culture absorbing another as the rubble of communism in Europe and Russia is absorbed into western aesthetics. For an interesting discussion with more examples (and counterexamples!), see Kuro5hin. You may also be interested in my collection of Czech Communist art. For someone who seems to have taken this concept way too far, see Mozilla: the Imagery. - Boldra
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 boldra.com net.bruno.net |