How Governments Use Design & Propaganda to Control You

Source: How Governments Use Design & Propaganda to Control You, Design Theory, 42:20, uploaded 2024-02-17, Watch Later position 983.

John Mauriello opens with a coin. Wheat ears on its face refer to prosperity, a symbol that reaches back to ancient Rome, whilst Abraham Lincoln’s portrait continues the older practice of placing rulers on currency. The object sits in a pocket and turns up in an ordinary transaction, which makes its political meaning easy to miss. Mauriello treats that quiet reminder of state authority as a model for the whole subject. Design can carry a political message through objects that appear too familiar to deserve attention.

He defines propaganda as the spread of ideas that shapes public opinion for a political group or cause. Advertising aims at a purchase, whilst propaganda aims at a belief, although both use similar methods. The most effective examples work below the level of conscious attention. Products, buildings, state-funded art, public-service announcements, typefaces, and documents can all give government or ideology a visible form.

Currency, scribes, and the marks of authority

Ancient rulers needed scribes for more than recordkeeping. Different scripts marked kingdoms and official functions, and their elaborate forms made royal commands difficult to imitate. A scribe could spend years refining a distinctive hand that carried the authority of the ruler it served. Mauriello names Merovingian writing and English chancery hand as examples of documents whose form helped establish their royal origin.

The same logic appears in heraldic marks and banknotes. Ornate currency, prominent leaders, and difficult-to-copy details make authority present whilst also helping prevent counterfeiting. The design of a banknote therefore joins a practical security problem to a political message. Every time someone handles the money, a state symbol enters an otherwise unremarkable moment.

Typography makes the same claim through the structure of written language. Louis XIV commissioned the King’s Roman typeface from Philippe Grandjean, a project that began in 1692 and took more than fifty years to complete. Instead of following the irregular movement of handwriting, the typeface used a mathematical grid developed by a committee at the French Academy of Sciences. Grandjean then cut each letter by hand for a range of sizes and styles. Mauriello gives the resulting inventory as 4,264 capital and lowercase letters, alongside the punctuation marks.

The typeface was meant to embody the French monarchy’s authority. The source says that it remained the official royal typeface for more than 150 years, and that only royal printers could use it. Its precision made the monarchy’s order visible in every line of print. Garamond and Bodoni also carry royal or religious histories in Mauriello’s account. Bodoni designed his typeface for the Catholic Church’s Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, the institution whose name helped spread the word “propaganda” in the seventeenth century.

Ordinary forms and administrative violence

Words carry power, yet Mauriello argues that design gives collective stories a symbolic form that reaches beyond words. Once a society grows beyond a small group, it needs a shared account of its order. Modern financial and legal documents still use consistent typography and a formal appearance to signal trust and official status. Barcodes, RFID chips, and other newer devices have joined the older visual language of tablets, seals, and custom type.

The source then turns to an ordinary government form. It shows the incarceration documents of a Polish Jewish woman whose name the captions render as Haa Benan. The form records her physical features, name, and number after she was forced into a ghetto and later sent to an internment camp, where she worked as a seamstress. The video says that her final fate remains unknown.

The document appears almost undesigned. Mauriello reads that plainness as part of its function. A bureaucratic form can turn mass imprisonment into a routine administrative task, allowing a participant to see a human life as a set of fields and data points. The design does not need a dramatic symbol to support oppression. Its boring surface helps conceal the violence that the paperwork organises.

Mauriello connects this example to David Graeber’s discussion of the link between bureaucracy and violence. A missed court date or unpaid bill can still escalate into police intervention through the same chain of official authority. The source does not give the title or passage of Graeber’s work, so this remains a reference made in the video rather than a claim checked against the underlying text.

Constructivism and the approved reality

After the First World War, Russian Constructivists used abstract forms to propose a new social order. Their intersecting lines, strong colour contrasts, and visible energy were meant to carry a political message. They treated art as a practical tool for reshaping society, and they placed their hopes in technology, modern materials, machines, factories, and mass production. Mauriello presents that optimism alongside its later limits, since the working conditions of industrial production complicate the movement’s promise of progress.

Constructivism became politically dangerous once Stalin came to power. The Communist Party wanted art that represented ordinary people in a simple and realistic manner, and it labelled the abstract movement fanciful and decadent. The state then outlawed Constructivism and other avant-garde practices. The Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia called for a heroic realism that could present a unified, state-approved version of life.

Socialist Realism sounds like an account of actual reality, yet the source says that the government wanted to show its preferred reality. The style left little room for abstraction or formal experiment because the image had to communicate a simple collective vision. This change gives Mauriello one of his recurring links between design and power. A government can use an aesthetic to unify thought, then restrict the forms that might allow people to imagine another order.

Artists often depend on patrons, from Michelangelo’s church commissions to contemporary designers working for corporations. The Soviet Union made that dependence far more severe through imprisonment, exile, and death. Some avant-garde artists found refuge in the United States, where their work entered another political story. American institutions later used the language of their freedom and experimentation as evidence for the superiority of the West.

Bernays, consumerism, and the modern object

Mauriello introduces Edward Bernays as the theorist who made this American strategy explicit. In his book Propaganda, Bernays treats human beings as driven by irrational and animal desires. He sees the world wars as proof of that danger, then proposes directing those impulses towards consumerism. Advertising creates an inner desire, and a corporation sells the object that appears to satisfy it. Bernays calls this process the “engineering of consent”.

The video says that President Herbert Hoover embraced the plan and that consumerism became central to American life. Its political function, in Mauriello’s account, was to keep people docile and distracted whilst supporting economic activity. Bernays writes about the public as a herd that can be directed through propaganda, and the source presents his openness about the project as evidence that this is a historical programme rather than a hidden theory.

Two design conditions help the programme work. The first is mass production. A 1909 Ford Model T took about twelve hours to manufacture, whilst the 1914 version could be made in ninety-three minutes and sold for less than half the price. The second is modernist design, which sought simple, functional, affordable objects that could reach a large public. Mauriello argues that this good intention also supplied consumerism with a visual language and a production method.

The system depends on planned obsolescence. Cheap products are easier to replace, so a consumer economy can keep the cycle of purchase and disposal moving. The video points to smartphones that repeat small changes in shape and add features such as Dynamic Island to create the feeling of novelty. Mauriello’s criticism is aimed at the way modernism can flatten cultural difference into a neutral, widely acceptable object. He sees mid-century modern furniture as a beige visual language that makes the least offensive choice feel universal.

The object then becomes a ready-made identity. Nike shoes can suggest a sporty self, Allbirds can display environmental concern, and Doc Martens can signal rebellion. The source accepts that buying things can express a person and that consumer demand may have helped the American economy during the Great Depression. Its point concerns the political meaning that enters the purchase when a product promises a way of being.

The boundary between advertising and propaganda becomes difficult to hold once the State Department funds exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art. The products shown there were presented as evidence of American progress, creativity, and individual choice. Their diplomatic use turned everyday objects into symbols of capitalism’s cultural superiority over the Soviet Union. Soviet design carried its own national message, so the contrast between the two systems also contains a shared political purpose.

Cold War modernism

The same Cold War strategy reached abstract expressionism. Mauriello describes rumours that the US government funded artists such as Jackson Pollock, then gives a qualified account. The Tate Gallery could not fund an exhibition of avant-garde American work, so the American millionaire Julius Fleischmann and his Farfield Foundation supported it. The foundation had financial links to the CIA, and the Museum of Modern Art organised exhibitions that travelled through Europe.

The source does not claim that government officials understood abstract expressionism. It suggests that they saw a useful symbol in its refusal of conventional rules. The paintings could stand for individual freedom and creative independence because the Soviet state enforced Socialist Realism. American institutions therefore presented an art that many people disliked as evidence that American culture allowed forms that a communist government would suppress.

Weapons and the look of fear

Flags and national emblems often carry swords, shields, or firearms because weapons give fear a collective answer. They promise security against an unnamed enemy and turn the nation’s strength into a visual reassurance. The AR-15 shows how this symbolism can settle on an ordinary object and make it politically charged.

The rifle became familiar through television images of US soldiers in the Middle East. Firearms companies used its resemblance to military weapons to present it as the rifle of a hero. The sales language appealed to what one company executive called the “wannabe factor”, the wish to resemble a special-forces soldier. Dark materials, angular surfaces, and modular accessories add to the image of power. Mauriello connects the rifle’s jagged silhouette to the evolutionary associations of thorns, teeth, and stingers.

Function supports the same appeal. The rifle’s gas-operated action reduces recoil, and its smaller-calibre ammunition makes it comfortable to fire. Its accessories also allow owners to customise it. Sales rose as gun-control arguments grew more intense. The source quotes Grover Norquist describing purchases as an “F.U. to the left”, and it notes that Republican politicians wore rifle pins on their lapels. It gives a figure of more than twenty million AR-15-style weapons in American ownership by late 2021, roughly fifty times the number twenty-five years earlier.

Mauriello compares the AR-15 with the Ruger Mini-14, a rifle he describes as functionally similar and less politically polarising because it has a wooden stock and a conventional hunting-rifle appearance. The design difference gives the objects different meanings. In this account, the AR-15’s form helped turn a weapon into a political icon, whilst the political conflict then intensified the meaning of the form.

Shock, contrast, and counter-propaganda

Shock demands attention. A First World War recruitment poster of Lord Kitchener pointing towards the viewer made use of new colour printing and a composition whose eyes and finger seem to follow a person across the room. Mauriello argues that the image had greater force for viewers who had seen less visual propaganda than people living with constant screens. The poster’s repeated copies, including the American Uncle Sam version, show how quickly a striking design can become a political template.

John Heartfield turns the same attention-grabbing method against fascism. His photomontages made him a threat to the German regime and placed him on the Gestapo’s most-wanted list. One image depicts wealthy elites as hyenas feeding on the destruction of war. The dark top hat and bright face create the strongest visual contrast, whilst the medal marked “For Profit” changes a military honour into an accusation. The hyena’s large scale overwhelms the human cost beneath it, so the viewer feels the relation between profit and suffering before reading a detailed explanation.

The image also shows the danger of counter-propaganda. Heartfield dehumanises his opponents and reduces a complex conflict to good and evil. That simplification can rally opposition to an authoritarian regime, yet it can also normalise the same manipulative tactics and weaken critical thought. Mauriello leaves the question open: using the enemy’s methods in the service of truth may still damage the moral grounds of the cause.

Napoleon and the authority of a flattering image

Jacques-Louis David’s portrait of Napoleon crossing the Alps supplies a second lesson in visual distortion. Napoleon sits upright on a calm horse whilst the animal’s anxious expression recedes behind him. A blue uniform, golden cloak, diagonal movement, and dramatic light make him the stable centre of the composition. The names Hannibal and Charlemagne appear beside his own, connecting the present ruler to legendary conquerors.

Napoleon rejected the need for an exact likeness. The source quotes his view that a portrait should convey the character of a great man, since genius matters more than the exact features. That position makes the purpose of the image clear. The painting gives Napoleon the historical role he wants to occupy, even though the crossing itself was more ordinary. Paul Delaroche’s later painting shows Napoleon travelling several days behind his army on a mule, wearing a dull coat and following a servant.

The two paintings set visual grandeur against a less flattering account of the event. Design turns a military journey into a story about authority, and the story can survive because the image supplies the feeling of truth. Mauriello treats this as a general property of propaganda. A picture can make an invented version of a person feel more reliable than a plain record.

Palazzo Braschi and the staged vote

The video closes its case studies at Palazzo Braschi in Rome, where the facade of Benito Mussolini’s face repeats the word “sì”, or “yes”. The design refers to the 1934 Italian election, in which voters could approve or reject a list of deputies chosen by the Fascist Grand Council. The ballot offered the appearance of a choice whilst leaving the composition of the list outside the voter’s control.

The repeated word confronts anyone approaching the voting place. Black lettering on white creates a hard contrast, and the orderly arrangement of the letters gives the wall an authoritarian rhythm. The simplified face of Mussolini leaves little room for empathy or doubt. Mauriello reads the repetition as a command that loses its ordinary meaning and becomes a pattern of obedience.

The ballot continued the pressure. The “yes” option used the colours of the Italian flag, whilst the “no” option came on plain brown paper. Voters had to hand their colour-coded choice to an election official, so their dissent was visible. The source reports 15,000 votes against the list and ten million in favour, a result of 99.84 percent. It accepts that the election may have been rigged, whilst arguing that the design could have produced obedience even without falsifying every ballot.

Palazzo Braschi makes architecture part of the act of voting. The facade, the word, the face, the paper, and the official who receives the ballot form one system. Its purpose is to make a political decision feel settled before a person has made it.

The limits of visual persuasion

Mauriello’s closing claim is that political regimes use design to project an image of unquestionable power. Custom typefaces, currency, monumental buildings, shocking posters, and politically charged objects hide the weakness of the institution behind a surface of permanence. He quotes his friend Kyle’s description of regimes as fragile, with a small crack capable of bringing the whole structure down.

The source points to attempts in the United States in December 2020 to mandate neoclassical architecture for government buildings. Mauriello reads the proposal as an effort to narrow cultural and intellectual expression, although the video gives no document or link for the claim. The example brings the subject into the present. Design still carries political choices through rules about what public authority should look like.

Art and design can express ideas that words cannot hold, including ideas of beauty and purity. That power carries a duty to examine the narratives that a form serves. The video’s final answer to propaganda is curiosity: look beyond the surface, ask who made the image, and keep the visual pleasure from settling the question of truth.

Limits

This note follows John Mauriello’s narration and the examples shown in the video. The historical figures, dates, vote totals, production times, firearm counts, institutional links, and political interpretations remain claims made by the source unless a reference is named below. The account of the Farfield Foundation’s CIA links and the Museum of Modern Art’s role needs archival checking before it can support a precise history of US cultural policy.

The captions contain errors in proper names and technical terms. I have restored recognisable spellings such as Edward Bernays, John Heartfield, Jacques-Louis David, Paul Delaroche, Philippe Grandjean, Palazzo Braschi, and the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. The woman’s name in the incarceration-document example remains unclear in the source. The video also uses humour and invented claims about surveillance horses during transitions. Those asides do no explanatory work here and are excluded.

Mauriello’s argument works through visual examples and historical associations. It shows how design can make authority feel ordinary, yet it does not establish that every object or style he discusses was created with a coordinated propaganda purpose. The distinction matters because a form can acquire political use after its designer’s intentions have changed. The source leaves that relation between intention, appropriation, and effect open.

Further reading / references

• Ruben Pater, CAPS LOCK: How capitalism took hold of graphic design, and how to escape from it, Valiz, 2021. The video’s description names it as one of its two main research sources.
• Roxane Jubert, Typography and Graphic Design: From Antiquity to the Present, Flammarion, 2006. The video’s description names it as the other main research source.
• Edward Bernays, Propaganda, named in the video without a linked edition.