So: electricity will cost five times as much and will be severely rationed. We won’t be able to support an industrial economy, but we can just buy everything from China. The standard of living will revert to a 1900 level. But we’ll have inspirational posters to make us feel good about it. And everything will be communal, except for the politically connected who will continue to live well, but that won’t be in the posters.
Fascination with the agitprop graphic style has been around since I studied advertising art and design many years ago. It started as a ginchy retro smirk, then graduated to a mainstream but clueless reference with Shepard Fairy et al, now it’s accepted by a generation of Americans as something vaguely cool with no context. When I was a kid, soviet and communist poster art was a standing joke, we laughed at the phony sincerity and obvious play-on-emotions of the visuals. Like old advertising that showed a doctor smoking and quoting “Camel calms your nerves”, the art was served up for ridicule instead of inspiration. Now designers mimic it without any critical reservations. To sum up, these modern graphic artists are dangerously clueless and under-informed.