Culture is your local consensus reality; your clothing, cuisine and hairstyle, the music you listen to, the films you see; your values, ideas, beliefs and prejudices. Culture, unlike race, is not quite an inevitability of birth, but ultimately, in its choice of statements, an intellectual position. Today culture has a powerful new vector: the internet. Ideas--from a YouTube video to a viral marketing phenomenon or a fundamentalist religion--are travelling further and faster, and changing the cultural landscape like never before. In a new electronic democracy of ideas, cultural power is devolving to the creative individual. Amid our symbol-drenched existences, we desperately need a way of decoding the messages that bombard us. Written and designed by author and artist Rian Hughes, and sporting such design features as a faux-leather cover, die-cuts and tip-ins, Cult-ure is the culmination of a decade's research into why and how we communicate. Revealing how ideas are transmitted through words, symbols and gestures, how such ideas gain cultural currency via the theory of the meme, this book provides a provocative exploration into media convergence within our digital age and an insider's guide into the changing nature of communications, perceptions and identities; it is the twenty-first century's answer to Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore's seminal graphic collaboration The Medium Is the Massage (which punned on McLuhan's famous motto "the medium is the message" to suggest the ways in which media directly tweaks our sensorium). Cult-ure is a guide to surviving the new media revolution.
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"Rian Hughes is a culture-maven/documentarian par excellence; his scouring of the pop culture terrain in 'CULT-URE' is stimulating and poetic...bound to provoke and inspire." - Steven Heller
About the Author
Rian Hughes is an award-winning graphic designer, illustrator, comic artist, logo designer and typographer. He studied graphic design at the London College of Printing before working for an advertising agency, 'i-D' magazine and a series of record sleeve design companies. In 1994, he founded his own studio, Device, and has since worked with a wide range of international clients in publishing, advertising, music and fashion. He has also worked extensively for the British and American comic book industries, both as artist and designer. "One of the most successful and prolific British designer-illustrators of the past 20 years." - Roger Sabin, 'Eye' magazine
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Imitation Leather
One of the most fun and insightful books I have ever read!
I would recommend this to people who are interested in communication of ideas. And that is most of us! It is also a book for those who want an example of a totally new type of book!
My first idea was that I should underline all the significant statements, as I usually do. I immediately encountered several deep ideas. But then I discovered a problem. I would have to underline 99% of all the statements! The book is filled with one worthy observation after the other, many on each page. No fluff. This book does not waste your time. It gets right to the points. I love the stream of interesting insights.
Friends who have looked at my copy have the same reaction, Wow! I want to read this after you are done. Some of us are directly envious about the fun graphics quality, which is a dominant part of the book. We wish we could write a `management' book in this exciting style. The graphics are well designed, and make the absorption of the deep points an extra pleasure. I guess it has not been economic to make books a colourful as this earlier, so we built up habits of mainly-text books. Times are changing. This is a book for people who love their iPhone! Who love great and useful design. Books will never be the same, and other books look distinctly boring by comparison!
I would recommend this to people who are interested in communication of ideas. And that is most of us! It is also a book for those who want an example of a totally new type of book!
My first idea was that I should underline all the significant statements, as I usually do. I immediately encountered several deep ideas. But then I discovered a problem. I would have to underline 99% of all the statements! The book is filled with one worthy observation after the other, many on each page. No fluff. This book does not waste your time. It gets right to the points. I love the stream of interesting insights.
Friends who have looked at my copy have the same reaction, Wow! I want to read this after you are done. Some of us are directly envious about the fun graphics quality, which is a dominant part of the book. We wish we could write a `management' book in this exciting style. The graphics are well designed, and make the absorption of the deep points an extra pleasure. I guess it has not been economic to make books a colourful as this earlier, so we built up habits of mainly-text books. Times are changing. This is a book for people who love their iPhone! Who love great and useful design. Books will never be the same, and other books look distinctly boring by comparison!
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Imitation Leather|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book is staggeringly amazing, cool, informative, mind opening and beautifully designed to boot. 10 stars, plus bonus extra credit points. Highest possible recommendation.
0 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By Nima
Format:Imitation Leather|Amazon Verified Purchase
It was a steal for the book! These usually run about 30-50 dollars! although I haven't actually cracked open the book [which I'm sure it will be somewhat boring, simply because it's a course book!] it is as it says "new" and it was even packaged up nicely! Came in the nick of time too! This is a steal~
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