Annotation Our culture is dominated by the visual. Yet most writing on design reflects a narrowpreoccupation with products, biographies, and design influences. Maud Lavin approaches design fromthe broader field of visual culture criticism, asking challenging questions about about who reallyhas a voice in the culture and what unseen influences affect the look of things designers produce. Lavin shows how design fits into larger questions of power, democracy, and communication. Manycorporate clients instruct designers to convey order and clarity in order to give their companiesthe look of a clean new world. But since designers cannot clean up messy reality, Lavin shows, theyoften end up simply veiling it. Lacking the power to influence the content of their commercial work, many designers work simultaneously on other, more fulfilling projects. Lavin is especiallyinterested in the graphic designer's role in shaping cultural norms. She examines the anti-Nazipropaganda of John Heartfield, the modernist utopian design of Kurt Schwitters and the neue ringwerbegestalter, the alternative images of women by studio ringl + pit, the activist work of suchcontemporary designers as Marlene McCarty and Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, and the Internetinnovations of David Steuer and others. Throughout the book, Lavin asks how designers can expand thepleasure, democracy, and vitality of communication.