I received this query from a student:
Do you believe that graphic design can or should have a role to play within society?
Of course, it can, should and does. But often that role is to simply support our consumption of products. Here is an elaborate selling tool, illustrated, designed and printed at no small cost. It is a fan given to customers as a sales premium during the hot summer of the pre-Depression late 1920s.
It is also a page out of consumerist history. A lily white store, “sanitary” meat and poultry, women the primary consumers, men the principal retailers, and a little girl learning the ropes. Every picture tells a story, don’t it?