41 21st Century Ireland

The political climate from which these objects emerged is paramount in contextualising their visual messages. Economic failure had positioned Ireland in marked contrast to the fast-recovering economies of postSecond World War Europe and intense scrutiny of the economic failings of nation-building crystallised the Irish government’s decision to apply for EEC membership in 1961. As Minister for Industry and Commerce for some 21 years between 1932 and 1959, the influence of Fianna Fáil’s Seán Lemass is hugely significant to this study. While his support for the economic policies of Department of Finance Secretary T.K.Whitaker, from 1958 onwards, has been well documented, his understanding of how design practice supports economic activity, particularly with regard to the international promotion of Irish goods and services, has been less fully explored. In fact Lemass’s acknowledgement of such extends back as far as 1937, when he established a committee ‘to advise on matters affecting the design and decorations of articles’, and O’Neill was well-known to have Fianna Fáil connections. Unsurprisingly, the decision to employ Dutch design expertise to work on the account of what Lemass considered was the achievement ‘for which he would like to be remembered’, coincides with his return as minister to the office of tourism and minister of finance

for Aer Lingus. As the decade progressed, these designers worked for many tourism-related companies including Bord Fáilte and John Hinde, in addition to working for a host of indigenous companies, including Guinness and RTÉ. They were also active in promoting the advertising industry which continued to expand with the establishment of the Institute of Creative Advertising in 1958 (now ICAD). As a flag carrier, and thus, official agent of state, Aer Lingus became hugely significant in how Ireland and Irish design were viewed internationally. It became a locus for the promotion of quality Irish goods as exemplified by the design of crew uniforms, the examples of Irish ceramics, glass and textiles used in its service provision, and its promotion of Irish design in the pages of its in-flight magazine, Cara. This visual timeline covers the periods of Modernism to Postmodernism and various design styles and influences contained with in each era and shows how interactions of style and influences relate to each other. This poster is a visual representation of major design milestones of the 20th and early part of the 21st century and identifies key design practitioners active and influential in each important decade.

It identifies the multidisciplinary nature of design and highlights major design disciples including: Vehicle Design; Architecture; Product & Industrial Design and Visual Communication & Graphic Design. This is a infographic charts design’s relationship with culture and history. Literature from national and international sources were investigated in order to develop a multidisciplinary approach in identify key moments in design history and how this relates to current world and national historical events, and events within poplar culture. These influences are mapped against key design artefacts of the period and how colour is utilised within each decade. The time line looks at design in both an international and and Irish context and charts key design moments from the foundation of the state right up to the Year once visualised, patterns themes and influences can be identified. Notably, from an international view, the Influence of Dieter Rams’ work on Jonathan Ive and how in Ireland, government reports on the design sector had lead to representation and action within industry. The example here of Scandinavian report in 1962 which led to the foundation of Kilkenny Design Workshop in 1963 and Enterprise Ireland’s Opportunities in Design in 1999 led to Design Ireland being founded a year later. One such example is the Aer Lingus travel bag owned by Frank Aiken while he was Minister for External Affairs (1957-69). This is a family-owned object, of deep personal significance, but

Industry and Commerce in 1951. Significantly, it also came two years after the publication of the Report on the Arts in Ireland by Thomas Bodkin (former Director of the National Gallery of Ireland), which, in a scathing assessment of the links between art and industry in Ireland, singled out Irish tourism advertising for particular criticism, stating that: Both design and typography are unusually neglected in modern Ireland. So, I would suggest that a few outstanding foreign firms... should be given the opportunity to re-design and re-set, according to their own high standards, some half dozen of the existing folders, if only to provide models for Irish productions. Within this timeframe also, the Department of Industry and Commerce published The Synthesis of Reports on Tourism, 1950–51. More commonly known as the Christenberry Report, it formally acknowledged the Irish tourism industry as an under–exploited source of potential revenue.[13] The report authored under Daniel Morrissey, Minister of Industry and Commerce in the Inter–Party Government but supported by his successor, Lemass made observations and recommendations about the industry as a whole and reflected contemporary American political discourse on Irish economic development in the wake of Ireland’s receipt of Marshall Aid funding. Placing particular emphasis on advertising and promotional activities to attract the lucrative US market, it was highly critical of the existing provision and stated that both public and private agencies the Irish Tourist Board and Irish Tourist Association respectively were ‘completely inadequate to handle the important mission to which they are assigned that of actively promoting tourism to Ireland from abroad’. By 1951 Lemass was fully convinced of the importance of tourism development to Ireland’s economic future. Addressing a public gathering in Cork he stated that tourism ‘ranked second only to agriculture as the nation’s most important industry’, suggesting that it was ‘big business’ on which the country’s welfare depended but it ‘could be made much bigger business’. The Christenberry Report made many suggestions as to how potential tourists might be targeted through specific references, including the friendliness of the people, castles and fishing, and such suggestions are directly reflected in the objects scrutinised here.[16] As a representative example of Aer Lingus’s advertising output these reveal the duality of the company’s role at this time, where, in a climate of mass emigration and unemployment, its position as transportation agent was often subordindated to its responsibility as de facto tourist authority. Aer Lingus’s dependence on indigenous tourism development marks it as different to other European airlines of the period,

Significantly, it also came two years after the publication of the Report on the Arts in Ireland by Thomas Bodkin (former Director of the National Gallery of Ireland), which, in a scathing assessment of the links between art and industry in Ireland, singled out Irish tourism advertising for particular criticism, stating that: Both design and typography are unusually neglected in modern Ireland. So, I would suggest that a few outstanding foreign firms... should be given the opportunity to re-design and re-set, according to their own high standards, some half dozen of the existing folders, if only to provide models for Irish productions. Within this timeframe also, the Department of Industry and Commerce published The Synthesis of Reports on Tourism, 1950–51. More commonly known as the Christenberry Report, it formally acknowledged the Irish tourism industry as an under–exploited source of potential revenue.[13] The report authored under Daniel Morrissey, Minister of Industry and Commerce in the Inter–Party Government but supported by his successor, Lemass made observations and recommendations about the industry as a whole and reflected contemporary American political discourse on Irish economic development in the wake of Ireland’s receipt of Marshall Aid funding. Placing particular emphasis on advertising and promotional activities to attract the lucrative US market, it was highly critical of the existing provision and stated that both public and private agencies the Irish Tourist Board and Irish Tourist Association respectively were ‘completely inadequate to handle the important mission to which they are assigned that of actively promoting tourism to Ireland from abroad’. By 1951 Lemass was fully convinced of the importance of tourism development to Ireland’s economic future. Addressing a public gathering in Cork he stated that tourism ‘ranked second only to agriculture as the nation’s most important industry’, suggesting that it was ‘big business’ on which the country’s welfare depended but it ‘could be made much bigger business’. The Christenberry Report made many suggestions as to how potential tourists might be targeted through specific references, including the friendliness of the people, castles and fishing, and such suggestions are directly reflected in the objects scrutinised here.[16] As a representative example of Aer Lingus’s advertising output these reveal the duality of the company’s role at this time, where, in a climate of mass emigration and unemployment, its position as transportation agent was often subordindated to its responsibility as de facto tourist authority. Aer Lingus’s dependence on indigenous tourism development marks it as different to other European airlines, and the complexity of the

It is thanks to the architects, designers and illustrators who have provided tangible evidence in the form of objects, that the Irish people and those beyond Irish borders, know the values of the Irish but more importantly, know the answer to the question - ‘who are we’.” “

airline’s role in promoting both its services, and Irish tourist development more generally, reflects specific national circumstances. Comments by Aer Lingus’s general manager, J.F. Dempsey, in 1958 are particularly revealing in this regard. In comparing the strategies of the Irish airline in targeting the lucrative US market he stated: Other European airlines in some advertising and publicity carry no reference to the attractions of their own countries. Alitalia sell Tel Aviv, Swissair sell Cologne, BOAC/BEA sell Brussels and so on. But these airlines do so because the primary promoters of tourist traffic in those countries have in the first instance created the desire in American minds to visit their countries while the airlines are meeting the demand and incidentally playing a useful but secondary role in promoting additional traffic. Clear distinction between the airline

Rural West

and the tourist authorities was further confused by the frequent use of the same pool of Dutch designers, while the practice within the sector of jointly commissioning promotional material and the shared operation of tourist bureaux in certain countries became commonplace. Melai’s poster stylistically and compositionally follows Henry in dividing the poster into two distinct parts: text and image. In such examples the image is treated as an independent painting that text is added adjacent to, but usually not integrated with, reflecting the appropriation of the image from a fine art to commercial context. While Henry favoured unpopulated landscapes or the subordination of human activity to the geographical drama of the sublime landscape, Melai’s image focuses on a single figure. In presenting a specific aspect of rural life on the western seaboard, which had, by the 1950s, become emblematic of discourses of tradition and ethnicity, the poster can be read as reflecting discourses of exoticism, premodernity and difference recognisable to both internal and external audiences and thus exemplifies Eric Cohen’s definition of ‘native’ people as ‘indigenous, minority groups of a country, which are generally believed to enjoy a significant degree of separate ethnic, cultural or social identity.’ The visualisation of cultural difference is of particular relevance here, as the poster was commissioned to coincide with the launch of An Tóstal in 1953, the ‘Festival of the Welcomes’, aimed at targeting the Irish- American diaspora. The image is a deliberate attempt to visualise an ‘Irish national costume’ reflecting the growing export market for Aran sweaters in the US while simultaneously reflecting the author’s self-professed love of the west. Yet, read as a synecdoche for Ireland in a more general sense, the twoversions of the poster, one customised by Aer Lingus to include an aeroplane screen-printed across the top and the other for Fogra Fáilte without, infer oppositional meanings, simultaneously suggesting that Ireland can provide both an antidote to and engagement with modernity. As with many Aer Lingus publicity images the poster effectively demonstrates Luke Gibbons’ thesis that tradition does not exclusively reside in the past. IWhen customised by Aer Lingus the image demonstrates a strategy that Jeffrey Meikle has identified within European and US airline ephemera of the inter-war period where modernity is placed within a ‘historical continuum linking past, present and future naturalizing modernity and neutralizing its strangeness’ and alleviating fears of social disruption.In synthesising the twin abstractions that Geertz has identified as epochalism and essentialism, this poster demonstrates how Aer Lingus straddled a fine line between facilitating