Design Like Mad |

One of my earlier influences of design may seem to be an unlikely source, but growing up in a little town during the 50′s and 60′s, I had an unsettling feeling of incongruity. On the surface everything seemed quite normal. We kids caught lightning bugs in old mayonnaise jars with holes punched in the lid, while at school we practiced “duck and cover” drills in the event of a nuclear attack. We were raised on The Mickey Mouse Club yet beyond the facade of “apple pie” existed the beat counterculture of Lenny Bruce and Kerouac. The pretense of the times seemed outwardly to go unnoticed by the adults around us. Parents whispered quietly about the truths of the day in an attempt to safeguard us from the fearful realities of The Cold War and later the assassinations of JFK, Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King. This protective exclusion made these events seem even more alarming. To clarify the underlying meaning of the happenings going on around me, I turned to the resources of Mad Magazine. Mad Magazine was for me a symbol of a world beyond my small town and its printed parody of the things I quietly worried about was a catharsis. The fun of a Mad Fold-In (an early example of interactive media), the silly antics of Spy VS. Spy, and the irreverent parody of loveable characters of mainstream media are what Mad Magazine did best for American culture and in turn design. Mad Magazine demonstrates that media, through smart humor and audacity, can impact society by shedding light on its absurdities and its ills.