Pressing Buttons: Kodak, Advertising Psychotechnics, and the Politics of Graphic Design, c. 1915

Abstract

This essay focuses on a print advertising campaign that the Eastman Kodak Company launched in 1912 to promote the services of studio photographers. Examining period conceptions of mental picturing, the social and racial dimensions of design, and print media as an extension of the scientific laboratory, I argue that the open layouts of the series establish consumer imagination as the fundamental advertising apparatus. By reconceiving what the print advert could do, and sacrificing illustration in the layout so that a more personal and powerful impression could emerge, Kodak’s advertising department made the advert a thought machine every bit as complex as the company’s most advanced imaging technologies.