The Presenter
Garry Lavin is an innovator, designer and craftsman, with a dry sense of humour and a quick wit. He's got an extraordinary talent for making complicated concepts simple, and fantastic drawing and graphic design skills which really bring his illuminating explanations to life. He has brought the story of the popular art and mark-making to life in colleges and universities for many years.
Students of design and advertising have benefited from Garry's unique insight and his practical skills in this area for many years. With his enthusiasm and energy, his know-how and his knowledge, he is ideally suited to presenting this hands-on series.

The Series
Although primarily exploring the mechanics of art, design and communication, the series forms a social history of a subject that has always exerted major influence over society and today drives the world.
Throughout history, civilisations have displayed power, status and influence through graphic images and symbols. These elements have been with us since prehistoric times. High-tech, contemporary and sophisticated uses of visual information and images have surprisingly evolved from simple crafts and still contain elements of design and meaning from the earliest times. The series will encompass the earliest forms of symbols through to contemporary developments in the production and consumption of image based media.

The Format
Garry will explore cave paintings at Lascaeux and uncover Celtic symbols that influence cultures from Ireland to Siberia - the prehistoric origins of visual information. He will show the connections between ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and the earliest forms of the written word. He will carve ancient texts in stone and recreate the earliest forms of mass produced images and information. He will sketch battle scenes in the Crimean War and then ride to London to engrave printing plates. He will re-print the first photographs to depict scenes of war (American Civil War) and paint glass lantern-slides to publicise the wonders of the Victorian British Empire. By drawing and exploring the world of entertainment, Garry will show how the earliest comics were influenced by fairground art and they in turn influenced camera angles in the emerging film industry. He will go on to produce storyboards and animations using traditional and emerging methods.
He will recreate in paint and carving, the colourful coats-of-arms that were once the basis of an international system that not only identified friend and foe but also outlined the structure of society across Europe. Garry will show how this power was harnessed by the Nazis who used ancient Roman symbols to create perhaps the world's most powerful advertising campaign.
Along the way Garry will introduce us to classic ad campaigns.
We will navigate our way through a complex world, helped by classic maps, signs, instructions, international symbols and new technology.

Sample Programme: Programme One - Power and Influence
Whether citizens of a state or members of a club, we are all aware of symbols of authority or identity. The NAZI coporate identity susumed Germany. Who hasn't recoiled at the sight of the Royal crown on a brown envelope? Thousands brandish the 'crests' of favourite football teams every week while others stick the flags of their home nations in the windows of their cars. This is the world of Heraldry, with its own language and social order, which, at its height in the Middle Ages, marked the identity of rulers and their inter-related families across Europe, often using symbols from Greek, Norse and Eastern mythology. This has evolved and absorbed general imagery to create the Logo, which becomes the perceived public identity of companies and organisations globally.
From illiterate age to international age, symbols are identifiable across the world and are integral to power and communication.

Programme Two - Mass Communication
Prior to the invention of the printing press and the growth of reading, the Church spread its message through the medium of stained-glass windows - spectacular backlit popular art depicting Biblical scenes. This changed with the advent of printing - Garry will demonstrate by carving stone tablets, how the ancient Greek and Romans gave us the shape of type we use today in books and computer screens. The extra flourishes of the chisel gave us serifs. These serifs kept the letters 'crisp' in early printing - even after thousands of prints. When small metal type was used to print books and newspapers, serifs were the first things to wear away, so the type stayed legible for a huge print run. The overall shape of the letters was also determined by the Greeks - by conforming to the system of proportion known as 'The Golden Section' - Garry will show how this is the basis of much of our architecture and design. 'Modernist' artists and designers at the dawn of the 20th. Century produced new clean letters for a new age - but they kept the same proportions. In turn - these styles lend themselves to the pixels in computer screens (newspapers now with supplements on CD) and giant headlines on billboards.

Programme Three - Entertainment
Using his experience of fairground sign-painting and decoration, Garry will show how games and rides were decorated with images from the popular Art of the day, which in turn was derived from 'Fine' Art - visual storytelling in an age without electronic media. Garry will paint glass slides to produce a 'magic-lantern' show - the forerunner of cinema. He will emulate the early comic strips and show how these influenced film camera angles. From his own storyboards, he will design sets and create models for stop-frame animation. We will see the development of computer games from simple animated logos to fully interactive 3-D imagery.

Programme Four - Finding Your Way
Britain's road signs were completely revamped with a specially designed, easily read typeface and a logical system of symbols and colours in the 1960's. Although part of the design revolution, it owed much of its 'grammar' to the mould-braking Underground map of the 1920's - the definitive example of clear, attractive information design. With global travel and trade we have returned to an age where symbols diagrams are a major form of communication, whether for furniture assembly, operating the video or simply using the right public toilet. Garry works with designers and ergonomists on ideal communication solutions - and how we 'read' products such as car dashboards.

Programme Five - Selling
Since the 19th. Century, merchandising has provided the most fertile ground for each new printing technique and graphic innovation - from enamel shop signs and printed tin-cans. The psychology of labelling and advertising. We see classic brands and ad campaigns.