Developing Design Discourse in Soviet Print Media: A Case Study Comparing Estonia and Lithuania, 1959–1968

Abstract

This essay analyzes the different serial publications that disseminated design knowledge in the Baltic States between 1959 and 1968, in order to understand the mediation of “design” as a developing discipline in local print media. The essay compares two Soviet peripheral states, Estonia and Lithuania, for a better understanding of the variations and similarities between different and local design cultures. It demonstrates that, although the two states had their own distinctive design systems, which manifested in the structure of the publications, these design publications mirrored similar structures of modernization. Relevant information was presented in ways dependent on their intended audiences. For specialists, Western information was presented in a balanced and direct manner, whereas in articles written for the general public, modernism was mediated either via abstract guidelines that referred to the need to be “contemporary” or through references to European Socialist material culture.