Published by Victoria University Press in conjunction with the group's trust, it explains the WMC was a politically motivated graphic design and communications operation that stamped its mark on Wellington in the two decades from the late 1970s.
The participants were associated with left-wing politics, and tackled a broad range of social issues. WMC was founded at the end of 1978 ''to share media skills with groups and individuals so that they can get their message across more effectively.''
It began with 19 members. Their mission statement was: ''We will work with you, not for you.''
They were young designers and they produced many posters to carry strong messages. In one of the two essays in the book, Polly Cantlon says the group had a ''significant impact'' on three major success stories in New Zealand activism: the anti-apartheid movement, notably opposition to the 1981 Springbok tour, the campaign against nuclear testing in the Pacific, legislated in 1987, and the Maori rights movement.
They also tackled many other hot political and social potatoes; the posters from 1978 to 1998 were sometimes ugly or crude, and mostly shrieked out messages. It is a form of art that is hard to admire but can produce results, as activists have found before in many countries.
This book has lavished examples of these posters (more than 250) as well as some screen- prints in two large sections of colour plates, as well as some monochrome reproductions in a final section with some thoughtful text.
It has been designed rather like an extravagant shout from the group to its public, but fallen into a few traps on the way. The thickness of its 236 large-format pages (in glossy white and dull fawn paper) and its tight binding make it very difficult to open this book flat without breaking the spine.
And the inside gutters of the pages are too narrow, making it hard to wrestle with to read the edge of the inner column of text - also ruining the effect of a double-page illustration spread on pages 32-3. So a black mark to the designers there!
- Geoff Adams is a former editor of the Otago Daily Times.
