Designing a Dictatorship

I have been recently suggested to read the book Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea by American journalist Barbara Demick (2014). She collected a series of stories which were told to her by North Koreans who had defected. I felt ashamed about how little I knew about it. After some research, I could not stop thinking about tangible parallelism between North Korean and other regimes. In fact, if there is something totalitarian states have in common, is the way they ‘brand’ their dictatorships. Graphic design always played a crucial role in this process: in fact, posters, postcards and other relevant distribution methods have always been in the centre of political propaganda. But while many dictatorships happened and ended almost a century ago and they have been studied and analysed by many, North Korea is mostly a mystery. The lack of information about its dictatorship is notable, and it is often not possible to receive non-filtered news from the country.