Today's media and today's brands promote a global landscape of symbols, only to see them re-animated, re-appropriated, and made personal by an explosive popular culture. This extraordinary boxed set of nine illustrated volumes, each created by an avant-garde designer or design company, explains the desires and fantasies, the aspirations and the commitments of the new "visual generation." Experience, lifestyle, and identity are now expressed through media-disseminated symbols. Lara Croft or Calvin Klein, McDonald's or Netscape, The X-Files or Star Wars--all evoke images of individual desire. Each of the nine volumes in Symbol Soup takes on a different theme--gaining enlightenment through The Mix, seeing how Digital Characters operate as scouts for the future, how the past forgot to die in Retro, or what emissaries from tomorrow's world will make of today in Random Access. Body adornment and mutilation is about reclaiming the body, religion has become Spirituality, Aliens embody a modern mythology, fashion icons can be transformed into a new Look, and everyone can find a profile that is exactly You. Symbol Soup provides the key to youth culture for anyone involved with the media, design, fashion, graphics, popular culture, and marketing. Read Less