Steven Heller is a former hippie who went to military school, an ad design geek who dreamt of flying fighter jets, and a New York liberal taken with political pageantry. From this nest of contradictions grew "Iron Fists," Heller's new book about another unexpected convergence: fascism and graphic design. It's his 120th book or so (a shelf in his SVA office sags with past work -- "that's just some of it," he says) and it's been in his head for years.

"When I was a hippie I wore an old German army uniform -- with an ascot -- and one day this woman started yelling at me," he said. "It wasn't a Nazi uniform, and I was wearing it for different reasons, but you have to understand the power of these symbols."

The book tells the history of Nazism, Italian Fascism, and Soviet and Chinese Communism through their branding strategies -- how they designed, advertised, and symbolized their political identity.

"A symbol's only as good" -- or as evil -- "as what it represents," Heller explained. While Mussolini and his followers plastered Italy with the fascio (a bundle of sticks and an ax head symbolizing republicanism during the French revolution) two hung in Congress. They're still there, but the swastika is banned in Germany -- and rightly so, says Heller -- because its ties to Nazism are still so strong.

"If there was no Holocaust, if Hitler had never gone to war, he would've been just another well-branded leader," Heller said. That's an understatement. Just thumb through the hundreds of posters, pamphlets, flags, and fliers and it's clear that Stalin, Mao, Hitler, and Mussolini obsessed over how their regimes looked. Mussolini's minister of propaganda quipped that he "believes that form...determines substance."

For Hitler, the swastika was just the beginning. Nazi design flooded German life, from massive choreographed spectacles down to the way sympathizers spoke (the one-armed salute replaced "guten tag") and dressed. A cascade of insignias, badges, and logos, says Heller, turned people into consumers of the Nazi brand, and ads for it. The same tactics work today. "In a democracy, it's all about capitalism," Heller says. "We still wear our ideologies, but it's not on your sleeve, it's on the tongue of your shoe."

But, ideologies aside, were Fascists good designers? Heller is currently working on a book about design failures. Nazis aren't in it, but he entertained the question. "Well, they were really effective..." He paused. "But yeah, Socialist Realism is kitsch now. I think it sucks."