Part V The Age of Information
18 The International Typographic Style
1930
1930s Bill, Stankowski & others, constructivist graphic design 1942 Bill, Moderne Schweizer Architektur 1944 Herdeg, Graphis 1st issue 1947 Ruder & Hofmann join Basel School of Design faculty 1948 Huber, “Gran premio dell’ Autodrome” poster
Graphic design in the
1950 Ulm School of Design planned; Odermatt opens studio; Zapf designs Palatino 1950 Korean War begins
global village
1950 First Xerox machine produced 1952 de Harak opens New York studio 1952 Polio vaccine developed 1953 Stankowski, Standard Elektrik Lorenz AG logo 1954 Frutiger, Univers fonts 1954 Brown vs Board of Education ends school segregation in the U.S. 1954 Henri Matisse dies 1955 Casey joins MIT
18 The International Typographic Style
1955 Albert Einstein dies 1956 DNA molecule first photographed 1957 Miedinger, Haas Grotesque (later named Helvetica by Stempel foundry) 1958 European Economic Community becomes effective
19 The New York School
1959 Neue Grafik Design begins publication;
20 Corporate Identity and Visual Systems
1960 Müller-Brockmann, der Film poster
21 The Conceptual Image
1970s International Typographic Style becomes dominant
22 Postmodern Design
1980 Müller-Brockmann, concert poster series
Hofmann, Giselle poster
1967 Ruder, Typography: A Manual of Design 1968 Ulm School of Design closes; Stankowski, Berlin design program; Zapf, Manuale Typographicum
throughout the world
1991 Jacqueline S. Casey dies
23 National Visions within a Global Dialogue
1996 Müller-Brockmann dies
2000
24 The Digital Revolution— and Beyond
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19 The New York School
20 Corporate Identity and Visual Symbols
1930
1939 Thompson, 1st Westvaco Inspirations
1940
1940 Golden becomes art director of CBS 1945 Olden joins CBS
1940 Print magazine, 1st issue
1946 Dorfsman joins CBS
1940s Rand, Directions covers
1947 Pintori joins Olivetti
1941 Japan attacks Pearl Harbor
1948 Gandhi assassinated
1945 Lustig, New Directions book covers 1945 United Nations founded
1950 Korean War begins
1947 Rand, Thoughts on Design
1951 Golden, CBS symbol
1949 Doyle Dane Bernbach founded
1951 Color television introduced 1951 UNIVAC I, 1st mass produced computer
1950 Alvid Eisenman creates graphic design program at
1954 Matter, New Haven railroad program New York and Hartford
Yale University 1950s Brodovitch’s editorial design classes inspire a generation
1955 Disneyland opens
1952 Eisenhower elected president
1956 Rand, IBM logo; Pintori, Olivetti Electrosumma 22 poster
1952 Korean War ends
1957 Soviet satellite Sputnik launches the space age
1953 Wolf art directs Esquire
1959 Golden dies
1954 Senate censures McCarthy
1959 Castro ousts Batista from Cuba
1955 Bass, Man with the Golden Arm graphics 1957 Brownjohn, Chermayeff & Geismar formed 1958 Storch redesigns McCall’s
1960 Chermayeff & Geismar, Chase Manhattan identity; Beall, International Paper logo
1959 Brodovitch retires; Wolf art directs Bazaar; Communication Arts, 1st issue
1962 Aicher & staff, Lufthansa identity system 1964 Mobil identity program 1968 Wyman, Mexico City Olympics
1960s Lois, Esquire “statement” covers 1968–71 Lubalin, Avant Garde magazine
1972 Massey, Labor Department identity; Aicher & staff,
1970 International Typeface Corporation begins;
1977 U. S. National Parks Unigrid system
Munich Olympics Lubalin & Carnase, Avant Garde typeface 1984 Los Angeles Olympics 1995 Bradbury Thompson dies 1996 Paul Rand dies
2000
1985 Manhattan Design, MTV logo
1990
World events / Graphic design events
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21 The Conceptual Image
1953 Trepkowski, “Nie!” poster
22 Postmodern Design
1950
1960
1962 Venturi, Grand’s Restaurant supergraphics
1954 Testa, Pirelli graphics; Push Pin Studios forms
1966 Solomon, Sea Ranch environmental graphics
1956 Trepkowski dies; Tomaszewski leads Polish movement,
1968 Weingart joins Basel School of Design faculty
evolves toward a colorful collage approach
1969 Compuserve, 1st commercial online service
1958 Supreme Court orders school desegregation 1959 Twen magazine launched
1970s Postmodernism designates design breaking with modernism 1970 Kent State shootings
1960 Kennedy elected president
1970 Computer floppy disk is introduced
1962 Cuban missile crisis
1973 U.S. pulls most troops out of Vietnam
1962 Andy Warhol exhibits his Campbell’s Soup Cans
1975 Microsoft founded
1962 Berg joins CBS Records 1963 Kennedy assassinated
1981 AIDS epidemic recognized
1964 Massin designs The Bald Soprano
1981 Memphis exhibition in Milan
1965 U.S. troops sent to Vietnam
1981 MTV launched
1966 Kieser, “Alabama Blues” poster
1986 U.S. space shuttle Challenger explodes during launch
1967 Wilson & Moscoso, psychedelic posters; Glaser, Dylan poster
1995 Dan Friedman dies
1968 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated 1969 Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin land on the Moon
2000
1970 Max, Love graphics 1970s Richards, Pirtle & others, Texas becomes a major design center 1974 Nixon resigns as president 1976 Rambow, 1st S. Fischer-Verlag poster 1980 Janiszewski, Solidarity logo; Rambow, Die Hamletmachine poster 1988 Rambow, South African Roulette poster
2000
1996 Glaser, “Art Is . . . Whatever” poster
World events / Graphic design events
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23 National Visions within a Global Dialogue
1950
1959 Rodrigues “Visit Portugal” poster
24 The Digital Revolution—and Beyond
1970
1971 Katherine and Michael McCoy cochair
Michigan’s Cranbook Academy of Art design department
1962 Fletcher, Forbes & Gill founded
1981 IBM introduces the personal computer (PC)
1963 Tanaka design studio opens; Total Design opens
1984 Apple’s first generation Macintosh computer 1984 Susan Kare, first screen fonts for the Macintosh computer
in Amsterdam 1964 Kamekura, Tokyo Olympics posters
1984 VanderLans, Émigré magazine
1965 Oxenaar, 1st new Dutch currency
1985 Aldus introduced PageMaker software for the
1969 Spencer, Pioneers of Modern Typography
Macintosh computer 1985 Apple laser printer
1970 António Salazar dies
1985 The first version of Microsoft Windows is released
1970 Igarashi, Sato open studios
1987 Stone, Stone type family; Greiman, bitmapped Design Quarterly
c 1975 Igarashi, isometric alphabets
1989 Abbott Miller and Ellen Lupton form
1976 Oxenaar, PTT Aesthetic Advisor 1977 Studio Dumbar opens; Wild Plakken forms
Design/Writing/Research 1990 Macintosh II color computer; Adobe, multiple master
1978 1st Hard Werken magazine
typefaces; Bernes-Lee, HTML programming language
1979 Iranian revolution
1991 Kuhr, color-xeroxed prototype for Wired magazine 1981 Tanaka, “Nihon Buyo” poster
1992 Carson, Ray Gun magazine
1986 Oxenaar, Dutch 250-guilder note
1992 Adobe released its first multiple-master typefaces
1987 Altmann, Ellis & Greenhalgh cofound Why Not Associates
1994 33 percent of US households have computers
1989 PTT privatized; visual identity by Studio Dumbar
1994 Wired publishes its first issue
1989 Estrada opens own graphic design studio
1995 Kit Hinrichs and Corporate Design Foundation,
1989 Charles S. Anderson Design Co. formed
@issue: The Journal of Business and Design 1996 Licko, Mrs Eaves typeface
1989 Berlin Wall comes down
1996 Kyle Cooper founds Imaginary Forces 1990 Fletcher, Victoria and Albert logo
1999 The number of Internet users worldwide reaches
1990 Hubble Telescope launched into space
150 million worldwide
1991 Soviet Union collapses
2001 September 11th terrorist attacks on the United States
1991 van Toorn becomes director of the Jan van Eyck Academy
2001 Apple releases iPod MP3 music player
1994 Hard Werken becomes Inízio
2003 The US space shuttle Columbia explodes, killing 7 astronauts
1994 Momayez, cover for Blue, A Collection of
2003 Chahine, Koufiya, first dual-script font family (Latin and Arabic)
Forugh Milani’s Poetry 1995 Oklahoma City bombing
2004 The Summer Olympics are held in Athens
1995 Hans Dieter Reichert cofounds Bradbourne Publishing &
2004 Matthew Carter, the Yale typeface
begins baseline magazine
2005 More than 800 million internet users globally, 200 million in the US
1996 HIV infects 27.9 million people 1997 Stolk, Briners & van den Dungen form Experimental Jetset
2007 Ingmar Bergman dies 2007 Apple introduces the iPhone 2007 Erik Spiekermann appointed to board of directors
2002 Rodiguez, “Goya Posada” 2003 First Iranian Typography Exhibition
2010
2007 Gil, Pioneers of Spanish Graphic Design
at Microsoft 2008 Fidel Castro resigns from the Cuban Presidency 2008 The Summer Olympics are held in Beijing 2008 The world stock exchanges crash, triggering a global recession 2009 Barak Obama inaugurated president of the United States 2010 Apple introduces the iPad
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2010
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18 The International Typographic Style During the 1950s a design movement emerged from Switzerland and Germany that has been called Swiss design or, more appropriately, the International Typographic Style. The objective clarity of this design movement won converts throughout the world. It remained a major force for over two decades, and its influence continues today. The visual characteristics of this style include a unity of design achieved by asymmetrical organization of the design elements on a mathematically constructed grid; objective photography and copy that present visual and verbal information in a clear and factual manner, free from the exaggerated claims of propaganda and commercial advertising; and the use of sans-serif typography set in a flush-left and raggedright margin configuration. The initiators of this movement believed sans-serif typography expressed the spirit of a more progressive age and that mathematical grids are the most legible and harmonious means for structuring information. More important than the visual appearance of this work is the attitude developed by its early pioneers about their profession. These trailblazers defined design as a socially useful and important activity. Personal expression and eccentric solutions were rejected, while a more universal and scientific approach to design problem solving was embraced. In this paradigm, designers define their roles not as artists but as objective conduits for spreading important information between components of society. Achieving clarity and order is the ideal.
18–1
18–1. Ernst Keller, poster for the
18–2. Théo Ballmer, poster for an
Rietberg Museum, 1955. Emblematic
office professions exhibition, 1928.
images are energized by repetitive
Traces of the grid squares used to
geometric elements.
construct this poster remain as the thin white lines between the letters. 18–3. Théo Ballmer, poster for a traveling exhibition of industrial standards, 1928. Absolute mathematical construction is used, rather than the asymmetrical horizontals and verticals of De Stijl.
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Pioneers of the movement More than any other individual, the quality and discipline found in the Swiss design movement can be traced to Ernst Keller (1891–1968). In 1918 Keller joined the Zurich Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Applied Art) to teach a course in advertising layout and develop a professional course in design and typography. In his teaching and his designs of lettering, trademarks, and posters, Keller maintained a standard of excellence over four decades. Rather than espousing a specific style, Keller argued that the solution to a design problem should emerge from its content. Fittingly, his work encompassed diverse solutions. His poster for the Rietberg Museum (Fig. 18–1) demonstrates his interest in symbolic imagery, simplified geometric forms, expressive edges and lettering, and vibrant contrasting color. A gentle and unassuming man, Keller initiated a climate of excellence in Swiss graphic design. The roots of the International Typographic Style are to a large extent found in the curriculum advanced at the School of Design in Basel. The development of this curriculum has
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18–2
18–3
its basis in fundamental geometric exercises involving the cube and the line. This foundation, begun in the nineteenth century and thus independent of De Stijl and the Bauhaus, was the basis for the 1908 formation of the school’s Vorkurs (foundation course) and remained relevant to the design program in the 1950s. Théo Ballmer (1902–65), who studied briefly at the Dessau Bauhaus under Klee, Gropius, and Meyer in the late 1920s, applied De Stijl principles to graphic design in an original way, using an arithmetic grid of horizontal and vertical alignments. In 1928 Ballmer’s poster designs achieved a high degree of formal harmony as he used an ordered grid to construct visual forms. In his “Büro” poster (Fig. 18–2), both the black word and its red reflection are carefully developed on the underlying grid. The other lettering on this poster shows the influence of Van Doesburg’s experiments with geometric letterforms. However, Ballmer’s lettering is more refined and graceful than the ungainly types of Van Doesburg. While the grid used to build the forms in the “Büro” poster is only implied, in Ballmer’s “Norm” poster (Fig. 18–3) the grid itself is openly displayed. Max Bill’s (1908–94) work encompassed painting, architecture, engineering, sculpture, and product and graphic design. After studying at the Bauhaus with Gropius, Meyer,
Moholy-Nagy, Albers, and Kandinsky from 1927 until 1929, Bill moved to Zurich. In 1931 he embraced the concepts of art concret (concrete art) and began to find his way clearly. Eleven months before Van Doesburg died in April 1930, he formulated a manifesto of art concret, calling for a universal art of absolute clarity based on controlled arithmetical construction. Art concret paintings were totally constructed from pure, mathematically exact visual elements—planes and colors. Because these elements have no external meanings, the results are purely abstract. Graphic design is the antithesis of this concept in one sense, as design without symbolic or semantic meaning ceases to be a graphic communication and becomes fine art. However, art concret concepts can nonetheless be applied to the structural aspect of graphic design. As the 1930s gave way to the war years and Switzerland maintained its neutrality, Bill constructed layouts of geometric elements organized with absolute order. Mathematical proportion, geometric spatial division, and the use of Akzidenz Grotesk type (particularly the medium weight) are features of his work of this period (Fig. 18–4). He further explored the use of the ragged-right margin and indicated paragraphs by an interval of space instead of a paragraph indent in some of his 1940s book designs. His American architecture exhibition
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18–4. Max Bill, book cover, 1942. Mathematical precision is achieved by the alignment of type down the center of the page, creating harmony and order in an asymmetrical layout. 18–5. Max Bill, exhibition poster, 1945. Diamond-shaped photographs form a wedge; some photographs are placed on the white ground to equalize the figure and ground. 18–6. Anthony Froshaug, cover for the Quarterly Bulletin of the Hochschule für Gestaltung, Ulm, 1958. The four-column grid system, use of only two type sizes, and graphic resonance of this format were widely influential.
18–4
18–6
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18–5
poster, constructed with an intricate grid (Fig. 18–5), demonstrates his strategy of designing a mathematical structure to contain the elements. The evolution of Bill’s art and design was based on the development of cohesive principles of visual organization. Important concerns include the linear division of space into harmonious parts; modular grids; arithmetic and geometric progressions, permutations, and sequences; and the equalization of contrasting and complementary relationships into an ordered whole. In 1949 he concluded, “It is possible to develop an art largely on the basis of mathematical thinking.” In 1950 Bill became involved in the planning of the curriculum and buildings for the Hochschule für Gestaltung (Institute of Design) in Ulm, Germany. This school, which operated until 1968, attempted to establish a center of research and training to address the design problems of the era with educational goals similar to those of the Bauhaus. Among the cofounders, Otl Aicher (1922–91) played a major role in developing the graphic design program (see Figs. 20–35 and 20–36). Bill left the Ulm directorship in 1956, and the school evolved using scientific and methodological approaches to design problem solving. English typographer Anthony Froshaug (1918–84) joined the Ulm faculty as professor of graphic design from 1957 until 1961 and set up the typography workshop. Froshaug’s design of the Ulm journal’s first five issues (Fig. 18–6) is paradigmatic of the emerging movement. The Ulm Institute of Design included a study of semiotics, the philosophical theory of signs and symbols, in its curriculum. Semiotics has three branches: semantics, the study of the meaning of signs and symbols; syntactics, the study of how signs and symbols are connected and ordered into a structural whole; and pragmatics, the study of the relation of signs and symbols to their users. Also, principles of Greek rhetoric were reexamined for application to visual communications.
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Functional graphics for science
18–7
18–8
18–7. Max Huber, yearbook cover, 1951. An informal balance of halftones printed in red, black, and blue combines with yellow rectangles to turn the space into an energy-charged field. 18–8. Max Huber, poster for automobile races, 1948. Speed and movement are expressed by typography racing back in perspective and arrows arcing forward, bringing depth to the printed page. 18–9. Max Huber, poster for Borsalino Hats, 1949. The design devices below the hat help to unify the posters when hung in rows together.
In counterpoint to Bill’s evolution toward a purist approach to graphic design from the 1930s to the 1950s, there was also a strong tendency toward complexity in this period. During the same era, Max Huber (1919–92) brought a vitality and intricacy to his work. After studying the formal ideas of the Bauhaus and experimenting with photomontage as a student at the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts, Huber moved south to Milan, Italy, and began his career. Returning to his native Switzerland during the war, Huber collaborated with Bill on exhibition design projects. After his return to Italy in 1946, Huber produced phenomenal graphics. Bright, pure hues were combined with photographs in intense, complex visual organizations (Fig. 18–7). Huber took advantage of the transparency
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375
18–9
of printing inks by layering shapes, typography, and images to create a complex web of graphic information (Fig. 18–8). Sometimes Huber’s designs seem pushed to the edge of chaos, but through balance and alignment he maintained order in the midst of complexity. Others are more straightforward in approach (Fig. 18–9). Functional graphics for science German-born Anton Stankowski (1906–98) worked from 1929 until 1937 as a graphic designer in Zurich, where he enjoyed close contact with many of the leading artists and designers of Switzerland, including Bill, Matter, and Richard P. Lohse (1902–88). During his Zurich period, Stankowski was particularly innovative in photography, photomontage, and darkroom manipulation of images. Visual pattern and form were explored in his close-up photographs of common objects, whose texture and detail were transformed into abstract images. In 1937 Stankowski moved to Stuttgart, Germany, where he painted and designed for more than five decades. A dialogue is evident between Stankowski’s painting and his design. Ideas about color and form from his paintings often find their way into his graphic designs; conversely, wide-ranging form experimentation in search of design solutions seems to have provided shapes and compositional ideas for his fine art. World War II and military service, including a period as a prisoner of war after his capture by the Russians, interrupted his career. After the war, his work started to crystallize into what was to become his major contribution to graphic design: the creation of visual forms to communicate invisible processes and physical forces (Figs. 18–10 through 18–12). The abilities Stankowski brought to this problem were a strong mastery of constructivist design, an intellectual acumen for science and engineering, and a burning curiosity.
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18–10
18–11
18–12
18–10. Anton Stankowski, trademark
Research and comprehension of the subject preceded his designs, for only after understanding the material to be presented can a designer invent forms that become symbols of complex scientific and engineering concepts. Stankowski tackled the unseen, ranging from electromagnetic energy to the internal workings of a computer, and transformed the concept underlying these forces into visual designs. In 1968 the senate of Berlin commissioned Stankowski and his studio to develop a comprehensive design program for that city. Consistent design standards for architectural signage, street signs, and publications were developed. Instead of designing a trademark or unique typographic logo for use as the unifying visual element, Stankowski developed a tectonic element for consistent use on all material. This long horizontal line, with a short vertical line rising from it, became a symbol for the then-divided city of Berlin. The vertical line represented the Berlin Wall, which until 1989 separated the Soviet-dominated portion of the city from the rest of Berlin. The name Berlin, set in medium Akzidenz Grotesk, was always placed on the right side of the tectonic element (Fig. 18–13).
for Standard Elektrik Lorenz AG, 1953. Dynamic equilibrium is achieved by an asymmetrical construction in an implied square, signifying communications transmission and reception. 18–11. Anton Stankowski, calendar cover for Standard Elektrik Lorenz AG, 1957. A radial configuration symbolizes transmission and radiation using the client’s radio and telephone products. 18–12. Anton Stankowski, image from a calendar for Viessmann, a manufacturer of heating equipment. Linear elements change color after passing through the central bar, representing heat and energy transfer in furnace
18–13
boilers. 18–13. Anton Stankowski, cover for Berlin-Layout, 1971. The cover design derives from a Stankowski painting.
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New Swiss sans-serif typefaces The emerging International Typographic Style was exemplified by several new sans-serif type families designed in the 1950s. The geometric sans-serif styles, mathematically constructed with drafting instruments during the 1920s and 1930s, were rejected in favor of more refined designs inspired by nineteenth-century Akzidenz Grotesk fonts (see Fig. 12–32). In 1954 a young Swiss designer working in Paris, Adrian Frutiger (b. 1928), completed a visually programmed family of twenty-one sans-serif fonts named Univers (Fig. 18–14). The palette of typographic variations—limited to regular, italic, and bold in traditional typography—was expanded sevenfold. Numbers replaced conventional nomenclature. The normal or regular weight with the proper black-and-white relationships for
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A master of classical typography
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book setting is called Univers 55, and the family ranges from Univers 39 (light/extra condensed) to Univers 83 (expanded/ extrabold). Fonts to the left of Univers 55 are expanded; fonts to the right of Univers 55 are condensed. The stroke weights of fonts above Univers 55 are lighter, while stroke weights of fonts below Univers 55 are heavier. Because all twenty-one fonts have the same x-height and ascender and descender lengths, they form a uniform whole that can be used together with complete harmony (Fig. 18–15). The size and weight of the capitals are close to the size and weight of the lowercase characters; therefore, the texture and tone of a Univers text setting is more uniform than that of most earlier typefaces, especially in multilingual publications. Frutiger labored for three years on Univers. To produce the Univers family, the Deberny and Peignot foundry in Paris invested over two hundred thousand hours of machine engraving, retouching, and final hand-punching to create the thirty-five thousand matrixes needed to produce all twenty-one fonts in the full range of sizes. In the mid-1950s, Edouard Hoffman of the HAAS type foundry in Switzerland decided that the Akzidenz Grotesk fonts should be refined and upgraded. Hoffman collaborated with Max Miedinger (1910–80), who executed the designs, and their new sans serif, with an even larger x-height than that of Univers, was released as Neue Haas Grotesk. When this design was produced in Germany by the now-defunct D. Stempel AG in 1961, the face was named Helvetica (Fig. 18–16), the traditional Latin name for Switzerland. Helvetica’s well-defined forms and excellent rhythm of positive and negative shapes made it the most specified typeface internationally during the 1960s and 1970s. However, because different designers in several countries developed Helvetica’s various weights, italics, and widths, the original Helvetica family lacked the cohesiveness of Univers. As digital typesetting became prevalent in the 1980s, versions of the Helvetica family with more systemic compatibility were developed, including Linotype’s 1983 Neue Helvetica with eight weights, each with extended, condensed, and italic versions.
18–14
18–15
18–16
18–14. Adrian Frutiger, schematic
18–16. Edouard Hoffman and Max
diagram of the twenty-one Univers
Miedinger, Helvetica typeface,
fonts, 1954. Frutiger systematically
1961. The basic version of Helvetica
altered the forms of fonts located on
released by the Stempel foundry in
this chart above, below, and to the
1961 is shown, along with some of the
left or right of Univers 55.
variations developed later.
18–15. Bruno Pläffli of Atelier Frutiger, composition with the letter u, c. 1960. All twenty-one variations of Univers can be used together to achieve dynamic contrasts of weight, tone, width, and direction.
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A master of classical typography While German and Swiss designers were forging the International Typographic Style, a major German typeface designer evolved from the traditions of calligraphy and Renaissance typography. A tremendous admiration for Rudolf Koch and Edward Johnston proved the catalyst that launched the career of Hermann Zapf (b. 1918). A native of Nuremberg, Germany, Zapf entered the graphic arts as an apprentice photo retoucher at age sixteen. A year later he started his study of calligraphy after acquiring a copy of Koch’s Das Schreiben als Kunstfertigkeit (Writing as Art), a manual on the subject. Four years of disciplined self-education followed, and at age twenty-one Zapf ’s first typographic involvement began when he entered Koch’s printing firm. Later that year Zapf became a freelance book and typographic designer, and at age twenty-two the first of his more than fifty typefaces was designed and cut for the Stempel foundry. Zapf developed
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18–17
18–17. Hermann Zapf, typefaces. Palatino, 1950; Melior, 1952; and Optima, 1958. These alphabets have a harmony and elegance seldom achieved in typeface design. 18–18. Hermann Zapf, page from Manuale Typographicum, 1968. Jan Parandowski’s thoughts concerning the power of the printed word to “govern time and space” inspired this graphic field of tension radiating from a central cluster. 18–19. Hermann Zapf, page from Manuale Typographicum, 1968. Zapf organized this page with classical symmetry and exquisite intervals between letters.
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18–18
18–19
an extraordinary sensitivity to letterforms in his activities as a calligrapher, typeface designer, typographer, and graphic designer; all of these endeavors contributed to his view of typeface design as “one of the most visible visual expressions of an age.” Zapf’s triumvirate of typefaces designed during the late 1940s and the 1950s are widely regarded as major type designs (Fig. 18–17): Palatino (released in 1950) is a roman style with broad letters, strong serifs, and elegant proportions somewhat reminiscent of Venetian faces; Melior (1952) is a modern style that departs from earlier models through its vertical stress and squared forms; and Optima (1958) is a thick-and-thin sans serif with tapered strokes. While Zapf’s typeface designs are based on a deep understanding of the past, they are original inventions designed with a full understanding of twentieth-century technologies. To the complex and technically demanding craft of typeface design Zapf brought the spiritual awareness of a poet capable of inventing new forms to express the current century and to preserve it for posterity. In the area of book design, Zapf’s two editions of Manuale Typographicum, published in 1954 and 1968, are outstanding contributions to the art of the book (Figs. 18–18 and 18–19). Encompassing eighteen languages and more than a hundred typefaces, these two volumes consist of quotations about the art of typography, with a full-page typographic interpretation for each quotation. Zapf, like Eric Gill, combines a great love and understanding of the classical traditions of typography with a twentieth-century attitude toward space and scale.
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Design in Basel and Zurich
Design in Basel and Zurich The further development of the International Typographic Style occurred in two cities, Basel and Zurich, located 70 kilometers (about 50 miles) apart in northern Switzerland. Fifteenyear-old Emil Ruder (1914–70) began a four-year compositor’s apprenticeship in 1929 and attended the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts when he was in his late twenties. In 1947 Ruder joined the faculty of the Allgemeine Gewerbeschule (Basel School of Design) as the typography instructor and called upon his students to strike the correct balance between form and function. He taught that type loses its purpose when it loses its communicative meaning; therefore, legibility and readability are dominant concerns. His classroom projects developed sensitivity to negative or unprinted spaces, including the spaces between and inside letterforms. Ruder advocated systematic overall design and the use of a grid structure to bring all elements—typography, photography, illustration, diagrams, and charts—into harmony with each other while allowing for design variety. Problems of unifying type and image were addressed. More than any other designer, Ruder realized the implications of Univers and the creative potential unleashed by the unity of proportion, because the consistent baseline and x-height allowed the mixing of all twenty-one typefaces. Ruder and his students exhaustively explored the contrasts, textures, and scale possibilities of the new face in both commissioned and experimental work. His methodology of typographic design and education was presented in his 1967 book Typography: A Manual of Design, which had a worldwide influence (Figs. 18–20 and 18–21). In 1947 Armin Hofmann (b. 1920) began teaching graphic design at the Basel School of Design, after completing his education in Zurich and working as a staff designer for several studios. Together with Emil Ruder, he developed an educational model linked to the elementary design principles of the Vorkurs established in 1908. This curriculum was the decisive one for the 1950s and was widely used in the pharmaceutical industry by former students such as Karl Gerstner (b. 1930), the founder of the GGK agency. Also in 1947, Hofmann opened a design studio in collaboration with his wife, Dorothea. Hofmann applied deep aesthetic values and an understanding of form to both teaching and designing. As time passed, he evolved a design philosophy based on the elemental graphic-form language of point, line, and plane, replacing traditional pictorial ideas with a modernist aesthetic. In his work and in his teaching, Hofmann continues to seek a dynamic harmony, where all the parts of a design are unified. He sees the relationship of contrasting elements as the means of invigorating visual design. These contrasts include light to dark, curved lines to straight lines, form to counterform, soft to hard, and dynamic to static, with resolution achieved when the designer brings the total into an absolute harmony. Hofmann works in diverse areas, designing posters, advertisements, and logos, as well as other materials (Figs. 18–22 through 18–26). In 1965 Hofmann published Graphic Design Manual, a book that presents his application of elemental design principles to graphic design.
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18–21 18–20. Emil Ruder, book cover for Typography: A Manual of Design, 1967. Ruder’s book is among the most important treatises on the International Style, and his design for the text reflects his beliefs. 18–21. Emil Ruder, page spread from Typography: A Manual of Design, 1967. This page spread illustrates the differences between the written and printed letterform.
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18–25. Armin Hofmann, poster for Herman Miller furniture, 1962. Shapes and silhouettes of Herman Miller chairs cascade through space, anchored to the format and the type by the red logo at the top center. 18–26. Armin Hofmann, poster for
18–22
Wilhelm Tell (William Tell), 1963. In large sans-serif uppercase letters the name Tell implies an arrow aimed at the large apple in the background. 18–27. Carlo L. Vivarelli (designer) and Werner Bischof (photographer), “Für das Alter” (For the Elderly) poster, 1949. The contrasting juxtaposition of an organic, human, and textured photograph with sharp geometric typography intensifies the meaning of both.
18–23
18–25
18–24
18–22. Armin Hofmann, logotype for the Basel Civic Theater, 1954. This hand-lettered logotype anticipates the tight spacing and capital ligatures of phototypography. The control of spatial intervals between letterforms is
18–27
magnificent. 18–23. Armin Hofmann, poster for the Basel theater production of Giselle, 1959. An organic, kinetic, and soft photographic image contrasts intensely with geometric, static, and hard-edged typographic shapes. 18–24. Armin Hofmann, trademark for the Swiss National Exhibition, Expo 1964. An E for Exhibition links with
18–26
the Swiss cross. The open bottom permits the white space of the page to flow into the symbol.
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Zurich designers, including Carlo L. Vivarelli (1919–86), were also forging the new movement in the late 1940s. Vivarelli’s “For the Elderly” poster, conceived to spread awareness of the elderly and their problems, used the angle of illumination on the face for dramatic impact (Fig. 18–27). Swiss design began to coalesce into a unified international movement when the journal New Graphic Design began publication in 1959 (Figs. 18–28 through 18–30). The editors were Vivarelli and three other Zurich designers who played a major role in the evolution of the International Typographic Style: Lohse, Josef Müller-Brockmann (1914–96), and Hans Neuburg (1904–83). This trilingual periodical presented the philosophy and accomplishments of the Swiss movement to an international audience. Its format and typography were a living expression of the order and refinement achieved by Swiss designers. Emerging as a leading theorist and practitioner of the movement, Müller-Brockmann sought an absolute and universal form of graphic expression through objective and impersonal presentation, communicating to the audience without the interference of the designer’s subjective feelings or propagandistic techniques of persuasion. A measure of his success can be gauged by observing the visual power and impact of his work. Designs made by Müller-Brockmann in the 1950s are as current and vital as they were a half-century ago and communicate their message with intensity and clarity (Fig. 18–31). His photographic posters treat the image as an objective symbol, with neutral photographs gaining impact through scale and camera angle (Figs. 18–32 and 18–33). In his celebrated concert posters, the language of constructivism creates a visual counterpart to the structural harmony of the music to be performed (Fig. 18–34).
18–28
18–29
18–28. Carlo L. Vivarelli, cover for New Graphic Design, no. 2, 1959. The mathematical structure of the organizational grid signifies the scientific and functional design philosophy of the Swiss movement. 18–29. Hans Neuburg, pages from New Graphic Design, no. 7, 1960. Asymmetrical balance, white space, and rigorous adherence to a four-column grid characterized this publication.
18–30
18–30. Hans Neuburg, pages from New Graphic Design, no. 13, 1962. Trademark design competition entries are organized on a grid; spatial intervals create rhythm and movement.
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18–31. Josef Müller-Brockmann, American Books Today catalog cover, 1953. Shapes signify books, while color signifies the country of their origin. 18–32. Josef Müller-Brockmann, Swiss Auto Club poster, 1954. Photography amplifies the text, “The friendly hand sign protects against accidents.” 18–33. Josef Müller-Brockmann, public awareness poster, 1960. Red type declares “less noise,” while the photograph graphically depicts the discomfort noise causes.
18–31
18–32
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18–33
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18–34. Josef Müller-Brockmann, “Musica Viva” concert poster, 1959. Colored squares march in musical rhythm on the tilted white square. Typography and shapes align in harmonious juxtaposition. 18–35. Josef Müller-Brockmann, Der Film exhibition poster, 1960. Against a black field, the word Film is white, the word der is gray, and the other typography is red.
18–34
His exhibition poster Der Film (Fig. 18–35) demonstrates the universal design harmony achieved by mathematical spatial division. The proportions are close to the three-to-five ratio of the golden mean, considered the most beautifully proportioned rectangle by the ancient Greeks. The space is divided into fifteen rectangular modules, with three modules across the horizontal dimension and five down the vertical dimension. The top nine modules approximate a square, the title fills three units, and three are below the title. Film occupies two units, and the secondary typographic information aligns with the front edge of the F in Film. This design organization grew out of functional communication needs. The title projects clearly at great distances against the field of black, and the overlapping of Film in front of der is a typographic equivalent to the cinematic techniques of overlapping images and dissolving from one image to another. The graphic power of this poster’s elemental simplicity successfully combines effective communication, expression of the content, and visual harmony. As with Müller-Brockmann’s music posters, geometric forms become metaphorical in a poster for an exhibition of lamps (Fig. 18–36). In a 1980 poster for an exhibition of his own he revealed the nature of the grid structures underlying his work (Fig. 18–37). Through his designs, writing, and teaching, Müller-Brockmann became the era’s most influential Swiss designer as the national movement he helped create grew beyond the country’s borders. In Switzerland, a country with outstanding design schools, such self-educated graphic designers as Siegfried Odermatt (b. 1926) are a rarity. Originally Odermatt planned to become a photographer, but after working in photographic studios for several years, he turned to design and typography. After a period of employment in several advertising agencies, Odermatt opened his own studio in 1950. Working for corporate clients
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18–35
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18–36
18–37
18–36. Josef Müller-Brockmann, poster for an exhibition of lamps, 1975. Modulated, glowing multicolor disks signify the radiant energy of lighting fixtures. 18–37. Josef Müller-Brockmann, exhibition poster, 1980. The grid, always underlying Müller-Brockmann’s designs, becomes visible as a major element in this poster.
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in the areas of trademark development, informational graphics, advertising, and packaging, Odermatt played an important role in applying the International Typographic Style to the communications of business and industry. He combined succinct, efficient presentation of information with a dynamic visual quality, using straightforward photography with drama and impact. Ordinary images were turned into convincing and engaging photographs through the careful use of cropping, scale, and lighting, with attention to shape and texture as qualities that cause an image to emerge from the page (Figs. 18–38 through 18–40). Odermatt seeks originality through the idea, not through visual style—in his work, graphic design is always seen as an instrument of communication. Much of Odermatt’s work is purely typographic, and he believes a one-color typographic design can achieve the visual impact and power of full-color graphics through strength of concept and orchestration of visual form, space, shape, and tone. By his fresh and original arrangements of graphic elements, Odermatt demonstrates the infinite possibilities for dividing and organizing space on the printed page. There is also an element of the playful and the uninhibited in his work, a feature that is unusual for Swiss design of this period. Rosmarie Tissi (b. 1937), who joined his studio in the early 1960s, is also known for her playful work (Fig. 18–41). In 1968 she became an equal partner with Odermatt in the studio Odermatt & Tissi (Fig. 18–42). This studio loosened the boundaries of the International Typographic Style and introduced elements of chance, the development of surprising and inventive forms, and intuitive visual organization into the vocabulary of graphic design. This phase of the studio’s development marked the beginning of a break with the traditions of Swiss design and will be discussed further in chapter 22. During the post–World War II era the spirit of internationalism grew. Increased trade enabled multinational corporations to operate in more than a hundred different countries. The speed and pace of communications were turning the world into a global village. There was an increasing need for communicative clarity, for multilingual formats, and for elementary pictographs and glyphs to enable people from around the world to comprehend signs and information. The new graphic design developed in Switzerland helped fulfill these needs, and its fundamental concepts and methodology spread throughout the world. The International Typographic Style in America The Swiss movement had a major impact on postwar American design. Its influence was first felt in the late 1940s and 1950s, and became especially evident during the 1960s and 1970s. Rudolph de Harak (1924–2002), a self-taught graphic designer who embraced European modernism, began his career in Los Angeles in 1946. Four years later he moved to New York, where he formed his own design studio in 1952. De Harak’s evolution has been a continuing quest for communicative clarity and visual order, which are the qualities he deems vital to effective graphic design. He recognized these qualities in Swiss design during the late 1950s and
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The International Typographic Style in America
18–38
18–39
18–40
18–42
18–38. Siegfried Odermatt, advertise-
18–40. Siegfried Odermatt, inside
ment for Apotheke Sammet over-the-
pages for Schelling Bulletin, no. 4,
counter medicine, 1957. Close-up
1963. A four-column grid unifies ty-
photography makes ordinary subjects
pography with product photography.
arresting. The trademark is created from the firm’s initials.
18–41. Rosmarie Tissi, Univac advertisement, 1965. A dynamic, powerful
18–39. Siegfried Odermatt, cover for
image is created by the careful crop-
Schelling Bulletin, no. 4, 1963. This
ping and placement of two telephone
folder for a paperboard and packag-
receivers.
ing manufacturer uses an unexpected
18–41
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photographic view of an ordinary
18–42. Rosmarie Tissi, calendar
object.
design, 1971.
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18–44
18–43
18–45 18–43. Rudolph de Harak, cover for the album Sounds of the Alps, c. 1961. Three vigorous brushstrokes signify sound waves and Switzerland’s mountainous terrain. 18–44. Rudolph de Harak, cover for the album Vivaldi: Gloria, early 1960s. Squares of color become a twentiethcentury designer’s emotive response to eighteenth-century music. 18–45. Rudolph de Harak, book jacket for The Stress of Life, 1963. This is one of over 350 book jackets designed for McGraw-Hill Publishers in the 1960s. Each cover conforms to a consistent format, yet the subjects are interpreted through a remarkable variety of symbolic forms and images. Here the book’s subject is implied by a knotted rope. 18–46. Rudolph de Harak, book jacket for The Siege of Leningrad, 1963. The siege is represented by an altered swastika.
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18–46
adapted attributes of the movement such as grid structures and asymmetrical balance. Responding to the legibility and formal perfection of Akzidenz Grotesk before it was available in the United States, de Harak obtained specimen sheets from European foundries so that he could assemble headlines for his designs, which combine purity of form with elemental signs and images. A series of album covers for Westminster Records (Figs. 18–43 and 18–44) evoke conceptual images of the music’s structure. During the early 1960s de Harak initiated a series of over 350 book jackets for McGraw-Hill Publishers using a uniform typographic system and grid (Figs. 18–45 and 18–46). Each book’s subject was implied and articulated through visual configurations ranging from elemental pictographs to abstract geometric structures. This series of paperback books covered academic disciplines including history, psychology, sociology, management, and mathematics. De Harak’s approach appropriately expressed the conceptual content of each volume. The nature of book-jacket design in the United States was expanded and redefined by de Harak’s extensive production. The International Typographic Style was rapidly embraced in corporate and institutional graphics during the 1960s and remained a prominent aspect of American design for more than two decades. A noteworthy example was found in the graphic design office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where a sustained level of quality and imagination was achieved. In the early 1950s MIT established
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18–47. Jacqueline S. Casey, announcement for the MIT ocean engineering program, 1967. Typography sits above an X-ray of a chambered nautilus shell superimposed on a wavelike repetition of fluid blue shapes.
18–47
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a graphic design program enabling all members of the university community to benefit from free, professional design assistance on their publications and publicity material, an early recognition of the cultural and communicative value of design by an American university. MIT based its graphicdesign program on a commitment to the grid and sans-serif typography. The staff was innovative in the use of designed letterforms and manipulated words as vehicles to express content. This approach evolved in the work of Jacqueline S. Casey (1927–91), director of the Design Services Office; Ralph Coburn (b. 1923), designer for the Office of Publications; and Dietmar Winkler (b. 1938), a German-trained designer who worked with Casey and Coburn from 1966 until 1971. The Design Services Office (now the Publishing Services Bureau) produces publications and posters (Fig. 18–47) announcing concerts, speakers, seminars, exhibitions, and courses on the university campus. These frequently use solid-color backgrounds. Many of their solutions are purely typographic, originally created on a drafting table for economical line reproduction. In a sense, letterforms are used as illustrations, for the design and arrangement of the letters in key words frequently become the dominant image (Figs. 18–48 through 18–51). The use of graphic form to express technical and scientific information is demonstrated by Dietmar Winkler’s poster for a computer-programming course (Fig. 18–52). The rapid spread of the International Typographic Style resulted from the harmony and order of its methodology. The ability of elemental forms to express complex ideas with clarity and directness is seen in the “Inflatable Sculpture” exhibition poster (Fig. 18–53) by Arnold Saks (b. 1931). The design movement that began in Switzerland and Germany outgrew its native boundaries to become truly international. In countries such as Canada and Switzerland, where bilingual or trilingual communications are the norm, the International Typographic Style was particularly valuable. It allowed diverse informational materials ranging from signage to publicity to be unified into a coherent body. A growing awareness of design as a logical tool for large organizations caused corporate design and visual-identification systems to expand after World War II. During the mid-1960s the development of corporate design and the International Typographic Style were linked into one movement. This will be discussed in chapter 20.
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18–48. Jacqueline S. Casey, “Six Artists” exhibition poster for the MIT Hayden Gallery, 1970. 18–49. Ralph Coburn, poster for the MIT jazz band, 1972. A staccato repetition of the letterforms of the word jazz establishes musical sequences and animates the space. 18–50. Jacqueline S. Casey, poster for an MIT open house, 1974. Stencil letterforms announce the open house, and the open O does double duty as a concrete symbol of the opening of the campus to visitors.
18–48
18–49
18–50
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18–51
18–52
18–51. Jacqueline S. Casey, “Body
18–53. Arnold Saks, “Inflatable Sculp-
Language: Figurative Aspects of
ture” poster for the Jewish Museum,
Recent Art” exhibition poster for
1968. A sequence of bars bending
the MIT Hayden Gallery, 1981. The
upward signifies the action of energy
subject is implied through the use
upon pliable materials and graphically
of three-dimensional letters.
conveys the essence of the subject.
18–52. Dietmar Winkler, poster for a computer programming course at MIT, 1969. The term COBAL emerges from a kinetic construction of modular
18–53
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letters.
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19 The New York School The first wave of modern design in America was imported by talented European immigrants seeking to escape political totalitarianism. They provided Americans with a firsthand introduction to the European avant-garde. The 1940s saw steps toward an original American approach to modernist design. While borrowing freely from the work of European designers, Americans added new forms and concepts. European design was often theoretical and highly structured; American design was pragmatic, intuitive, and less formal in its approach to organizing space. Just as Paris had been receptive to new ideas and images during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, New York City served as a cultural incubator in the middle of the twentieth century. It nurtured creativity, and its prevailing climate attracted individuals of great talent and enabled them to realize their potential. Unique aspects of American culture and society informed the American approach to modern design. The United States is an egalitarian society with capitalistic values, limited artistic traditions before World War II, and a diverse ethnic heritage. In this highly competitive society, novelty of technique and originality of concept were much prized, and designers sought simultaneously to solve communications problems, present information directly, and satisfy a need for personal expression. This phase of American graphic design began with strong European roots during the 1940s, gained international prominence in the 1950s, and continued until the 1990s.
19–1
19–1. Paul Rand, cover for Direction magazine, December 1940. The red dots are symbolically ambiguous, becoming holiday decorations or blood drops.
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Pioneers of the New York school More than any other American designer, Paul Rand (1914–96) initiated the American approach to modern design. When he was twenty-three years old, Rand began the first phase of his design career as a promotional and editorial designer for the magazines Apparel Arts, Esquire, Ken, Coronet, and Glass Packer. His magazine covers broke with the traditions of American publication design. A thorough knowledge of the modern movement, particularly the works of Klee, Kandinsky, and the cubists, led Rand to the understanding that freely invented shapes could have a self-contained life, both symbolic and expressive, as a visual-communications tool. His ability to manipulate visual form (shape, color, space, line, value) and skillful analysis of communications content, reducing it to a symbolic essence without making it sterile or dull, allowed Rand to become widely influential while still in his twenties. The playful, visually dynamic, and unexpected often found their way into his work. A Direction magazine cover (Fig. 19–1)
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Pioneers of the New York school
19–2
19–3
19–2. Paul Rand, Jazzways yearbook cover, 1946. Collage technique, elemental symbolic forms, and dynamic composition characterized Rand’s work in the late 1930s and 1940s. 19–3. Paul Rand, Ohrbach’s advertisement, 1946. A combination of elements—logotype, photograph, decorative drawing, and type—are playfully unified. 19–4. Paul Rand, cover for Thoughts on Design, 1946. A photogram,
19–5
with several exposures of an abacus placed on photographic paper in the darkroom, becomes a metaphor of the design process—moving elements around to compose space—and provides a visual record of the process. 19–5. Paul Rand, poster for the American Institute of Graphic Art, 1968. A red “A. I. G. A.” plays hide-and-seek against the green background, as a pictographic clown face does the same with an organic abstraction. 19–6. Paul Rand, poster for the film No Way Out, 1950. Rand’s integration of photography, typography, signs,
19–6
graphic shapes, and the surrounding white space stands in marked contrast to typical film posters.
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391
19–4
shows the important role of visual and symbolic contrast in Rand’s designs. The handwritten Christmas tag on a crisp rectangle contrasts sharply with the mechanical stencil lettering of the logo on a torn-edged collage element; a Christmas package wrapped with barbed wire instead of ribbon was a grim reminder of the spread of global war. Rand seized upon collage and montage as means to bring concepts, images, textures, and even objects into a cohesive whole (Fig. 19–2). From 1941 until 1954 Paul Rand applied his design approach at the Weintraub advertising agency. His collaborations with copywriter Bill Bernbach (1911–82) became a prototype for the now ubiquitous art/copy team working closely together to create a synergistic visual-verbal integration. Campaigns they created for clients, including Ohrbach’s department store, featured entertaining puns and wordplay supported by Rand’s whimsical integration of photography, drawing, and logo (Fig. 19–3). The image visually reinforces the headline. After leaving the agency, Rand became an independent designer with increasing emphasis on trademark and corporate design. Thoughts on Design, his 1946 book (Fig. 19–4), illustrated with over eighty examples of his work, inspired a generation of designers. Rand understood the value of ordinary, universally understood signs and symbols as tools for translating ideas into visual communications (Figs. 19–5 and 19–6). To engage the audience successfully and communicate memorably, he knew that the designer needed to alter and juxtapose signs and symbols. A reinterpretation of the message was sometimes necessary to make the ordinary into something extraordinary. Sensual visual contrasts marked his work. He played red against green, organic shape against geometric type, photographic tone against flat color, cut or torn edges against sharp forms, and the textural pattern of type against white. In addition, Rand took risks by exploring unproven ideas. In his poster design for the American Institute of Graphic Arts, design
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19–8
19–9
19–7
becomes play and the futurist concept of simultaneity is evoked. For all his visual inventiveness, Rand defined design as the integration of form and function for effective communication. The cultural role of the designer was to upgrade rather than serve the least common denominator of public taste. During the early period of Rand’s career, he made forays into the vocabulary of modern art but never parted from an immediate accessibility of image (Fig. 19–7). During a design career in a life cut short by illness, Alvin Lustig (1915–55) incorporated his subjective vision and private symbols into graphic design. Born in Colorado, Lustig alternated between the East and West Coasts and between architecture, graphic design, and interior design. At age twenty-one he began a graphic design and printing business in the rear of a Los Angeles drugstore. On projects for the Ward Ritchie Press, Lustig created abstract geometric designs using type rules and ornaments. Sensing that Lustig’s work was created by an “artist who might possess a touch of genius,” publisher James Laughton of New Directions in New York began to give him book and jacket design commissions in 1940 (Figs. 19–8 through 19–10). As New Directions published books of outstanding literary quality, Lustig’s design methodology—searching for symbols to capture the essence of the contents and treating form and content as one—received a positive response from its literary audience. For 27 Wagons Full of Cotton (Fig. 19–11), a delicate magnolia flower is brutally nailed to rough siding; these contradictory photographic symbols represent the violence and hatred behind the civilized facade in human affairs. Believing in the importance of painting for design and design
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19–11
19–10
19–7. Paul Rand, monograph cover,
19–10. Alvin Lustig, cover for Ten-
1953. An exuberance of shape and
nessee Williams’s Camino Real, 1952.
whimsical images are recurring
The typographic title contrasts crisply
themes in Rand’s advertisements and
with the graffiti-marred wall on which
children’s books.
it is posted.
19–8. Alvin Lustig, cover for Arthur
19–11. Alvin Lustig, cover for Tennes-
Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell, 1945.
see Williams’s 27 Wagons Full of Cot-
Sharp black-and-white biomorphic fig-
ton, 1949. Lustig understood the frail
ures on a deep-red field suggest the
human spirit and brutal environmental
French poet’s spiritual descent into
forces articulated in Williams’s plays.
hell and his failures in love and art. 19–9. Alvin Lustig, cover for Federico García Lorca’s 3 Tragedies, 1949. In this montage of five photographic images, the author’s name and title become objects photographed in the world.
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19–12. Alvin Lustig, cover for Anatomy for Interior Designers, 1948. 19–13. Alex Steinweiss, album cover for Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, 1949. This collage of diverse elements typifies Steinweiss’s album covers. 19–14. Bradbury Thompson, pages from Westvaco Inspirations 151, 1945. The vast storehouse of printed images now in the public domain was
19–12
19–13
deftly probed and became part of the modern design vocabulary. 19–15. Bradbury Thompson, pages from Westvaco Inspirations 186, 1951. This spirited collage opens an issue called “Enlarging upon Printing,” exploring such possibilities as enlarging halftone dots.
19–14
19–15
education, he considered the artist’s pure research into private symbols the wellspring for the public symbols created by the designer (Fig. 19–12). In 1945 Lustig became the visual design research director of Look magazine, a position he held until 1946. By 1950 he was becoming increasingly involved in design education, and in 1951 he was asked by Josef Albers to help develop a graduate graphic design program at Yale University. However, his eyesight had begun to fail, and he was totally blind by the autumn of 1954. In the face of this overwhelming tragedy for an artist, Lustig continued to teach and design until his death more than a year later. In 1940, twenty-four-year-old Alex Steinweiss (1916–2011) was named art director of Columbia Records. The modern design sensibilities of the 1940s were applied to record-album design as Steinweiss searched for visual forms and shapes to express music (Fig. 19–13). Often Steinweiss approached space informally; elements were placed on the field with a casual balance sometimes bordering on a random scattering of forms. Bradbury Thompson (1911–95) emerged as one of the most influential graphic designers in postwar America. After graduation from Washburn College in his hometown of Topeka, Kansas, in 1934, Thompson worked for printing firms there for several years before moving to New York. His designs for Westvaco Inspirations, four-color publications demonstrating printing papers, continued from 1939 until 1961, making a significant impact. A thorough knowledge of printing and typesetting, combined with an adventurous spirit of experimentation, allowed him to expand the range of design possibilities. Westvaco Inspirations used letterpress plates of
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art and illustration borrowed from advertising agencies and museums. With a limited budget for new plates and artwork, Thompson used the typecase and print shop as his “canvas, easel, and second studio.” He discovered and explored the potential of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century engravings as design resources (Fig. 19–14). Large, bold organic and geometric shapes were used to bring graphic and symbolic power to the page. Letterforms and patterns were often enlarged and used as design elements or to create visual patterns and movements. Four-color process plates were taken apart and used to create designs (Fig. 19–15) and often overprinted to create new colors. In sum, Thompson achieved a rare mastery of complex organization, form, and visual flow. For Westvaco Inspirations 210 (Fig. 19–16), a photograph loaned for use as a printing specimen was the catalyst for Thompson’s typographic invention. Typography gained expression through scale and color (Fig. 19–17). During the 1960s and 1970s, Thompson turned increasingly to a classical approach to book and editorial format design. Readability, formal harmony, and a sensitive use of Old Style typefaces marked his work for periodicals such as Smithsonian and ARTnews, United States postage stamps (Fig. 19–18), and a steady flow of books, including the monumental Washburn College Bible. The sensibilities of the New York school were carried to Los Angeles by Saul Bass (1919–96). He moved from New York to California in 1950, and he opened a studio there two years later. Paul Rand’s use of shape and asymmetrical balance during the 1940s was an important inspiration for Bass, but while Rand’s carefully orchestrated compositions used complex
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Chapter 19: The New York School
19–19 19–16. Bradbury Thompson, pages from Westvaco Inspirations 210, 1958. A multiple-exposure photograph of a saxophone player is reversed from a black circle on the left and overprinted in primary colors on the right. 19–17. Bradbury Thompson, pages from Westvaco Inspirations 216, 1961. Complex typography interpreted the American Civil War; combinations of four-color process printing plates appear behind the large letters.
19–17
19–20
19–18. Bradbury Thompson, education stamp, 1980. With this design Thompson combined the text “Learning never ends” with Homage to the Square: Glow, a painting by his friend Josef Albers. 19–19. Saul Bass, billboard for Pabco Paints, early 1950s. The process of painting is reduced to a multicolored stripe, while happy customers are articulated by three simple marks. 19–20. Saul Bass, logo for The Man with the Golden Arm, 1955. This consistent and memorable visual identifier was flexible enough for uses ranging from minute newspaper advertisements to large-scale posters. 19–21. Saul Bass, film titles for The Man with the Golden Arm, 1955.
19–18
19–21
Abstract graphic elements create a spare, gaunt intensity reflecting the character of the film. Graphic design for film was revolutionized.
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Pioneers of the New York school
contrasts of shape, color, and texture, Bass frequently reduced his designs to a single dominant image. Bass had a remarkable ability to express the nucleus of a design with images that become glyphs, or elemental pictorial signs that exert great graphic power (Fig. 19–19). Although Bass reduced messages to simple pictographic images, his work is not simply the elemental graphics of constructivism. Irregular forms are cut from paper with scissors or drawn with a brush. Freely drawn, decorative letterforms are often combined with typography or handwriting. There is a robust energy about his forms and an almost casual quality about their execution. While images are simplified to a minimal statement, they lack the exactitude of measurement or construction that could make them rigid.
19–22 19–22. Saul Bass, poster for Exodus, 1960. Two levels of reality express the struggle of Israel’s birth: the twodimensional logo and the photographically frozen moment when this image is engulfed in flames.
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395
Motion pictures had long used traditional portraits of actors and actresses in promoting films and mediocre and garish typography for film titles. Then producer/director Otto Preminger commissioned Bass to create unified graphic materials for his films, including logos, theater posters, advertising, and animated film titles. The first comprehensive design program unifying both print and media graphics for a film was the 1955 design program for Preminger’s The Man with the Golden Arm. Bass’s symbol for this film about drug addiction is a thick pictographic arm thrusting downward into a rectangle composed flat cutout shapes and bracketed with the film title (Fig. 19–20). The titles for this motion picture were equally innovative (Fig. 19–21). Accompanied by staccato jazz music, a single white bar thrusts down onto the screen, followed by three more; when all four reach the center of the screen, typography appears, listing the featured performers. All of these elements, except one bar, retained for continuity, fade. Then, four bars sweep in from the top, bottom, and sides to frame the film-title typography, which suddenly appears. This kinetic sequence of animated bars and typography continues in perfect synchronization to the throbbing wail of jazz music through the credits. Finally, the bars thrust into the space and transform into the pictographic arm of the logo. From this beginning, Bass became the acknowledged master of the film title. He pioneered an organic process of forms that appear, disintegrate, reform, and transform in time and space. This combination, recombination, and synthesis of form was carried over into the area of printed graphics. A typical Bass motion picture design program can be seen in the 1960 graphics for Exodus. Bass created a pictograph of arms reaching upward and struggling for a rifle, conveying the violence and strife connected with the birth of the nation of Israel. This mark was used in a comprehensive publicity program, including newspaper, magazine, and trade advertisement posters (Fig. 19–22) and film titles, and even stationery, shipping labels, and other routine printed matter. Each individual item was approached as a unique communications problem. The simplicity and directness of Bass’s work enables the viewer to interpret the content immediately. In addition to his film graphics, Bass created numerous corporate-identity programs. He also directed a number of films, ranging from the outstanding short film Why Man Creates, which used a kaleidoscope of film techniques probing the nature of human creativity and expression, to a feature-length motion picture. George Tscherny (b. 1924), a native of Budapest, Hungary, immigrated to the United States as a child and received his visual education there. Tscherny headed the graphic design department for the New York design firm George Nelson & Associates before opening his own design office in 1956. Tscherny has functioned as an independent designer, which is unusual in a profession where partnerships, large staffs, and staff positions are the norm. An intuitive and sensitive designer, Tscherny possesses an ability to seize the essence of the subject and express it in stunningly simple terms. The results are elegant, to the point, and disarmingly simple.
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19–23
19–24
19–23. George Tscherny, dance program cover, 1958. Two pieces of cut paper capture the renowned modern dancer Martha Graham in one of her classic poses. 19–24. George Tscherny, exhibition catalogue cover, 1961. José de Rivera (1904–85) was a constructivist sculptor whose parabolic curves twist and bend in space. Tscherny expressed
Tscherny’s vocabulary of techniques for solving design problems includes type, photography, simple calligraphic brush drawing, and bold, simple shapes cut from colored papers. Regardless of technique, his process of reducing complex content to an elemental graphic symbol expressing the underlying order or basic form of the subject is constant (Figs. 19–23 and 19–24). The New York firm of Brownjohn, Chermayeff, and Geismar, founded by three youthful designers in 1957, did important work. Their decision to call their firm a design office instead of an art studio reflected their attitudes toward design and the design process. Robert Brownjohn (1925–70) had studied painting and design under Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and architecture under the distinguished architect-teacher Serge Chermayeff. Ivan Chermayeff (b. 1932), Serge’s son, had worked as an assistant to Alvin Lustig and as a record-album designer; a close friend from the graduate graphic design program at Yale University, Thomas H. Geismar (b. 1931), had served two years with the United States Army as an exhibition designer and then freelanced. The initial contribution of these three to American graphic design sprang from a strong aesthetic background and an understanding of the major ideas of European modern art, which had been reinforced by their contacts with the elder Chermayeff, Moholy-Nagy, and Lustig. A communicative immediacy, a strong sense of form, and a vitality and freshness characterized their work in the early months of the partnership. Images and symbols were combined with a surreal sense of dislocation to convey the essence of the subject on book jackets and posters (Figs. 19–25 and 19–26). Typographic solutions, such as the record-album cover for Machito and His Orchestra (Fig. 19–27), used color repetition and unusual letterforms to express the subject matter. A fine sense of both typographic and art history, developed as a result of the principals’ wide-ranging educational backgrounds, enabled them to solve problems through inventive and symbolic manipulation of forms and imagery. Solutions grew out of the needs of the client and the limitations of the problem at hand. In 1960 Brownjohn left the partnership and moved to England, where he made significant contributions to British graphic design, especially in the area of film titles. Particularly inventive was his title design for the motion picture Goldfinger. Brownjohn’s typographic designs for the credits were 35mm color slides projected upon a moving human body filmed in real time. This integration of two-dimensional graphics with figurative cinematography inspired numerous other experimental titling efforts. Meanwhile, the firm, renamed Chermayeff & Geismar Associates, played a major role in the development of postwar corporate identity, discussed in the next chapter.
this by photographing bent and twisted type. 19–25. Thomas H. Geismar, cover for
19–25
Common Sense and Nuclear Warfare, c. 1958. The atomic blast became a visual metaphor for the human brain, graphically echoing the title.
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Graphic design education at Yale University School of Art In 1950 Josef Albers was appointed director of the art school at Yale University. During the same year he invited Alvin Eisenman (b. 1921) to direct the graphic design program, providing the genesis of the first such program to be supported by a major university. In addition to teaching, Eisenman was appointed typographer and successor to Carl Purington
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Graphic design education at Yale University School of Art
19–26
19–27
Rollins at the Yale University Press. According to John T. Hill, a Yale colleague, “Both Albers and Eisenman shared a passion for type and typography. From his teaching at the Bauhaus, Albers brought exercises that examined letters and typography as formal elements devoid of their literal function. Eisenman brought a rigorous study of classic type design and the traditions of fine book design and printing” (Figs. 19–28 and 19-29). Eisenman was joined in 1951 by Lustig, who remained on the faculty until his death in 1955 at age forty. As a result of Eisenman’s vision, for over half a century leading graphic designers, photographers, printmakers and other innovative visual artists have taught in the Yale graphic design program. The program has contributed to the advancement of professional instruction in graphic design and design education internationally, as many of its alumni have become prominent designers and educators around the world. In addition to Eisenman and Lustig, the faculty has included Norman Ives, Paul Rand, Herbert Matter, Bradbury Thompson, Armin Hofmann, Alexy Brodovitch, Walker Evans, John T. Hill, Inge Druckery, Dan Friedman, Philip Burton, Douglas Scott, Christopher Pullman, and Sheila de Bretteville, the current director. The list of visiting lecturers also reads like a Who’s Who of twentieth-century graphic design. It includes luminaries such as Lester Beall, Otl Aicher, Raymond Savignac, Dieter Rot, Peter Brattinga, Robert Frank, Ken Hiebert, Anton Stankowski, George Tscherny, April Greiman, Wolfgang Weingart, Rudi de Harak, Bob Gill, Shigeo Fukuda, Steven Heller, Jan Tschichold, Steff Geissbuhler, Adrian Frutiger, Greer Allen, Matthew Carter, and Malcolm Grear. A member of the first class under Albers and Eisenman, Norman Ives (1923–1978) received his MFA in graphic design in 1952. While an undergraduate at Wesleyan, Ives had developed a love for literature and the classics that became a part of his overall vision. In his early paintings one senses overtones
19–26. Ivan Chermayeff, Between the Wars, 1977. The interwar years are represented by Churchill’s hat between two helmets. 19–27. Robert Brownjohn, album cover for Machito and His Orchestra, 1959. A pattern of abstract shapes is formed by repeating the bottom portions of letters fragmented by a stencil-lettering effect. 19–28. Alvin Eisenman, title spread
19–29 19–28
for Inscriptions: Eugene O’Neill to Carlotta Monterey O’Neill, 1960. 19–29. Alvin Eisenman, insert for Homage to the Book portfolio, 1968.
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of Arp and Klee, and in his typographic work, the playful approach and expressive use of letters found in the work of Apollinaire, Sandberg, and Werkman. After graduation, Eisenman asked Ives to join his newly assembled faculty. Ives immediately proved to be a naturally gifted teacher and was admired for his succinctness, dearth of rhetoric, and insightful criticism and generosity. Ives began making collages in the late 1950s, initially using triangular shapes of the same size cut from letters and words on posters and broadsides. These were then glued to grids drawn on boards (Fig. 19–30). Although they retained their colors and forms, they were detached from their original sources, an aspect that distinguished them from the scraps used by Schwitters, who preserved much of the identity of his materials. An editorial design revolution During the 1940s, only a few American magazines were well designed. Among them were Fortune, a business magazine whose art directors included Will Burtin and Leo Lionni (1910–99); Vogue, where Alexander Liberman replaced Mehemed Fehmy Agha as art director in 1943; and especially Harper’s Bazaar, where Alexey Brodovitch continued as art director until his retirement in 1958 (see chapter 17). One of Agha’s assistants at Vogue during the 1930s, Cipe Pineles (1910–91), made a major contribution to editorial design during the 1940s and 1950s, first as art director at Glamour and then at Seventeen, Charm, and Mademoiselle. Pineles often commissioned illustrations from painters, resulting in editorial pages that broke with conventional imagery (Fig. 19–31). Pineles became the first woman admitted to membership in the New York Art Director’s Club, breaking the bastion of the male-dominated professional design societies. Born in the Netherlands, Leo Lionni studied economics in Italy from 1931 to 1935. While in Italy, he became acquainted
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19–32
with the futurist artist Filippo Marinetti, who encouraged him to paint. Lionni’s career as a graphic designer began when he worked as a designer and art director for Motta, an Italian food distributor. In 1939 he moved to the United States, where he was hired as art director at the pioneering Philadelphia advertising agency N. W. Ayer, whose clients included the Container Corporation of America. He also contributed to the war effort with designs such as his 1941 poster “Keep ‘em Rolling,” in wich three tanks and the image of a welder are integrated with an American flag. In 1949 he became art director at Fortune magazine, where he remained until his retirement in 1961 (Fig. 19–32). While there, he gave the magazine a unique identity, largely through his innovative use of photography. In addition, he served as Olivetti’s design director in America and was coeditor of Print magazine from 1955 until 1959. Over the course of the 1950s a revolution in editorial design occurred, spurred in part by the design classes Brodovitch taught first at his home and then at the New School for Social Research in New York. The seeds for an expansive, design-oriented period of editorial graphics were sown in these classes. One of his students, Otto Storch (1913–1999), later wrote, “Brodovitch would dump photostats, type proofs, colored pieces of paper, and someone’s shoe lace, if it became untied, on a long table together with rubber cement. He would fold his arms and with a sad expression challenge us to do something brilliant.” Brodovitch’s students learned to examine each problem thoroughly, develop a solution from the resulting understanding, and then search for a brilliant visual presentation. His impact on the generation of editorial designers and photographers who came into their own during the 1950s was phenomenal, and he helped editorial design experience one of its greatest eras. Storch, working as an art director at the Dell publishing house, was unhappy with the subject matter in his assignments. Keenly interested in Brodovitch’s design of Harper’s
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An editorial design revolution
19–30. Norman Ives, Ionic-Recon-
19–33. Otto Storch (art director) and
struction, acrylic and dry pigment on
Paul Dome (photographer), pages
canvas, 1965. Ives produced painted
from McCall’s, 1961. Introductory
versions of his collages, as in this
pages for a frozen-foods feature unify
construction comprised of twenty
typography and photography into a
separate canvases.
cohesive structure.
19–31. Cipe Pineles, cover for
19–34. Otto Storch (art director) and
Seventeen, 1949. Stripe patterns and
Dan Wynn (photographer), pages
a mirror-image reflection achieve a
from McCall’s, 1961. Typography
graphic vitality.
bends with the elasticity of a soft mattress under the weight of the sleeping
19–32. Leo Lionni, Fortune magazine cover, 1960. Using multicolor letterforms, Lionni manages to express the vibrancy of the city of New York.
19–33
19–34
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woman.
399
Bazaar, Storch joined the art directors, photographers, fashion and general illustrators, and packaging, set, and typographic designers who gathered to learn from the master. After class one evening in 1946, Brodovitch reviewed Storch’s portfolio and advised him to quit his job because he showed potential but his position did not. A seven-year period of freelancing followed, and then Storch joined the McCall’s Corporation as assistant art director for Better Living magazine. In 1953, he was named art director of McCall’s magazine. When this major women’s publication developed circulation problems in the late 1950s, a new editor named Herbert Mayes was brought in to revitalize the magazine. In 1958 Mayes gave Storch a free hand to upgrade the graphics, and an astounding visual approach developed. Typography was unified with photography as the type was designed to lock tightly into the photographic image (Fig. 19–33). Headlines often became parts of illustrations. Type warped and bent, or became the illustration, as in Figure 19–34 , where it takes on the shape of a mattress. Scale was explored in this large-format publication, whose 27 by 34.5 centimeter (105 ⁄8 by 131 ⁄2 inch) pages provided abundant space for design. Small objects became large graphics. Subjects such as a beautiful ear of fresh summer corn (Fig. 19–35) were presented as full double-page layouts. Storch and the photographers who worked with him went to great lengths to produce unexpected and poetic photographic essays. Foods and fashions were often shot on location instead of in the studio. Storch ranks among the major innovators of the period. His philosophy that idea, copy, art, and typography should be inseparable in editorial design (Fig. 19–36) influenced both editorial and advertising graphics. Success made the management at McCall’s more conservative, and opposition to Storch’s creative layouts began to build. After nearly fifteen years as art director of McCall’s, he resigned to concentrate on editorial and advertising photography. After gaining experience in studios and an advertising agency, Vienna-born Henry Wolf (1925–2005) became art director of Esquire in 1953. Wolf also studied under Brodovitch, and he redesigned Esquire’s format, placing greater emphasis on the use of white space and large photographs. When Brodovitch retired in 1958, Wolf replaced him as art director of Harper’s Bazaar. Wolf experimented with typography, making it large enough to fill the page on one spread and then using small headlines on other pages. Wolf’s vision of the magazine cover was a simple image conveying a visual idea. His “Americanization of Paris” cover (Fig. 19–37) inspired letters asking where instant wine could be purchased. The sophistication and inventiveness of the photography commissioned by Harper’s Bazaar during his tenure were monumental achievements (Figs. 19–38 and 19–39). In 1961 Wolf left Harper’s Bazaar to design the new magazine Show (Fig. 19–40), a short-lived periodical that explored new design territory as a result of Wolf’s imaginative art direction. He then turned his attention toward advertising and photography. In the late 1960s, broad factors at work in America ended the era of large pages, huge photographs, and design as a
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significant component of content. Television eroded magazines’ advertising revenue and supplanted their traditional role of providing popular entertainment. At the same time, public concerns about the Vietnam War, environmental problems, the rights of minorities and women, and a host of other issues produced a need for different magazines. The public demanded higher information content, and skyrocketing postal rates, paper shortages, and escalating paper and printing costs shrank the large-format periodicals. Esquire, for example, went from 25.5 by 33.4 centimeters (10 by 13 inches) to a typical format size of about 21 by 27.5 centimeters (8 by 11 inches). Major weeklies including Life, Look, and the Saturday Evening Post ceased publication. Editorial design after the decline Many predicted the death of the magazine as a communications form during the 1960s; however, a new, smaller-format breed of periodicals emerged and thrived by addressing the interests of specialized audiences. Advertisers who wished to reach these audiences bought space. The new editorial climate, with longer text, more emphasis on content, and less opportunity for lavish visual treatment, necessitated a new approach to editorial design. Layout became more controlled, and the use of a standard typographic format and grid became the norm. A harbinger for the future evolution of the magazine as a graphic communications form can be found in the work of Peter Palazzo (1926–2005), design editor of the New York Herald Tribune from 1962 until 1965. Palazzo received considerable acclaim for his overall typographic design of this newspaper, the editorial design approach of the Book Week Supplement and New York magazine, and the conceptual power of many of the images he commissioned. In the weekly New York magazine section, Palazzo established a three-column grid and a consistent size and style for article titles, which were always bracketed by a thick ruled line above and a thin rule below (Fig. 19–41). The total effect was somewhere between the newspaper (with its dominant masses of text) and the magazine design of the period (with engaging visuals and ample white space). After the New York Herald Tribune ceased publication in April 1967, the New York supplement continued as an independent city magazine. During the late 1960s American graphic design slowly started to become a national profession. New photographic typesetting and printing technology permitted excellent work to be produced in smaller cities; professional educational programs developed around the country. Two national design magazines—Print, published in New York from 1940, and Communication Arts, launched in the San Francisco area in 1959—communicated to an increasingly nationwide design community and played a major role in defining the profession and its standards. A new breed of editorial art directors who were as much editors as designers emerged in some cities, including Atlanta and San Francisco. They helped shape the editorial viewpoints and philosophies of their publications. One prototype for this new editorial designer is Dugald Stermer (b. 1936), who left
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19–35
19–36
a studio job in Texas in 1965 to return to his native California and become art director of Ramparts magazine. Public opposition to the Vietnam War and concern about a host of other social and environmental issues were exploding, and Ramparts became the journal of record for the movement. Stermer developed a format using Times Roman typography with capital initials, two columns of text on the page, and centered titles and headings. The dignity and readability of classical, traditional typography thus packaged the most radical periodical of the era. Stermer made a major contribution in the use of images, often placing full-page illustrations or photographs on covers and at the beginnings of articles. Stermer and editors Warren Hinkle, Robert Scheer, and Sol Stern came perilously close to being indicted for conspiracy as a result of the December 1967 cover design (Fig. 19–42). At a time when many young Americans were burning their Selective Service registration cards as a matter of conscience, this cover depicted four hands holding burning facsimile draft cards of Stermer and the three editors. Convincing arguments by attorney Edward Bennett Williams persuaded the grand jury not to indict the four. In contrast to the consistent format adopted by Stermer, the design of Ms. magazine by Bea Feitler (1938–82) depended
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Editorial design after the decline
19–37
19–38
19–40
19–41
19–39
19–35. Otto Storch (art director and
19–37. Henry Wolf, cover for Esquire,
19–39. Henry Wolf, cover for Harper’s
19–41. Peter Palazzo (art director),
photographer), pages from McCall’s,
1958. “The Americanization of Paris”
Bazaar, 1959. Colors on a peacock
pages for New York, 1965. A transpar-
1965. The soft beauty of an ear of
is signified by a packet of “instant red
feather are echoed by the eye
ent anatomical drawing of an arm
corn fills the pages. A photograph of
wine,” satirizing the creeping spread
makeup in an arresting juxtaposition.
combines with a photograph of a
a roadside market’s handmade sign
of American technology, customs, and
serves as the title.
conveniences.
baseball to express the arm problems 19–40. Henry Wolf, cover for Show,
of a major-league pitcher.
1964. An article on the underground 19–36. Otto Storch (art director) and
19–38. Henry Wolf, cover for Harper’s
film industry is represented by one of
Allen Arbus (photographer), pages
Bazaar, 1959. This refracted image
its stars.
from McCall’s, 1959. Typography
typifies Wolf’s imaginative visual solu-
tumbles from a heel and hand of mov-
tions for ordinary design problems.
ing models. Contrasting colors and
As a subtle detail, the logo is re-
values create a dynamic visual impact.
fracted as well.
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19–42. Dugald Stermer (art director),
19–44. Mike Salisbury, pages from
cover for Ramparts, 1967. Because
West, late 1960s. Here the art director
the editors’ names are clearly vis-
became a visual historian, researching
ible on the burning draft cards, this
and selecting old Levi’s advertise-
graphic depiction of civil disobedi-
ments and products for a pictorial
ence takes on the quality of a self-
essay.
documented crime. 19–45. Mike Salisbury, pages from 19–43. Bea Feitler (art director),
Rolling Stone, 1974. Diverse type-
cover for Ms. magazine, 1972. The
faces are contained in plaques and
lime-green typography against a fluo-
boxes. Full, two-page photographs
rescent pink background projected
produce a lively graphic pacing.
joyously from newsstands.
19–42
19–44
19–45
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19–43
heavily on diversifying typographic style and scale to bring vitality and expression to this journal of the women’s movement. Social conventions and standard design thinking were challenged by the Ms. 1972 Christmas cover (Fig. 19–43). The traditional holiday greeting, normally expressing “good will to men,” is directed toward “people.” Feitler had an original approach to typography and design that depended not on consistency of style but on a finely tuned ability to make appropriate choices uninhibited by current fashion or standard typographic practice. In a single issue of Ms. magazine her graphic range included fifteenth-century Garamonds with ornamental initials, simple geometric sans-serif types, and novelty and illustrated letterforms. After her tenure at Ms., Feitler became active as a freelance designer of periodicals and books. A number of currents—the conceptual approach to cover design, the role of art director expanding into the editorial funtion (as illustrated by Stermer), and the growing taste for nostalgia, ephemera, and popular culture partly inspired by 1960s pop art—dovetailed in the work of Mike Salisbury (b. 1941), who became the art director of West, the Sunday supplement of the Los Angeles Times, in 1967. For five years, until the newspaper terminated it because its advertising revenue failed to meet production costs, Salisbury made West a vital expression of California culture. The visual delights of vernacular artifacts, ranging from orange-crate labels to blue jeans advertising (Fig. 19–44) to customized cars, were featured in editorial spreads researched by Salisbury and designed with a combination of randomness and order in original layouts that intensified the pages of the publication. In 1974 Salisbury redesigned the entire format of Rolling Stone, a rock-and-roll newspaper repositioned as a tabloid magazine (Fig. 19–45). The element of surprise became Salisbury’s primary design tool for giving Rolling Stone visual energy. Typography was used differently for each article in an issue, and the range of illustrations and photographic approaches knew no bounds. In addition to redefining Rolling Stone’s format, Salisbury established an uninhibited,
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The new advertising
403
freewheeling design approach that influenced the layout of many popular, specialized, and regional periodicals for a decade. He also worked as a consultant designer or art director for Oui, City, and New West. The new advertising The 1940s were a lackluster decade for advertising. Repetition of hyperbolic slogans, movie-star testimonials, and exaggerated claims were the mainstays of the decade, though they were punctuated by occasional design excellence. On 1 June 1949 a new advertising agency, Doyle Dane Bernbach, opened its doors at 350 Madison Avenue in New York City with a staff of thirteen and less than half a million dollars in client accounts. Copywriter Bill Bernbach was the partner with responsibility for the creative area, and his initial staff consisted of art director Bob Gage (1919–2000) and copywriter Phyllis Robinson (b. 1921). Doyle Dane Bernbach “took the exclamation mark out of advertising” and made it talk intelligently to consumers. The company’s first client was a budget department store badly in need of a fresh image (Fig. 19–46). In contrast to the crowded space and multiple messages of much advertising of the period, Doyle Dane Bernbach used white space effectively to focus the reader’s attention toward the headline and image on crowded newspaper pages. For each campaign they developed a strategy surrounding important advantages, distinguishing characteristics, or superior features of the product. In order to break through to consumers bombarded by perpetual commercial messages, Bernbach sought an imaginative package for this information. His major contribution was combining words and images in a new way. Traditionally, a copywriter’s headline and body copy were sent to the art director, who then made a layout. In the Bernbach approach, a synergistic relationship between visual and verbal components was established. Paul Rand had developed a bellwether approach to advertising in the 1940s, integrating words and phrases in a freer organization, using visual metaphors and puns seldom seen in advertising. Now Bernbach and his colleagues removed the boundaries separating verbal and visual communications and evolved visual/verbal syntax: word and image fused into a conceptual expression of an idea so that they become completely interdependent (Fig. 19–47). In the Volkswagen campaign, “strange little cars with their beetle shapes” were marketed to a public used to luxury and high horsepower as status symbols. This approach to advertising led to a new working relationship, as writers and art directors worked as “creative teams.” In addition to Gage, Bill Taubin (1916–98), Helmut Krone (1925–96), Len Sirowitz (b. 1932), and Bert Steinhauser (19292002) rank among the art directors who produced outstanding creative work in collaboration with Doyle Dane Bernbach copywriters. Because concept was dominant, the design of many Doyle Dane Bernbach advertisements was reduced to the basic elements necessary to convey the message: a large, arresting visual image, a concise headline of bold weight, and body copy that stakes its claim with factual and often entertaining writing instead of puffery and meaningless superlatives. Often
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19–46 19–46. Bob Gage (art director), Bill Bernbach and Judy Protas (writers), Ohrbach’s advertisement, 1958. A “catty lady” learns how a friend dresses so well on an ordinary income: she buys high fashions for low price.
the visual organization was simple and symmetrical, for design arrangements were not allowed to distract from the straightforward presentation of an idea. Advertising stereotypes were replaced by real people from America’s pluralistic society (Fig. 19–48). The potency of this approach was demonstrated when a public-service ad spurred federal legislation (Fig. 19–49) and Steinhauser, the art director, received a letter of thanks from President Lyndon B. Johnson after the bill was passed. Doyle Dane Bernbach became a training ground for what was eventually called “the new advertising.” Many writers and art directors who developed there joined spin-off agencies. These boutique agencies, small shops that emphasized creativity rather than full marketing services, challenged the dominance of the monolithic multimillion-dollar agencies during the flowering of advertising creativity in the 1960s. The notion grew that there were superstars in advertising, a perception fed by a proliferation of awards, competitions, professional periodicals, and annuals. By the 1980s Doyle Dane Bernbach had evolved into a more traditional large advertising agency. Nonprint advertising also flourished in the middle of the twentieth century. Regular television broadcasting started in 1941, and immediately after World War II television began its spectacular growth as an advertising medium. By the early
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19–47. Helmut Krone (art director) and Julian Koenig (writer), Volkswagen advertisement, 1960. An economy car is made lovable as conventional exaggerated claims and superlatives yield to straightforward facts. 19–48. Bill Taubin (art director) and Judy Protas (writer), subway poster, c. 1965. Mass communication stereotypes were replaced by more realistic images of people, and taboos against representing ethnic minorities were broken. 19–49. Bert Steinhauser (art director) and Chuck Kollewe (writer), politicalaction advertisement, 1967. Startling words and a vivid picture challenged readers to write Congress about a rat-extermination bill.
19–47
19–49
1960s television was the second-largest medium (after newspapers) in total advertising revenue and the largest medium in major national advertising budgets. Print art directors began turning toward the design of television commercials, the newly ubiquitous genre with great, if ambivalent potential: on the one hand, it might, for example, expand public understanding of cinematic form by adopting techniques from experimental film; on the other, at its worst, it might become an unavoidable blight on the public consciousness. The “new advertising” developed at the same time as the “new journalism,” and comparisons were inevitable. The journalistic approach of writers like Tom Wolfe (b. 1931) replaced traditional objectivity with subjective responses as a component of reportage. The journalist experienced a story as a participant rather than as a dispassionate observer. By contrast, although the new advertising remained oriented toward persuasive selling techniques and subjective emotional appeals, its methods were more honest, literate, and tasteful. In the 1970s advertising became increasingly involved in positioning products and services against their competitors, and the general level of print advertising creativity declined. 19–48
19–50. Gene Federico (art director),
19–51. Don Egensteiner (art director),
advertisement for Woman’s Day,
advertisement for Young and Rubicam
1953. In this double-page advertise-
Advertising, 1960. The heavy, one-
ment from the New Yorker magazine,
word headline crashes into the body
the perfectly round Futura o’s form
copy to accomplish a major objective:
bicycle wheels.
grabbing attention.
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American typographic expressionism A playful direction taken by New York graphic designers in the 1950s and 1960s involved figurative typography. This took many forms—letterforms became objects; objects became letterforms. Gene Federico (1919–1999) was one of the first graphic designers to delight in using letterforms as images (Fig. 19–50). Another approach to figurative typography used the visual properties of the words themselves, or their organization in the space, to express an idea. Don Egensteiner’s “Tonnage” advertisement (Fig. 19–51) is an example of the visual organization of type
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American typographic expressionism
19–50
taking on connotative meaning. Typography was sometimes scratched, torn, bent, or vibrated to express a concept or introduce the unexpected to the printed page. Another typographic trend that began slowly in the 1950s was a reexamination of nineteenth-century decorative and novelty typefaces that had been rejected for many decades under the influence of the modern movement. This revival of interest was inspired by Robert M. Jones, art director of RCA Victor Records, who established the private Glad Hand Press in 1953. Jones had a fondness for colonial and nineteenth-century printing and exercised this interest in hundreds of pieces of graphic ephemera produced at the press. In addition, he often set typography for his record-album designs using wood type. Phototypography, the setting of type by exposing negatives of alphabet characters to photographic paper, was attempted as early as 1893, with limited results. During the 1920s inventors in England and America moved closer to success. The year 1925 saw the quiet dawning of a new era of typography with the public announcement of the Thothmic photographic composing machine, invented by E. K. Hunter and J. R. C. August of London. A keyboard produced a punched tape to control a long, opaque master film with transparent letterforms. As a given letter moved in position in front of a lens, it was exposed to photographic paper by a beam of light. The Thothmic was a harbinger of the graphic revolution that came a half-century later. Commercially viable photographic display typesetting in the United States began when the Photolettering firm was established in New York in 1936. It was headed by Edward Rondthaler (1905–2009), who had been instrumental in perfecting the Rutherford Photolettering Machine, which sets type by exposing film negatives of type characters onto photopaper.
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405
19–51
Although phototypography had the potential to replace the rigid quality of metal type with a dynamic new flexibility, for over two decades it was used only as an alternative method of setting type, with some production advantages and some disadvantages. A major advantage of phototype was a radical reduction in the cost of introducing new typestyles. New designs and reissues of old designs accompanied the large-scale expansion of phototype during the 1960s. A specimen book (Fig. 19–52) designed by John Alcorn (1935–92) introduced Morgan Press nineteenth-century typefaces as phototype from Headliners Process Lettering. This was one of many phototype collections making Victorian faces widely available. Graphic designers rethought the value of supposedly outmoded forms and incorporated them in their work. Someone was needed to define the aesthetic potential of phototypography by understanding its new flexibility and exploring its possibilities for graphic expression. Herb Lubalin (1918–81), a generalist whose achievements include advertising and editorial design, trademark and typeface design, posters, and packaging, was hailed as the typographic genius of his time. Major thrusts of American graphic design—including the visual/verbal concept orientation of Doyle Dane Bernbach and the trends toward figurative and more structured typography—came together in Lubalin’s work. Space and surface became his primary visual considerations. He abandoned traditional typographic rules and practice and looked at alphabet characters as both visual form and message communication. Discontented with the rigid limitations of metal type in the 1950s, Lubalin would cut apart his type proofs with a razor blade and reassemble them. In his hands, type was compressed until letters joined into ligatures, and enlarged to unexpected sizes; letterforms were joined, overlapped, and enlarged;
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19–52. John Alcorn, cover for a
19–54. Herb Lubalin (designer) and
phototype specimen booklet, 1964.
Tom Carnase (letterer), proposed
The symmetrical mixture of decorative
magazine logo, 1967. The ampersand
fonts approximates the nineteenth-
enfolds and protects the “child” in a
century wood-type poster, but the
visual metaphor for motherly love.
spacing and use of color were current. 19–55. Herb Lubalin, proposed New 19–53. Herb Lubalin, typogram from
York City logo, 1966. Isometric perspec-
a Stettler typeface announcement
tive creates a dynamic tension between
poster, 1965. Marriage, “the most
two- and three-dimensionality while
licentious of human institutions,”
implying the city’s high-rise architecture.
becomes an illustration through the joined Rs.
19–56. Herb Lubalin, poster announcing Davida Bold typeface, 1965. Four lines of the Peter Piper tongue twister share a common capital P. 19–57. Herb Lubalin, page from Eros, 1962. Lubalin overlapped and
19–53
touched letterforms, compressed the space between words, and squeezed words and images into a rectangle.
19–54
19–58. Herb Lubalin, pages from Eros, 1962. The pictorial essay closes with a photograph of the Kennedys opposite a quotation from Stephen Crane, which now reads as a chilling forewarn-
19–55
ing of the president’s assassination.
19–52
19–56
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capital Os became receptacles for images. Words and letters could become images; an image could become a word or a letter. This typographic play engages the reader and requires participation. Lubalin practiced design not as an art form or a craft created in a vacuum, but as a means of giving visual form to a concept or a message. In his most innovative work, concept and visual form are yoked into a oneness called a typogram, meaning a brief, visual typographic poem. Lubalin’s wit and strong message orientation enabled him to transform words into ideographic typograms about the subject (Figs. 19–53 through 19–55). In 1960, most display typography was the hand-set, metal type of Gutenberg’s day, but this five-hundred-year-old craft was being rendered obsolete by phototype. By the end of the decade, metal type was virtually a thing of the past. More than any other graphic designer, Lubalin explored the creative potential of phototypography to see how the fixed relationships of letterforms marching on square blocks of metal could be exploded by phototype’s dynamic and elastic qualities. In phototype systems, letterspacing could be compressed to extinction and forms could overlap. A greater range of type sizes was available; type could be set to any size required by the layout or enlarged to huge sizes without losing sharpness. Special lenses could be used to expand, condense, italicize, backslant, or outline letterforms. Lubalin incorporated these
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American typographic expressionism
19–57
19–58
possibilities into his work not just as technical or design ends in themselves but as potent means of intensifying the printed image and expressing content. During the metal-type era, hundreds of thousands of dollars had to be invested in the deployment of a single new typeface. Matrixes had to be manufactured for every size of hand-set and hot-metal keyboard type, then each typesetting firm had to purchase a large stock of metal type in each size and variation of roman, bold, italic, and so on to meet client requests. Phototypography reduced this process to the relatively inexpensive creation of simple film fonts, and a proliferation of typeface designs to rival the Victorian era began. Visual Graphics Corporation, the manufacturer of the Phototypositor display typesetting machine, which enabled design studios and printing firms around the world to set excellent photo display type, sponsored the National Typeface Design Competition in 1965. Lubalin’s posters demonstrating the dozen winning designs spurred the awareness of phototypography and its design potential (Fig. 19–56). When his detractors said his typography suffered from a decline in legibility due to tight spacing and overlapping forms, Lubalin responded, “Sometimes you have to compromise legibility to achieve impact.” Lubalin’s attentiveness to detail and typographic experimentation raised other designers’ typographic sensitivities, inspiring them to try new things. Lubalin also made significant contributions to editorial design during the 1960s. A host of editorial redesigns, including two for the ill-fated Saturday Evening Post, accompanied his collaboration with publisher Ralph Ginzburg (1929–2006) on a series of magazines. A hardbound quarterly journal called Eros, launched in 1962 with a massive direct-mail campaign, was billed as the magazine of love. Its ninety-sixpage advertisement-free format allowed Lubalin to explore scale, white space, and visual flow. In a photographic essay about President John F. Kennedy (Figs. 19–57 and 19–58),
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407
scale changes ranging from a double-page bleed photograph to pages jammed with eight or nine photographs established a lively pace. After pondering over photographic contact sheets, Lubalin designed layouts of remarkable vitality (Figs. 19–59 and 19–60). Believing that typeface selection should express content and be governed by the visual configuration of the words, Lubalin used a variety of display types in Eros, including giant condensed sans serifs, novelty faces, and delicate Old Style romans. Although the visual and written content of Eros was tame in comparison to the explicit material permitted a decade later, Ginzburg was convicted of sending obscene material through the mail and after exhausting all appeals was imprisoned for eight months in 1972. In 1967 Ginzburg launched Fact magazine, which featured editorial exposés of hallowed institutions and sacred cows. Lubalin’s graphic treatment on a frugal production budget presaged the restrained economics of inflationary 1970s publishing. Lacking funds to hire ten different illustrators or photographers for each issue, Lubalin commissioned one illustrator to illustrate every article in an issue for a flat fee. Design economy was achieved by a standardized format using Times Roman Bold titles and Times New Roman subtitles (Fig. 19–61). Ginzburg and Lubalin closed out the decade with the square format Avant Garde, a lavishly visual periodical that published visual essays, fiction, and reportage. Born amidst the social upheavals of the civil rights movement, the women’s liberation movement, the sexual revolution, and antiwar protests (Fig. 19–62), this magazine became one of Lubalin’s most innovative achievements. Although his layouts have a strong underlying geometric structure, this is not the classical geometry of the Basel and Zurich designers. Instead, it is the exuberant and optimistic order of the expansive American character, unencumbered by a sense of tradition or any thought of limitations that cannot be overcome. The logotype for Avant Garde, with tightly integrated capital ligatures,
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19–59
Chapter 19: The New York School
19–60
19–61 19–59. Herb Lubalin (designer) and
19–61. Herb Lubalin (designer) and
Bert Stern (photographer), cover
Etienne Delessert (illustrator), pages
for Eros, 1962. The grid of images
from Fact, 1967. The “illustration” for
formed by strips of photographic
this article is a symbolic restatement
transparencies is violated by one that
of the headline.
shifts upward to align with the logo and headline. 19–60. Herb Lubalin (designer) and Bert Stern (photographer), pages from Eros, 1962. A transparency crossed out with a marker by its subject, Marilyn Monroe, gains drama through scale.
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was developed into a family of geometric sans-serif typefaces bearing the same name (Figs. 19–63 and 19–64). By 1970 typeface design began to occupy more of Lubalin’s time. He saw the designer’s task as projecting a message from a surface using three interdependent means of expression: photography, illustration, and letterforms. As phototype facilitated production of new typefaces, design piracy became a pressing issue. Original typeface designs requiring hundreds of hours of work could now be photocopied by unscrupulous operators who produced instant film fonts but did not compensate the designers. To enable designers to be adequately compensated for their work while licensing and producing master fonts available to all manufacturers, Lubalin, phototypography pioneer Rondthaler, and typographer Aaron Burns (1922–91) established the International Typeface Corporation (ITC) in 1970. Thirtyfour fully developed type families and about sixty additional display faces were developed and licensed during ITC’s first decade. Following the examples of Univers and Helvetica, ITC fonts had large x-heights and short ascenders and descenders; these became the prevailing characteristics of fonts designed during the 1970s and the early 1980s. With Lubalin as design director, ITC began a journal, U&lc, to publicize and demonstrate its typefaces. The complex, dynamic style of this tabloid-size publication and the popularity of ITC typefaces had a major impact on typographic design of the 1970s (Fig. 19– 65). From the time that Lubalin left his position as vice president and creative director of the Sudler and Hennessey advertising agency in 1964, he formed partnerships and associations with a number of associates, including graphic designers Ernie Smith and Alan Peckolick (b. 1940) and lettering artists Tony DiSpigna (b. 1943) and Tom Carnase (b. 1939). Their works share visual similarities with Lubalin’s oeuvre while achieving original solutions to a diverse range of problems.
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George Lois
19–62. Herb Lubalin, advertisement for Avant Garde’s antiwar poster competition, 1967. Unity and impact result from compressing complex information into a rectangle dominated by the large red headlines. 19–63. Herb Lubalin (designer) and Pablo Picasso (lithographer), section opener for an issue of Avant Garde (1969). The magazine’s title logo spawned a typeface filled with unusual capital ligatures, here used in an issue about Picasso. 19–64. Herb Lubalin, type specimen for Avant Garde, 1969.
19–62
19–64
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19–63
George Lois Among the young art directors and copywriters who passed through Doyle Dane Bernbach during the late 1950s, George Lois (b. 1931) became the enfant terrible of American mass communications. Lois’s energetic efforts to sell his work, including such legendary tactics as climbing out on the thirdfloor ledge of the A. Goodman & Company president’s office demanding that his poster proposal be approved (Fig. 19–66), combined with a tendency to push concepts to the very limit of propriety, earned him this reputation. Lois adopted the Bernbach philosophy that fully integrated visual/verbal concepts were vital to successful message conveyance. He wrote that an art director must treat words “with the same reverence that he accords graphics, because the verbal and visual elements of modern communication are as indivisible as words and music in a song.” His designs are deceptively simple and direct (Figs. 19–67 and 19–68). Backgrounds are usually removed to enable the content-bearing verbal and pictorial images to interact unhampered, a technique he learned at Bernbach, his third agency. At age twenty-eight Lois left Bernbach to cofound Papert, Koenig and Lois, which grew to forty million dollars per year in billing in seven short years. On several subsequent occasions, Lois left an agency partnership to form yet another advertising agency. In 1962 Esquire magazine was in serious trouble. If any two consecutive issues lost money on newsstand sales, it would have to fold. After being the men’s magazine in America, Esquire was losing its younger audience to Playboy, founded by former Esquire staff member Hugh Hefner in 1960. Esquire editor Harold Hayes asked Lois to develop effective cover designs for the literate but nearly bankrupt magazine. Lois believed design—a harmony of elements—had no place on a magazine cover. Instead, he opted for the cover as a statement capable of capturing the reader with a spirited comment on a major article. An ability to stay closely in touch with one’s times is a vital requirement for someone in visual communications, and
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19–69
19–70
19–66
19–67
19–68
19–65. Herb Lubalin, cover for U&lc,
19–67. George Lois, advertisement
ity, for the preceding ad featured the
cover, May 1968. This composite
1974. Fifty-nine typographic ele-
for Coldene, 1961. Unlike the coarse
loquacious bottle talking to a tomato.
photograph of candidate Richard M.
ments, seven illustrations, and sixteen
hard-sell advertising of most medica-
rules—a total of eighty-two separate
tions, this ad shows a simple black
19–69. George Lois (designer) and
sion appearance is typical of Lois’s
elements—are integrated into an
page with twelve words suggesting
Carl Fischer (photographer), Esquire
audacity.
information-filled page
a midnight exchange between con-
cover, April 1968. Muhammad Ali
cerned parents.
posed as Saint Sebastian, who was
19–66. George Lois, subway ad-
Nixon being made up for a televi-
condemned by Roman emperor
vertisement poster for Goodman’s
19–68. George Lois, advertisement
Matzos, 1960. The large-scale cracker
for Wolfschmidt’s, 1962. Blatant
anticipates the 1960s pop-art fascina-
symbolism combines with outrageous
19–70. George Lois (designer) and
tion with blown-up everyday objects.
humor. This ad campaign has continu-
Carl Fischer (photographer), Esquire
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Diocletian and shot by archers.
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George Lois
19–71. George Lois (designer) and Carl Fischer (photographer), Esquire cover, May 1969. To suggest the cover’s subject Lois shows Andy Warhol being ingested by a whirlpool of Campbell’s Soup.
19–71
many of Lois’s most innovative concepts grew from his ability to understand and respond to the people and events of his era. Over the next decade, Lois designed over ninety-two Esquire covers in collaboration with photographer Carl Fischer (b. 1924). These covers helped recapture the magazine’s audience, and by 1967 Esquire was turning a three-million-dollar profit. Lois thought Fischer was one of the few photographers who understood his ideas. Their collaborative efforts created covers that challenged, shocked, and often provoked their audience. Unexpected combinations of images and photographic montage techniques served to intensify an event or make a satirical statement. Lois’s skill in persuading people to participate in photographs resulted in powerful images. He persuaded boxer Muhammad Ali, who had been stripped of his world heavyweight championship title because as a conscientious objector he refused military service, to pose as Saint Sebastian, a religious martyr (Fig. 19–69). As Richard Nixon mounted his second presidential campaign in 1968, Lois combined a stock photograph of the candidate with Fischer’s photograph of four hands applying makeup (Fig. 19–70). This concept grew out of Lois’s recollection of the 1960 presidential campaign, when Nixon lost the race to John F. Kennedy partly because Nixon’s “five o’clock shadow made him look evil.” After the cover ran, Lois received a call from one of Nixon’s staffers, who berated Lois because the lipstick attacked Nixon’s masculinity.
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For the May 1969 cover of Esquire, “the final decline and total collapse of the American avant-garde” is implied by showing Andy Warhol drowning in one of his best-known images: a can of Campbell’s soup (Fig. 19–71). The New York school was born from an excitement about European modernism and fueled by economic and technological expansion; it became a dominant force in graphic design from the 1940s until the 1970s. Many of its practitioners, young revolutionaries who altered the course of American visual communications in the 1940s and 1950s, continued to design into the 1990s.
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20 Corporate Identity and Visual Systems The technological advances made during World War II were immense. After the war, productive capacity turned toward consumer goods, and many believed that the outlook for the capitalist economic structure could be unending economic expansion and prosperity. With this bright view of the future in mind, “Good design is good business” became a rallying cry in the graphic design community during the 1950s. Prosperity and technological development appeared closely linked to the era’s increasingly important corporations, and the more perceptive corporate leaders comprehended the need to develop a corporate image and identity for diverse audiences. Design was seen as a major way to shape a reputation for quality and reliability. Visual marks had been used for identification for centuries. In medieval times, proprietary marks were compulsory and enabled the guilds to control trade. By the 1700s virtually every trader and dealer had a trademark or stamp. The Industrial Revolution, with its mass manufacturing and marketing, increased the value and importance of trademarks for visual identification. But the visual identification systems that began during the 1950s went far beyond trademarks or symbols. The national and multinational scope of many corporations made it difficult for them to maintain a cohesive image, but by unifying all communications from a given organization into a consistent design system, such an image could be projected, and the design system enlisted to help accomplish specific corporate goals.
20–1
20–1. Giovanni Pintori, Olivetti poster,
20–3. Giovanni Pintori, poster for the
1949. Olivetti’s products are sug-
Olivetti 82 Diaspron, c. 1958. A sche-
gested by a mélange of numbers.
matic diagram depicting a typewriter key’s mechanical action combines with
20–2. Giovanni Pintori, poster for
a photograph to communicate two
the Olivetti Elettrosumma 22, 1956.
levels of information.
An informal structure of cubes and numerals suggests the mathemati-
20–4. Giovanni Pintori, poster for
cal building process that takes place
the Olivetti Lettera 22 typewriter,
when this calculating machine is used.
1952. The design playfully implies the movement of the typing fingers.
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Pintori at Olivetti The first phase in the development of postwar visual identification resulted from pioneering efforts by strong individual designers who put their personal imprint on a client’s designed image. This was the case with Behrens at AEG (see chapter 12) and with the Olivetti Corporation, an Italian typewriter and business machines company whose dual commitment to humanist ideals and technological progress dated from its 1908 founding by Camillo Olivetti. Adriano Olivetti (1901–70), son of the founder, became president in 1938. He had a keen sense of the contribution that graphic, product, and architectural design could make to an organization. In 1936 he hired twenty-four-year-old Giovanni Pintori (1912–1998) to join the publicity department. For thirty-one years, Pintori put his personal stamp on Olivetti’s graphic images. The logotype he designed for Olivetti in 1947 consisted of the name in lowercase sans-serif letters, slightly letterspaced. Identity was achieved not through a systematic design program but through the general visual appearance of promotional graphics.
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Design at CBS
20–2
20–3
In one of Pintori’s most celebrated posters (Fig. 20–1) Olivetti’s mission is subtly implied by a collage created solely from numbers and the company logo. Pintori’s ability to generate graphic metaphors for technological processes is shown in a 1956 poster for the Olivetti Elettrosumma 22 (Fig. 20–2). There is a casual and almost relaxed quality to Pintori’s organization of space. Even his most complex designs have a feeling of simplicity, because he is able to combine small elements into unified structures through a repetition of size and visual rhythms. This complexity of form was well suited to Olivetti’s publicity needs during the 1940s and 1950s, for the firm sought a high-technology image to promote advanced industrial design and engineering. Pintori was particularly adept at using simplified graphic shapes to visualize mechanisms and processes (Fig. 20–3). His abstract configurations often playfully suggest the function or purpose of the product being advertised (Fig. 20–4). Olivetti received international recognition for its commitment to design excellence. Design at CBS The Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) of New York City moved to the forefront of corporate identity design as a result of two vital assets: CBS president Frank Stanton (1908–2006), who understood art and design and their potential in corporate affairs, and William Golden (1911–59), the CBS art director for almost two decades. Golden brought uncompromising visual standards and keen insight into the communications process. The effectiveness of the CBS corporate identity did not depend on a regimented design program or application of specific graphic elements, such as a single corporate typeface, to all corporate communications. Rather, the quality and intelligence of each successive design solution enabled CBS to establish an ongoing and successful corporate identity.
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413
20–4
Golden designed one of the most successful trademarks of the twentieth century for CBS (Fig. 20–5). When the pictographic CBS eye first appeared as an on-air logo on 16 November 1951, it was superimposed over a cloud-filled sky and projected an almost surreal sense of an eye in the sky. After one year, Golden suggested to Frank Stanton that they might abandon the eye and seek another logo. Stanton reminded Golden of the old advertising adage, “Just when you’re beginning to get bored with what you have done is probably the time it is beginning to be noticed by your audience.” The eye remained. In applying this trademark to the corporation’s printed material, from shipping labels to press releases, care and concern were used in even the most modest graphic designs. Dogmatic consistency in how the CBS trademark was used was not considered necessary. It was used in print with a variety of different company signatures, and Golden and his staff avoided forcing it where it did not belong. Even in printed advertising, it was sometimes omitted if it conflicted with the rest of the design. The effectiveness of the CBS symbol demonstrated to the larger management community that a contemporary graphic mark could compete successfully with more traditional illustrative or alphabetic trademarks. A corporate philosophy and approach to advertising emerged in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Advertising was created not by an outside agency but by internal staff; this permitted CBS to maintain a unified approach to advertising and other graphics. Fine artists including Feliks Topolski, René Bouche, and Ben Shahn were commissioned to create illustrations for CBS advertisements. The climate of creative freedom encouraged them to accept these commissions and resulted in a high level of artistry compared to typical newspaper and trade publication advertisements of the period. A classic example of this approach is “The Big Push” (Fig. 20–6),
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20–5
20–6
20–5. William Golden, CBS Television
which appeared in business and advertising trade publications during a booming economy. The text says Americans will purchase more than in any other summer in history and recommends television advertising during this big summer sales push. Shahn’s drawing adds an ambience of quality and distinction to the commercial message. In a 1959 lecture at a design conference, Golden called upon designers to have a sense of responsibility and a rational understanding of the function of their work. He declared the word design a verb “in the sense that we design something to be communicated to someone” and added that the designer’s primary function is ensuring that the message is accurately and adequately communicated. Stanton’s recognition of the importance of design helped designers gain executive and administrative authority. In 1951 Golden was named creative director in charge of advertising and sales promotion for the CBS Television Network. In 1945 CBS hired Georg Olden (1920–75) to establish a graphics department to design on-air visuals for its new television division. Television was a fledgling medium poised to grow rapidly in the next few years. Only about ten thousand television sets were in use when wartime restrictions on their manufacture were lifted in 1946; this number grew rapidly to a million sets in 1949 and soared past the fifty-million mark when Olden left CBS to become television group art director at BBDO Advertising in 1960. During his fifteen-year tenure at CBS, Olden played a major role in defining the early development of television broadcast graphics. Olden realized the limitations of early black-and-white television. The medium was incapable of differentiating between subtle color and tonal contrasts, and television sets often markedly cropped the edges of the signal. Two-dimensional titles were only on the air for a few seconds, requiring rapid viewer comprehension. To overcome these problems, he designed on-air graphics from the center out, using simple symbolic imagery with strong silhouettes and linear properties. Emphasis was placed on concepts that quickly captured the essence of each program using the connotative power of simple signs, symbols, and images.
trademark, 1951. Two circles and two arcs form a pictographic eye. Translucent and hovering in the sky, it symbolizes the awesome power of projected video images. 20–6. William Golden (designer) and Ben Shahn (illustrator), trade ad for CBS Television, 1957. Textured shopping carts and text type unify into a horizontal band. This tonal complexity contrasts with a bold headline in the white space above and the staccato repetition of the black wheels below. 20–7. Georg Olden, stamp for the centenary of the Emancipation Proclamation, 1963. Olden reduced a complex subject, slavery’s end, to its most elemental expression. 20–8. Lou Dorfsman (designer) and Andy Warhol (illustrator), program ad for CBS Radio, 1951. The open, direct presentation is typical of Dorfsman’s work. 20–9. Lou Dorfsman, advertisement for a program series, 1968. The combination of images carried tremendous shock value, gaining viewers for important news programs.
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20–7
20–9
20–8
Olden, the grandson of a slave from a northern Kentucky plantation who escaped to the north as the Civil War broke out and eventually joined the Union army, was the first African American to achieve prominence as a graphic designer. He accomplished this in the era before the civil rights movement, when few blacks held professional positions in America. Reynolds Ruffins (b. 1930), another African American to achieve early prominence in graphic design, was a founding partner of Push Pin Studios (see Fig. 21–17).
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The United States Postal Service commissioned Olden to design a postage stamp for the one hundredth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation (Fig. 20–7), making him the first African American designer accorded the honor of designing a United States postage stamp. Olden’s stamp design possesses the economy and directness of his television graphics. Lou Dorfsman (1918–2008) became art director for CBS Radio in 1946. He combined conceptual clarity with a straightforward and provocative visual presentation (Fig. 20–8). Typography and image were arranged in well-ordered relationships using blank space as a design element. In 1954, he was named director of advertising and promotion for the CBS Radio Network. As its art director during the 1950s, Dorfsman forged a design approach that combined a pragmatic sense of effective communication with imaginative problem solving. He did not advocate continuity in typefaces, spatial layouts, or imagery; rather, the high quality of his solutions to communications problems during his four decades with CBS enabled him to project an exemplary image for the corporation. After Golden’s sudden death at age forty-eight, Dorfsman became the creative director of CBS Television (Fig. 20–9). He was named director of design for the entire CBS Corporation in 1964 and vice president in 1968, which kept with
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20–12
20–11
20–13
20–10. Raymond Loewy, BP (1989),
20–14. Norman Ives, trademark for
Shell (1971), and Exxon logos (1966)
Eastern Press, New Haven, Connecticut, 1958. The influence of Josef
20–11. Raymond Loewy, Lucky Strike logo, 1939. 20–12. Herbert Matter, New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad trademark, 1954. The mathematical harmony of parts demonstrates how alphabetic forms can be unified into a unique gestalt. 20–13. Herbert Matter, New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad trademark, 1954. Matter’s trademark proved to be very adaptable when applied to heavy railroad equipment.
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Albers is clearly evident in this logo.
20–14
Stanton’s philosophy that design is a vital area that should be managed by professionals. When architect Eero Saarinen (1910–61) designed a new CBS headquarters building in 1966, Dorfsman designed all aspects of the typographic information, right down to the numerals on the wall clocks and elevator buttons, exit signs, and elevator-inspection certificates. Dorfsman also applied his graphic design sense to film, computer animation in the production of promotional spots, informational materials, and network title sequences. The CBS approach to corporate image and design was not dependent on a system or style but rather on the management policy toward design and the creative abilities of its design personnel. The strength of this approach is a varying and dynamic corporate design that can shift with company needs and evolving sensibilities; the potential danger is the lack of a fallback position if management or design authority moves into less astute hands. CBS’s era of design leadership lasted until the late 1980s. After new owners purchased the company, its philosophy on design changed and Dorfsman resigned.
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Corporate identification comes of age
Like Stanton, Raymond Loewy (1893–1986) recognized the significance of comprehensive design systems, and he left an indelible mark on America’s history of visual styling. His streamlined and moderne aesthetic can be seen across a range of industrial products, packaging, architecture, interiors, and corporate identities. He first gained attention through his industrial product design with a commission for British manufacturer Sigmund Gestetner. Loewy’s Gestetner mimeograph machine emphasized the form by hiding the device’s messy inner mechanics inside a smooth paneled exterior. The look and concept became the genesis of a new streamlined aesthetic. Future industrial designs emphasized this smoothness and sensuousness of form. Loewy’s forms followed function, if only symbolically, as his streamlined aesthetic suggested speed, economy, and modernity. Loewy specialized in design for the locomotive and automotive industries, where speed and innovation defined success, and he reimagined how trains, planes, buses, and cars looked and performed. Loewy’s flashy personality preceded his brilliant design work. Sophisticated and charismatic, he considered himself a visionary and an impresario of good design across a number of mediums. His persona remained an ongoing design project, as he tailored his appearance and refined his artistic vision, making his voice heard across a broad design spectrum. Through this effort, he changed the way industrial designers engaged with corporate design culture by assuming more control over entire industrial and visual campaigns. Product designs for blue chip companies—BP, Shell, Exxon, (Fig. 20–10) Nabisco, US Mail, Studebaker, Lucky Strike (Fig. 20–11), Canada Dry, and TWA—were not limited to packaging or industrial objects but also included complete identity designs. When New York Railroad hired Loewy to redesign one if its locomotives, he also designed the interiors, menus for table service, and matchbooks. Loewy defined and pursued areas of growth in even more comprehensive systems and processes via his industrial design work. Loewy initiated a study of his audience—the public—as he aimed to define their needs and wants. This analysis affected the way he introduced designs into consumer culture. Loewy expertly negotiated the balance between familiarity and innovation, as he developed his Most Advanced Yet Acceptable (MAYA) credo. While he endeavored to deliver the most advanced product, he recognized the point at which unfamiliarity bred undesirability. With respect to his corporate identity work he said: “I’m looking for a very high index of visual retention. We want anyone who has seen the logotype, even fleetingly, to never forget it.” Loewy’s work of the twentieth century is hard to forget; he succeeded in leaving a lasting impression. His designs not only are recognizable at a fleeting glance but also have endured the test of time. The New Haven Railroad design program A short-lived but highly visible corporate identity effort occurred in 1954, when Patrick McGinnis, president of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad, launched a
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corporate design program. The New Haven Railroad was in the midst of a technological updating, with new engines, cars, and signal systems. McGinnis believed a contemporary logo and design program, replacing the old logotype and olivegreen and Tuscan-red color scheme, would enable the firm to project a modern and progressive image to industry and passengers. Herbert Matter was commissioned to design the new trademark. He developed a geometric capital N above an H and a red, black, and white color scheme (Figs. 20–12 and 20–13). The traditional industrial feeling of slab-serif type, long associated with the railroad industry, was updated for a more modern look, based on the mathematical harmony of parts. Marcel Breuer was commissioned to design the interiors and exteriors of the new trains. Using Matter’s color scheme and logo, Breuer designed a passenger train that looked like a Russian constructivist painting roaring along the New Haven’s 2,700 kilometers (1,700 miles) of track. The dingy gray and earth tones previously used for freight cars were replaced by solid red or black. Plans called for implementation of a comprehensive corporate-identity program encompassing everything from stations to matchbooks, but the commuter railroad developed financial problems and suffered from a consumer uprising against its late trains, poor scheduling, and rising fares. On 20 January 1956, McGinnis resigned as president, and the corporate-identity program came to an abrupt halt. However, the new management continued to apply the logo and color scheme whenever possible. Printed pieces designed by Matter offered a degree of guidance, and the strength of the logo and color scheme provided some semblance of continuity. Norman Ives (1923–1978) is one of the long-neglected masters of corporate image design (Fig. 20–14). His carefully constructed logos clearly reflect the teachings of one of his principal mentors, Josef Albers. In 1960, Ives described the designer’s mission in logo design: A symbol is an image of a company, an institution or an idea that should convey with a clear statement or by suggestion the activity it represents. . . . The symbol, besides being memorable and legible, must be designed so that it can be used in many sizes and situations without losing its identity. The designer must distort, unify, and create a new form for the letter, so that it is unique and yet has the necessary attributes of the letter for recognition. There is no part of a symbol that can be eliminated without destroying the image it creates. It is a true gestalt, in which the psychological effect of the total image is greater than the sum of its parts would indicate. Corporate identification comes of age While World War II left most industrial countries devastated, the manufacturing capacity of the United States escaped undamaged. An era of unprecedented industrial expansion began, with large corporations playing an important role in developing and marketing products and services. During the 1950s and 1960s many American designers—including Rand,
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20–15
20–16
20–18
20–19
20–15. Paul Rand, IBM trademark,
20–18. Paul Rand, “Eye Bee M”
1956. The original design is shown
poster, 1981. Using the rebus prin-
with outline versions and the eight-
ciple, Rand designed this poster for
and thirteen-stripe versions currently
the presentation of the Golden Circle
used.
award, an in-house IBM occasion. Although Rand eventually prevailed,
20–16. Paul Rand, IBM package de-
it was temporarily banned, as it was
signs, late 1950s. A strong corporate
felt that it would encourage IBM staff
identification was achieved through
designers to take liberties with the
a repeating pattern of blue, green,
IBM logo.
and magenta capital letters on black package fronts, white handwritten
20–19. Paul Rand, The IBM Logo: Its
product names, and blue package
Use in Company Identification, 1996.
tops and sides.
In this exuberant cover the IBM logo resembles exploding fireworks.
20–17. Paul Rand, IBM package design, 1975. After two decades, the original packaging design program was replaced by an updated design using the eight-stripe logo.
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20–17
Beall, Bass, and design firms such as Lippincott & Margules and Chermayeff & Geismar—embraced corporate visual identification as a major design activity. After playing a pivotal role in the evolution of American graphic and advertising design during the 1940s and early 1950s, Rand became more involved in trademark design and visual identification systems in the mid-1950s. He realized that to be functional over a long period of time, a trademark should be reduced to elementary shapes that are universal, visually unique, and stylistically timeless. Rand’s trademark for International Business Machines (Fig. 20–15) was developed from an infrequently used typeface called City Medium, designed by Georg Trump (1896–1985) in 1930. This geometric slab-serif typeface was designed along lines similar to Futura. Redesigned into the IBM corporate logo, it was transformed into a powerful and unique alphabet image, for the slab serifs and square negative spaces in the B lent the trademark unity and distinction. In the 1970s Rand updated the logo by introducing stripes to unify the three letterforms and evoke scan lines on video terminals. Package designs by Rand
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20–20. Jon Craine, companywide poster to promote IBM’s annual U.S. Savings Bond initiative for employees. “Save for a Sunny Day” (also written by Craine) was the theme, and the graphic landscape was inspired by the IBM stripes. 20–21. Jon Craine, Office Products Division poster to announce IBM’s latest “Selectric” III typewriter, 1982. This was designed for the Noyes office, and the arrows playfully echo the vertical stress of the document rest on the typewriter.
20–20
20–21
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show the application of the logo in the 1950s (Fig. 20–16) and after its redesign in the 1970s (Fig. 20–17). Rand’s 1981 “Eye Bee M” poster (Fig. 20–18) and the playful cover for the 1996 booklet The IBM Logo: Its Use in Company Identifi cation (Fig. 20–19) demonstrates that he was prepared to divert from the original logo when a design concept called for it. Eliot Noyes (1910–77), IBM’s consulting design director during the late 1950s, wrote that the IBM design program sought “to express the extremely advanced and up-to-date nature of its products. To this end we are not looking for a theme but for a consistency of design quality which will in effect become a kind of theme, but a very f lexible one.” The IBM design program was f lexible enough to avoid stif ling the creativity of designers working within the guidelines of the program. The model developed by IBM, with design consultants such as Rand and internal staff design departments whose managers have the authority to maintain the corporate visual identity, produced an evolving design program of consistently high quality. Jon Craine (b. 1940) was one of the two lead graphic designers in the White Plains, New York, office from 1979 through 1988. Among other assignments, this office was responsible for product announcements for the Data Products Division (DPD), IBM’s largest product sector. Craine’s “Buy U.S. Savings Bonds” poster from 1979 was designed while he was working for the White Plains office on a freelance basis before joining its staff (Fig. 20–20), and his poster for the IBM “Selectric” III typewriter was designed when he was employed by IBM (Fig. 20–21). After a 1959 study of the “public faces” of the Westinghouse Corporation, a decision was made to redesign its “Circle-W” trademark. Rand was commissioned to symbolically incorporate the nature of the company’s business in a new mark that would be simple, memorable, and distinct (Fig. 20–22). General graphic forms, rather than specific signs or symbols, suggest Westinghouse products by evoking wires and plugs, electronic diagrams and circuitry, and molecular structures. Rand, who also developed a typeface for Westinghouse, applied these new elements to packaging, signage, and advertising.
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20–23
20–24
20–22. Paul Rand, Westinghouse
20–25. Paul Rand, IBM annual report,
trademark, 1960. This mark is shown
1958. Advanced technology and or-
as it might be constructed in an
ganizational efficiency were expressed
animated film sequence.
through design.
20–23. Paul Rand, American Broadcasting Company trademark, 1965. The continuing legacy of the Bauhaus and Herbert Bayer’s universal alphabet informs this trademark, in which each letterform is reduced to its most elemental configuration.
20–25
20–24. Paul Rand, NeXT trademark, 1986. The four-letter name is separated into two lines to startle the viewer by giving a common word an uncommon image.
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20–26
20–27
20–26. Lester Beall and Richard
20–28. Chermayeff & Geismar
Rogers, International Paper Company
Associates, Chase Manhattan Bank
trademark, 1960. Initials, tree, and up-
corporate identity program, 1960.
ward arrow combine in a mark whose
Consistent use of the mark, color,
fundamental simplicity—an isometric
and typeface built recognition value
triangle in a circle—assures a timeless
through visual redundancy.
harmony. 20–27. Lester Beall and Richard Rogers, International Paper Company trademark, 1960. For a forest products company, stenciling trees is one of numerous applications that must be considered.
Rand’s 1965 redesign of the trademark for the American Broadcasting Company (Fig. 20–23) reduced the information to its essence while achieving a memorable and unique image. The NeXT computer logo (Fig. 20–24) was designed in 1986 after IBM agreed to loan its longtime design consultant to a competitive computer company. The black box at a twentyeight-degree angle signified the NeXT computer, which itself looked like a black box. The annual report to stockholders, a legal publication required by federal law, evolved from a dry financial report into a major communications instrument during the postwar period. Landmarks in this evolution include the IBM annual reports designed by Rand during the late 1950s. The 1958 IBM annual report (Fig. 20–25) established a standard for corporate literature. Imagery included close-up photography of electronic components that almost became abstract patterns, and simple dramatic photographs of products and people. Lester Beall helped launch the modern movement in American design during the late 1920s and early 1930s. During the last two decades of his career, he created pioneering corporate-identity programs for many companies, including Martin Marietta, Connecticut General Life Insurance, and International Paper Company. He also contributed to the development of the corporate-identity manual, a firm’s book
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421
20–28
of guidelines and standards for implementing its program. Beall’s manuals specifically prescribed the permissible uses and forbidden abuses of the trademark. If a plant manager in a small town retained a sign painter to paint the trademark and name on a sign, for example, the corporate design manual specified their exact proportions and placement. In discussing his mark designed with Richard Rogers for the International Paper Company, one of the largest paper manufacturers in the world, Beall wrote: Our assignment was to provide management with a strong mark that could be readily adapted to an immense variety of applications. This ranged from its bold use on the barks of trees to its intricate involvement in repeat patterns, carton designs, labels, and trucks. In addition to its functional strength, the new mark is a powerful force in stimulating and integrating divisional and corporate identity with positive psychological effects on human relations. (Figs. 20–26 and 20–27) The International Paper Company trademark was initially controversial: the letters I and P are distorted to make a tree symbol, and critics questioned whether letterforms should be altered to this extreme. The continuing viability of this mark since its inception indicates that Beall’s critics were overly cautious. Chermayeff & Geismar Associates moved to the forefront of the corporate-identity movement in 1960 with a comprehensive visual image program for the Chase Manhattan Bank of New York. Chase Manhattan’s new logo was composed of four geometric wedges rotating around a central square to form an external octagon (Fig. 20–28). It was an abstract form unto itself, free from alphabetic, pictographic, or figurative connotations. Although it had overtones of security or protection because four elements confined the square, it proved a completely abstract form could successfully function as a large organization’s visual identifier. A distinctive sans-serif typeface was designed for use with the logo. The selection of an expanded letter grew out of the firm’s study of the bank’s design and communications needs. Urban signage, for instance, is often seen by pedestrians at extreme angles, but an extended letterform retains its character
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20–29
20–31 20–29. Chermayeff & Geismar Associates, Mobil Oil trademark, 1964. 20–30. Chermayeff & Geismar Associates, trademarks for (left to right, top to bottom) the American Film Institute, 1964; Time Warner, 1990; the American Revolution Bicentennial, 1971; Screen Gems, 1966; Burlington Industries, 1965; the National Broadcasting Company, 1986; Rockefeller Center, 1985; and the National Aquarium in Baltimore, 1979. 20–31. Saul Bass & Associates, trademark for Minolta, 1980.
20–30
recognition even when viewed under these conditions. The uncommon presence of the expanded sans-serif type in this design system launched a fashion for this kind of letterform during the first half of the 1960s. Consistency and uniformity in the application of both logo and letterform enabled redundancy, in a sense, to become a third identifying element. The Chase Manhattan Bank corporate identification system became a prototype for the genre. Other financial institutions seriously evaluated their corporate image and the need for an effective visual identifier. The recognition value gained by the Chase Manhattan mark indicated that a successful logo could, in effect, become an additional character in the inventory of symbolic forms carried in each person’s mind. Tom Geismar observed that a symbol must be memorable and have “some
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barb to it that will make it stick in your mind.” At the same time it must be “attractive, pleasant, and appropriate. The challenge is to combine all those things into something simple.” One of Chermayeff & Geismar’s most far-reaching corporate design programs was for Mobil Oil, a corporation operating in more than one hundred countries. Executed in an elemental geometric sans-serif typeface, the Mobil Oil trademark is the ultimate in simplicity (Fig. 20–29). The name Mobil is executed in five vertical strokes, the diagonals of the M, and two circles. The name became the trademark, with the round, red O separating it from the visual presentation of other words. Chermayeff & Geismar has produced more than one hundred corporate design programs, including the trademarks illustrated in Figure 20–30. The firm continues to accept a steady stream of smaller projects, such as posters, requiring immediate, innovative solutions. Rather than maintaining design consistency from project to project, the company allows each solution to evolve from its problem. Saul Bass’s mastery of elemental form can be seen in the iconic and widely imitated trademarks produced by his firm Saul Bass & Associates, later renamed Saul Bass/Herb Yeager & Associates. Bass believed a trademark must be readily understood yet possess elements of metaphor and ambiguity that will attract the viewer again and again. Many Bass trademarks, such as the mark for Minolta, became important cultural icons (Fig. 20–31). Within two years after Bass redesigned the Bell Telephone System trademark, public recognition of the symbol rose from 71 percent to more than 90 percent. After the AT&T long-distance telephone network was split from the local Bell system telephone companies in 1984, Bass designed a new mark to reposition the firm as “a global communications company” rather than “the national telephone system,” with information bits circling the globe. This concept was expressed by making computer-graphics animation the identification tag for AT&T television commercials (Fig. 20–32). Muriel Cooper (1925–94) had two careers—the first as a print designer for MIT publications and books, and the second as founder and director of the Visible Language Workshop (VLW). From her student years at Massachusetts College of
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20–32. Saul Bass & Associates, AT&T computer graphics animation identification tag, 1984. A spinning globe gathers electronic bits of information, then transforms into the AT&T trademark. 20–33. Muriel Cooper, MIT Press logo, 1963. Vertical lines imply books and can be read as mitp.
20–32
20–33
Art, she was fascinated with animation and pushing the border between the static medium of print and the x, y, and z axes of the computer screen. In 1963 she designed the MIT Press logo, a series of vertical lines suggesting half a dozen books on a shelf, and spelling out a gestalt M I T (Fig. 20–33). Cooper designed more than five hundred books, including the seminal 1969 Bauhaus, by Hans Wingler, perhaps her best-known design (Fig. 20 –34). This was the first complete Bauhaus book in English. After the enthusiastic reception the authoritative text received, Cooper made a film version of the thick Bauhaus, a speed-reading version of what one design historian has dubbed the King James Version. It was Cooper’s pursuit of dynamic media that led to the 1978 founding of the VLW at MIT, which she said was an attempt to re-create the atmosphere of Paris in the 1920s. In the VLW, where workstations were in the open, Cooper encouraged
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her interdisciplinary graduate students to formulate good questions rather than pat answers. While most graphic designers were limited to off-the-shelf software, Cooper’s work was accelerated by powerful computers at MIT that allowed her to create almost anything she could imagine. She was the first graphic designer to employ such new electronic media as 3-D text, which allowed vast amounts of complex data to be read in context, the top layer sharp, the layers below successively lighter. In this way, she was able to combine the traditional x and y axes of the flat screen with the z axes of depth, but she did not stop there. Trusting her designer’s eye, she pushed her programmers for additional tools—color, transparency, and eventually type that could pulse and move. Her goal, until her untimely death in 1994, was to move graphic design from form to content; to create clear, compelling communication that could be plucked and digested from an ocean of print and the electronic sea of the World Wide Web. Cooper was also a founding member of the MIT Media Lab (1985), perhaps the most advanced graduate research program on new media in the world. Programmed visual identification systems During the 1960s, the impetus of the International Typographic Style and the visual-identity movement joined with the development of highly systematic design programs to combine complex and diverse parts into a unified whole. The 1962 Lufthansa German Airlines identification system was conceived and produced at the Ulm Institute of Design. The principles of the International Typographic Style were extended into a design program addressing all visual-communication and product-design needs of a large corporation. Otl Aicher designed this program in collaboration with Tomás Gonda (1926–88), Fritz Querengässer (1906–79), and
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20–35
20–36
20–34
20–37 20–34. Muriel Cooper, cover for Bauhaus, by Hans Wingler, 1969. 20–35. Otl Aicher in collaboration with Tomás Gonda, Fritz Querengässer, and Nick Roericht, pages from the Lufthansa identity manual, 1962. All typographic details were rigorously specified. 20–36. Otl Aicher in collaboration with Tomás Gonda, Fritz Querengässer, and Nick Roericht, page from the Lufthansa identity manual, 1962. The supercargo double trademark gains unity through consistent line weight. 20–37. Ralph Eckerstrom, trademark for Container Corporation of America, 1957. A flat image becomes an isometric optical illusion, signifying packaging while provoking visual interest.
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Nick Roericht (b. 1932). Aicher believed a large organization could achieve a uniform, and thus significant, corporate image by systematically controlling the use of constant elements. A f lying crane trademark used since the 1930s was retained but enclosed in a circle and subordinated to the name Lufthansa in a consistent letterspacing arrangement (Fig. 20 –35). The company’s air-freight service combined the crane icon with an isometric package and bold lines to create an arrow configuration (Fig. 20 –36). Grid systems and detailed typographic specifications were worked out to take into account every visual communications need, from food service packaging to timetables and aircraft identification. The Lufthansa corporate-identity program became an international prototype for the closed identity system, with every detail and specification addressed for absolute uniformity. The Container Corporation of America (CCA) became an early advocate of systematic corporate identity in the 1960s. A new corporate logo (Fig. 20–37) was created by design director Ralph Eckerstrom (c. 1920–96) and his staff. The corporate initials were packaged in a rectangle with two corners shaved at a forty-five-degree angle to imply an isometric box. Eckerstrom stated the requirements of a corporate identification program: As a function of management, design must be an integrated part of overall company operation and directly related to the company’s business and sales activities. It must have continuity as a creative force. It must reflect total corporate character. Unless it meets these requirements, the company
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The Federal Design Improvement Program
20–38. Massimo Vignelli and the Unimark New York office staff, Knoll Graphics, 1966–1970s. Knoll is renowned for furniture design, so the graphic program signified a strong design orientation.
20–38
image it seeks to create will never coalesce into a unified whole, but will remain a mosaic of unrelated fragments. The “Great Ideas of Western Man” advertising campaign had varied widely in its typographic approaches during the 1950s; now it entered a two-decade period of typographic continuity. In 1964 CCA established the Center for Advanced Research in Design, an independent design studio that worked on advanced and experimental projects and received commissions from other organizations. The center developed a comprehensive visual identification system for Atlantic Richfield, a major petroleum products company whose name later changed to Arco. CCA was purchased by Mobil Oil in 1976 and sold to the Jefferson Smurfit company in 1986. Decentralized and lacking an autonomous identity, CCA’s era as a design patron drifted to a close. Unimark, an international design firm that grew to 402 employees in forty-eight design offices around the world, was founded in Chicago in 1965 by a group of partners including Ralph Eckerstrom (1922-1996), James K. Fogleman (b. 1919), and Massimo Vignelli (b. 1931). Unimark rejected individualistic design and believed that design could be a system, a basic structure set up so that other people could implement it effectively. The basic tool for this effort was the grid, standardizing all graphic communications for dozens of large Unimark clients, including Alcoa, Ford Motor Company, JCPenney, Memorex, Panasonic, Steelcase, and Xerox. Helvetica was the preferred typeface for all Unimark visual identity systems, as it was considered the most legible type family. Objectivity was Unimark’s goal as it spread a generic conformity across the face of multinational corporate communications. The design programs it created were rational and so rigorously systematized that they became virtually foolproof as long as the standards were maintained.
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The graphic excellence of Unimark design programs can be seen in the Knoll program (Fig. 20–38), directed by Massimo Vignelli, who was Unimark’s director of design and head of the New York office. This program set the standard for furniture-industry graphics for years to come. But Unimark’s far-flung design empire—with offices in major North American cities, England, Australia, Italy, and South Africa—proved vulnerable to the effects of recession in the early 1970s, and a retrenchment process began. The Unimark philosophy continued as its founders and the legion of designers they trained continued to implement its ideals. When the New York office closed, Massimo and Leila Vignelli founded Vignelli Associates in 1971. Their typographic range expanded beyond Helvetica to include such classical faces as Bodoni, Century, Garamond, and Times Roman, but the rational order of grid systems and emphasis on lucid and objective communication remained a constant. Vignelli continues to put his imprint on the evolution of information design. The Federal Design Improvement Program In May 1974, the United States government initiated the Federal Design Improvement Program in response to a growing awareness that design could be an effective tool for achieving objectives. This initiative was coordinated by the Architectural and Environmental Arts Program (later renamed the Design Arts Program) of the National Endowment for the Arts. All aspects of federal design, including architecture, interior space planning, landscaping, and graphic design, were upgraded under the program. The Graphics Improvement Program, under the direction of Jerome Perlmutter, set out to improve the quality of visual communications and the ability of government agencies to communicate effectively to citizens.
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20–39
20–40
20–39. John Massey, trademark for
20–42. Various artists/designers,
the U.S. Department of Labor, 1974.
nineteen first aid symbols from vari-
Stripes on the L forms suggest the
ous systems throughout the world.
American flag’s stars and stripes.
Semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic values of existing programs were
20–40. Massimo Vignelli (consulting
evaluated.
designer), Vincent Gleason (art director), and Dennis McLaughlin (graphic
20–43. Roger Cook and Don
designer), Unigrid system for the
Shanosky, signage symbol system
National Park Service, 1977.
for the U.S. Department of Transportation, 1974. This poster introduced
20–41. National Park Service publica-
the thirty-four symbols to a wide
tions staff, including Vincent Gleason
audience.
(chief) and designers Melissa Cronyn, Nicholas Kirilloff, Dennis McLaughlin, Linda Meyers, Phillip Musselwhite, and Mitchell Zetlin, publication created with the Unigrid, 1977–90.
The prototype federal graphic standards system was designed by John Massey for the Department of Labor. Problems identified by this case study included outmoded, unresponsive, and impersonal images, a lack of uniform and effective communications policies, and insufficient image continuity. Massey’s goals for the new design program were “uniformity of identification; a standard of quality; a more systematic and economic template for publication design; a closer relationship between graphic design (as a means) and program development (as an end) so that the proposed graphics system will become an effective tool in assisting the department to achieve program objectives.”
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20–41
A graphic standards manual established a cohesive system for visual identification and publication formats. Standards for format sizes, typography, grid systems, paper specifications, and colors realized tremendous economies in material and time. These standards, however, were carefully structured so that the creativity and responsiveness to each communications project would not be seriously hampered. With the mechanics of the printing and format predetermined, Department of Labor staff designers were able to devote their time to the creative aspects of the problem at hand. The Department of Labor communications mark (Fig. 20–39) is composed of two interlocking Ls that form a diamond configuration around a star. A set of publication format sizes provided economy of production and minimized paper waste, while a series of grid systems and uniform typographic specifications ensured consistency. Routine printed materials, including stationery, envelopes, and forms, were given standardized formats. Over forty federal departments and agencies initiated visual identification programs, and many of the leading designers in America were called upon to develop them. One of the most successful is the Unigrid system, developed in 1977 for the United States National Park Service by Vignelli Associates in collaboration with the Park Service Division of Publications, headed by Vincent Gleason. The Unigrid (Fig. 20–40) unified the hundreds of informational folders used at about 350 national park locations. It is based on simple basic elements: ten format sizes, all derived from the Unigrid; broadside or full-sheet presentation of the folders, instead of layouts structured on folded panels; black title bands with park names serving as logotypes; horizontal organization of illustrations, maps, and text; standardized typographic specifications; and a master grid coordinating design in the studio with production at the printing plant.
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20–42
Typography is restricted to Helvetica and Times Roman in a limited number of sizes and weights. The standardized format of the Unigrid enables the Park Service publications staff to focus on achieving excellence in the development and presentation of pictorial and typographic information (Fig. 20–41). The program proved so successful that a format was also developed for the Park Service’s series of 150 handbooks. To attract outstanding architects and designers to government service, traditional civil service procedures were supplemented by portfolio reviews conducted by professionals. Designers were recruited by a publicity campaign with the theme “Excellence attracts excellence.” However, by 1980 momentum for federal design excellence became a casualty of tax cuts and huge federal deficits. Many established design programs for such agencies as the Park Service were maintained, while others sank back toward mediocrity. Transportation signage symbols Major international events, large airports, and other transportation facilities handling international travelers have commissioned graphic designers to create pictographic signage programs to communicate important information and directions quickly and simply. The development of these sign-andsymbol systems involved considerable time and expense, and near duplication of effort often occurred. In 1974, the United States Department of Transportation commissioned the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), the nation’s oldest professional graphic design organization, to create a master set of thirty-four passenger and pedestrian-oriented symbols for use in transportation facilities. The goal was a consistent and interrelated group of symbols for worldwide transportation facilities meant to bridge language barriers and simplify basic messages.
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20–43
The first step was the compilation and inventory of symbol systems developed for individual transportation facilities and international events (Fig. 20–42). A committee of five prominent graphic designers, headed by Thomas H. Geismar, acted as evaluators and advisers on the project. The Department of Transportation provided the AIGA with a list of message areas. Prior solutions to the thirty-four subject areas were evaluated by each member of the advisory committee, and a summary recommendation was prepared to guide the design of the symbol system. Some existing symbols were retained, while in other categories totally new glyphs were developed, with clarity of image their overriding goal. The final set of symbols (Fig. 20–43) was designed and drawn by Roger Cook (b. 1930) and Don Shanosky (b. 1937) of Cook and Shanosky Associates in Princeton, New Jersey. These signs combined overall harmony with a visual consistency of line, shape, weight, and form. This effort represented an important first step toward the goal of unified and effective graphic communications transcending cultural and language barriers in a shrinking world. A 288-page book published by the Department of Transportation provided invaluable information about the design and evaluation process used to arrive at the system.
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20–46
20–45 20–44. Masaru Katzumie (art director),
20–47. Lance Wyman, logo poster for
Yusaku Kamekura (designer), and their
the Nineteenth Olympiad, 1966.
staff, twenty comprehensive multisport symbols for the Tokyo Olym-
20–48. Lance Wyman, logotype and
piad, 1964. The complete pictogram
alphabet for the Nineteenth Olym-
system, comprising twenty multisport
piad, 1967. Composed of five bands
symbols and thirty-nine general infor-
or ribbons, the logotype and alphabet
mation pictograms, were drawn using
echo design motifs from early Mexi-
a square field with a grid.
can folk arts.
20–45. Masaru Katzumie (art director), Yusaku Kamekura (designer), and their staff, thirty-nine general information pictograms for the Tokyo Olympiad, 1964. The pictograms were designed for instant identification by a multilingual audience. 20–46. Masaru Katzumie (art director), Yusaku Kamekura (designer), and their staff, identification signage for the Tokyo Olympiad, 1964.
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Design systems for the Olympic Games By the early 1960s, the concept of comprehensive design systems was becoming a reality. Planners realized that comprehensive planning for large organizations and events was not only functional and desirable but also necessary. This was particularly true in the case of international events, including world’s fairs and Olympic Games, where an international and multilingual audience had to be directed and informed. Among many outstanding efforts, the design programs for the 1964 Tokyo Eighteenth Olympiad, 1968 Mexico City Nineteenth Olympiad, the 1972 Munich Twentieth Olympiad, the 1984 Los Angeles Twenty-Third Olympiad, and the 2008 Beijing Twenty-Ninth Olympiad were milestones in the evolution of graphic systems. In the summer of 1964, Tokyo hosted the eighteenth Olympic Games. The 1964 Summer Games was the first use of a comprehensive identity program, setting a standard for all subsequent games. Masaru Katzumie (art director) and Yusaku Kamekura (graphic designer) were the creative visionaries and team leaders behind this remarkable project. The focus of their research efforts was on an internationally standardized signage system based on their concern with
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the social significance of graphic design. They identified that simple pictographs were the most efficient method of communicating to an international audience. Using a square field with a grid, the team created an extensive range of geometrically stylized pictograms. This comprehensive identity program, which included twenty multisport symbols (Fig. 20 – 44) and thirty-nine general information pictograms (Fig. 20 – 45) emphasized the athletes’ physical movements and were designed for immediate identification by a multilingual audience (Fig. 20 – 46). This pictogram system served as a standard that inf luenced Lance Wyman for the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, Otl Aicher for the 1972 Munich Olympics, and Min Wang and his team for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and has become a guide for universal public visual design systems and worldwide events. A theme—“The young of the world united in friendship through understanding”—was adopted by the organizing committee of the Nineteenth Olympiad in Mexico City, chaired by Mexican architect Pedro Ramírez Vázquez (b. 1919). Realizing that an effective information system encompassing environmental directions, visual identification, and publicity was needed, Vázquez assembled an international design team, with American Lance Wyman (b. 1937) as director of graphic design and British industrial designer Peter Murdoch (b. 1940) as director of special products. Because the Nineteenth Olympiad took place in and around Mexico City itself, rather than in a special location built for the purpose, the design system had to be deployed throughout one of the world’s largest cities. Traffic control, urban logistics, and a multilingual audience compounded the challenge. Wyman’s initial analysis of the problem determined that the solution should reflect the cultural heritage of Mexico.
An exhaustive study of ancient Aztec artifacts and Mexican folk art led him to employ two design ideas: the use of repeated multiple lines to form patterns and the use of bright, pure hues. Throughout the country, arts and crafts, adobe homes, paper flowers, marketplaces, and clothing sang with joyous, pure color, and this exuberant color spirit figured prominently in Wyman’s planning. Designing a logotype for the Olympiad (Fig. 20–47) formed a basis for the further evolution of the design program. The five rings of the Olympiad symbol were overlapped and merged with the numeral 68 and then combined with the word Mexico. The repeated-stripe pattern observed in traditional Mexican art was used to form the letters. Following development of the logotype, Wyman extended it into a display typeface (Fig. 20–48) that could be applied to a range of graphics, from tickets to billboards and from uniform patches to giant color-coded balloons hovering over the arenas. The system encompassed pictographic symbols for athletic (Fig. 20–49) and cultural events, formats for the Department of Publications, site identification, directional signs for implementation by the Department of Urban Design throughout the city, informational posters, maps, postage stamps (Fig. 20–50), film titles, and television spots. For the exterior environmental signage, Wyman and Murdoch collaborated on the development of a complete system of modular functional components with interchangeable parts (Fig. 20–51). These combined directional and identification signage with pictures of objects such as mailboxes, telephones, and water fountains. This design system was so effective that the New York Times proclaimed, “You can be illiterate in all languages and still navigate the surroundings successfully, so long as you are not color-blind.”
20–47
20–48
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20–49 20–50
20–51
20–49. Lance Wyman, Eduardo
20–51. Peter Murdoch, preliminary
Terrazas, and Manuel Villazón, sports
studies for the Mexican Olympiad
symbols for the Nineteenth Olympiad,
signage and facilities, 1968. Modular
1967. Sports equipment pictographs
components were assembled into
permitted immediate identification
units throughout the city.
by an international audience. The pictograph sports icon designs were influenced by early Mexican glyph systems. 20–50. Lance Wyman, Mexican Olympiad postage stamps, 1967–68. Silhouetted athletes are printed over brilliant color backgrounds. The images were designed to flow from stamp to stamp in a continuous design.
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Wyman’s goal was to create a completely unified design system easily understood by people of all language backgrounds and flexible enough to meet a vast range of applications. Measured in terms of graphic originality, innovative functional application, and its value to thousands of visitors to the Mexican Olympiad, the graphic design system developed by Wyman and his associates in Mexico was one of the most successful in the evolution of visual identification. After completing the two-year Olympiad project, Wyman returned to New York City and reestablished his design firm, where he applied the expertise gained on the Mexican project to comprehensive design programs for shopping plazas and zoos. For the 1972 Twentieth Olympiad in Munich, Germany, Otl Aicher directed a design team in the development and implementation of a more formal and systematized design program. An identification manual (Fig. 20–52) established standards for use of the event’s symbol, a radiant sunburst/ spiral configuration centered beneath the Olympic rings and bracketed by two vertical lines. Univers was selected as the typeface, and a system of publication grids was established. The color palette consisted of a partial spectrum composed of two blues, two greens, yellow, orange, and three neutral tones (black, white, and a middle-value gray). Excluding one segment of the spectrum in this way created harmony and projected a festive air. An extensive series of pictographs were drawn on a modular square grid divided by horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines (Fig. 20–53). For each Olympic sport a pictograph was designed (Fig. 20–54) that emphasized the motion of the athletes and their equipment. Immediate identification was achieved in spite of language barriers. These pictographs were widely used in printed graphics (Fig. 20–55) and identification signs. The geometry of the pictographs served as a counterpoint to another level of imagery: high-contrast photographs used on publications (Fig. 20–56) and a series of twenty-two
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20–52. Otl Aicher and his staff, Munich Olympiad graphics standards manual pages, c. 1970. Every detail of the graphics program was determined. 20–53. Otl Aicher, grid for the Munich Olympiad pictographs, c. 1972. The complexity of the grid permitted an infinite range of permutations. 20–54. Otl Aicher and his staff, sports pictographs for the Munich Olympiad, c. 1970.
20–53
20–54
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20–56 20–55. Otl Aicher and his staff, informational graphics for the Munich Olympiad, 1972. Pictographs function as signifiers and illustrations. 20–56. Otl Aicher and his staff, covers for the Munich Olympiad Bulletin, 1971. An inventive variety is achieved with a consistent format. In no. 6, the grid becomes part of the illustration. 20–57. Otl Aicher and his staff, poster
20–57
20–58
for the Munich Olympiad, 1972. Each poster had a wide expanse of one dominant color as a ground for a posterized photograph of athletic competition. 20–58. Jim Berté (designer) and Robert Miles Runyan (art director), symbol for the games of the Los Angeles Olympiad, 1980. The “star in motion” is generated by three weights of horizontal lines. 20–59. Debra Valencia (designer) and Deborah Sussman (art director), design guide for the Los Angeles Olympiad, 1983. The design parameters allow diversity within a fixed range of possibilities.
20–59
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20–60. Deborah Sussman, Design Quarterly cover, 1985. This periodical cover captures the graphic resonance created for the Los Angeles Olympiad. 20–61. The Jerde Partnership, Sussman/Prejza & Co., and Daniel Benjamin, entrance to the Los Angeles Olympiad swimming competition venue, 1984.
20–60
20–61
commemorative posters depicting major Olympic sports. These used the modified-spectrum palette of four cool and two warm colors. The track events poster (Fig. 20–57), for example, defines the track and runners in the lighter green and two shades of blue against a dark-green field. The 1984 Los Angeles Twenty-Third Olympiad saw a sprawling city transformed into a joyous environment of color and shape that unified twenty-eight athletic sites, forty-two cultural locations, and three Olympic Villages for housing athletes. Hundreds of designers and architects working for more than sixty design firms were involved. Continuing the practice of combining a symbol specifically designed for each edition of the Olympics with the traditional linked rings, the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee selected a dynamic star-in-motion configuration (Fig. 20–58) in a 1980 competition among leading Los Angeles design firms. The design problem was well defined: how to temporarily transform these far-flung facilities to create a unified celebratory feeling, express the international character of the games, and invent a designed environment that would work effectively both on-site and for the global television audience. For help in addressing these challenges, the organizing committee called on two design firms to spearhead the effort. An architectural firm, the Jerde Partnership, directed by Jon Jerde (b. 1940) and David Meckel, collaborated with an environmental and graphic design firm, Sussman/Prejza & Co., headed by Deborah Sussman (b. 1931) and Paul Prejza, in planning the visual vocabulary—architecture, color, graphics, and signage—for this massive event. A “parts kit” was assembled to provide a uniform idiom for designing components and environments. Forms were simple and basic. Sonotube columns, normally used as molds for casting concrete columns but used here as columns themselves, were decorated with colorful painted stripes. The sonotubes
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were lined up to make colonnades, combined with rented tents to make colorful pavilions, or topped with flat graphic pediments echoing the forms of earlier Olympiads. A postersize design guide (Fig. 20–59) was produced to provide all participants with consistent parameters for using the parts kit. Sussman selected a bright, vibrant palette with hot magenta as the basic color. Its primary supporting palette consisted of vivid aqua, chrome yellow, and vermilion. A secondary palette included yellow, green, lavender, and light blue, with violet, blue, and pink accents. Graphic forms were derived from the stars and stripes of the American flag combined with the stripes of the star-in-motion logo. The program was infinitely adaptable, while adherence to the color palette, stripe-and-star motif, and approach to spatial organization permitted diverse materials (Fig. 20–60) to evoke the Los Angeles Olympics. Each sports arena was transformed with its own color combinations and visual motifs developed from the design guidelines. Entryways to the sporting events became festive colonnades (Fig. 20–61). The graphic design program of the 2008 Beijing TwentyNinth Olympiad was produced by diverse teams of graphic and product designers led by designer Min Wang (b. 1956), the creative force behind the extraordinary undertaking begun in 2005 in a country that just thirty years earlier had no word for graphic design. Since 2003, Min Wang has also been dean of the School of Design, at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing. He was appointed design director for the 2008 Olympic Games in 2006. At that time, he created a unique working group in the Art Research Center for the Olympic Games (ARCOG) at CAFA. Under his leadership, the center’s design teams, including CAFA students, developed an elegant and comprehensive design system for the 2008 Olympic Games. Their work included the athletic pictographic symbols, the Beijing
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20–62
20–63
20–64
20–62. AICA (Armstrong International)
20–64. Cover and sample spreads
Design. The Beijing 2008 Olympic
from Dancing Colours: Beijing
Games emblem is also the official
Olympic Games: The Colours, a visual
emblem for the Beijing Organizing
identity manual specifying color usage
Committee for the Games of the XXIX
for the 2008 Olympic Games advertis-
Olympiad (BOCOG). The emblem
ing and promotional materials.
consists of three parts: the Beijing Games symbol, the logotype, and the Olympic symbol. 20–63. Min Wang (art director), Hang Hai, Wang Jie (design), and ARCOG team and CAFA team (design), pictograms of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, with borders. The designs were inspired by calligraphic inscriptions of ancient Chinese seal script (hsiao chuan), oracle bone writing (chiaku-wen), and bronzeware script (chin-wen). These scripts were adapted to create symbols for the Olympic sport that could be recognized by a vast and diverse audience.
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Games emblem (Fig. 20–62) and its applications, the design of the medals for the Games, the Olympic torch graphics, and extensive promotional and advertising graphic designs. The design group addressed design planning through the development of extensive design standards manuals and reaffirmed the Olympic spirit and significance of this international multisporting event. The presentation of the games in Beijing put the fastest growing nation in the world on center stage with a design program developed in a relatively new design education and business environment. Min Wang’s efforts and those of his design teams at the Art Research Center followed in the traditions of the Olympic pictogram designs developed by Katzumie, Wyman, and Aicher. The design process, to create symbols for a vast multilingual audience, was based on what Wang called “an effort that combines the Olympic spirit and Chinese values.” The teams sought inspiration for the pictograms (Fig. 20–63) in ancient Chinese writing systems, some more than two thousand years old, that revealed Chinese messages and joined them with a modern Western-style visual language that would communicate visually to people of many cultures. The designs of the Olympic emblem and its applications, athletic pictograms, and Olympic color scheme standards were elegantly presented in three large-format design standard manuals: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games Emblem Usage Manual, Pictograms of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, and Dancing Colours: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games: The Colours. The color systems of the Games, as shown in Dancing Colours (Fig. 20–64), was derived from traditional Chinese cultural sources and organized on a Western design model, bringing China to the world and the world to China. In a sense, graphics helped restore the Olympics as an international celebration after terrorist activities (1972) and political boycotts (1980, 1984) had tainted the games. Similarly, the memory of protests that had unfolded in Tiananmen Square in June 1989 was redeemed by the modern graphic design, architecture, and, of course, the fraternity of sports presented in the Olympic Games in Beijing.
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The Music Television logo
The Music Television logo Music Television (MTV) first went on the air in 1981. Media visionary Bob Pittman initiated the idea of a round-the-clock music television station at a time when music videos had not yet reached full flower as a creative medium and only eighteen million American households subscribed to cable television. The fledgling network commissioned a logo design from Manhattan Design, a New York City studio noted for its independent, risk-taking experimentation, especially for music-industry clients. Partners Pat Gorman (b. 1947), Frank Olinsky (b. 1950), and Patti Rogoff (b. 1945) all had finearts backgrounds; in addition, each had a bold, iconoclastic approach gained from an interest in comic-book art. Olinsky’s father was an animator and illustrator, while Gorman’s father was an actor. While growing up, Gorman had spent many hours in studios and playing with equipment, so television became her native language. During the design process, Gorman felt Olinsky’s sketch of a bold, three-dimensional sans-serif M needed further development, so she scrawled a large, graffiti-like TV on its face, creating a memorable and influential trademark (Fig. 20–65). A moment of insight occurred when the designers realized the potential of varying the color, decoration, material, dimensionality, viewing angle, and motion of the logo (Figs. 20–66 through 20–68), with its broad flat M and vigorous TV. With these variations, the logo could assume different personalities, participate in animated events, and be demolished. The concept of a logo with a constantly changing persona runs contrary to the widely held belief that trademarks and visual identifiers should be absolutely fixed and used in a consistent manner. Once this concept was decided upon, Manhattan Design produced hundreds of sketches to show possible variations. During the network’s early years, the MTV logo appeared as a ten-second network identification spot at the top of each hour. Manhattan Design, MTV internal staff, and several animation studios storyboarded an unending stream of ten-second identification spots and quick station tags. The constant creation of new identification sequences led to an ongoing collaboration involving animation, illustration, photography, and direct manipulation of the video medium. Gorman observed that the MTV logo “changed the face, the idea, and the speed of graphic design”; it played a major role in redefining visual identity in the electronic age. During the 1980s print graphics began to reflect the influence of television in the use of color, texture, decorative graphic elements, and sequence. The MTV logo was a harbinger of the world of motion graphics that would soon open up as cable television, video games, and computer graphics expanded the variety and range of kinetic graphic messages. On 8 September 1996, the New York Times observed, “The move of information from the printed page to other media has changed the nature of graphic identity. The MTV logo, which emerges from an unexpected metamorphosis, is probably the ultimate in animated identity.” By 1995 MTV was reaching more than 250 million homes
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20–65
20–66
20–67
20–68
20–65. Manhattan Design, MTV logo,
20–67. Pat Gorman and Frank Olinsky
1981.
of Manhattan Design, MTV “Colorforms” logo, 1985. Random patterns
20–66. Pat Gorman and Frank Olinsky
of geometric shapes convey a playful
of Manhattan Design (design) and
resonance.
Broadcast Arts (fabrication), MTV “taxi” logo, 1981. As a dimensional
20–68. Pat Gorman and Frank Olinsky
object, the logo appears in limitless
of Manhattan Design, MTV “puzzle”
guises and environments.
logo, 1985. The logo is assembled, dismantled, melted, and shattered without losing its ability to establish identity.
in fifty-eight countries, and it had the second most recognized logo in the world, trailing only that of Coca-Cola. In the second half of the twentieth century, visual identity gained increased importance as the world entered the information age. Multipart international events, large governmental entities, and multinational corporations required complex design systems developed by graphic designers to manage information flow and visual identity. While accomplishing these pragmatic goals, design systems can also create resonance, helping express and define the very nature of the large organization or event. The identity of a large organization can be created or redefined by design.
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21 The Conceptual Image
21–2 21–1. Armando Testa, poster for Pirelli, 1954. The strength of a bull elephant is bestowed on the tire by the surrealist technique of image combination. 21–2. Armando Testa, rubber and plastics exhibition poster, 1972. A synthetic hand holds a plastic ball in a distinctive and appropriate image for this trade exhibition.
Sensing that traditional narrative illustration did not address the needs of the times, post–World War I graphic designers reinvented the communicative image to express the machine age and advanced visual ideas. In a similar quest for new imagery, the decades after World War II saw the development of the conceptual image in graphic design. Images conveyed not merely narrative information but ideas and concepts. Mental content joined perceived content as motif. The illustrator interpreting a writer’s text yielded to the graphic imagist making a statement. A new breed of image maker was concerned with the total design of the space and the integration of word and image. In the exploding information culture of the second half of the twentieth century, the entire history of visual arts was available to the graphic artist as a library of potential forms and images. In particular, inspiration was gained from the advances of twentieth-century art movements: the spatial configurations of cubism; the juxtapositions, dislocations, and scale changes of surrealism; the pure color loosened from natural reference by expressionism and fauvism; and the recycling of mass-media images by pop art. In the decades following World War II, graphic artists had greater opportunity for self-expression, created more personal images, and pioneered individual styles and techniques. The traditional boundaries between the fine arts and public visual communications became blurred. The creation of conceptual images became a significant design approach in Poland, the United States, Germany, and even Cuba. It also cropped up around the world in the work of individuals whose search for relevant and effective images in the post–World War II era led them toward the conceptual image. In the most original work of the Italian graphic designer Armando Testa (1917–92), for example, metaphysical combinations were used to convey elemental truths about the subject. Testa was an abstract painter until after the war, when he established a graphic design studio in his native Turin. His 1950s publicity campaigns for Pirelli tires had an international impact on graphic design thinking (Fig. 21–1). Testa borrowed the vocabulary of surrealism by combining the image of a tire with immediately recognizable symbols. In his posters and advertisements, the image is the primary means of communication, and he reduces the verbal content to a few words or just the product name. Testa effectively used more subtle contradictions, such as images made of artificial materials (Fig. 21–2), as a means of injecting unexpected elements into graphic design.
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The Polish poster
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The Polish poster World War II began in Europe on 1 September 1939 with Hitler’s lightning invasion of Poland from the north, south, and west without a declaration of war. Seventeen days later, Soviet troops invaded Poland from the east, and six years of devastation followed. Poland emerged from the war with enormous population losses, its industry devastated, and its agriculture in ruins. The capital city of Warsaw was almost completely destroyed. Printing and graphic design, like so many aspects of Polish society and culture, virtually ceased to exist. It is a monumental tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that an internationally renowned Polish school of poster art emerged from this devastation. In the communist society established in Poland after the war, the clients were state-controlled institutions and industry. Graphic designers joined filmmakers, writers, and fine artists in the Polish Union of Artists, which established standards and set fees. Entry into the union came after completion of the educational program at either the Warsaw or the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts. Entry standards for these schools were rigorous, and the number of graduates was carefully controlled to equal the need for design. The first Polish poster artist to emerge after the war was Tadeusz Trepkowski (1914–56). In the first decade after the devastation, Trepkowski expressed the tragic memories and aspirations for the future that were deeply fixed in the national psyche. His approach involved reducing the imagery and words until the content was distilled into its simplest statement. In his famous 1953 antiwar poster (Fig. 21–3), Trepkowski used a few simple shapes symbolizing a devastated city, superimposed on a silhouette of a falling bomb. Henryk Tomaszewski (1914–2005) emerged as the spiritual head of Polish graphic design after Trepkowski’s early death
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21–5
21–3. Tadeusz Trepkowski, antiwar poster, 1953. A passionate statement is reduced to just one word: No! 21–4. Henryk Tomaszewski, football poster for the Olympic Games in London, 1948. 21–5. Henryk Tomaszewski, poster for the play Marie and Napoleon, 1964. Tomaszewski led Polish graphic design toward colorful and artistic expression.
and became an important impetus for the movement from his position as professor at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. The poster became a source of great national pride in Poland; its role in the cultural life of the nation is unique. Electronic broadcasting lacked the frequency and diversity of Western media, and the din of economic competition was less pronounced in a communist country. Therefore, posters for cultural events, the circus, movies, and politics served as important communications. In 1964 the Warsaw International Poster Biennial began, and Muzeum Plakatu—a museum devoted exclusively to the art of the poster—was established in Wilanów, near Warsaw. The Polish poster began to receive international attention during the 1950s. Tomaszewski led the trend toward developing an aesthetically pleasing approach, escaping from the somber world of tragedy and remembrance into a bright, decorative world of color and shape (Figs. 21–4 and 21–5). In an almost casual collage approach, designs were created from torn and cut pieces of colored paper and then printed
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21–6
21–7 21–6. Jerzy Flisak, cinema poster for Rzeczpospolita Babska, undated. Bright colors and informal shapes convey the delightful resonance of the 1950s Polish poster. 21–7. Roman Cieslewicz, circus poster, 1962. Collage elements superimpose the word cyrk and a clown on a high-contrast photograph of an elephant.
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by the silkscreen process. Typical of this style is the film poster for Rzeczpospolita Babska (Fig. 21–6) by Jerzy Flisak (1930–2008). The symbolic female figure has a pink, doll-like head with round, rouged cheeks and a heart-shaped mouth. The circus poster has flourished as a lighthearted expression of the magic and charm of this traditional entertainment since 1962, when concern about mediocre circus publicity inspired a juried program to select a dozen circus posters per year for publication by the Graphic Arts Publishers in Warsaw. The word cyrk (circus) is the only type or lettering on each poster (Fig. 21–7). Printed strips with typographic information giving full particulars for the specific engagement were pasted under the poster image on kiosks and walls. The next major trend in Polish posters started to evolve during the 1960s and reached a crescendo in the 1970s. This was a tendency toward the metaphysical and surrealism, as a darker, more somber side of the national character was addressed. It has been speculated that this represented either a subtle reaction to the social constraints of the dictatorial regime or a despair and yearning for the autonomy that has so often been denied the Polish nation during its history. One of the first graphic designers to incorporate this new metaphysical sensitivity into his work was Franciszek Starowieyski (1930–2009). In his 1962 poster for the Warsaw Drama Theater, a serpent hovers in space, coiling around two circles that become shaking hands (Fig. 21–8). This enigmatic image was a harbinger of things to come in Starowieyski’s work, which sometimes tends toward the slime-and-gore school of graphics, and in the work of a number of other Polish graphic designers. Jan Lenica (1928–2001) pushed the collage style toward a more menacing and surreal communication in posters and experimental animated films. Then, during the mid-1960s, he began using flowing, stylized contour lines that weave through the space and divide it into colored zones that form an image (Fig. 21–9 and 21–10). Lenica and Starowieyski were joined in their break from the mainstream by several members of the emerging generation who realized that the Polish poster was in danger of fossilizing into an academic national style. This potential pitfall was avoided, as designers including Waldemar Swierzy (b. 1931) arrived at unique personal visions. Approaching graphic design from a painterly viewpoint, Swierzy draws on folk art and twentieth-century fine art for inspiration (Fig. 21–11). A prolific artist, he has created more than a thousand posters in a wide variety of media. He often incorporates acrylics, crayon, pencil, and watercolor into designs. In his famous poster for the American rock musician Jimi Hendrix (Fig. 21–12), Swierzy animated the large portrait with swirling energetic gestures. The spontaneous quality of much of his work is deceptive, for Swierzy sometimes devotes three weeks to a poster and might even execute a poster five or more times before being satisfied with the results. An exiled Polish poster artist, Roman Cieslewicz (1930–96) lived in Paris from the 1960s on. Closely associated with the Polish avant-garde theater, Cieslewicz took the poster, a public art form, and transformed it into a metaphysical medium to
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21–8
21–9
21–10
21–8. Franciszek Starowieyski, Warsaw Drama Theater poster, 1962. The cube drawn in perspective transforms the flat page into deep space, forcing the strange complex above it to float. 21–9. Jan Lenica, Warsaw Poster Biennale poster, 1976. Meandering arabesques metamorphose into a winged being. 21–10. Jan Lenica, poster for Alban Berg’s Wozzeck, 1964. As with many of Lenica’s posters, the spirit of art nouveau is evident. 21–11. Waldemar Swierzy, Ulica Hanby poster, 1959. The painterly lettering becomes an extension of the lipstick.
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express profound ideas that would be difficult to articulate verbally (Fig. 21–13). Cieslewicz’s techniques include enlarging collage, montage, and halftone images to a scale that turns the dots into texture, setting up an interplay between two levels of information: the image and the dots that create it (Fig. 21–14). In 1980 shortages of food, electricity, and housing led to strikes and the formation of the illegal Solidarity labor union, whose logo (Fig. 21–15), designed by Jerzy Janiszewski, became an international symbol of struggle against oppression. As a result of government censorship during Poland’s social unrest, the country’s posters frequently addressed issues that reached beyond national borders rather than directly confronting internal political struggles such as that reflected by the banning of Solidarity. An example is a poster by Marian Nowinski (b. 1944), which eloquently laments censorship and the suppression of the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (Fig. 21–16). For many viewers it also expressed solidarity with the Chilean struggle for democracy and independence. Powerful images such as this transcend their immediate subject matter to become universal statements about censorship and the suppression of ideas everywhere. The legalization of Solidarity and its overwhelming victory in the May 1989 elections ended one-party communist rule and marked the beginning of a new era in Polish history. For half a century, the Polish poster developed as a result of a conscious decision by the government to sanction and support poster art as a major form of expression and communication. The posters were creative statements trafficking in ideas rather than commodities. Despite political changes, a tradition of excellence bolstered by strong design education may ensure a continuing poster art form in Poland. Inventiveness is already being demonstrated by younger graphic designers entering the profession.
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American conceptual images During the 1950s the golden age of American illustration was drawing to a close. For over fifty years narrative illustration had ruled American graphic design, but improvements in paper, printing, and photography caused the illustrator’s edge over the photographer to recede rapidly. Traditionally, illustrators had exaggerated value contrasts, intensified color, and made edges and details sharper than life to create more convincing images than photography. But now, improvements in materials and processes enabled photography to expand its range of lighting conditions and image fidelity. The death of illustration was somberly predicted as photography made rapid inroads into the profession’s traditional market. However, as photography stole illustration’s traditional function, a new approach to illustration emerged. This more conceptual approach to illustration began with a group of young New York graphic artists. Art students Seymour Chwast (b. 1931), Milton Glaser (b. 1929), Reynolds Ruffins (b. 1930), and Edward Sorel (b. 1929) banded together and shared a loft studio. On graduation from Cooper Union in 1951, Glaser received a Fulbright scholarship to study etching under Giorgio Morandi in Italy, and the other three friends found employment in New York advertising and publishing. Freelance assignments were solicited through a joint publication called the Push Pin Almanack. Published bimonthly, it featured interesting editorial material from old almanacs illustrated by the group. When Glaser returned from Europe in August 1954, the Push Pin Studio was formed. Ruffins left the studio after a time and became a prominent decorative and children’s book illustrator (Fig. 21–17). In 1958 Sorel started freelancing, and he later emerged as one of the major political satirists of his generation. Glaser and Chwast continued their partnership for two decades. Glaser eventually left to pursue
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441
21–12. Waldemar Swierzy, Jimi Hendrix poster, 1974. The electric vitality of gestural strokes on the cobalt blue portrait suggests the vigorous energy of hard-rock music.
21–15 21–13. Roman Cieslewicz, poster for Vertigo, 1963. A target on the forehead of a skull, also alluding to the film’s title, is combined with a fingerprint in this enigmatic interpretation of the Polish version of Hitchcock’s film. 21–14. Roman Cieslewicz, Zezowate Szczescie (Bad Luck) movie poster, 1959. As with many posters by Cieslewicz, the viewer is left with the task of interpreting the image. 21–15. Jerzy Janiszewski, Solidarity logo, c. 1980. Crude letterforms evoke street graffiti, and the crowded
21–17
letters are a metaphor for people standing solidly together in the street. 21–16. Marian Nowinski, political poster, 1979. A book bearing the name of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, whose works were banned and burned by the Pinochet regime, is closed by large metal spikes. 21–17. Reynolds Ruffins, illustration for Amtrak Express magazine, 1983. Decorative color and abstracted forms typify Ruffins’s work over half a century. 21–18. Milton Glaser, record album cover for The Sound of Harlem, 1964. In this early example of Glaser’s contour line and flat color period, the figures are weightless shapes flowing
21–16
in musical rhythm.
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a wide range of interests, including magazine, corporate, and environmental design. Chwast remains as director of the renamed Pushpin Group. The Push Pin Almanack became the Push Pin Graphic, and this experimental magazine provided a forum for presenting new ideas, imagery, and techniques. The philosophies and personal visions of Push Pin Studio artists had global influence. Graphic design has often been fragmented into separate tasks of image making and layout or design. Like turn-of-the-century graphic designers Alphonse Mucha and Will Bradley, Glaser and Chwast united these components into a total communication conveying the individual vision of the creator, who was also involved in the total conception and design of the printed page. Using art and graphic history from Renaissance paintings to comic books as a data bank of form, images, and visual ideas, Push Pin artists freely paraphrased and incorporated a multiplicity of ideas into their work, often reshaping these eclectic sources into new and unexpected forms. Glaser’s singular genius is hard to categorize, for over the course of several decades he reinvented himself as a creative force by exploring new graphic techniques and motifs. During the 1960s he created images using flat shapes formed by thin, black-ink contour lines, adding color by applying adhesive color films (Fig. 21–18). This almost schematic drawing style echoed the simple iconography of comic books, the flowing curvilinear drawing of Persian and art nouveau arabesques, the flat color of Japanese prints and Matisse cutouts, and the dynamic of contemporary pop art. As with other graphic designers whose work captured and expressed the sensibilities of their times, Glaser was widely imitated. Only his ability to
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maintain a steady stream of innovative conceptual solutions, along with his restless exploration of different techniques, prevented him from being consumed by his followers. While the images described above are formed by the edge, another approach developed by Glaser evolved from the mass. Inspired in the late 1950s by oriental calligraphic brush drawing and Picasso aquatints, Glaser began making gestured silhouette wash drawings that tease by only suggesting the subject, requiring the viewer to fill in the details from his or her own imagination. Glaser’s concert posters and record-album designs manifest a singular ability to combine his personal vision with the essence of the content. Glaser’s 1967 image of the popular folk-rock singer Bob Dylan (Fig. 21–19) is presented as a black silhouette with brightly colored hair patterns inspired by art nouveau sources. Nearly six million copies of the poster were produced for inclusion in a best-selling record album. Like James Montgomery Flagg’s Uncle Sam poster, it became a graphic icon in the collective American experience. A photographer told Glaser about being on assignment on the Amazon River and seeing the Dylan poster in a hut at a remote Indian village. In a rejected poster design for the Museum of Modern Art’s Dada and surrealism exhibition, the words themselves take on a metaphysical afterlife as objects (Fig. 21–20). Dada is impaled through the tabletop to hover over its wayward offspring, surrealism. Like the art movements it represents, this design defies rational interpretation. Glaser often assimilates spatial devices and imagery from surrealism to express complex concepts (Fig. 21–21). During the 1980s and 1990s Glaser became increasingly interested in illusions and dimensionality. For Glaser, geometric forms, words, and numbers are not merely abstract signs but
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21–22
21–23
tangible entities with an object-life that allows them to be interpreted as motifs, just as figures and inanimate objects are interpreted by an artist. In very personal works, the dialogue between perceptual and conceptual iconography is explored (Fig. 21–22). Chwast’s vision is very personal, yet communicates on a universal level. He frequently uses the technique of line drawings overlaid with adhesive color films and experiments with a large variety of media and substrata. Echoes of children’s art, primitive art, folk art, expressionist woodcuts, and comic books appear in his imaginative reinventions of the world. Chwast’s color is frontal and intense (Fig. 21–23). In contrast to Glaser’s spatial depth, Chwast usually maintains an absolute flatness in his work. Chwast’s innocent vision, love of Victorian and figurative letterforms, and ability to integrate figurative and alphabetic information has enabled him to produce unexpected design solutions. His album cover for The Threepenny Opera (Fig. 21–24) demonstrates his ability to synthesize diverse resources—the German expressionist woodcut, surreal spatial dislocations, and dynamic color found in primitive art—into an appropriate expression of the subject. In his 1965 moving announcement for Elektra Productions (Fig. 21–25), each letter in the word lumbers across the space, endowed with its own form of transportation. From antiwar protest (Fig. 21–26) to food packaging to magazine covers, Chwast has reformulated earlier art and graphics to express new concepts in new contexts. Both Chwast and Glaser developed a number of novelty display typefaces. Often these began as lettering for assignments and then were developed into full alphabets. Figure 21–27 shows the logo Chwast developed for Artone Ink; the graded version of Blimp, based on old woodtypes; a geometric face in-
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21–25
21–19. Milton Glaser, Bob Dylan
21–23. Seymour Chwast, Judy
poster, 1967. Transcending subject
Garland poster, c. 1960. The vibrant
and function, this image became a
flat colors aptly express the resonance
symbolic crystallization of its time.
of her singing. Chwast uses his own typeface Blimp for the title.
21–20. Milton Glaser, Dada and surrealism exhibition poster, 1968. The
21–24. Seymour Chwast, album cover
smaller table isolates the word real
for The Threepenny Opera, 1975.
within the longer word surrealism.
Diverse inspirations combine to capture the resonance of the renowned
21–21. Milton Glaser, Poppy Records
German play.
poster, 1968. A poppy blooming from a granite cube symbolizes a
21–25. Seymour Chwast, moving an-
new, independent company breaking
nouncement for Elektra Productions,
through the monolithic conventions of
c. 1965. Walking, riding, or propelled
the recording industry.
by locomotive power, the client’s name travels to its new location.
21–22. Milton Glaser, “Art Is” poster, 1996. Suggesting a painting by Magritte, visual and verbal meanings are explored by manifesting a hat as a photograph, a shadow, a word, a pictograph, and a written definition.
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21–27
spired by the logo Glaser designed for a film studio; a typeface based on lettering first developed for a Mademoiselle poster; and the Buffalo typeface, originally devised for a French product named Buffalo Gum, which was never produced. The term Push Pin style became widely used for the studio’s work and influence, which spread around the world. The studio hired other designers and illustrators in addition to Glaser and Chwast, and a number of these younger individuals, who worked for the studio and then moved on to freelance or to other positions, extended the boundaries of the Push Pin aesthetic. The Push Pin approach is less a set of visual conventions, or a unity of visual techniques or images, than it is an attitude about visual communications, an openness about trying new forms and techniques as well as reinterpreting work from earlier periods, and an ability to integrate word and image into a conceptual and decorative whole. Barry Zaid (b. 1939), an influential young graphic designer in the late 1960s and early 1970s, joined Push Pin for a few years during this period. A Canadian who majored first
21–26. Seymour Chwast, poster pro-
21–28. Barry Zaid, book jacket for Be-
testing the bombing of Hanoi, 1968.
vis Hillier’s Art Deco, 1970. Decorative
A mundane advertising slogan gains
geometry of the 1920s is reinvented
new life when combined with a blue
in the context of the sensibilities of a
woodcut and offset printed green and
half-century later.
red areas. 21–27. Seymour Chwast, display typeface designs. Chwast playfully echoes Victorian, art nouveau, op art, and art deco forms.
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21–28
in architecture and then in English during college before becoming a self-taught graphic designer and illustrator, Zaid worked in Toronto and then London prior to joining Push Pin Studio. As a graphic archaeologist basing his work on a thorough study of the graphic vernacular of bygone eras, Zaid became an important force in the revivalism and historicism that were prevalent in graphic design during this period. He was particularly prominent in the revival of 1920s art deco decorative geometric forms (Figs. 21–28 and 21–29), including the cover of the 1970 book Art Deco by English art historian Bevis Hillier. Zaid’s historicism did not merely mimic nostalgic forms, for his spatial organization, scale, and color was of his own time. Among the illustrators and designers who passed through Push Pin Studio was James McMullan (b. 1934), who revived watercolor, a medium that had declined from a position second only to oil paint for fine art and illustration, and restored it as a means of graphic expression. McMullan achieved prominence during the 1960s with energetic ink-line and watercolor illustrations that often combined multiple images with significant changes in spatial depth and image size and scale. Moving into the 1970s, McMullan’s watercolor technique became increasingly masterly, and he developed a photo-documentary approach emphasizing sharp detail and realism. At the same time, however, a concern for total design asserted itself, and McMullan began to make f luid lettering an important part of his images. In his 1977 poster for Eugene O’Neill’s play Anna Christie (Fig. 21–30), the intimate portrayal of a figure sitting in an interior is superimposed on an ocean scene. The dual image combines to communicate the locale of the play while creating an engaging spatial interplay.
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American conceptual images
Another Push Pin alumnus who moved toward a total design approach is Paul Davis (b. 1938), who first appeared in the Push Pin Graphic with a series of primitive figures painted on rough wood panels with superimposed targets. From this beginning Davis moved toward a painting style of minute detail that drew inspiration from primitive colonial American art. He evolved into a master of meticulous naturalism; the solid shapes of his forms project a convincing weight and volume. Like McMullan, Davis often became involved in a painterly integration of image and words. His work demonstrates enormous inventiveness in relating sensitive portraits to expressive lettering (Fig. 21–31). Although not formally associated with the Push Pin Studio, graphic designer Richard Hess (1934–91) turned to illustration and developed a painting technique closely related to the work of Paul Davis. Hess had a stronger inclination toward surrealism than Davis and was inspired by René Magritte’s spatial illusions. An understanding of the folklore and imagery of nineteenth-century America enabled Hess to produce a number of images that thoroughly captured the essence of this earlier period (Fig. 21–32). 21–29
21–29. Barry Zaid, cover for the Australian Vogue, 1971. The rotund geometric forms of Léger and modernist pictorial art are evoked. 21–30. James McMullan, Anna Christie poster, 1977. McMullan often calls attention to the physical properties of the medium; the red background changes into painterly strokes and then becomes lettering. 21–31. Paul Davis, poster for The Threepenny Opera, c. 1975. A sinister portrait of Mack the Knife is placed in front of a hanging yellow sheet on which the title is painted in blood.
21–30
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21–31
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21–32
21–33
21–32. Henrietta Condak (art director) and Richard Hess (illustrator), album cover for Charles Ives: The 100th Anniversary, 1974. A complex Victorian poster format frames many images from the composer’s time. 21–33. Arnold Varga, newspaper advertisement for Joseph P. Horne, c. 1966. The joys of food and cooking are conveyed. (Reproduced from a proof not showing the Horne logo and text at the bottom of the page.)
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The Push Pin school of graphic illustration and design presented an alternative to the narrative illustration of the past, the mathematical and objective typographic and photographic orientation of the International Typographic Style, and the formal concerns of the New York school. Warm, friendly, and accessible, Push Pin designs project vitality with lush color and unashamed allusions to other art. The Push Pin group did not maintain a monopoly on the conceptual image in America, for a number of autonomous designers forged individual approaches to communications problem-solving while combining the traditional conceptualization and layout role of the graphic designer with the imagemaking role of the illustrator. One such, Arnold Varga (1926– 94), practically reinvented the retail newspaper advertisement. Varga entered the field in 1946. Beginning in the mid-1950s, his newspaper advertisements for two Pittsburgh department stores, Joseph P. Horne & Co. and Cox’s, turned this usually pedestrian form of visual design into memorable image-building communications. Many of Varga’s ads used carefully integrated white space and headlines with large, simple illustrations to break through the monotonous gray of the newspaper page. A multiple-image picture-and-caption approach, such as the gourmet shop advertisement for Joseph P. Horne (Fig. 21–33), achieved notable public response—people actually offered to buy this advertisement to hang on their walls! Conceptual image making is not the exclusive province of the illustrator. Designers such as Paul Rand, Lou Danziger, Herbert Leupin, and Raymond Savignac, for example, incorporated the technique of combining two symbols to create a “fused image.” This was a means of uniting form and content to create memorable images for book covers, posters, and advertisements. Paul Rand’s cover design for Modern Art in Your Life (Fig. 21–34) uses a common household place setting and artists’ tools as a visual metaphor to communicate with wit and reinforce the content of the title. Lou Danziger (b. 1923) uses the American flag and an artist’s paintbrush (Fig. 21–35) to create a memorable image for American painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Paint tubes turn into skyscrapers (Fig. 21–36), becoming a cover for The New York School: The First Generation. Herbert Leupin’s poster advertisement for the Tribune de Lausanne (Fig. 21–37) combines the newspaper with the coffee pot to suggest timely news every morning. The French poster artist Raymond Savignac (1907–2002) creates a humorous advertising poster for Gitanes by using cigarettes as confetti and alternating both shape and color (Fig. 21–38) to help communicate the idea of night and day. Designers and art directors call on the entire range of image-making possibilities to convey concepts and ideas. This is particularly true of graphic designers working in the music recording industry. Art and music share a common idiom of expression and experience. The same words (rhythm, texture, tone, color, and resonance) are used to convey the perceptual and spiritual dimensions of both visual and auditory experiences. The design staff of CBS Records operated at the forefront of the graphic interpretation of music. Conceptual image making
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American conceptual images
21–34
21–35
21–36
21–38
21–34. Paul Rand, cover design for
21–35. Lou Danziger, “American
Modern Art in Your Life, 1949. With
Paintings from the Metropolitan
this MoMA publication Rand makes
Museum of Art” poster, 1966.
modern art seem as accessible as
21–37
a daily meal. As Steven Heller aptly
21–36. Lou Danziger, poster for The
stated in his superb biography of
New York School: The First Genera-
Rand, published in 1999, “Rand’s
tion, 1966.
jackets and covers were both mini canvases and mini posters. He
21–37. Herbert Leupin, poster for
composed the limited image area for
Tribune de Lausanne, 1955.
maximum impact.” 21–38. Raymond Savignac, poster for Gitanes, 1954.
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21–40
emerged as a significant direction in album design during the early 1960s, after Bob Cato (1923–1999) became head of the creative services department and hired John Berg (b. 1932), who served as art director at CBS’s Columbia Records until 1984. Photographs of musicians performing and portraits of composers yielded to more symbolic and conceptual images, as in Berg’s cover for the New York Philharmonic’s William Tell Overture album (Fig. 21–39). For two decades Berg and his staff wrested the maximum potential from the large 961-square-centimeter (150-square-inch) format of vinyl longplay records that preceded compact-disc technology. The art director became a conceptualizer and collaborator, working with illustrators and photographers to realize imaginative expressions for the spectrum of musical experience. The fantastic, the real, and the surreal joined the classical and outrageous in Columbia Records’ graphic repertoire (Fig. 21–40). Illustrative, conceptual images and the influence of Push Pin Studios often mingled with Wild West, Mexican, and Native American motifs and colors in a regional school of graphic design that emerged in Texas during the 1970s and became a major force in the 1980s. A high level of aesthetic awareness, an open friendliness, and a strong sense of humor characterize graphic design from the Lone Star State. Intuitive approaches to problem solving combine with a pragmatic emphasis on content. Texas designers acknowledge the importance of Stan Richards (b. 1932), head of the Richards Group in Dallas, as a catalytic figure in the emergence of their state as a major design center. The work of Woody Pirtle (b. 1943), one of many major Texas designers who worked for Richards during their formative years, epitomizes the originality of Texas graphics. His logo for Mr. and Mrs. Aubrey Hair (Fig. 21–41) evidences an unexpected wit, while his Knoll “Hot Seat” poster (Fig. 21–42) ironically combines the clean Helvetica type and generous white space of modernism with regional iconography. In 1988 Pirtle moved on to join the Manhattan office of the British design studio Pentagram. The 1980s saw graphic design in the United States become a truly national profession. Outstanding practitioners emerged
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21–41
21–42
21–43
all around the country, often far from the traditional centers. Print magazine, the American graphic design periodical founded in 1940, instituted a regional design annual in 1981 to reflect the emerging national scope of the discipline. The poster mania In contrast to postwar Polish posters, which were patronized by government agencies as a national cultural form, the poster craze in the United States during the 1960s was a grassroots affair fostered by a climate of social activism. The civil rights movement, the public protest against the Vietnam War, the early stirrings of the women’s liberation movement, and a search for alternative lifestyles figured into the social upheavals of the decade. Posters of the period were hung on apartment walls more frequently than they were posted in the streets. These posters made statements about social viewpoints rather than spreading commercial messages. The first wave of poster culture emerged from the late 1960s hippie subculture centered in the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco.
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The poster mania
21–39. John Berg, record album cover for the William Tell Overture, 1963. Complex visual organization was replaced by the simple presentation of a concept. 21–40. John Berg (art director) and Virginia Team (designer), record album cover for the Byrds’ Byrdmaniax,
21–44
1971. An enigmatic image transcends normal portraiture as masklike faces emerge from an oily fluid. 21–41. Woody Pirtle, logo for Mr. and Mrs. Aubrey Hair, 1975. In this graphic pun, the comb relates to the client’s name, which is spelled by the comb’s teeth. 21–42. Woody Pirtle, poster for Knoll furniture, 1982. A hot pepper becomes a red and green chair, signifying the availability of Knoll’s “hot” furniture in Texas.
21–45 21–43. Wes Wilson, concert poster for The Association, 1966. Lettering becomes an image, signifying a cultural and generational shift in values. 21–44. Wes Wilson, concert poster for the Grateful Dead, Junior Wells Chicago Blues Band, and the Doors, 1966. Hand-drawn line art is printed in intensely vibrating colors. 21–45. Victor Moscoso, poster for the Chambers Brothers, 1967. The vibrant contrasting colors and Vienna Secession lettering inside of the sunglasses implies the drug culture of the period. 21–46. Victor Moscoso, concert poster for the Miller Blues Band, 1967. The shimmering nude female figure in the center of the poster reflects the uninhibited atmosphere of the 1960s.
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21–46
449
Because the media and general public related these posters to antiestablishment values, rock music, and psychedelic drugs, they were called psychedelic posters (Fig. 21–43). The graphics movement that expressed this cultural climate drew from a number of resources: the flowing, sinuous curves of art nouveau, the intense optical color vibration associated with the brief op-art movement popularized by a Museum of Modern Art exhibition, and the recycling of images from popular culture or by manipulation (such as reducing continuous-tone images to high-contrast black and white) that was prevalent in pop art. Many of the initial artists in this movement were largely self-taught, and their primary clients were rock-and-roll concert and dance promoters. Dances in the 1960s were intense perceptual experiences of loud music and light shows that dissolved the environment into throbbing fields of projected color and bursting strobes. This experience was paralleled graphically in posters using swirling forms and lettering warped and bent to the edge of illegibility, frequently printed in close-valued complementary colors. A Grateful Dead poster (Fig. 21–44) designed by Robert Wesley “Wes” Wilson (b. 1937) contains swirling lines and letterforms, which are variants of Alfred Roller’s art nouveau. Wilson was the innovator of the psychedelic poster style and created many of its stronger images. According to newspaper reports, respectable and intelligent businessmen were unable to comprehend the lettering on these posters, yet they communicated well enough to fill auditoriums with a younger generation who deciphered, rather than read, the message. Other prominent members of this brief movement included Kelly/Mouse Studios and Victor Moscoso (b. 1936), the only major artist of the movement with formal art training (Figs. 21–45 and 21–46). Some aspects of the psychedelic-poster movement were used in the exceedingly popular art of New York designer Peter Max (b. 1937). In his series of posters during the late 1960s, the art nouveau aspects of psychedelic art were combined with more accessible images and softer colors. One of his most famous images, the 1970 “Love” graphic (Fig. 21–47), combined the fluid organic line of art nouveau with the bold, hard contour of comic book and pop art. In his finest work, Max experimented with images and various printing techniques. His posters and merchandise, from mugs and T-shirts to clocks, offered a more palatable version of psychedelic art and found a mass audience among young people across America. After the poster mania reached its peak in the early 1970s, American poster art of inventive quality retreated to the university campus, one of the few surviving pedestrian environments in America. Because universities sponsor a large number of events, the campus is an ideal poster-communications environment. David Lance Goines (b. 1945) proves that even in the late twentieth-century era of overspecialization, it is possible for individual artists and craftsmen to define a personal direction and operate as independent creative forces with total control over their work. A native of Oregon, Goines had an early interest in calligraphy that blossomed into serious study
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21–47. Peter Max, “Love” poster, 1970. Max’s split fountain printing resulted in colors lyrically dissolving into one another. 21–48. David Lance Goines, classical film screening poster, 1973. The directness of image and composition gains graphic distinction from a poetic sense of color and sensitive drawing.
21–47
at the University of California at Berkeley. He was expelled from the university at age nineteen for his participation in the free-speech movement and learned graphic arts as an apprentice pressman at the radical Berkeley Free Press, where he wrote, printed, and bound a book on calligraphy. When the Berkeley Free Press failed in 1971, Goines acquired it, renamed it the Saint Hieronymous Press, and continued to print and publish books while developing his poster style. Offset lithography and graphic design are unified in Goines’s work, becoming a medium for personal expression and public communications. He designs, illustrates, and hand-letters posters, makes the negatives and plates, and then operates the press to print the edition. This thoughtful and scholarly designer has evolved a highly personal style that integrates diverse sources of inspiration. Symmetrical composition, simplified line drawing, quiet planes of f lat color, and subtle stripes rimming the contours of his forms are characteristics of his poster designs (Fig. 21– 48). Sister Corita Kent’s (1918–1986) artistic expression came of age in the 1960s and worked prolifically until the time of
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her death. She entered the convent of the Immaculate Heart Community of Los Angeles and gained notoriety in the 1950s and 1960s with her iconoclastic approach to her spirituality and artistic practice. Kent studied art at Immaculate Heart College and earned a master’s degree in art history at University of Southern California, where she also learned printmaking and serigraphy. Through her work, she promulgated amnesty and social justice. She enjoyed printmaking and other mediums produced in multiples because it allowed her to reach the biggest audiences. Inspired by abstract expressionism’s active and experiential nature, Kent combined childlike forms and saturated colors suggesting a sense of optimism and innocence. She rejected her modernist upbringing, with its tenets of simple form and content relationships, and infused her work with a deeply personal touch. She appropriated signs, literary texts and phrases, and song lyrics from her everyday environment and used these elements in compositions that assumed new meanings (Figs. 21–49 and 21–50). She explored new territories, spreading
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European visual poets
451
21–49. Corita Kent. Feelin’ Groovy, serigraph, 1967. 21–50. Corita Kent. Handle with Care, serigraph, 1967.
spiritual teachings through her artwork while developing an iconic and forward-thinking art form. During the 1980s, a conservative decade characterized by growing economic disparity between rich and poor, environmental indifference, and limited social activism, many American posters were produced as decorative objects. Limited-edition images of photographs or paintings became posters rather than reproductions because the artist’s name and often a title—frequently letterspaced in elegant, all-capital type—were added. These were sold in specialty shops and department stores. Typical subjects included flowers, highperformance sports cars, and fruit presented against simple backgrounds with exquisite composition and lighting. European visual poets Poetry was once defined as bringing together unlike things to create a new experience or evoke an unexpected emotional response. In Europe, beginning in the 1960s and continuing into the 1990s, there emerged a poetic approach to graphic design based on imagery and its manipulation through collage, montage, and both photographic and photomechanical techniques. The graphic poets stretched time and typography, merged and floated objects, and fractured and fragmented images in a sometimes disturbing but always engaging manner. The conservative, traditional, and expected were rejected by these graphic designers, who defined the design process not as form arrangements or construction but as the invention of unexpected images to convey ideas or feelings. A receptive audience and client list developed for their book and album covers, magazine designs, and posters for concerts, television, and radio. A German master of this movement is Gunther Kieser (b. 1930), who began his freelance career in 1952. This brilliant imagist has consistently demonstrated an ability to invent unexpected visual content to solve communications problems. Kieser brings together images or ideas to create a new vitality, new arrangement, or synthesis of disparate objects. His “Alabama Blues” poster combines two photographs—a dove and a civil rights demonstration—with typography inspired by nineteenth-century wood type (Fig. 21–51); these diverse elements act in concert to make a potent statement. Kieser’s poetic visual statements always have a rational basis that links
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21–49
21–50
expressive forms to communicative content. It is this ability that separates him from design practitioners who use fantasy or surrealism as ends rather than means. In the late 1970s and early 1980s Kieser began to construct fictitious objects that are convincingly real. Viewers sometimes stop in their tracks to study the huge posters bearing color photographs of Kieser’s private visions to determine if they are having delusions. In a poster for the 1978 Frankfurt Jazz Festival (Fig. 21–52), Kieser and his photographer almost convince us that a moss-covered tree stump can grow in the shape of a trumpet. Launched in Munich in 1959, the German periodical Twen (whose name, derived by chopping the last two letters from the English word twenty, signified the age group of sophisticated young adults to whom the magazine was addressed) featured excellent photography used in dynamic layouts by art director Willy Fleckhouse (1925–1983). With a genius for cropping images and using typography and white space in unexpected ways, Fleckhouse made the bold, uninhibited pages of Twen a milestone in editorial design. While the Brodovitch
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21–52
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tradition was undoubtedly a resource for Fleckhouse, the dynamic of scale, space, and poetic images in Twen made a provocative and original statement (Figs. 21–53 and 21–54). One of the most innovative image makers in late twentiethcentury design is Gunter Rambow (b. 1938) of Frankfurt, Germany, who often collaborated with Gerhard Lienemeyer (b. 1936) and Michael van de Sand (b. 1945). In Rambow’s designs, the medium of photography is manipulated, massaged, montaged, and airbrushed to convert the ordinary into the extraordinary. Everyday images are combined or dislocated, and then printed as straightforward, documentary, black-and-white images in an original metaphysical statement of poetry and profundity. In a series of posters commissioned by the Frankfurt book publisher S. Fischer–Verlag for annual distribution beginning in 1976 (Fig. 21–55), the book is used as a symbolic object, altered and transformed to make a statement about itself as a communication form. The book as a means of communicating with vast numbers of people is symbolized by a huge book emerging from a crowd scene: the book as a door or window opening on a world of new knowledge is symbolized by turning the cover of a book into a door one year and a window the next (Fig. 21–56). These metaphysical and symbolic advertisements carry no verbal information except the logo and name of the client, giving the audience of editors and publishers memorable and thought-provoking visual phenomena rather than a sales message. Rambow often imbues straightforward photographs with a sense of magic or mystery (Fig. 21–57), and he uses collage and montage as a means of creating a new graphic reality. Images are often altered or combined and then rephotographed. In the 1980 poster for the play Die Hamletmaschine (Fig. 21–58), a photograph of a wall was placed under a photograph of a man standing in front of the wall, and then part of the top photograph was torn away. The final rephotographed image presents the viewer with a perplexing impossibility. This image seems to be capable of self-destruction—a figure appears to possess the existential ability to negate itself (Fig. 21–59). The iconic power of Rambow’s images can be seen in the Südafrikanisches Roulette (South African Roulette) theater poster (Fig. 21–60), designed by Rambow and photographed by Rambow and Van de Sand. During the 1960s literary and graphic design communities throughout the world were astounded and delighted by the experimental typography of French designer Robert Massin (b. 1925), who designed editions of poetry and plays for the Paris publisher Editions Gallimard. As a young man, Massin apprenticed in sculpture, engraving, and letter-cutting under his father. He did not seek formal design training but learned graphic design under typographic designer Pierre Faucheux. In its dynamic configurations and use of letterforms as concrete visual form, Massin’s work has affinities with futurist and Dadaist typography, but his intensification of both narrative literary content and visual form into a cohesive unity expressing the author’s meaning is unique. Massin’s designs for Eugene Ionesco’s plays combine the pictorial conventions of the comic book with the sequencing
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European visual poets
21–53
21–54
21–55
21–56
21–57
21–51. Gunther Kieser, “Alabama
21–53. Willy Fleckhouse (art director),
21–55. Gunter Rambow (designer/
the world gain intensity from the
Blues” concert poster, 1966. A con-
cover for Twen, 1970. Graphic com-
photographer) and Michael van de
luminous sunlight streaming from this
cert announcement becomes a potent
munications often become political
Sand (photographer), S. Fischer–
volume.
symbol of the longing for freedom
symbols in the struggle between
Verlag poster, 1976. The portability of
and justice contained in the music.
alternative value systems and genera-
the book is conveyed in memorable
21–57. Gunter Rambow (designer/
tions.
fashion.
photographer), Gunter Rambow and
and Hans Hartmann (photographer),
21–54. Willy Fleckhouse (art director),
21–56. Gunter Rambow (designer/
poster for the play Antigone, 1978.
Frankfurt Jazz Festival poster, 1978.
pages from Twen, 1970. Sensitive
photographer) and Michael van de
Pathos and isolation are conveyed by
Symbolic fabrications are disseminat-
cropping, a full-page photographic
Sand (photographer), S. Fischer–Ver-
the burning chair photographed from
ed through photographs of sculpted
symbol, and white space create a
lag poster, 1980. The book and the
a low vantage point at dusk.
objects.
dynamic and expansive layout.
concept of reading as a window on
21–52. Gunther Kieser (designer)
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Gerhard Lienemeyer (typographers),
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21–59
21–58 21–58. Gunter Rambow, poster for the play Die Hamletmaschine, 1980. A chilling sense of anonymity is produced by this self-inflicted act of vandalism. 21–59. Gunter Rambow, poster for Othello, 1978. The pathos of the play is expressed by an image within an image: a tattered poster hanging on a wire fence in front a bleak apartment complex. 21–60. Gunter Rambow (designer/ photographer) and Michael van de Sand (photographer), theater poster for Südafrikanisches Roulette, 1988.
21–60
A bandaged hand with a bloodstain shaped like Africa conveys the pathos of suffering and revolution.
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European visual poets
21–62
21–61
and visual flow of the cinema. The drama of La cantatrice chauve (The Bald Soprano) is enacted through Henry Cohen’s high-contrast photographs (Fig. 21–61). Each character is assigned a typeface for his or her speaking voice (Fig. 21–62) and is identified not by name but by a small photographic portrait. By printing typography via letterpress onto sheets of rubber and then manipulating and photographing it, Massin created unprecedented figurative typography (Fig. 21–63), while a major argument in the play provided him with the opportunity to generate an explosive typographic event (Fig. 21–64). Visual vitality, tension, and confusion appropriate to the play are graphically conveyed. In his design for Ionesco’s Délire à deux (Frenzy for Two, or More), words become the expressionistic image (Fig. 21–65). Massin’s manipulations of typography anticipated the elastic spatial possibilities inherent in bitmapped computer graphics of the 1980s. His many years of research into letterforms and their history led to the important 1970 book Letter and Image, which explores the pictorial and graphic properties of alphabet design through the ages. During the May 1968 student revolts in Paris, the streets were filled with posters and placards, mostly handmade by amateurs. Three young graphic designers, Pierre Bernard (b. 1942), François Miehe (b. 1942), and Gérard Paris-Clavel (b. 1943), were deeply involved in the radical politics of the day.
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21–63
21–64 21–61 through 21–64. Robert Massin (designer) and Henry Cohen (photographer), cover and double-page spreads from Eugene Ionesco’s La cantatrice chauve, 1964. The pictorial directness of the comic book is combined with the expressive typography of futurist poetry.
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21–65
21–65. Robert Massin, pages from Eugene Ionesco’s Délire à deux, 1966. The words leap and run and overlap and smear into ink blots in a calligraphic homage to the nonrepresentational, surreal ideas of Ionesco, a master of the theater of the absurd. 21–66. Grapus, exhibition poster, 1982. A layering of emotionally charged graphic symbols contradict each other and unsettle viewers.
21–66
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The third-world poster
Bernard and Paris-Clavel had each spent a year in Poland studying under Henryk Tomaszewski, who stressed an attitude of being both artist and citizen. His teaching advocated an intellectual rigor and clear personal conviction about the world. These three young designers believed publicity and design were directed toward creating artificial demands in order to maximize profits, so they joined forces to turn their graphic design toward political, social, and cultural rather than commercial ends. Seeking to address real human needs, they formed the Grapus studio in 1970 to realize this mission. (In those days, French left-wing radicals were by some dismissively dubbed crapules staliniennes [Stalinist scum]. This phrase was melded with the word graphic to produce the group’s name.) Grapus was a collective; intensive dialogue took place about the meaning and means of every project. The starting point of Grapus’s problem solving was a thorough analysis and lengthy discussion about content and message. The most significant aspects of the problem and the kernel of the message were determined, and then a graphic expression of the essence of the content was sought. Grapus favored universal symbols with readily understood meanings: hands, wings, sun, moon, earth, fireworks, blood, and flags. Typographic refinement and technical polish yielded to handwritten headlines and scrawled graffiti, creating a raw vitality and energy. Often a palette of primary colors was used for its intense graphic power. Grapus was motivated by the dual goals of achieving social and political change while striving to realize creative artistic impulses. A 1982 poster (Fig. 21–66) for an exhibition of Grapus graphics features a central figure holding a dimensional arrow with cutout letters. Bounding into the space on a jack-in-the-box spring, it layers an arresting group of cultural icons: the ubiquitous yellow smile face, Mickey Mouse ears, and Hitler’s hair and mustache. Its eyes are the communist and French tricolor indicia, and a small television antenna sprouts from the top of its head. Grapus spawned many imitators. The shocking verve of its statements, especially the dynamic informality of its spatial organization and casual, graffiti-like lettering, was copied by fashionable advertising. The third-world poster From the end of World War II until the dismantling of the Iron Curtain in 1989, the industrialized nations formed two groups: the capitalist democracies of Western Europe, North America, and Japan, and the communist block led by the Soviet Union. The emerging nations of Latin America, Asia, and Africa have been called the third world. In social and political struggles, ideas are weapons, and the poster is a major vehicle for spreading them. The medium is effective because access to newspapers, radio, and television is often limited in these countries, where the poster is sometimes used with the intensity and frequency that characterized the European context during World War I. In this context, posters become vehicles for challenging authority and expressing dissent untouched by the traditional censorship of government, business, and newspapers. Some are
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spontaneous expressions, crude folk art created by unskilled hands, while others are created by accomplished artists. In both cases, the artists/advocates who create such posters have an agenda and seek to alter viewers’ perspectives. Third-world posters address two constituencies: in their native lands, they tackle political and social issues, motivating people toward one side of a political or social struggle; a secondary audience exists in the industrial democracies, where distributors such as Liberation Graphics in Alexandria, Virginia, make posters available to Westerners who feel strongly about international issues. Cuba became a major center for poster design after the revolutionary force led by Fidel Castro defeated the regime of President Fulgencio Batista on New Year’s Day in 1959. Over the next two years, Cuba’s Marxist course led to a complete breakdown in diplomatic ties with the United States and a close association with the Soviet bloc. The creative arts had been virtually ignored under Batista, but three conferences in June 1961 enabled artists and writers to meet with the Castro regime to forge a mutual understanding. At the final meeting, on 30 June, Castro delivered his lengthy address “Words to the Intellectuals,” defining his policy toward the creative arts. Castro assured artists and writers “that freedom of form must be respected,” but freedom of content was seen as a more subtle and complex matter. He said artists and intellectuals “can find within the Revolution a place to work and create, a place where their creative spirit, even though they are not revolutionary writers and artists, has the opportunity and freedom to be expressed. This means: within the Revolution, everything; against the Revolution, nothing.” Each person could “express freely the ideas he wants to express,” but “we will always evaluate his creation from the Revolutionary point of view.” Castro defined “the good, the useful, and the beautiful” as whatever is “noble, useful, and beautiful” for “the great majority of the people—that is, the oppressed and exploited classes.” Popular art forms—cinema and theater, posters and leaflets, songs and poetry—and propaganda media were encouraged. Traditional painting and sculpture were seen as relatively inefficient in reaching large audiences with the revolutionary message. Artists and writers admitted to the union for creative workers receive salaries, work space, and materials. Graphic designers worked for a variety of government agencies with specific missions. Leading Cuban graphic designers include Raúl Martínez (1927–1995), a painter who created illustrative designs (Fig. 21–67), and New York–educated Félix Beltrán (b. 1938). Beltrán served as art director for the Commission for Revolutionary Action (COR), which created internal ideological propaganda and maintains public consciousness of the revolution by promoting commemorative days (Fig. 21–68) and past leaders. Bureaus and institutes in Cuba have responsibility for motion pictures, musical and theatrical events, publishing, and exhibition programs, and use graphics to promote these cultural events. Emphasis is on outreach—unlike in many countries, where cultural programs are only available to
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21–67
21–68
21–67. Raúl Martínez, poster honor-
21–68. Artist not identified, poster for
ing the Cuban people, c. 1970.
COR, 1967. Clouds part to reveal an
Leaders and workers are cheerfully
orange sun, symbolizing the ill-fated
depicted in a comic book drawing
26 July 1953 assault on the Santiago
style and bright, intense color.
army barracks, which launched the Cuban Revolution.
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The third-world poster
the urban population, in Cuba a serious attempt is made to reach the rural areas. Film posters are lively and happy affairs printed in an uninhibited palette of bright silk-screened colors. Posters and leaflets for export throughout the third world are produced by the Organization of Solidarity with Asia, Africa, and Latin America (OSPAAAL) to support revolutionary activity and build public consciousness for ideological viewpoints. OSPAAAL posters are printed via offset and use elemental symbolic images readily comprehended by people of diverse nationalities, languages, and cultural backgrounds. The Castro government sees itself as being involved in an ideological war against “Yankee imperialism” for the hearts and minds of people in the emerging third-world countries. The eye of the beholder is tantalized while revolutionary consciousness is formed through repeated exposure. The international distribution of OSPAAAL graphics is evidenced by the presence of Arabic, English, French, and Spanish typography on each poster. Lacking artistic traditions, Cuban graphic designers have assimilated a variety of resources. American sources—including pop art, the psychedelic poster, and the Push Pin Studio—are important inspirations, as are Polish posters. The “heroic worker” school of romanticized realism prevalent in the former Soviet Union and in China is avoided. The icon, ideograph, and telegraphic message are far more effective in developing nations. Myth and reality have been unified in a powerful graphic symbol based on the image of Ernesto (“Che”) Guevara. A leader of the Cuban revolution, Guevara left Cuba in the mid-1960s to lead guerrillas in the South American country of Bolivia, and on 9 October 1967 he was killed in a gun battle in the jungle village of Higuera. Graphic designers have converted Che’s image, one of the most reproduced of the late twentieth century, into a symbolic icon (Fig. 21–69) representing struggle against oppression throughout the third world. Drawn in light-and-shadow planes like highcontrast photography, the fallen guerrilla wears a beard and a beret with a star; his head tilts slightly upward. A specific person, Ernesto Guevara, is converted into the mythic hero or savior who sacrificed his life so others might live. The importance of conceptual images in the second half of the twentieth century developed in response to many factors, and ideas and forms from modern art have filtered into popular cultures. By usurping graphic art’s documentary function, photography and video have repositioned graphic illustration toward a more expressive and symbolic role. The complexity of the political, social, and cultural ideas and emotions that graphic artists need to communicate can frequently be presented more effectively by iconic and symbolic rather than narrative images.
21–69
21–69. Elena Serrano, “Day of the Heroic Guerrilla” poster, 1968. An iconographic image of Che Guevara transforms into a map of South America in a radiating image signifying revolutionary victory.
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22 Postmodern Design
22–1
22–1. Robert Venturi, competition model for the Football Hall of Fame, 1967. A vast, kinetic electronic graphics display dominates the building, as information replaces structure as the dominant “subject” of architecture. Photograph by George Pohl.
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By the 1970s, many believed the modern era was drawing to a close in art, design, politics, and literature. The cultural norms of Western society were being scrutinized, and the authority of traditional institutions was being questioned. Pluralism emerged as people began to dispute the underlying tenets of modernism. The continuing quest for equality by women and minorities contributed to a growing climate of cultural diversity, as did immigration, international travel, and global communications. Accepted viewpoints were challenged by those who sought to remedy bias and distortion in the historical record. The social, economic, and environmental awareness of the period caused many to believe the modern aesthetic was no longer relevant in an emerging postindustrial society. People in many fields embraced the term postmodernism to express a climate of cultural change. These included architects, economists, feminists, and even theologians. Maddeningly vague and overused, postmodernism became a byword in the last quarter of the twentieth century. In design, postmodernism designated the work of architects and designers who were breaking with the international style so prevalent since the Bauhaus. Postmodernism sent shock waves through the design establishment as it challenged the order and clarity of modern design, particularly corporate design. (Some observers reject the term postmodern, arguing that it is merely a continuation of the modern movement. Late modernism and mannerism are proffered as alternative terms for late twentieth-century design.) Design forms and terminology have political and social meaning, expressing attitudes and values of their time; postmodernism gained a strong foothold among the generation of designers who emerged in the 1970s. Perhaps the international style had been so thoroughly refined, explored, and accepted that a backlash was inevitable. Historical references, decoration, and the vernacular were disdained by modernists, while postmodern designers drew upon these resources to expand the range of design possibilities. As the social activism of the late 1960s gave way to more self-absorbed, personal involvement during the 1970s, media pundits spoke of the “Me Generation” to convey the spirit of the decade. The intuitive and playful aspects of postmodern design reflect personal involvement. Postmodern designers place a form in space because it “feels” right rather than to fulfill a rational communicative need. As radically different as a psychedelic poster and a visual-identity manual might be, both are corporate designs, intended for or relating to a body of people with common values. Postmodern design, on the other hand, is often subjective and even eccentric; the designer
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Early Swiss postmodern design
becomes an artist performing before an audience with the bravura of a street musician, and the audience either responds or passes on. The umbrella term postmodernism does not tell the whole story, because while architecture may fit rather neatly into historical categories (Victorian, art nouveau, modern, and postmodern), graphic design is far too diverse to fit such a simplistic system. Just three examples of graphic-design expressions having no parallel in architecture are World War I posters, the work of the Push Pin group, and the psychedelic poster. Graphic design, rapidly changing and ephemeral, was never dominated by the international style the way architecture was. Postmodern graphic design can be loosely categorized as moving in several major directions: the early extensions of the International Typographic Style by Swiss designers who broke with the dicta of the movement; newwave typography, which began in Basel, Switzerland, through the teaching and research of Wolfgang Weingart (b. 1941); the exuberant mannerism of the early 1980s, with significant contributions from the Memphis group in Milan, Italy, and from San Francisco designers; retro, the eclectic revivals and eccentric reinventions of earlier models, particularly European vernacular and modern design from the decades between the world wars; and the electronic revolution spawned by the Macintosh computer in the late 1980s, which drew upon all of the earlier thrusts. Precursors to postmodern design During the 1960s, supermannerism and supergraphics were words coined to describe breaks with modern design. Like many art history labels, supermannerism was first used disparagingly. Mannerism was originally used as a label for the stylish art of the 1500s, which broke with the natural and harmonious beauty of the High Renaissance. Mannerism departed from Renaissance norms by taking liberties with the classical vocabulary of form; the term supermannerism was first used by advocates of the purist modern movement to describe work by young architects whose expanded formal range embraced the pop-art notion of changing scale and context. Zigzag diagonals were added to the horizontal and vertical structures of modern architecture. An architecture of inclusion replaced the machine aesthetic and simple geometric forms of the international style. In the late 1960s, the application of graphic design to architecture in large-scale environmental graphics extended the formal concepts of art concret and the International Typographic Style. Supergraphics became the popular name for bold geometric shapes of bright color, giant Helvetica letterforms, and huge pictographs warping walls, bending corners, and flowing from the floor to the wall and across the ceiling, expanding or contracting space in scale changes relative to the architecture. Psychological as well as decorative values were addressed, as designers created forms to enliven dismal institutional architecture, reverse or shorten the perspective of endless hallways, and bring vitality and color to the built environment.
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Philadelphia-born Robert Venturi (b. 1925) is the most controversial and original architect branded with the supermannerist label. When Venturi looked at the vulgar and disdained urban landscape of billboards, electric signs, and pedestrian buildings he saw a vitality and functional purpose and urged designers to learn from the hyperbolic glitter of places such as Las Vegas. Venturi saw the building not as sculptured form but as a component of the larger urban traffic/communication/interior/exterior environmental system. Uncommon uses and juxtaposition of materials, graphic elements from the commercial roadside strip, billboards, and environmentalscale lettering were freely added to his architectural vocabulary. Venturi sees graphic communications and new technologies as important tools for architecture; his proposal for the Football Hall of Fame (Fig. 22–1) featured a giant illuminated sign that would have been visible for miles on the approaching interstate highway. Supermannerist architect Charles W. Moore (1923–93) designed a large condominium project at Gualala, California, in the mid-1960s. He called on graphic designer Barbara Stauffacher Solomon (b. 1932) to bring the walls and ceilings of this large architectural project to life through the application of color and shape (Fig. 22–2). Solomon, a San Francisco native and painter who had studied graphic design at the Basel School of Design during the late 1950s, used a pallet of pure hue and elementary shape in compositions that transformed the totality of the space. In 1970 the American Institute of Architects presented its medal to Solomon for “bold, fresh, and exciting designs clearly illustrating the importance of rational but vigorous graphics in bringing order to the urban scene.” Both the name supergraphics and the idea caught the public’s fancy; by 1970 supergraphics were being used in corporate identification systems, in interior design for shops and boutiques, and to brighten factory and school environments, bringing about greater graphic-design involvement in environmental design. Early Swiss postmodern design Tendencies toward postmodern graphic design first emerged from individuals working within the dictates of the International Typographic Style. The main thrust of this movement was toward neutral and objective typography; the playful, unexpected, and disorganized were rarely allowed to encroach upon its cool clarity and scientific objectivity. One of the earliest indications that a younger generation of graphic designers was starting to enlarge its range of possibilities in the 1960s was the 1964 advertisement (Fig. 22–3) for the printer E. Lutz & Company by Rosmarie Tissi. Different kinds of copy printed by the client—headlines, text, halftones, and solids— are illustrated by elemental symbols. Rather than align these images in boxes ordered on a grid, the five images appear to have been intuitively and randomly placed. The ruled lines forming the edges of the squares on which these images rest have lost-and-found edges to engage the viewer, who must fill in the missing lines.
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22–2
22–3
22–5
22–4
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Early Swiss postmodern design
22–6
22–7
22–2. Barbara Stauffacher Solomon,
22–7. Rosmarie Tissi, poster for
supergraphics for Sea Ranch, 1966.
Anton Schöb printers, 1985. Letters
Vibrant primary colors, sans-serif
enclosed in a triangle give the image
letters, arcs, and slashing diagonals
a dynamic thrust.
form a strong counterpoint to the architectural structure and the brilliant
22–8. Steff Geissbuhler, Geigy
sunlight.
brochure cover, 1965. Legibility is sacrificed in favor of dynamic visual
22–3. Rosmarie Tissi, advertisement for E. Lutz & Company, 1964. The space comes to life through subtle shifts and angles that throw the page into a state of suspended animation. 22–4. Siegfried Odermatt, advertisement for Union wall safes, 1968. Overlapping and cropping the logo, printed in black and blue-gray, brings the vitality and impact of pure form to the newspaper page. 22–5. Rosmarie Tissi, Graphis cover, 1980. The whimsical geometric shapes of Tissi’s letters impaled on grids engage the viewer with their three-dimensionality. 22–6. Rosmarie Tissi, direct mail folder for Anton Schöb printers, 1981. Dynamic color and shape create an expressive backdrop for the message.
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organization.
463
22–8
In 1966 Siegfried Odermatt (b. 1926) designed a trademark for the Union Safe Company that is the antithesis of Swiss design, for the letterforms in the word Union are jammed together to form a compact unit suggesting the sturdy strength of the product, sacrificing legibility in the process. In full-page newspaper advertisements for Union (Figs. 22–4), placed during prestigious banking conferences, Odermatt treated this logo as pure form to be manipulated visually, creating a plastic dynamic on the newspaper page. Odermatt and Tissi have always used strong graphic impact, a playful sense of form, and unexpected manipulation of space in seeking logical and effective solutions to design problems. When Odermatt and Tissi turned to typeface design, their originality of form produced unexpected letterforms, as can be seen in Tissi’s cover for an issue of Graphis (Fig. 22–5). A presentation folder designed by Tissi for the printing firm Anton Schöb (Fig. 22–6) achieves typographic vitality by overlapping and combining letterforms. Placing text typography on geometric shapes whose configuration is generated by the line lengths of the text is a technique Odermatt and Tissi used frequently during the 1980s (Fig. 22–7). Another Swiss designer with a strong interest in complexity of form is Steff Geissbuhler (b. 1942), who joined the Geigy pharmaceutical company in the mid-1960s. In a capabilities brochure for the publicity department (Fig. 22–8), his swirling typographic configuration becomes a circular tunnel moving back into space. He moved to Philadelphia and established an independent design practice before becoming a partner at Chermayeff & Geismar Associates. While at Chermayeff & Geismar he created corporate identity programs for Merck, Time Warner, NBC, Telemundo, the Union Pacific Corporation, the Toledo Museum of Art, Crane & Co., and the May Department Stores Companies, among others. Complexity of form is never used as an end in itself; the dynamic of multiple components forming a whole grows from the fundamental
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22–9
22–11
22–10 22–9. Steff Geissbuhler, Blazer finan-
22–13. Wolfgang Weingart, typo-
cial services poster, 1974. A kinetic
graphic experiments, 1971. A form-
repetition of forms moving across the
and-space exploration relates bullets
space suggests travel while connoting
to letterforms. Four German words
categories of service. This is one of
explore inverted lowercase m forms
five posters used as decorative wall
to make a B and an a, while colons
displays.
and apostrophes combine to form accented u letterforms.
22–10. Bruno Monguzzi, typographic poster for Oskar Schlemer, Igor Stravinsky exhibition, 1988. 22–11. Wolfgang Weingart, part of
22–12
a German typesetters’ examination, 1963. The strong influence of Swiss typography is evident. 22–12. Wolfgang Weingart, experimental text setting, 1969. Traditional word spacing and letterspacing concepts dating from medieval times were called into question.
22–13
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New-wave typography
content of the design problem at hand (Fig. 22–9). Careful structural control enables Geissbuhler to organize vast numbers of elements into a cohesive whole. Other Swiss designers were interested in using typography as a means of bending the traditions of modernism to experiment and express their ideas for communication with the viewer. Bruno Monguzzi (b. 1941) is an extraordinary designer, typographer and teacher. After studying in Geneva and London he began his career at Studio Boggeri in Milan in 1961. His typographic solutions express the subject matter through an innovative bond of form and function. (Fig. 22–10). Odermatt, Tissi, Geissbuhler, and others working in the 1960s did not rebel against the International Typographic Style; rather, they expanded its parameters. In the 1970s, this development was followed by a revolt, as practitioners and teachers schooled in the International Typographic Style sought to reinvent typographic design. These new directions were quickly labeled new-wave typography. New-wave typography Just as Herbert Bayer, Jan Tschichold, and others employed a new approach to typographic design in the 1920s, some forty years later, opposition to the cool formalism of the modernist tradition emerged first in Switzerland and then spread around the world. In 1964 young Wolfgang Weingart (b. 1941), who had already completed a three-year apprenticeship in typography (Fig. 22–11) and studied art, arrived in Basel from southeastern Germany to study with Emil Ruder. Weingart joined Armin Hofmann on the faculty of the Basel School in 1968. As a student, Weingart had worked under the influence of Ruder and Hofmann; as a faculty member, however, he taught type differently than his mentors. Weingart began to question the typography of absolute order and cleanness. He wondered if perhaps the international style had become so refined and prevalent throughout the world that it had reached an anemic phase. Rejecting the right angle as an exclusive organizing principle, Weingart achieved a joyous and intuitive design with a richness of visual effects. Ideology and rules collapsed in the face of his boundless energy. Drawing on broad technical knowledge and a willingness to explore the untried, he turned up the intensity of the page. From 1968 until 1974, Weingart worked with lead type and letterpress systems (Figs. 22–12 and 22–13). In his teaching and personal projects he sought to breathe a new spirit into the typography of order and neatness by questioning the premises, rules, and surface appearances that were hardening the innovations of the Swiss masters into an academic style. Time-honored traditions of typography and visual-language systems were rethought. To emphasize an important word in a headline, Weingart often made it white on a chunky, black rectangle. Wide letterspacing, discarded in the fetish for tight type in the revolution from metal to photographic typographic systems in the 1960s, was explored. In response to a request to identify the kinds of typography he designed, Weingart listed “sunshine type, bunny type, ant type, five-minute type, typewriter type,” and “for-the-people type.” The humor and
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22–14
22–14. Wolfgang Weingart, announcement from Typografische Monatsblätter magazine, 1974. This early layered collage, with overlapping images and complex dropouts, uses numbers and arrows rather than left-to-right and top-to-bottom sequencing to direct the reader through the page.
expressive metaphors Weingart used to define his work find close parallels in his typographic invention. But by the mid-1970s Weingart set off in a new direction, turning his attention toward offset printing and film systems. He used the printer’s camera to alter images and explored the unique properties of the film image. Weingart began to move away from purely typographic design and embraced collage as a medium for visual communication (Fig. 22–14). A new technique—the sandwiching or layering of images and type that have been photographed as film positives—enabled him to overlap complex visual information (Fig. 22–15), juxtapose textures, and unify typography in unprecedented ways. He took particular delight in the graphic qualities of enlarged halftone dots (Fig. 22–16) and the moiré patterns produced when these dot patterns are overlapped and then shifted against each other. His design process involved multiple film positives and masks that were stacked, arranged, then exposed with careful registration to produce one negative, which went to the printer. In color work such as his poster for Das Schweizer Plakat (The Swiss Poster) exhibition (Fig. 22–17), the process was extended to allow the interaction of two colors, using overprinting to build dimensional layers of illusionistic forms. Weingart advocates the “Gutenberg approach” to graphic communications: designers, like the early typographic printers, should strive to stay involved in all aspects of the process
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22–15
Chapter 22: Postmodern Design
22–16
22–18
22–15. Wolfgang Weingart, exhibition
22–17. Wolfgang Weingart, exhibition
poster, 1979. A kaleidoscope of shift-
poster, 1984. Modulated patterns of
ing forms and typography character-
overlapping shapes and colors struc-
ize Weingart’s posters.
ture the space. Switzerland is implied by the shape of the Matterhorn.
22–16. Wolfgang Weingart, exhibition poster, 1981. Moiré patterns are cre-
22–18. Dan Friedman, Typografische
ated by layered film positives.
Monatsblätter magazine cover, 1971. Letterforms become kinetic objects moving in time and urban space.
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22–17
(including concept, typesetting, prepress production, and printing) to ensure the realization of their vision. By the time homogenized versions of Weingart’s innovations were assimilated into the mainstream of graphic design, he had moved on to new explorations. In October 1972, Weingart traveled to America and delivered presentations at eight prominent design schools. His new design sensibility fell on fertile soil. Young designers who spent time at Basel afterwards came to the United States to teach and practice. These included Dan Friedman (1945–95), April Greiman (b. 1948), and Willi Kunz (b. 1943). A new typographic vocabulary began to filter into an American design profession that had grown bored with the redundancy of sansserif and grid-based corporate systems. Weingart and others who pioneered the typographic new wave strongly rejected the notion of style and saw their work as an attempt to expand the parameters of typographic communication. Their work was so widely imitated, however, especially in design education, that it gave rise to a prevailing typographic approach in the late 1970s and 1980s. Specific design ideas explored by Weingart and his students in the late 1960s and early 1970s and adopted a decade later include letterspaced sans-serif type; bold stair-step rules; ruled lines punctuating and energizing space; diagonal type; the introduction of italic type and/or weight changes within words; and type reversed from a series of bars. Dan Friedman, an American who studied at the Ulm Institute of Design in 1967 and 1968 and at the Basel School of Design from 1968 to 1970, rethought the nature of typographic forms and how they could operate in space; he called his Typografische Monatsblätter (Fig. 22–18) magazine cover a visual manifesto for a more inclusive typography. After returning to the United States, he taught courses at Yale University and the Philadelphia College of Art in 1970 and 1971. At a
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New-wave typography
467
22–19
22–19. Dan Friedman (instructor) and Rosalie Hanson (student), typographic permutations, 1970. Friedman’s students explored typographic contrasts in their class assignments.
time when letterpress typography was collapsing but the new photographic and computer-generated processes were still evolving, Friedman addressed the problem of teaching the basics of a new typography through syntactic and semantic investigations, using such ordinary copy as a daily weather report (Fig. 22–19). After exploring principles of rhythm, harmony, and proportion, students were given a neutral message in 30-point Univers 55 and 65. A sequence of design operations ranging from simple to complex was conducted, varying the effects of the message through changes in position; weight and scale; slant (roman to italic); line-, word-, and letterspacing; clustering; symbolic gesture; and pictorial confrontation. Another concern was the evaluation of legibility and readability, for Friedman believed “that legibility (a quality of efficient, clear, and simple reading) is often in conflict with readability (a quality that promotes interest, pleasure, and challenge in reading).” He urged his students to make their work both functional and aesthetically unconventional. Exploration of the spatial intervals between letters, lines, and words gave
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some works by Friedman and his students a deconstructed quality—that is, the syntactic structure has been pulled apart. Nevertheless, even in the most random solutions, an underlying structure is evident. The 1973 publication of this work in the journal Visible Language had a widespread influence on typographic education in the United States and other countries. Friedman’s graphic design, furniture, and sculptural works were paradigms of the emerging postmodern currents. His formal background at Ulm and typographic experimentation at Basel were synthesized as he played formal structure against spontaneous and expressive forms (Fig. 22–20). Texture, surface, and spatial layering were explored in his work; organic and geometric forms were contrasted. Friedman believed that forms could be amusing to look at and provocative, and he freely injected these properties into his designs. As his work progressed, he rejected the term postmodernism in favor of radical modernism, which he defined as a reaffirmation of the idealism of modernism altered to accommodate the radical cultural and social changes occurring in the late twentieth century. On the West Coast, April Greiman established a studio in Los Angeles after studying with Weingart and Hofmann in Basel during the early 1970s. Weingart observed, “April Greiman took the ideas developed at Basel in a new direction, particularly in her use of color and photography. All things are possible in America!” While Greiman drew from Basel
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22–21 22–20
22–22 22–20. Dan Friedman (in association
22–22. April Greiman, China Club in-
with Anspach Grossman Portugal,
vitation, 1980. The space is energized
Inc.), Bonwit Teller gift packag-
by gestural and geometric forms mov-
ing proposal, 1977. Spontaneous
ing in counterpoint to the typographic
hand-drawn forms are layered with
structure.
mechanical linear patterns and typography. 22–21. April Greiman, China Club advertisement, 1980. Overlapping forms and movements in and out of space animate the flat typographic page.
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design, she evolved a new attitude toward space (Figs. 22–21 and 22–22). Typographic design has usually been the most two-dimensional of all the visual disciplines, but Greiman achieves a sense of depth in her typographic pages. Overlapping forms, diagonal lines that imply perspective or reverse perspective, gestured strokes that move back in space, overlap, or move behind geometric elements, and floating forms that cast shadows are the means she uses to make forms move forward and backward from the surface of the printed page. Greiman’s typographic space operates with the same governing principle defined by El Lissitzky in his PROUN paintings but never applied to his typography. Strong tactile qualities are found in Greiman’s work, as textures resulting from enlarged four-color process screens and repetitive patterns of dots or ruled lines contrast with flat shapes of color or tone. The intuitive dispersal of numerous elements could collapse into chaos, but a point-counterpoint organization maintains order by pulling the eye into the page through dominant elements that quickly lead to others as the viewer moves through the page’s richness of form. In collaboration with the photographer Jayme Odgers (b. 1939), Greiman moved graphic design and photographic illustration into a new realm of dynamic space (Fig. 22–23). Graphic elements become part of the real space of photographs. Odgers’s wide-angle photographs with extreme depth of field have objects thrusting into the picture space from the peripheral edges. Swiss-born Willi Kunz played a role in introducing the new typography developed at Basel to the United States. After apprenticing as a typesetter, Kunz completed his postgraduate studies at the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts. He moved to New York City in 1970 and worked there as a graphic designer until 1973, when he accepted a one-year appointment to teach typography at the Basel School of Design while Weingart was
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New-wave typography
22–23. April Greiman (design and typography) and Jayme Odgers (art direction, photography, and design), poster for California Institute of the Arts, 1979. The printed surface is redefined as a continuum of time and space.
22–23 22–24. Willi Kunz, pages from 12 T y p o graphical Interpretations, 1975. Marshall McLuhan noted that Kunz understood “the resonant interval in structuring designs.”
22–24
on sabbatical. Inspired by the research of Weingart and his students, and with the type shop at his disposal, Kunz began a series of typographic interpretations of writings by Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan. These were hand-printed and published under the title 12 T y p o graphical Interpretations (Fig. 22–24). McLuhan’s thoughts on communications and printing were visualized and intensified by contrasting type weights, sometimes within the same word; geometric stair-step forms; unorthodox letter-, word-, and linespacing; lines and bars used as visual punctuation and spatial elements; and textual areas introduced into the spatial field. After Kunz returned to New York and established his design office, his exhibition poster for photographer Fredrich Cantor (Fig. 22–25) was hailed by Print magazine as a “quint-
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essential example of Post Modern design.” The contrasting sizes of the photographs, the mixed weight of the typography, the diagonal letterspaced type, and the stepped pattern of dots covering part of the space all heralded the arrival of a new typographic syntax. Kunz does not construct his work on a predetermined grid; rather, he starts the visual composition and permits structure and alignments to grow through the design process. He builds his typographic constellations with concern for the essential message, the structure unfolding in response to the information to be conveyed. He might be called an information architect who uses visual hierarchy and syntax to bring order and clarity to messages, as seen in a lecture series and exhibition schedule announcement (Fig. 22–26). Kunz’s
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22–25
22–27
22–26
22–25. Willi Kunz, photography
22–27. Kenneth Hiebert, exhibi-
exhibition poster, 1978. A dynamic
tion and symposium poster, 1979. A
equilibrium between diverse parts is
formal grid structure is implied, but
achieved.
a playful intuitive process of form ex-
working method is not unlike the process used by Piet Zwart in that he believes design must be resolved by working with the actual typographic materials and generally does not spend a large amount of time working on preliminary sketches. After the basic ideas are formed, he has actual type material set and then develops the final solution from a careful probing of the organizational possibilities of the project. As new-wave typography spread, many designers working in the International Typographic Style began to test their precepts against the exploratory design attitudes that were emerging. Dada photomontage techniques were used; grids were established, then violated; functional elements of 1920s new typography were used as decorative elements; and designers began to define the overall space as a field of tension, much as Zwart had done half a century earlier. Moreover, intuition and play reentered the design process. This can be seen in the work of designer and educator Kenneth Hiebert (b. 1930), who retained the harmonious balance achieved through experience with grid systems but, in designs such as his 1979 “Art/Design/ Play” poster for a Paul Rand exhibition (Fig. 22–27), introduced texture, a small dot pattern, and a wider typeface range, and shifted forms on the grid. A very early application of the architectural term postmodern to graphic design was the title of a 1977 Chicago exhibition curated by Bill Bonnell: “Postmodern Typography: Recent American Developments.” Ironically, the exhibition included works by Steff Geissbuhler, April Greiman, Dan Friedman, and Willi Kunz—all of whom had come to America after work or study in Switzerland.
ploration led Hiebert to unexpected 22–26. Willi Kunz, typographic workshop poster, 1974. The International Style is supplemented with the use of a strong diagonal.
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relationships.
The Memphis and San Francisco schools A new movement in postmodern design swept into international prominence as the 1970s ended and the 1980s began. This work was pluralistic, eclectic, and hedonistic. Designers
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22–28
22–28. Christoph Radl and Valentina Grego, Memphis logo designs, early
22–29
1980s. The Memphis vocabulary of form and pattern is given typographic expression in this series of logo designs. 22–29. William Longhauser, poster for a Michael Graves exhibition, 1983. Letterforms retain their legibility while being transformed into decorative geometric forms evoking a postmodern architectural landscape.
were deeply enamored of texture, pattern, surface, color, and a playful geometry. Innovation occurred in many cities and countries around the globe, with important contributions from diverse groups, including architects and product designers in Milan, Italy, and graphic designers in San Francisco, California. An important inspiration for all areas of design emerged in 1981, when global attention was concentrated on an exhibition of the Italian design group Memphis, led by eminent Italian architectural and product designer Ettore Sottsass (1917–2007). The group chose the name Memphis to reflect the inspiration they drew from both contemporary popular culture and the artifacts and ornaments of ancient cultures. Function became secondary to surface pattern and texture, color, and fantastic forms in their lamps, sofas, and cabinets. The Memphis sensibility embraces exaggerated geometric forms in bright (even garish) colors, bold geometric and organic patterns, often printed on plastic laminates, and allusions to earlier cultures, such as the use of marble and granite for table and chair legs
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evocative of columns in Greco-Roman architecture. In Memphis designs, form no longer follows function—it becomes the reason for the design to exist. Christoph Radl (Fig. 22–28) headed the Memphis graphic design section. The experimental attitude, fascination with tactile and decorative color pattern, and exuberant geometry had a direct influence on postmodern design throughout the world. Memphis exploded onto the scene just as the prosperous 1980s began and helped set the stage for an extravagantly decorative period of design. Postmodernist architect Michael Graves (b. 1934) was another source of design inspiration. Graves became known in the 1960s for private houses designed in the minimalist tradition of orthodox modernism influenced by Le Corbusier. In the late 1970s, he rebelled against the modernist tradition and expanded his range of architectural forms. Classical colonnades and loggias were revived and combined with visual elements inspired by cubist paintings. Graves’s geometry is not the cool purism of Mies van der Rohe; it is an energetic, highspirited geometry of decorative surfaces and tactile repetitive patterns. His visual motifs are expressed in a poster designed by Philadelphia graphic designer William Longhauser (b. 1947) for an exhibition of Graves’s works (Fig. 22–29). In this poster, which became an influential postmodern design in itself, a background pattern of repetitive dots is produced by the letters M I C H A E L letterspaced on a grid. The design community and art schools in San Francisco were strongly influenced by the international style. This direction was punctuated by the flowering of the psychedelic poster in the late 1960s, proving to Bay Area graphic designers that tremendous potential existed for innovative form and color. In the early 1980s, San Francisco postmodern design emerged
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22–30
22–31
22–32
22–33
22–34
22–30. Michael Vanderbyl, California
22–31. Michael Vanderbyl, pro-
22–32. Michael Vanderbyl, postmod-
22–33. Michael Vanderbyl, cover for
Public Radio poster, 1979. A rectangle
motional mailer for Simpson Paper
ern architecture poster, 1984. An
an HBF business furniture catalogue,
negates the eye while triangles over
Company, 1985. Diagonal placement,
“innovative” postmodern building
1985. Gestures and other elements of
the ear and flaring away from the
textured letterforms, and mixed fonts
sticks out its tongue at an “obsolete”
art are used as decorative elements.
mouth signify the auditory, nonvisual
echo the uninhibited vigor of the Ital-
modern building, the stereotypical
medium of radio.
ian design studio Memphis.
and oft-criticized “boring glass box.”
22–34. Michael Manwaring, retail display poster for Santa Cruz clothing, 1984. Diagonal torn-edged collage elements and rubber stamps convey a lively informality.
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The Memphis and San Francisco schools
quickly, earning the city a reputation as a major center for creative design. Michael Vanderbyl (b. 1947), Michael Manwaring (b. 1942), and Michael Cronin (b. 1951) figured prominently in the evolution of the medium. An ongoing dialogue between these and other San Francisco designers enabled them to learn from each other as they forged the Bay Area postmodern movement. The range of graphic possibilities they explored together conveyed a cheerful optimism, a warm sense of humor, and an unbridled attitude about form and space. Freely drawn gestures, a sunny palette of pastel hues, and intuitive composition are often found in their work. Grays were often used with tints of lavender, turquoise, and peach. Vanderbyl’s poster for California Public Radio (Fig. 22–30) is an important harbinger of the emerging school. The palette, repetition of ruled lines, and overall pattern of radio waves on the background foretell the new directions. Forms such as the lines and gestures signifying radio waves are carefully selected for their symbolic meaning; they also play strong decorative and structural roles, Vanderbyl paid homage to the exuberant furniture and textile designs of Memphis in a promotional mailer for Simpson Paper Company (Fig. 22–31) and aimed his wit at postmodern architecture in a poster series that used graphic images to make editorial comments about aspects of the movement (Fig. 22–32). This series shows the emergence of a self-referential attitude within design disciplines. In graphics for products ranging from woolen knit caps to office furniture (Fig. 22–33) Vanderbyl combines a casual postmodern vitality with a typographic clarity echoing his background in the ordered typography of the International Typographic Style. The Hickory Business Furniture catalogue cover is part of a systematic design program combining informational graphics with vibrant visual expression. In Bay Area designs, elements are given symbolic roles and become part of the content. A lyrical resonance permeates the color, form, and texture in Michael Manwaring’s graphic and environmental designs. In his series of posters for Santa Cruz clothing (Fig. 22–34), graphic forms and color serve the function of a traditional headline, linking lifestyle values to consumer products. In Manwaring’s brochure cover for Barr Exhibits (Fig. 22–35), the juxtaposition of a dimensional exhibition in the shape of the letter B against a grid pattern of small squares denoting floor plans and structural elements conveys the essence of the client’s activity. Although the San Francisco designers share a set of gestures, shapes, palettes, and intuitive spatial arrangements, personal attitudes are evident in their work. Michael Cronin often builds his compositions with shapes that become symbolic vessels or containers for color. His Beethoven Festival poster (Fig. 22–36), designed with Shannon Terry, uses the repetition of diagonal and curved forms to bring order and harmony to the composition. Three treatments of display typography are unified by their structural relationship to the edges of the rectangle and the green architectural elements. The ornamental and mannerist postmodern design styles spawned by diverse international sources, including Memphis, Michael Graves, and San Francisco designers, became a
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22–35. Michael Manwaring, bro-
22–36. Michael Cronin and Shannon
chure cover for Barr Exhibits, 1984.
Terry, Beethoven Festival poster,
Postmodern design delights in pastel
1983. Beethoven’s passion is signaled
shades and repeated patterns. The
by the corresponding forms of flame
viewer participates in the design by
and hair.
deciphering the half-hidden B.
22–35
22–36
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22–37. Paula Scher, poster for CBS records, 1979. The synthesis of contradictory sources of inspiration, in this case Russian constructivism and nineteenth-century wood-type posters, is often a springboard to innovation. 22–38. Paula Scher, “Great Beginnings” spread for Koppel & Scher promotional booklet, 1984. Typographic ideas paraphrasing Russian constructivism, futurism, and Dada are freely combined and reinvented. 22–39. Paula Scher, Swatch Watch poster, 1985. A famous Herbert Matter poster from the 1930s (see Fig. 16–61) is unabashedly parodied for Swatch, the Swiss watch manufacturer.
22–38
22–39
22–37
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Retro and vernacular design
dominant design direction during the 1980s. In a decade when economic expansion and materialism were fueled by abundant energy supplies and heavily leveraged debt, architects around the world decorated façades with arches, pediments, and colonnades, and embellished them with marble, chrome, and pastel colors. Graphic designers used lush palettes and ornamented their work with gestures, textures, and decorative geometric elements. Surface and style often became ends in themselves. Retro and vernacular design During the 1980s, graphic designers gained a growing understanding and appreciation of their history. A movement based on historical revival first emerged in New York and spread rapidly throughout the world. Called retro by some designers, it was based on an uninhibited eclectic interest in modernist European design from the first half of the century, a flagrant disregard for the rules of proper typography, and a fascination with eccentric and mannered typefaces designed and widely used during the 1920s and 1930s that were more or less forgotten after World War II. The prefi x retro suggests the term retrograde, implying “backward-looking” and “contrary to the usual.” Retro may be considered an aspect of postmodernism because of its interest in historical revivals, yet it paraphrases modern design from the decades between the wars rather than the Greco-Roman and Renaissance motifs employed by many architects. The term vernacular design refers to artistic and technical expression broadly characteristic of a locale or historical period; it closely relates to retro design. Vernacular design is the paraphrasing of earlier commonplace graphic forms, such as baseball cards, matchbook covers, and unskilled commercial illustrations and printing from past decades. The New York approach to retro began with a small number of designers, including Paula Scher (b. 1948), Louise Fili (b. 1951), and Carin Goldberg (b. 1953). They rediscovered earlier twentieth-century graphics, ranging from the turnof-the-century Vienna Secession to modernist but decorative European typefaces popular during the two decades between the world wars. Their approach to space, color, and texture is often personal and original. Unorthodox attitudes about the accepted rules and regulations of design and typography permit them to take risks and experiment by exuberantly mixing fonts, using extreme letterspacing, and printing type in subtle color-on-color combinations. They are, however, typographic precisionists seeking a sublime level of visual organization. In many of their designs, typography does not play a role secondary to illustration and photography but moves to center stage to become figurative, animated, and expressive. The self-consciously eclectic aspects of retro continue a trait of New York design: Scher credits Seymour Chwast of Push Pin Studios and his use of Victorian, art nouveau, and art deco forms as an important inspiration; Fili worked with the late Herb Lubalin, who often called upon the extravagance of Victorian and art nouveau typographic themes. Scher and Fili moved New York’s tradition of historicism forward into the 1920s and 1930s.
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475
Paula Scher, an outspoken designer with an ironic sense of humor, worked for CBS Records during the 1970s, when music graphics were characterized by generous budgets, elaborate photography and illustrations, and opportunities to experiment. The highly successful recording industry crashed in 1978 as inflation, skyrocketing production costs, and slumping sales took a powerful toll. By 1979, tight budgets often forced Scher to develop typographic solutions based on imagination, art- and design-history sources, and her fascination with obscure and little-used typefaces. Art deco, Russian constructivism, and outmoded typefaces were incorporated into her work. Russian constructivism provided important typographic inspiration (Fig. 22–37). Scher did not copy the earlier constructivist style but used its vocabulary of forms and form relationships, reinventing and combining them in unexpected ways. Her use of color and space are different; the floating weightlessness of Russian constructivism is replaced by a dense packing of forms in space with the weight and vigor of old wood-type posters. After Scher formed the Koppel and Scher studio in partnership with Terry Koppel (b. 1950) in 1984, their “Great Beginnings” booklet (Fig. 22–38) announced their new partnership with period typographic interpretations of the first paragraphs of great novels. Retro designs became a national phenomenon in 1985 after Scher designed the first of two folios for a paper manufacturer, presenting twenty-two complete fonts of “an eclectic collection of eccentric and decorative type,” including such anomalies as the 1911 decorative script Phyllis, the playful 1925 Greco Rosart (renamed Greco Deco by Scher), and the quirky, thick-and-thin sans-serif Trio. Designers suddenly had access to complete fonts of eccentric 1920s and 1930s typefaces whose availability had vanished with hand-set metal type. The close paraphrasing of resources has been a controversial aspect of some retro designs (Fig. 22–39). Retro thrived in book-jacket design. The work of Louise Fili, who developed a deep love of typography while working in her college’s type shop, is highly personal and intuitive. After working for Herb Lubalin and art directing Pantheon Books from 1978 to 1989, she launched her own studio. Her early work evidenced Lubalin’s influence and then grew in power and originality from this starting point. Fili routinely vacationed in Europe each summer after the annual crunch of producing cover designs for Pantheon’s huge fall list, and her travels inspired the development of an original approach to American book-jacket design. Eccentric letterforms on signs at little Italian seashore resorts built between the world wars fascinated her, as did graphics from the same era found in French and Italian flea markets and used-book stalls. These vernacular graphics incorporated textured backgrounds, silhouetted photographs, and modernistic sans-serif typefaces with decorative elements or exaggerated proportions. After World War II, design sensibilities shifted, and these typestyles and techniques fell into disuse. When typography converted from metal to photographic methods in the 1960s and 1970s, the outmoded faces were not converted to the new processes. Fili responded to them with fresh eyes and began to introduce them into her work.
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Fili’s work is elegant and refined, possessing great subtlety and even softness. Seeking the right graphic resonance for each book, she searches for the appropriate typeface, color scheme, and imagery by producing volumes of tissue layouts. Although the death of hand-set metal typography made many old faces unavailable, Fili works around this problem and uses now-forgotten faces—such as Iris, a condensed sans serif with thin horizontal strokes, and Electra Seminegra, a bold geometric sans-serif face with inverted triangles for the crossbar of the capital A—by restoring letterforms from old printed specimens and commissioning handlettering of the missing letters or even an entire title. In Fili’s book covers, color and imagery resonate with the essence and spirit of the literature, almost as though she has developed a sixth sense for interpreting the author’s work (Fig. 22–40). Carin Goldberg developed a fine-tuned reverence for type as an assistant to Lou Dorfsman at CBS in the 1970s, where every type proof entering the offices was hand-altered and improved. She then worked at CBS Records under Paula Scher, whose curiosity, reverence for design history, and attitude toward her work were vital influences. When Goldberg opened a design office she focused on book jackets because her primary interest was in single-surface, posterlike areas. She describes her work as being 90 percent intuition and acknowledges the influence of early modernist designers, especially A. M. Cassandre. Goldberg’s early experience as a painter informs her attitude toward space, as does an architectural orientation inspired by classes she shared with architecture students in school and by the location of her studio adjacent to her husband’s architectural office. She says she “paints with her T-square”—functioning as a typographic precisionist with a painterly orientation. This explains the personal attitude that underlies her work, transcending her myriad and eclectic sources (Figs. 22–41 and 22–42). Lorraine Louie (b. 1955) and Daniel Pelavin (b. 1948) embraced the general resonance of the retro approach. Shape, spatial composition, and color are primary vehicles in Louie’s work. A series for the literary journal the Quarterly (Fig. 22–43) uses a large Q as a sign for the publication. Colorful geometric shapes balanced within the space energize each issue. Pelavin dates his affinities for 1930s and 1940s work to pre–World War II “late moderne” architecture and furniture from his college days in Michigan. High school industrial arts and drafting classes helped him develop formidable lettering skills. Pelavin draws inspiration from Gustav Klimt, the Vienna Workshops (Fig. 22–44), and streamlined art deco forms. He combines a reductive abstraction with precise mechanistic forms (Fig. 22–45). When Scher and Fili created their first designs in what later became known as the retro idiom, many veteran designers, raised on formal purity and typographic refinement, were appalled to see the return of these exiled letterforms and eccentric spatial organizations. But retro, like new-wave typography in the late 1970s and early 1980s, refused to go away, and more and more designers and clients responded to its energy and fresh approach. It crept into the design vocabulary
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22–40. Louise Fili, book cover for The Lover, 1985. A delicately vignetted photograph is used with lettering that seems to cast soft shadows. 22–41. Carin Goldberg (designer) and Frank Metz (art director), book cover for The Sonnets of Orpheus, 1987. Design motifs and sans-serif lettering constrained by black rectangles were inspired by the Vienna Workshops. 22–42. Carin Goldberg (designer) and Gene Greif (illustrator), book cover for When Water Comes Together with Other Water, 1987. Wavy ornaments signifying water were added to the Eagle typeface. 22–43. Lorraine Louie (designer) and Susan Mitchell (art director), cover for the Quarterly, 1987. For this series Louie invented a vast inventory of colorful shapes organized with an unerring sense of balance. 22–44. Daniel Pelavin (designer) and Judith Loeser (art director), book cover for The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, 1985. The lettering was inspired by a Gustav Klimt poster (see Fig. 12–9). 22–45. Daniel Pelavin (designer), book cover for Hoover’s Guide to the Top Southern California Companies, 1996. A tightly composed linear structure presents symbolic iconography with planes of color evoking the feeling of cloisonné.
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22–40
22–41
22–42
22–43
22–44
22–45
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22–46
22–48
22–47
22–49
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22–50
22–46. Charles S. Anderson, Marine
22–49. Charles S. Anderson Design
Midland Auto Financing Division
Co., watches and their packages,
trademark, 1985. The nostalgic auto-
1992. Within the expanding possibili-
mobile and the line technique used to
ties of postindustrial society, a design
draw it evoke newspaper spot illustra-
firm becomes creator, packager, and
tions of the 1930s and 1940s.
marketer of manufactured goods.
22–47. Charles S. Anderson (designer
22–50. Charles S. Anderson Design
and illustrator) and Lynn Schulte (il-
Co., cover for CSA Archive Catalog
lustrator), label designs for Classico
of Stock Art, 1995. The heaviness of
pasta sauce, 1985. Duffy Design
bold black type and illustration are
Group countered the garish color
tempered by an underlay of abstract
and strident typography of many
shapes in three warm colors.
mass-marketed grocery packages with subtle color and elegant typography. 22–48. Joe Duffy and Charles S. Anderson, identity program for various lines of Chaps/Ralph Lauren clothing, 1987.
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479
as designers dared to use such eccentric typefaces as Empire, Bernhard Fashion, and Huxley. Precise spacing, scale relationships, and color combinations give the best retro designs their remarkable vitality. Other original voices explored reinvention of historical models quite differently from the New York designers. At the Duffy Design Group in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Joe Duffy (b. 1949) and Charles S. Anderson (b. 1958) designed nostalgic revivals of vernacular and modernistic graphic arts from the first half of the century. Historical graphic resources as diverse as Aztec ornaments and Ouija boards were plumbed for their form and color. Anderson recalls growing up in the small town of Boone, Iowa, and being impressed by old graphics from the 1940s that had never been thrown away. The walls of an old print shop in town were covered with graphics from an earlier decade, and a retired artist who had created ubiquitous clip art as a newspaper illustrator made an indelible impression on the designer. Inspiration came from humble, coarsely printed spot drawings on old matchbook covers and newspaper ads (Fig. 22–46); the warmth of traditional typefaces and nineteenth-century woodcuts applied to grocery-store packaging (Fig. 22–47); decorative emblematic labels (Fig. 22–48); and trademarks recalling postage stamps, official seals, and pictorial trademarks of an earlier time. The power of graphic design was demonstrated by the Classico spaghetti sauce labels, when sales of this product, packaged in old-style mason jars with ornately illustrated and designed labels, soared to ninety-two million dollars within two years in spite of a limited advertising budget. In 1989, Anderson left the Duffy Design Group and opened the Charles S. Anderson Design Company. He declared his intent to give images or messages “a tangible and inherent artistic value. We see a new modernism evolving. One not based on sterile minimalism and an absence of humanity, but one that is rich in cultural vocabulary and personal expression.” The firm’s work reflects a genuine enchantment with textural properties, as enlarged details from cheap printing, such as comic books, and overall patterns based on spot illustrations find their way into designs. A subsidiary company, the CSA Archive, was formed to manufacture publications and other products. These ranged from a set of watches with whimsical illustrated faces (Fig. 22–49) to a massive collection of historical and original line illustrations (Fig. 22–50). In London, one of the more original visions of the 1980s emerged as Neville Brody (b. 1957) designed graphics and album covers for rock music and art-directed English magazines, including the Face and Arena. Although Brody has been influenced by the geometric forms of the Russian constructivist artists, especially Rodchenko, and by Dada’s experimental attitudes and rejection of the canons of the ruling establishment, it would misrepresent his philosophy and values to label him a retro designer reinventing past styles. As an art student in the late 1970s, Brody wondered if “within mass communications, the human had been lost completely.” While confronting te decision whether to pursue fine art or graphic design, Brody recalls asking: “Why can’t you take a painterly approach
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22–51. Neville Brody, record album cover design for Parliament, 1985. Hand-lettered words are executed with a mechanistic and mathematical perfection. 22–52. Neville Brody, contents page logos from the Face, nos. 49, 52, and 55, 1984. Over eight or nine issues, the word contents was deconstructed from a readable word into abstract marks as Brody investigated an organic process of change and the role of visual coding in the editorial environment. 22–53. Neville Brody, editorial pages for the Face, no. 59, March 1985. Type and image become objects composed against each other to achieve a
22–51
22–52
dynamic whole.
22–53
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22–54. Paula Scher, “Language Is a Deadly Weapon” graphic for MTV’s “Free Your Mind” campaign, 1994. Derogatory terms for women are presented to increase sensitivity to the effect of slang upon others.
22–54
within the printed medium? I wanted to make people more aware rather than less aware, and with the design that I had started to do, I followed the idea of design to reveal, not to conceal.” Brody’s work evolved from an effort to discover an intuitive yet logical approach to design, expressing a personal vision that could have meaning to his audience. Brody has stated that he never learned the rules of correct typography, which left him free to invent working methods and spatial configurations. His typographic configurations project an absolute emblematic authority that evokes heraldry and military emblems (Fig. 22–51). He designed a series of geometric sans-serif typefaces for the Face, bringing a strong graphic image to the magazine. Headlines became objects, with each carefully crafted to express content. Brody viewed the magazine as a multidimensional object existing in time and space and maintaining continuity from issue to issue. This continuity was explored when graphic elements such as the contents page logo were deconstructed into abstract glyphs over several months (Fig. 22–52). Brody’s ability to load a layout with levels of meaning is seen in the opening spread of an interview with Andy Warhol (Fig. 22–53): the repeated photograph echoes Warhol’s use of repeated images; the large W is actually the M from a feature on the popular singer Madonna from the month before, turned upside down and bringing a small portion of a photograph and part of a headline with it,
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paraphrasing Warhol’s use of existing graphic material. The oval within a circle and the cross above it refer to the sexuality of Warhol’s life and work. Seldom have a designer’s hard-won accomplishments been plagiarized as Brody’s distinctive work was in the late 1980s. As clones of his typefaces and emblematic logo designs appeared all around the world, Brody designed a new quarterly magazine, Arena, using the clean, informational attributes of Helvetica type in dynamic ways. Large scale, strong value contrasts, and clear, simple layouts characterize his art direction of this publication. The major thrust of postmodern graphic design is a spirit of liberation, a freedom to be intuitive and personal, and a willingness to go against the modern design so dominant through much of the twentieth century. Designers felt free to respond positively to vernacular and historic forms and to incorporate these into their work. An atmosphere of inclusion and expanding possibilities enabled many designers to experiment with highly personal, even eccentric, ideas. This is seen clearly in the work of Paula Scher, whose unfolding repertoire moves in several new directions, including lettering and images casually hand-painted on coarse paper. The result has been posters (Fig. 22–54) and book jackets whose words and pictures are unified through a common technique and surface; these designs project an unrefined, handmade character in counterpoint to the precision of computer-aided design. From the mid-1980s onward, designers became increasingly fascinated with the potential of computer-assisted design, not only as an efficient production tool but also as a potent catalyst for innovation. The unfolding strands of postmodern design became intertwined with electronic capabilities.
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23 National Visions within a Global Dialogue
23–1
23–1. Alan Fletcher, Colin Forbes, and Bob Gill, cover for Graphis, 1965. The record of a parcel’s international journey carrying Pentagram work to the magazine also became the package carrying Graphis to its readers.
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In 1966, the German graphic designer Olaf Leu wrote that German design no longer had any national attributes. He observed that while some might favor this development, many others regretted it. At the time of Leu’s writing, the purist geometry of the International Typographic Style and the unbridled freedom of American design were harmoniously coexisting as important influences on both German design and design activity around the globe. A period of international dialogue was beginning. In the same way that events in China and the Middle East may directly affect Europe, the Americas, and Japan, conceptual innovation and visual invention in one part of the world may spread rapidly to another. As one government’s foreign policy can have both local and global consequences, conceptual innovation and visual invention beginning locally may have a global reach that is rapid, powerful, and direct. Today, an international culture embracing fine arts, performing arts, and design spans national boundaries, extending from rich design metropolises to every corner of the globe. This growth has been spurred by a compounding of factors, including graphic arts technology, which makes professional typography and printing possible in small cities and developing countries, and the exponential growth of graphic design education. During the 1980s and 1990s, the rapid development of electronic and computer technology began to change the processes and appearance of design. Overnight express mail, fax machines, the Internet, electronic mail, global televisual communications such as the continuous Cable News Network (CNN), and direct-dial international long-distance telephone service all served to further shrink the human community into Marshall McLuhan’s “global village.” The advanced technology of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries created a cultural milieu of simultaneity—ancient and modern cultures, Eastern and Western thought, handicraft and industrial production—until past, present, and future blurred into a continuum of information and visual form. This complex world of cultural and visual diversity has created an environment in wich a global dialogue coexists with national visions, resulting in an explosive and pluralistic era for graphic design. The many countries and regions where designers have developed a unique national posture for design include the United Kingdom, Asia, the Netherlands, the Iberian Peninsula, the Americas, and the Middle East.
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Recent British graphic design
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483
23–3 23–4
23–2. Colin Forbes, symbol for the
in a typeface originally designed by
Zinc Development Association Die
Giambattista Bodoni. The problem
Casting Conference, 1966. Pentagram
centered on endowing the three char-
solutions seem to appear magically
acters with a single personality. The
from the content. The opportunity to
solution was to divide and remove
render the year in male and female
half of one letter, and add and insert
components of a die-casting mold
an ampersand to reinstate the missing
occurs only once each decade.
crossbar.”
23–3. Alan Fletcher, Victoria and
23–4. Alan Fletcher and Georg
Albert Museum logo, 1989. In 1996
Staehelin, logo for an exclusive
Fletcher discussed the V&A logo
boutique, 1968. Ornamented initials
in Beware Wet Paint: “The already
from five different Renaissance de-
classic symbol for the Victoria &
signs provide an unexpected graphic
Albert Museum (designed in 1989) is
expression of the name.
Postwar graphic design in the United Kingdom The historical influence of the United Kingdom, a constitutional democracy uniting England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, has transcended its size. Under Queen Elizabeth I (1533–1603), England became a major naval power and started its vast colonial empire, spreading English social customs and language around the globe. This international influence continues today. In post–World War II England, graphic design was characterized by an international culture that embraced the fine and performing arts. Both the purist modernism of Switzerland and the graphic expressionism of New York were assimilated, but outstanding English designers succeeded in making significant contributions to international dialogue while avoiding becoming tied to those movements that influenced them. After the trauma of the war, Herbert Spencer (1922–2002) became an important voice in renewing British graphic design through his writing, teaching, and graphic design practice. Spencer’s understanding of modern art and design was translated into a rare typographic sensitivity and structural vitality. As editor and designer of the journal Typographica and author of Pioneers of Modern Typography, an influential 1969 book that informed the postwar generation about the accomplishments of earlier twentieth-century designers, Spencer helped stimulate the worldwide dialogue.
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A design partnership that formed in 1962 became an early locus of British design. Alan Fletcher (1931–2006), Colin Forbes (b. 1928), and Bob Gill (b. 1931) launched a studio that carried their names. In 1965, after Gill left the partnership and architect Theo Crosby (1925–94) joined the firm, the name was changed to Crosby, Fletcher, Forbes. Exhibition design, historic conservation, and industrial design were added to the firm’s activities. As additional partners were added, the name of the studio was changed to Pentagram. Continued growth would make this five-pronged name obsolete, for by 1996 Pentagram had seventeen partners and 148 employees in its offices in London, Hong Kong, New York, San Francisco, and Austin, Texas. Intelligence and a talent for developing design solutions suited to the needs of the problem were the hallmarks of Pentagram design during its formative years in London. Asked to design a cover for a magazine containing an article about their work, the designers mailed a parcel from London to Zurich with a request for its return unopened. A color photograph documenting its journey through the postal system became the cover design (Fig. 23–1). Thorough evaluation of the communications problem and the specific nature of the environmental conditions under which the design was to appear was combined with British wit and a willingness to try the unexpected. This summarizes the essence of the Pentagram approach to graphic design. In the best English tradition, Pentagram’s partners combined a sense of the contemporary (Figs. 23–2 and 23–3) with a strong understanding of history (Fig. 23–4). The firm’s earlier design solutions range from clean geometric forms in corporate identity systems to a warm historicism in packaging design and graphics for smaller clients. Conceptual, visual, and often imbued with expressive humor, Pentagram’s graphic design work enabled Britain to establish an international presence in the field just as it had at the turn of the twentieth century and in the years after World War I. Pentagram’s expansion into other countries and continents is a testament to the organizational skills and creativity of the original partners. Recent British graphic design With its constantly changing consumer market and ever-expanding multicultural population, London is often characterized as transitory and enigmatic. Herein lies a visual culture embracing new media and the development of computer
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technology through a multitude of emerging design studios offering different approaches to visual problem solving. Many London graphic design studios embrace contemporary fine art that is eclectic and connected to ephemeral pop culture. Many also draw inspiration from traditional graphic design. As a young designer with a passion for independent rock music, Vaughan Oliver (b. 1957) collaborated with Ivo WattsRussell (b. 1954), the founder of the 4AD Records label. Employed by Watts-Russell’s South London company, Oliver created a remarkable series of record covers and promotional print collateral for well-known musical groups such as the Cocteau Twins, This Mortal Coil, the Pixies, Bush, and Lush. Motivated by his intense bond with music, he committed himself to high standards, bold exploration, and the imaginative use of found imagery. Oliver has often worked with the photographer Nigel Grierson in a partnership called 23 Envelope, and he more recently collaborated with Chris Bigg (b. 1962), producing graphic design for such clients as Microsoft, Sony, the BBC, JP Morgan Private Bank, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Harrods, Virgin, Warner Bros., and Raygun Publishing (Fig. 23–5). Other recent British designers include Michael Johnson (b. 1964), who got his start at Wolf Olins in the 1980s. After a short time working in Australia and Japan as an art director, he returned to London and set up his own graphic design studio. His work is witty and clever, using wordplay and strong visual puns as a communication strategy (Fig. 23–6). Why Not Associates was established by Andrew Altmann (b. 1962), David Ellis (b. 1962), and Howard Greenhalgh (b. 1963) in 1987. This multidisciplinary, experimental London-based
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23–5. Vaughan Oliver, Central St. Martin’s Fashion Show invitation, 2004. 23–6. Michael Johnson, “Design Decisions,” poster, 1996. One of a series of posters created for Britain’s Design Council. They were intended to be displayed in schools to spur children’s interest in the design process by using beautifully “wrong” images. 23–7. Why Not Associates, book cover, 1998. The name of the creative firm is implied by a question mark drawn with light. 23–8. Angus Hyland, spread from Grafik magazine, 2009. The spread visually interprets a series of essays on typographic forms. 23–9. David Hillman, Millennium Stamps series for the Royal Mail, United Kingdom, 1999.
23–9
design company has worked on diverse projects, including postage stamps, corporate identity, exhibition design, environmental design, television titles, and motion graphics. Clients include the typography magazine U&lc, the Royal College of Art, the Kobe Fashion Museum in Japan, Armani, Nike, Saab, and First Direct (Fig. 23–7). Pentagram’s philosophy continues to be based on the concept of a mutual interdisciplinary design practice and an intuitive exchange among partners. The London office hosts public events such as lectures and exhibitions in its Notting Hill gallery. Pentagram has diversified with the addition of architect Lorenzo Apicella (b. 1957), book designer Angus Hyland (b. 1963) (Fig. 23–8), and Colors magazine creative director Fernando Gutiérrez (b. 1963). Other notable members of the London office include David Hillman (b. 1943) (Fig. 23–9), who was previously commissioned to design the French daily newspaper Le Matin de Paris; John McConnell (b. 1939), whose previous clients include the leading 1960s boutique Biba; the distinguished product and package designer John Rushworth (b. 1958); and the industrial and vehicle designer Daniel Weil (b. 1953), whose work can be found in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Vince Frost (b. 1964) solves graphic design problems through his close collaboration with photographers, illustrators, and writers. This association is exemplified in the design and editing of the literary magazine Zembla. Representing a new era in magazine design, Zembla fuses writing, photography, illustration, and expressive typography in a manner that challenges all previous mores (Fig. 23–10).
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A graduate of the London College of Printing, Siobhan Keaney (b. 1959) creates work that is both independent and experimental. Her self-described “maverick” stance and “non-mainstream” approach is evident in her work for many important commercial and cultural clients, including the Royal Mail, London (Fig. 23–11). Her carefully structured yet seemingly spontaneous designs are recognized worldwide; she has exhibited and lectured widely throughout North America, Europe, the Near East, and Asia. Her designs are part of the permanent collection of the Twentieth Century Gallery at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and she is one of forty European designers and architects to have work featured at the Design Centre in Osaka, Japan. Keaney has also held academic appointments at some of the United Kingdom’s leading design programs, including the University of Brighton and the Royal College of Art, London. The rise of Japanese design Japan, an island nation off the east coast of Asia, has close to 128 million people and a population density of about 840 persons per square mile. Eighty percent of the island consists of rugged, uninhabitable mountains, and both food and fuel have to be imported. Japan remained an isolated and feudal society until the middle of the nineteenth century. The country’s rapid industrial development over the course of the twentieth century, particularly during the decades after World War II, is a major testament to the will and energy of the Japanese people. During the postwar period technological leadership and an awareness of Western social patterns and lifestyles raised philosophic issues for Japanese graphic designers as they
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23–10. Vince Frost, spread for Zembla magazine, vol. 10, no. 3, spring 2004. 23-11. Siobahn Keaney, Royal Mail Yearpack for the Royal Mail, London, 2002. This folder features specialedition stamps from 2002. 23–12. Ryuichi Yamashiro, poster for a tree-planting campaign, 1961. The Japanese characters for tree, grove, and forest are repeated to form a
23–11
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forest.
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sought to maintain national traditions while simultaneously incorporating international influences. The tree-planting poster (Fig. 23–12) by Ryuichi Yamashiro (b. 1920) demonstrates just how successfully this could be accomplished, as Eastern calligraphy and spatial concerns unite with a Western communications concept. European constructivism is a major resource for the Japanese design. However, the systematic organization and strong theoretical foundation of constructivism is tempered by a traditional Japanese inclination toward intuitive problem solving and a heritage of simplified emblematic form. Japanese designers more often use central placement and organize space around a median axis, reflecting the compositional traditions of many Japanese arts and crafts, rather than employing the relational asymmetrical balance of European constructivism. An important inspiration for Japanese graphic designers is the traditional family symbol or crest, the mon (Fig. 23–13), which has been used for a thousand years. A mon is a simplified design of flowers, birds, animals, plants, or household objects contained in a circle, which was applied to belongings and clothing. Yusaku Kamekura (1915–97) was apprenticed to an architect and then worked as art director for several Japanese cultural magazines from 1937 until 1948. During the postwar recovery period Kamekura emerged as an influential design leader who earned the reverential name “Boss” in Japanese design circles. Under his leadership, Japanese graphic designers dispelled the widely held belief that visual communications must be handdrawn. The notion of applied arts being inferior to fine art also weakened as Japanese designers established their professional status. Kamekura charted the course of this new Japanese movement through the vitality and strength of his creative work; his leadership in founding the Japan Advertising Art Club, bringing professionalism and focus to the new discipline; and his role with the Japan Design Center, newly established in 1960. As managing director of this organization, Kamekura brought leading graphic designers together with industry. Technical discipline, a thorough understanding of printing techniques, and careful construction of visual elements characterize Kamekura’s work (Fig. 23–14). The logo and posters he created for the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo received international acclaim and established Japan as a center of creative design (Fig. 23–15). Kamekura’s works are conspicuously modern yet often evoke the poetic traditions of Japanese art. The emblematic simplicity of his constructivist geometry and international style–inspired typography (Fig. 23–16) is the result of an extraordinary in which where all parts are unified into an expressive whole. An imaginative approach to photographic design was developed by Masuda Tadashi (b. 1922). His growing involvement in the use of photographic illustration to solve graphic design problems, combined with his interest in collaborative and team design, culminated in the establishment of the Masuda Tadashi Design Institute in 1958. Many art directors and graphic designers view photographers and illustrators as subcontractors on call to give form to the designer’s concepts. In Tadashi’s
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23–13
23–14
23–13. Japanese traditional crests and much postwar Japanese graphic design share direct frontal presentation of simplified images, symmetrical composition, and a refined use of line and space. 23–14. Yusaku Kamekura, booklet cover, 1954. Torn paper Japanese characters and Bodoni letterforms spell the same word, typifying Kamekura’s synthesis of Asian and Western forms.
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collaborative team approach, unexpected solutions and new ways of seeing things emerged. Type placement on, above, or below the photograph is usually done with great sensitivity. A favored layout approach uses a structure of fine, ruled lines as a vessel to contain the typographic information. Color is used very effectively: brightly colored backgrounds are sometimes juxtaposed with objects of contrasting hue, and a consistent color cast is often used to unify an image. Focal points such as the rich blue paper wrapping the printing plates on a Brain magazine cover (Fig. 23–17) are examples of the technique of using one intense color in an otherwise muted photograph. As Japanese design evolved, the constructivist impulse was developed by original thinkers who combined personal visions with the universal harmony of geometric form. Kazumasa Nagai (b. 1929), a sculpture major at the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music, turned to graphic design after graduating in 1951. His oeuvre might be considered ongoing research into linear form and the properties of line as a graphic medium for spatial modulation. His explorations of the nature of line through fine-art drawings and prints are the wellspring for his posters, abstract trademarks, and advertisements. The technical perfection of his designs and their printed production is formidable. His poster for a Paris exhibition of works by twelve Japanese graphic designers, Tradition et Nouvelles Techniques (Tradition and New Techniques) (Fig. 23–18), creates a universe of geometric forms evoking planets and energy forces moving in space. While Nagai bases his designs on line, Ikko Tanaka (1930–2002) used plane and shape as the nucleus for his work. Over the course of the 1950s, Tanaka assimilated many of the Bauhaus design traditions and then opened Tanaka Design Studio in 1963. A pluralistic designer, he explored many directions. Two underlying visual concepts in much of his work are grid structure and vibrant planes of color that explore warm/ cool contrast, close-valued color, and analogous color ranges. Traditional Japanese motifs, including landscape (Fig. 23–19), Kanze Noh theater, calligraphy, masks, and woodblock prints, are reinvented in a modernist design idiom. In some of his most original works, color planes are arranged on a grid to signify abstracted and expressive portraits, as seen in his “Nihon Buyo” poster for the Asian Performing Arts Institute (Fig. 23–20). These visages have remarkable individual character and personality. Takenobu Igarashi (b. 1944) has created a paradigm for the blending of Eastern and Western ideas. After graduating from Tama University in 1968, Igarashi earned a graduate degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. Upon returning to Japan, he found design firms and corporations unreceptive to a designer who had spent time abroad, so he opened his own design office in 1970. Much of Igarashi Studio’s work is in trademark, corporate identity, environmental, and product design. By 1976, Igarashi’s experiments with alphabets drawn on isometric grids were attracting clients and international recognition. The isometric alphabets have evolved into three-dimensional alphabetic sculptures that Igarashi calls architectural alphabets. These have been applied to signage as
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23–21
23–15. Yusaku Kamekura, Tokyo
23–18. Kazumasa Nagai, exhibition
Olympics logo and poster, 1964.
poster, 1984. An imaginary universe is
Three simple symbols—the red sun of
created from colorful linear elements.
the Japanese flag, the Olympic rings, and the words Tokyo 1964—combine
23–19. Ikko Tanaka, poster for Senei
into an immediate and compelling
Ikenobo’s flower arrangement, 1974.
message.
The mountains and waves of traditional woodblock prints are evoked
22–16. Yusaku Kamekura, poster
by a rhythmic sequence of blue and
of the Osaka World Exposition,
blue-green bands under a graduated
1970. The imagination of Japanese
tan sky.
designers is constantly tested as they invent new sun images as part of the
23–20. Ikko Tanaka, “Nihon Buyo”
heritage of the Land of the Rising Sun.
poster, 1981. A traditional Japanese theatrical character is reinvented us-
23–17. Masuda Tadashi (designer)
ing the aesthetic forms of a later age.
and Doki Mitsuo (photographer), cover for Brain magazine, 1964. To
23–21. Takenobu Igarashi, trademark
illustrate an article on typography,
for Parco Part 3 department store,
metal printing plates are wrapped in
1981. Letters assembled of geometric
typographic printed proofs that are
segments can be presented as a relief
torn to reveal their contents.
or as three-dimensional environmental signage.
part of visual identity programs (Fig. 23–21). Igarashi achieves unexpected variety in his isometric alphabets. The dynamic letters of his Expo ’85 poster (Fig. 23–22) become a metaphor for the materials and processes of the built environment. In 1983, Igarashi began the ten-year project of designing the Igarashi Poster Calendar, starting with five years for the Museum of Modern Art in New York and then continuing with five more for the Alphabet Gallery in Tokyo. As shown in the 1990 calendar (Fig. 23–23), each month has a different design theme and each number is a unique drawing. Igarashi says 95 percent of his designs are based on a grid system. His work is composed from elemental forms: the dot, the smallest component of perception; lines, which define positions and create boundaries between planes; grids, whose x and y axes bring mathematical order to his work; surfaces, which can be visual and tactile; flat or dimensional planes; and the basic geometric forms of circle, triangle, and square. Igarashi’s best works achieve boundlessness (Fig. 23–24), an expansive power created by color, texture, and ambiguity. The work of Tadanori Yokoo (b. 1936) replaces the order and logic of constructivism with the restless vitality of Dada and a fascination with mass media, popular art, and comic books. During the mid-1960s Yokoo used the comic-book technique of black line drawing as a vessel to contain flat areas
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23–24
23–25
23–26
23–22. Takenobu Igarashi, poster
23–24. Takenobu Igarashi, poster for
23–26. Tadanori Yokoo, poster for
23–28. Shigeo Fukuda, “Victory
for Expo ’85, 1982. An international
the Kanagawa Art Festival, 1984. A
printmaking exhibition, 1968. As
1945” poster, 1975. The simple act of
housing exposition is signified by
universe composed of dots evokes
Yokoo began to open his densely
turning the shell back toward the gun
exploded structural forms.
infinite time and space.
packed spaces and expand his range
signifies the folly of war.
of printing techniques, he moved 23–29. Shigeo Fukuda, exhibition
23–23. Takenobu Igarashi, poster
23–25. Tadanori Yokoo, poster for
calendar, 1990. Each of the 6,226
Koshimaki Osen, 1966. East and West
numbers designed in the ten-year
meet in a virtual catalogue of images
23–27. Tadanori Yokoo, exhibition
1975. “Impossible” optical illusions
project is different from all others.
and techniques.
poster, 1973. A Persian manuscript
are typical of Fukuda’s work.
from pop art to personal statement.
poster for Keio department store,
border frames an enigmatic black rectangle, where two plates of food hover inexplicably.
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of photomechanical color. He often collaged photographic elements into the designs, and he translated traditional Japanese images into the pop art idiom (Fig. 23–25). During the late 1960s and into the 1970s Yokoo’s design vocabulary and range of art and printing techniques became increasingly uninhibited. The “Sixth International Biennial Exhibition of Prints in Tokyo” poster (Fig. 23–26) combines a variety of techniques: a halftone group portrait in pink; a sky with an airbrushed brown band across the top and a red one at the horizon; calligraphic writing on vertical bands, as found in earlier Asian art; and a monumental montage figure towering over a lighthouse on a bank across water. During the 1970s and 1980s, Yokoo’s work often moved toward unexpected and even mystical images (Fig. 23–27). Yokoo expresses the passions and curiosity of a Japanese generation that grew up with American popular culture and electronic media—television, movies, radio, and records. Accordingly, shifting values and a rejection of tradition find symbolic expression in Yokoo’s uninhibited graphics, gaining him a cult reputation. Designs by Shigeo Fukuda (b. 1932) are disarmingly simple, as readable and immediate as a one-panel cartoon, yet they engage the viewer with their unexpected violations of spatial logic and universal order. Fukuda achieved early renown for his unconventional views of the world; these form the core of his work. His disarming directness is seen in “Victory 1945,” awarded first prize in an international competition for a poster commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of the end of World War II (Fig. 23–28). In other works, he expresses a nonverbal concept or presents an inexplicable visual phenomenon (Fig. 23–29). His images are a construct of memory and association rather than a direct impression of the senses.
23–27
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491
Playfulness and humor are abundant in Fukuda’s work. The enigma and contradictions of Dada and surrealism are reinvented not with high-minded seriousness but with a joyful affection for everyday life (Fig. 23–30). Given his humor and simplified drawing, one might ask what separates Fukuda’s work from ordinary comics. Intentional ambiguity and purposefulness pervade his work, giving it a life beyond the ephemeral or disposable. With the simplest of means, a complex idea is projected with disarming clarity and unexpected imagery. Part of the Japanese understanding of nonverbal communication comes from Zen Buddhism, which teaches the use of all five senses in receiving communication, and even states, “silence is communication.” In this tradition, Koichi Sato (b. 1944) brings delicate color motifs and metaphysical forms to his quietly poetic designs. Sato graduated from Tokyo University of Art and Music in 1968 and opened his own studio two years later. His painting of a white tray—which he tilted so the bluecolored water filling it graduated toward one end—became an important inspiration for his evolution. His first use of gradation in graphic design is in a 1974 concert poster (Fig. 23–31). Sato thinks in opposites: traditional/futuristic; organic/ mechanical; East/West; light/dark. He writes haiku, and his graphic designs share the multiple levels of meaning and expression of deep emotion found in this traditional form. Auras and glowing luminosity are found in his work, bringing a metaphysical poetics to the printed page (Fig. 23–32). The postwar miracle of Japan, which rose from the ashes of defeat to become a leader in technology and manufacturing, is paralleled by its emergence as a major center for graphic creativity. The finest contemporary Japanese graphic design
23–29
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has a strong emphasis on the aesthetic dimension, not at the expense of communicating the client’s message but as a means of reinforcing and extending it.
23–31 23–30. Shigeo Fukuda, teacups,
23–32. Koichi Sato, image poster
1975. Fukuda’s visual puns and illu-
for the Yuny supermarket, 1985. A
sions are expressed three-dimension-
metaphysical event in a subtle palette
ally in toys, products, environments,
of blues creates a poetic image for
and sculpture.
the client.
23–31. Koichi Sato, “New Music Media” poster for the May Corporation, 1974. A black fish, glowing pale green water, and a black box with shading around the edges emit a quiet poetry.
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Design in the Netherlands World War II and the German occupation completely disrupted Dutch society; with severe shotage of raw materials transportation and communications came to a virtual halt. The postwar years were a time for rebuilding the economy and working to restore prewar cultural and social life. As Dutch design evolved, two strong currents became evident: a pragmatic constructivism inspired by Dutch traditions from the first half of the century, including the De Stijl movement, Piet Zwart, and Paul Schuitema as well as postwar inf luences from Switzerland; and a vigorous expressionism, with jolting images and spontaneous spatial syntax. This duality is not surprising, for the Dutch have a reputation as a thrifty people who favor order and structure; they are also considered broad-minded and tolerant of diverse political, religious, and artistic ideas. Perhaps the former stems from the cooperative spirit of a densely populated small country, much of which lies below sea level and must be protected by 2,400 kilometers (1,500 miles) of dikes, while the latter stems in part from Holland’s traditional role as a seafaring nation, with international inf luences f lowing through its ports. Exposure to diverse ideas and cultures spurred an attitude of tolerance. From the 1500s, Dutch printers were free to print material banned in other countries, while scientists and philosophers whose radical theories made life uncomfortable for them elsewhere sought refuge in Holland. Dutch citizens prize their individuality and free expression and extend this freedom to others, creating a social climate that encourages innovation.
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23–33. Wim Crouwel, postage stamps for the Dutch postal service, 1976. Absolute simplicity gains expression through color gradation. 23–34. Total Design, trademarks for (top row) PAM petroleum company (1964); Thijssen Bornemisza (1971); Kunst an Bedrijf Foundation (1978); Hat Spectrum publishing company (1971); and (bottom row) Furness
23–33
23–34
Holding (1969) and its subsidiaries Furness road transport division (1969), harbor division (1969), trade division (1972), and insurance company (1969). 23–35. Wim Crouwel, poster for Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum design exhibition Vormgevers (Designers), 1966. The matrix governing the design of the poster and lettering is revealed as a design element. 23–36. Benno Wissing, poster for the exhibition Plannenmaken: 25 jaar bond van Nederlandse stedebouwkundigen (Plan Making: Alliance of Dutch Urban Development, 25 Years), 1961. A dynamic image is created with simple forms and overlapping primary colors contrasting with the
23–35
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A strong impetus toward functional design in the Netherlands began in 1963. A group including graphic designer Wim Crouwel (b. 1928), product designer Frisco Kramer (b. 1922), and graphic and architectural designer Benno Wissing (1923–2008) joined forces in Amsterdam to form a large, multidisciplinary design firm, Total Design (TD). Before TD, the Netherlands had no comprehensive firms capable of large-scale projects; these were being assigned to designers in other countries. TD offered extensive design programs for business, industry, and government. Its intention was to conceive and implement “ideas on design in all fields, in order whenever possible to achieve a unity of thought, or ‘total design’ in these fields.” Crouwel played an important role in establishing TD’s philosophy and direction. During the early 1950s he had been in direct contact with Swiss designers forging the International Typographic Style. However, Crouwel’s design philosophy was less emphatic about universal form and standardized formats; he emphasized the designer as an objective problem solver who finds solutions through research and analysis, simplifying the message and the means
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texture of the photograph.
for conveying it to an audience. He believed the flood of typographic messages in contemporary society demanded clarity and simplicity. Crouwel achieved a remarkable minimalism imbued with an aesthetic spirit (Fig. 23–33). TD sought a “total image” for clients through integrated graphics, architecture, and products. During the 1960s and 1970s the firm played a dominant role in Dutch design, initiating a purifying process through programs with limited typeface choices, standardized formats for paper and typography, and consistent schema for layouts. Projects included visual-identity programs (Fig. 23–34), museum exhibitions with related graphics (Figs. 23–35 and 23–36), book design, signage, and environments. TD used a team approach, with each team headed by a senior designer who established its direction. Kramer left TD in 1967 and Wissing departed in 1972. Crouwel remained as a guiding force until 1981, when he became a full-time professor, although he continued as an adviser to TD. The firm became an important training ground for young designers, who gained experience there and then
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left to launch new firms. TD, now Total Identity, continues as a major force in European design, with offices in six cities and over fifty professionals on staff. Another thrust toward modern design came from Pieter Brattinga (b. 1931), who learned all aspects of printing by working at his father’s printing firm, De Jong & Co., at Hilversum, near Amsterdam. During the 1950s, Brattinga functioned as a mediator between designers and printers. From 1954 until 1973, he curated exhibitions held in a small gallery at the printing firm, which introduced advanced art and graphic design to a wider audience. His posters for these exhibitions (Fig. 23–37) were designed on a grid of fifteen square modules, with one or more always appearing as an element in the design. Brattinga edited a square-format journal, Kwadraatblad (Quadrate), published by De Jong & Co. to demonstrate its printing capabilities while providing leading artists and designers an opportunity to explore the limits of the print medium. Often controversial, these publications showed clients and designers an extended range of possibilities. Brattinga also designed posters and publications for the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo. In addition to major corporations, Dutch cultural institutions and government agencies are major patrons of graphic design. Each government agency has a visual-identity program, called a house style in the Netherlands, and consciously tries to communicate effectively with citizens. Cities have commissioned visual-identity programs; postage stamps and currency have achieved distinction in design. The Dutch PTT (Post, Telephone, and Telegraph) emphasized the importance of design as early as 1919, when Jean François van Royen (1878– 1942) became general secretary of the PTT board. He believed
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23–37. Pieter Brattinga, poster for exhibition De man achter de vormgeving van de PTT (The Man Behind the Design for the Dutch Post Service), 1960. A vibrant translucency, achieved by overprinting gray and blue on a halftone photograph, expresses the subject. 23–38. Studio Dumbar, PTT corporate identity system, 1989. Architectural identification, vehicles, and signage were produced from guidelines in the identity manual, shown at right. 23–39. R.E.D. Oxenaar with J. J. Kruit, designs for Netherlands currency: 50 guilder, 1982, and 250 guilder, 1986. A rare aesthetic attainment and functional practicality enabled currency to contribute to a sense of national identity.
his government agency shouldered responsibility for aesthetic excellence in all areas, from telephone booths and buildings to postage stamps. He continually struggled to overcome obstacles to good design. In 1942, Van Royen died in a concentration camp. After World War II ended, PTT established its Aesthetic Design Department, headed by an aesthetic adviser whose office commissioned all designs produced by PTT. This department functioned as an intermediary between PTT, the public, and artists and designers who received commissions. For two decades after the war decorative and pictorial approaches prevailed, but from around 1966 the Aesthetic Design Department moved in more contemporary and adventurous directions. In 1976 R. D. E. Oxenaar (b. 1929) was appointed aesthetic adviser; under his leadership, PTT design moved onto an extraordinary plane. Oxenaar embraced a philosophy of autonomous expression coupled with utilitarian needs. This enabled PTT to achieve visual innovation while meeting the requirements of the agency and its audiences. Netherlands postage stamps have been unusually adventurous in their design, with a wide range of approaches from classical modernism to expressionism (see Figs. 23–33, 23–52, and 23–55). Young designers have received stamp design commissions early in their careers. PTT implemented its first comprehensive visual-identity system in 1981. Two design firms, Total Design and Studio Dumbar, were commissioned to collaborate on this extensive and far-reaching project. Rigorous graphic standards were established, but certain items—including postage stamps created by diverse artists, unique publications including annual reports, and interiors of post offices in historical buildings— were exempt from the design system.
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On 1 January, 1989, PTT was privatized and thus faced new competition in many of its services. The Aesthetic Design Department was renamed the Corporate Policy Unit for Art and Design, and today it continues to procure art for PTT facilities and commission product and graphic designs. PTT believed the existing identity system was effective but that changes were necessary to communicate the shift from government agency to private corporation. Studio Dumbar received the commission to revise the identity system (Fig. 23–38). Prominent use of PTT’s sans-serif initials continued, with more vibrant colors and geometric elements (squares, dots, and lines) used to intensify and energize PTT graphics, products, and environments. Bright hues become identifiers, with red used for the postal service and intense green for the telephone service. Telephone booths, which need to be located quickly in emergencies, form bright green oases in urban environments, highly visible regardless of season or time of day. In 1965, the Nederlandsche Bank selected R. D. E. Oxenaar to design Dutch paper currency. He was disappointed with his first design, a green five-guilder note, and agreed to design additional currency only if he could be involved in every step from the beginning to final production. His design process addressed production requirements, safeguards against counterfeiting, and ease of use. A major advance occurred in 1978, when a new hundred-guilder note was needed and Oxenaar was given the freedom to select the subject. He rejected traditional symbols of authority such as engraved portraits of venerated figures and national emblems. His new design featured a snipe, a long-billed brown bird found in marshy areas. The public responded positively to this bank note, so Nederlandse Bank permitted Oxenaar to select additional currency subjects (Fig. 23–39), including a sunflower and a lighthouse. Each note had a dominant color and large sans-serif numbers for the denomination. Composition and color were used to achieve an energy and expressiveness unprecedented in currency design. Oxenaar’s work confirms a critical realization: the personal and subjective interests of the artist can be brought to fruition while fulfilling the needs of public communication. While the 1960s saw a strong impetus toward functional corporate design in the Netherlands, evinced by the founding of Total Design, it also saw the emergence of the Provo youth movement, which emphasized individual freedom and rejected social conformity. The prevailing climate provided fertile ground for a new expressionism in graphic design; this tendency in Dutch design increased dramatically during the 1970s and 1980s. Dutch art and design has a long tradition of emphasizing the traditional values of harmony, unity, and order. Late twentieth-century designers, including Anthon Beeke (b. 1940) and the groups Studio Dumbar, Hard Werken, and Wild Plakken, pushed beyond these traditional values in their quest for individual meaning and subjective expression. Jan van Toorn (b. 1922) has been a graphic designer since 1957 and has taught in the Netherlands and the United States. From 1991 to 1998 he was the director of Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, where he developed programs in fine arts, graphic design, and design theory. Since 1989, he has
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23–40. Jan van Toorn, Mens en Omgeving (Man and Environment), poster, De Beyerd Visual Arts Center, Breda, the Netherlands, 1982. Seven montage poster designs were produced, each using the same triangular fragments of a TV image of actress Sophia Loren and her son. Van Toorn altered the reproduction on each poster by manipulating color plates and adding hand coloring. The repeated images called attention to the designer’s capability in shaping mass media and the media’s power to invent celebrity images. 23–41. Anthon Beeke (designer and photographer), theater poster for Leonce en Lena (Leonce and Lena), 1979. The image becomes a covert allusion to something not directly stated, disconcerting in its ambiguity. 23–42. Anthon Beeke (designer and photographer), poster for Een meeuw (The Seagull), 2003. The face of a woman encircled by a wreath of feathers at first appears to be the center of a flower. However, the carnival atmosphere quickly turns cynical as the face takes on the appearance of a blood-spattered specter.
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23–41
23–42
23–43
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23–43. Anthon Beeke (designer and photographer), poster for Hamlet, 2002. The skull image for Hamlet at first appears to be an ordinary interpretation of the subject, but another element is introduced as the eyes are bluntly covered with a red rectangle. Even without eyes, the skull stares at us through two white dots. Its teeth spell HAMLET and seem to be emitting caustic laughter. 23–44. Ghislain (Gielijn) Daphnis Escher, poster for the Shaffy Theater, 1974. Instead of promoting a play, this poster promotes the theater itself. 23–45. Ghislain (Gielijn) Daphnis Escher, “Dueten” (Duets) poster, 1997. Both title and subject are adroitly suggested through typography.
23–45
23–46
23–46. Ghislain (Gielijn) Daphnis Escher, poster for the exhibition Sandberg nu: Hommage aan Sandberg (Sandberg Now: Homage to Sandberg), 2004. The name Sandberg, which might be roughly translated as “sand mountain,” is represented by a mound of sand.
been a visiting professor at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island. Van Toorn’s work has inspired many expressionist designers, and he has explored means of organizing information to influence the viewer and to transmit social values. His memorable designs of calendars, museum catalogues, and posters are often assembled of intentionally provocative images and idiosyncratic font choices in unfinished montages rather than seamless compositions. His philosophy of “dialogic design” presents a critical challenge to the viewer to participate in the perception process and examine the meaning and motives of visual messages (Fig. 23–40). Anthon Beeke participated in Fluxus, a 1960s neo-Dada movement exploring conceptual and performance art, happenings, experimental poetry, and language art. This exposure helped Beeke seek unconventional solutions to visual communications assignments; he emerged as a provocateur pushing for maximum freedom of expression and thought. His posters (Fig. 23–41) often use photographic depictions of the human figure. These are frequently embellished with objects, fragmented, distorted, or altered to create jolting ambiguities, unexpected perceptual experiences, and shocking messages. Many of his works have erotic overtones. His typographic oeuvre is
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unrestrained. The visual style of tabloid journalism, handwritten titles jotted onto photographs, or even eloquent classical typography might be used and, on occasion, combined. Beeke, and those inspired by his example, define design not as a quest for ideal form or beauty but as a search for underlying truth. This search is undertaken from a philosophical vantage point acknowledging dark undercurrents running beneath the surface and in the belief that design should not avoid the true nature of the human condition by glossing over reality (Figs. 23–42 and 23–43). Like the early twentieth-century designer H. N. Werkman, Ghislain (Gielijn) Daphnis Escher (b. 1945) cannot be placed in any category. Through their simplicity and flat surfaces of color, Escher’s posters stand out from the urban surroundings where they hang, and through their quiet dignity they attract attention on crowded streets. His posters are uncompromising aesthetic statements, far removed from the mainstream of modern graphic design. With their anecdotal appeal they subtly reach the essence of the subject at hand (Figs. 23–44 through 23–46). Gert Dumbar (b. 1940) founded Studio Dumbar in 1977. First located in The Hague and then in Rotterdam, this studio has a comprehensive range, designing everything from experimental graphics for cultural clients to corporate identity programs (see Fig. 23–38) and literature. Dumbar rejects what he calls “dehumanized forms” and advocates graphic design with “stylistic durability to survive beyond its time.” As a design student at London’s Royal College of Art in the early 1960s, Dumbar developed a technique he called staged photography, consisting of still life arrangements and environments incorporating found material and papier-mâché figures and objects sculpted or assembled for the project (Fig. 23–47). These were photographed, often by Lex van Pieterson
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23–47
23–48
23–50
23–51
23–49
23–47. Gert Dumbar (designer), Lex
23–48. Studio Dumbar (Bob van Dijk),
23–50. Studio Dumbar (Dennis Koot),
van Pieterson (photographer), and
poster for Holland Dance Festival,
poster for Pulchri Studio, The Hague,
Teldesign (studio), poster for the
1995. In this poster series, graphic
End of Year Exhibition, 2002. The gal-
Mondrian collection at the Haags
forms reflect the dancers’ movements.
lery’s fall exhibition is symbolized by fruits of the harvest.
Gerneentemuseum, 1971. Dumbar’s sculptural fantasy caused great con-
23–49. Studio Dumbar (Bob van Dijk),
sternation among those who failed to
poster, “When the Well Is Dry, We
23–51. Hard Werken Design, covers
understand it as a perceptive homage
Know the Worth of Water,” 2000. The
for Hard Werken magazine no. 1,
to Mondrian’s creative process.
subject is implied through the use of a
1979, and no. 10, 1982. Experimenta-
cryptic image.
tion with images, printing techniques, and materials characterized early Hard Werken designs.
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23–52 23–52. Hard Werken Design, souvenir stamp sheet for PTT, 1988. The self-referential attributes of modern painting and literature are applied to postage stamps.
(b. 1946), in front of collage backgrounds that became part of the overall composition. Illustration, photography, typography, and sculpture were integrated into a lively visual syntax. Fragmented, sometimes complex to the edge of chaos, and layered with complex typography, many Dumbar projects caused consternation among advocates of a more ordered aesthetic. But by the late 1980s many European designers were mimicking Studio Dumbar’s approach, causing Gert Dumbar to place a moratorium on these techniques within his firm. Dumbar values the role of humor and impulse in design and believes an element of fun and play should permeate visual communications whenever appropriate. Studio Dumbar makes a conscious effort to produce innovative and provocative graphics; the goal is to achieve the level of freedom and diverse techniques usually associated with fine arts while successfully meeting client objectives. Dumbar says, “We follow our fingertips,” meaning the intuitive sense of the designer should lead the project. Teamwork and dialogue are important in the studio’s process. Dumbar is generous in recognizing the accomplishments of his staff and encourages individual approaches, as in the work of Bob van Dijk (b. 1967) (Figs. 23–48 and 23–49) and Dennis Koot (b. 1976) (Fig. 23–50). The structure of the studio is unique: there is almost no overhead or bureaucracy; designers are free to express themselves in their work. The rectangle printing format is often challenged by producing posters in die-cut shapes whose configuration is determined by the imagery. The role of enlightened clients is acknowledged by Dumbar, who says he hopes there is never a monument to Dutch designers but one to Dutch clients! In 1978 a group of Rotterdam designers launched a new monthly magazine (Fig. 23–51) titled Hard Werken (Hard Working); two years later they formed Hard Werken Design, which was more an informal association than a structured business. The group included Henk Elenga (b. 1947), who later opened Hard Werken L.A. Desk in Los Angeles, Gerard Hadders (b. 1954), Tom van der Haspel (b. 1953), Helen Howard, and Rick Vermeulen (b. 1950). Joining in a
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reaction to formalism and modernism, Hard Werken developed a relaxed, anything-goes attitude. Rejecting all styles and theories, its members sought solutions from their subjective interpretation of the problem (Fig. 23–52). Their openness to any conceivable typographic or image possibility resulted in surprising and original results. Hard Werken emphasized not just the message content but also the methods and materials used to convey it to an audience. Formal precepts governing design were suspended. Unlike the collaborative atmosphere at Studio Dumbar, Hard Werken was initially a collective of autonomous designers who could decide whether others could participate on projects. Hard Werken embraced the contemporary art scene and rejected design refinement; its work could be raw and offensive. It adhered to no fixed political or aesthetic position but embraced creative anarchy. Rejecting boundaries, Hard Werken designed audiovisual presentations, exhibitions, furniture, interior designs, lamps, and theater sets. By 1990, the group had evolved into a more structured company. Then, in 1994, it merged with the Ten Cate Bergmans design office to form a large communications firm named Inízio. Hard Werken embraced a cultural agenda; by contrast, the collaborative group Wild Plakken, formed by Frank Beekers (b. 1952), Lies Ros (b. 1952), and Rob Schröder (b. 1950) in 1977, had a definite social and political mission: it created designs for clients actively working for meaningful social or political change. The designers closely collaborated on each project. The name Wild Plakken can be translated as “Wild Pasting” or “Unauthorized Bill-Posting.” The name was thrust upon the studio in the early 1980s because it illegally pasted posters in the center of Amsterdam; Schröder was jailed several times for illegal posting. Wild Plakken accepted or rejected commissions based on the client’s ideological viewpoint; the group believed a designer should match his or her beliefs to the content of his or her graphic designs. Their work addressed such issues as racism (Fig. 23–53), the environment, abortion, women’s rights, and gay rights. Clients included trade unions, left-wing political parties, women’s rights organizations, museums, and performing-arts groups. In its formative years Wild Plakken used clear, straightforward images that might be called closed texts because viewers could only interpret them in one specific, carefully controlled way. As its work evolved, Wild Plakken offered viewers what might be called open texts, giving viewers greater freedom for imaginative interpretation (Figs. 23–54 and 23–55) by introducing surrealist imagery, photomontages using torn and fragmented images, and brightly colored shapes. Its work projects a raw power when juxtaposed against the refined photography of conventional print advertising. Wild Plakken did virtually all of its own photography because the designers then felt free to experiment in the darkroom or cut, tear, and combine the images unencumbered by the need to maintain the integrity of another photographer’s work. Wild Plakken designers believed the way a design looks should be determined by the nature and content of the subject. They thought designers risk becoming superficial or
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23–54 23–53. Wild Plakken, poster for the antiapartheid movement of the Netherlands, 1984. The multiracial unity of all women is signified by photographs split into dark and light skin color. 23–54. Wild Plakken, informational folder cover, 1988. The cover for this folder, used in Berlin to disseminate information about Dutch culture, reads, “Where Not Only Tulips Bloom.” 23–55. Wild Plakken, postage stamps for PTT: children and traffic, 1985;
23–55
Dutch trade unions, 1989; and elderly people and mobility, 1995. Color, type, and image are orchestrated into dynamic stamps. 23–56. Irma Boom, SHV Think Book 1996–1896, 1996. The 2,136-page SHV centenary book took five years
23–56
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the casting of type.
Experimental Jetset is an Amsterdam-based graphic design studio founded in 1997 by Marieke Stolk (b. 1967), Erwin Brinkers (b. 1973), and Danny van den Dungen (b. 1971). They recall being initially inspired by designers such as Wim Crouwel and Benno Wissing and consider modernism their “mother tongue.” In their work, they consistently attempt to blend the Dutch modernist heritage of the 1970s with the international postpunk tendencies of the 1980s (Figs. 23–57 and 23–58). The creativity and vitality of Dutch graphic design continues to inspire graphic designers throughout the world to push the limits of the printed page. Reinforced by a unique artistic tradition, it is the consequence of many exceptional talents as well as a highly open-minded clientele and society.
mere reflectors of fashionable trends if they are not deeply committed to the design process, clients, and content. After eleven years of close collaboration, Beekers left Wild Plakken to launch his own studio. Irma Boom (b. 1969), who specializes in making books, founded the Irma Boom design office in Amsterdam in 1991. She sees books as sculptural objects that can provide an additional aspect to a text. Published in English and Chinese, one of her most important works includes the SHV Think Book 1996–1896, which chronicles a century of the SHV (the largest Dutch trading company) (Fig. 23–56). Committed to design education, she teaches at Yale University and the Van Eyck Academy in Maastricht. Working with national and international clients in the cultural and commercial sectors, she believes effective work is achieved through a close collaboration between designer and client.
The new conceptual poster In spite of (or perhaps because of) advances in technology, print design continues to thrive in the Internet age. Some designers, such as Helmut Brade (b. 1937), remain faithful to the more traditional methods as well. A native of Halle, Germany, Brade works as a graphic and stage designer. Displaying wry humor, his colorful and highly illustrative posters effectively penetrate to the core of the subject depicted (Fig. 23–59). In addition to being a poster artist and textile designer, Gitte Kath (b. 1948) is scenographer and director at the Mill Theatre in Haderslev, Denmark. Except for a few posters for organizations such as Amnesty International, the Paralympics in Sydney, Australia, and the Umbrella Theatre in Copenhagen, Kath has created most of her posters for the Mill Theatre. Intensely meditative, the posters usually take several months to produce. Her design process involves collecting material,
23–57 23-57. Experimental Jetset, “Meet
23–58. Experimental Jetset, limited-
the Cast” movie poster for Helvetica,
edition packaging for the Helvetica
2006. The poster uses a classic mo-
documentary Blu-ray version, 2008.
tion picture slogan that also explicitly implies typography. The word cast can mean a group of actors or can refer to
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23–61
23–59. Helmut Brade, poster for Je-
23–62. Luba Lukova, “Water,” poster,
dermann (Even the Rich Die), by Hugo
2002. The message for water conser-
von Hofmannsthal, 2001. The contrast
vation is a barren lake bed that forms
of the skull and jester’s cap sardoni-
the body of a dead fish.
cally suggests the play’s title. 23–60. Gitte Kath, poster for The Chalk Circle, or the Story of the Abandoned Doll, a play for children and adults inspired by Bertolt Brecht’s The Chalk Circle. 23–61. Luba Lukova, “Peace,” poster, 2001. A medley of weapons is used to construct a dove.
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photographing it, and then introducing paint and text, the latter often her own handwriting or enlarged typewritten letters. Many of these visual elements reflect the transitory nature of life, and she has sometimes used a worn and discolored wall in her home as a background for the photographed objects. Kath approaches her posters more as a painter than as a graphic designer—they relate both to traditional still-life painting and twentieth-century assemblage. Although imbued with a poetic resonance that alludes to the essence of her subjects, her uncompromising approach inevitably requires a dialogue with the viewer (Fig. 23–60). Having received her artistic training in Bulgaria, artist and designer Luba Lukova (b. 1960) has lived in the United States since 1981. Now working in New York, she has won numerous awards, including the Grand Prix Savignac/World’s Most Memorable Poster at the International Poster Salon, held in Paris in 2001. Employing radically contrasting images (Figs. 23–61 and 23–62), her subtle and lucid statements often bluntly confront social and political issues such as war and environmental conservation. Conceptualism, a common attribute of Japanese graphic design, is profusely present in the complex designs of Hideki Nakajima (b. 1961). Laden with ambiguities, his elegant posters consist of highly abstract minimalistic and direct images of color and light. A painterly and harmonious use of space is created by blending digital imagery, linear moiré patterns, flat planes of color, and bold typography (Fig. 23–63). In “I Am Walking,” a large poster in nine sections, Nakajima subtly guides the reader through the text of a poem about walking in a forest. Makoto Saito (b. 1952) is active as a design director, architecture designer, and graphic designer. Armed with a fecund imagination, he orchestrates an arcane symbolic content that follows no previous models. Serendipity plays a prominent
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The new conceptual poster
23–63. Hideki Nakajima, “I Am Walking,” poster, 2001. This poster is a collaborative work with Ryuichi Sakamoto, a well-known Japanese musician and a winner of a Grammy Award. Sakamoto wrote the poem for this poster, and Nakajima provided a typographic interpretation of the text. 23–64. Makoto Saito, poster for Alpha Cubic Co., 1988. Saito’s expressive designs are embraced by his open-minded clients.
23–63
23–64
role as he discovers his solutions during the creative process. His 1988 poster for Alpha Cubic Co. consists of an intricately reconstructed face. With no text other than the name of the company, it proves to be both a quandary and source of intrigue for the onlooker (Fig. 23–64). It is a mistake to read too much into Saito’s pieces. He once stated, “Ten people looking at one of my posters can imagine ten different things.” So far, Saito refuses to use a computer, saying, “No matter how fast a computer can work, my imagination is much faster.” Saito’s 1999 poster “Sunrise Sunset” is an elegant and touching tribute to the late Yusaku Kamekura (Fig. 23–65). Shin Matsunaga (b. 1940) presents commonplace objects as fresh, rich, and unexpected images. Using simple geometric
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elements, he endows his images with vibrant color and a balance, warmth, and softness that seems almost spiritual. His 2002 poster for the JAGDA Member’s Poster Exhibition uses the familiar rising sun theme as a central element (Fig. 23–66). The application of layers of ethereal light is a recurring design device in posters by the Tokyo graphic designer Mitsuo Katsui (b. 1931). As with Matsunaga, the familiar circular shape is used in his majestic 1998 poster “En hommage à Yusaku Kamekura,” a design fully worthy of its subject (Fig. 23–67). Born in Austria, Stefan Sagmeister (b. 1962) received his first diploma in graphic design from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, and while on a Fulbright scholarship he earned a master’s degree from Pratt Institute in New York. After first working in New York and later as creative director for the Hong Kong office of the Leo Burnett advertising agency, he returned to New York in 1993 to found Sagmeister, Inc. He has designed graphics and packaging for the Rolling Stones, David Byrne, Lou Reed, Aerosmith, and Pat Metheny, among other clients. Sagmeister’s graphic design is consistently characterized by an uncompromising and harsh directness. On a poster for a Lou Reed album, lyrics from one of Reed’s songs are handwritten across his face like graffiti (Fig. 23–68). Werner Jeker (b. 1944) works as a graphic designer in Chatillens and Lausanne, Switzerland, mainly for cultural institutions. In his poster “Saison,” a single image is endowed with a double meaning through a simple modification, a change in color (Fig. 23–69). Jean-Benoît Lévy (b. 1959) divides his time between San Francisco and Basel, where he studied at the Basel School of Design from 1978 until 1983. Lévy is one of the few poster designers from the Basel School of Design
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23–66
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23–68
23–69
23–70
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23–71
23–72
23–65. Makoto Saito, “Sunrise Sunset
23–70. Jean-Benoît Lévy, poster for
Yusaku Kamekura,” poster, 1999.
AIGA, 2002. This poster announces
Commissioned by the Toppan Printing
the opening of nine design studios in
Company, Ltd., this poster serves as
San Francisco to local AIGA members.
a monumental homage to the late
The word seam was suggested as a
designer Kamekura.
theme, and Lévy sought imagery that implied mining. Diamonds numbered
23–66. Shin Matsunaga, “JAGDA
from 1 to 9 represent the nine design
Member’s Poster Exhibition,” poster,
studios and the quality of their work.
2003. The simplicity of the rising sun
The black-and-white photograph of
motif dominates the image.
a tearful fashion model with running makeup was taken by the Swiss pho-
23–67. Mitsuo Katsui, “En Hommage
tographer Robert Schlatter, now living
à Yusaku Kamekura,” poster, 1998.
in San Francisco. According to Lévy the tears could be caused by the heat
23–68. Stefan Sagmeister, Lou Reed
of a mine, by sadness, or by anger.
poster, 1996. “We designed a poster
The question lingers.
announcing his new album Set the Twilight Reeling,” explains Sagmeis-
23–71. Rudi Meyer, Verdi poster,
ter. “The lyrics are extremely personal.
2001. The operas of Verdi are implied
We tried to show this by writing those
by undulating lines of type in the
lyrics directly over his face.”
colors of the Italian national flag.
23–69. Werner Jeker, “Saison,”
23–72. Niklaus Troxler, poster for
poster, 2000. With recollections of
David Murrey and Kahil El Zabar,
Man Ray, in Jeker’s poster announc-
1991. The music is expressed through
ing the 2000–2001 season for the
expressionistic painted letters.
Théâtres Vidy-Lausanne, a leaf that becomes lips implies both “season”
23–73. Niklaus Troxler, “Solo Vocals,”
and “voice.”
poster, 2004. The subject, solo vocals, is represented by a single tube of lipstick.
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23–73
who remained in Basel. Combining figurative elements, frequently a face, with typography and natural or geometrical forms, his posters invite reflection and contemplation. His designs witness the rigor of his Swiss training blended with a conceptual vision (Fig. 23–70). Before moving to France during the 1960s, Rudi Meyer (b. 1943), a native of Basel, studied with Armin Hofmann and Emil Ruder at the Basel School of Design. He has taught at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs and as a graphic designer produces visual identity programs, posters, logos, exhibitions, products, and cartography. As a teacher, he has inspired a generation of graphic designers by stressing the importance of basic design principles, typographic research, and the rich tradition of French poster design. Whether typographical or image-based, Meyer’s work consistently displays a graceful elegance (Fig. 23–71). Niklaus Troxler (b. 1947) was introduced to graphic design while working as a typographic apprentice. He went on to receive formal training at the Art School of Lucerne from 1967 until 1971. He worked as an art director for Hollenstein Création in Paris before starting his own graphic design studio in Willisau, Switzerland, in 1973. An avid jazz fan, he has created many posters for jazz concerts and festivals. Equally at home with typographic and illustrative interpretations, Troxler is one of the leading forces in poster design today (Figs. 23–72 and 23–73). Beginning his graphic design training with Ernst Keller and Johannes Itten at the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Arts and Crafts) in Zurich, Karl Dominic Geissbuhler (b. 1932) completed his graphic art studies at the Kunsthochule (School of Art) in Berlin. After working as an art director for a German advertising agency, he became a freelance graphic designer. During his long career, Geissbuhler has designed over two
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23–74. Karl Dominic Geissbuhler,
23–76. Paul Brühwiler, poster for the
23–78. Holger Matthies, “Hamburger
23–79. Philippe Apeloig, poster for
poster for Maria Stuarda (Mary Stuart),
Luzerner Theater, 1998.
Sommer 2003,” poster. In this poster
the exhibition Bateaux sur l’eau (Boats
for Hamburg summer cultural events,
on Water), 2003. This poster was
2002. The A in Maria Stuarda’s name becomes her decapitated head below
23–77. Uwe Loesch, Fly By, poster,
the season is indicated by tomato
designed for a temporary exhibition in
the chopping block.
2003. A poster for an exhibition
sunglasses and the woman’s suntan.
Rouen, France, that displayed models
23–75. Paul Brühwiler, “Andere
of Loesch’s own designs curiously
of ancient barges; the typography
mingles flies with the typography.
implies how they traveled on water.
Zeiten” (Other Times), poster for Internationale Literaturtage Erlangen, 1997.
23–74
23–75
23–76
23–77
23–78
23–79
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The new conceptual poster
507
23–80. Annette Lenz, “Figures Antiques,” from a series of ten posters for Radio France, 2001. Lenz implies a contemporary interpretation of classical music by imposing a historical painting over a half-tone field.
hundred posters for such clients as British Airways and the Zurich Opera House, where he has also created notable stage designs for seasonal festivals of music and theater. As demonstrated by his poster for Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda, Geissbuhler is a master of the understatement (Fig. 23–74). In 1956, Paul (Pabrü) Brühwiler (b. 1939) began his graphic design studies in Lucerne and in 1960 continued his education in Paris. From 1965 until 1973, he lived in Los Angeles, where he collaborated periodically with Saul Bass. He opened his own studio in Los Angeles in 1969 and in 1973 returned to Switzerland, where his clients included the Swiss National Tourist Office, Swissair, Kunsthaus Zürich, and Museum Reitberg. In 1976, he returned to Los Angeles where he followed a course in cinema studies at UCLA while working as a freelance designer. He returned to Switzerland in 1979, and in 1983 he began teaching at the School for Art and Design in Lucerne, where he continues to work as a graphic designer (Figs. 23–75 and 23–76). Brühwiler’s painterly and direct approach distinguishes his singular poster designs. In the same vein, Uwe Loesch (b. 1943), a native of Dresden, Germany, provides the viewer with few clues to the meaning of his minimalist and arcane messages (Fig. 24–77). The Berlin/Hamburg graphic designer Holger Matthies (b. 1940) delights in presenting ordinary objects and situations in unusual ways: tomatoes become sunglasses (Fig. 24–78). The Parisian Philippe Apeloig (b. 1962) was educated at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Appliqués and the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs. He then worked as an intern for Total Design in Amsterdam, an experience that greatly enhanced his interest in typography. In 1985, he began working as a designer for the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, and in 1988 he worked and studied in Los Angeles with April Greiman. After returning to Paris, Apeloig began his own studio and became the art director for Jardins des modes. In 1997, he became a design consultant for the Louvre Museum, where he is currently the art director. Whether image-based or typographic, Apeloig’s designs are dominated by an expressive and decisive use of typography that not only provides information but also functions as a visual pun (Fig. 24–79). After studying design in Munich, Annette Lenz (b. 1964) moved to Paris in 1990, where she worked at the culturalpolitical design group Grapus. Having launched her own studio in 1993, she works mainly in the social and cultural
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23–80
sector, designing elegant works for public spaces. Among others, her clients include the City of Paris, the French Ministry of Culture, Radio France (Fig. 23–80), and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. Keith Godard (b. 1938) graduated from London College of Printing in 1962 and from the Yale University School of Art and Architecture MFA graphic design program in 1967. In 1968, he started Works Design Group with architect partners; since 1987 he has been the principal designer for StudioWorks and is involved with exhibition design, wayfinding, print design/publishing, public art, and information design. He has taught at the Philadelphia College of Art, Cooper Union, School of Visual Arts graduate program, and New York State College of Art and Design. Godard’s recent work could be described as “sculptural posters.” Ambitious special effects employing die cuts, stamping, and folds add a third dimension that have no precedent in poster design (Figs. 23–81 and 23–82).
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23–81. Keith Goddard, poster for Verdant Light, a University of Virginia lecture series, 2000. The V backing was printed in fluorescent green to give the impression of green light radiating from the cuts of the large letter. 23–82. Keith Goddard, poster for Currents, a University of Virginia lecture series, 2001. Currents evokes the idea of the travel of electricity and also refers to lecturers using contemporary technology in their work. 23–83. Chip Kidd, book cover for Naked, 1997. Two covers in one, this design reveals an X-ray after the dust jacket is removed. Potography by
23–81
23–82
Peter Zeray/Photonica.
23–83
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Design in Spain, Portugal, and Latin America
23–84
The conceptual book cover The designs of Charles I. (Chip) Kidd (b. 1964) for Alfred A. Knopf have helped foment a revolution in book jacket design. In a recent monograph on his work, Veronique Vienne focuses on the essence of his appeal: “By distancing the title from the image on the cover, Kidd puts a very specific kind of pressure on readers: he asks them to bridge the gap between what they read and what they see. In the process he empowers them by demanding they take control of the communication.” Like Gitte Kath, Kidd frequently uses vintage images such as old prints and family albums found in flea markets and junk shops. His visual cues are elusive and require the viewer to excavate the message. He has said, “I never really know if the readers get the subtle visual puns of my jackets, but I can’t let that inform my design to the point where I will compromise” (Figs. 23–83 and 23–84). In the late 1980s Katsumi Asaba (b. 1940), who founded the Katsumi Asaba Design Office in 1975, transformed a surviving pictographic script, Dongba (Tompa), used by the Naxi tribe in China, into a personal design language titled “Katsumi Asaba’s Tompa Character Exhibition: The Last Living Pictographic Script on Earth.” As demonstrated by the jacket for the book Spy Sorge, one of his goals has been to forge a connection between contemporary graphic design and ancient writing systems (Fig. 23–85). Founded in 1991 by Joanne Lefebvre and Louis Gagnon in Montréal, the Paprika studio maintains an ability to imbue all of its designs with a lasting elegance. The firm specializes in graphic design and strategic communications for business. This encompasses book design, identity programs, branding, annual reports, brochures, catalogues, billboards, packaging, exhibit design, signage, and Web sites. In 2008, Paprika was asked to create a new image for a Les Allusifs book series. Les Allusifs is a Montréal-based publisher
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23–85 23–84. Chip Kidd, book cover for
23–85. Katsumi Asaba, book cover for
Turn of the Century, 1998. A mirror
Spy Sorge, 2003.
image is used to depict the subject of this novel about the media-driven world of New York and Los Angeles. Photography ©Corbis/UPI.
that distributes international fiction and nonfiction books in French-speaking countries. Paprika’s covers, illustrated by Alain Pilon, achieve a sense of unity in the jacket designs; they are intellectually challenging and stand apart from those of larger and more commercially aggressive concerns (Fig. 23–86). Design in Spain, Portugal, and Latin America While one cannot define graphic design from Spain and Portugal as one and the same, these countries share analogous and at times parallel heritages, which have only recently been critically examined within the context of design. From the 1930s through the 1970s, both countries were, to a large extent, cut off from the rest of Europe by repressive governments, political turmoil, and financial misfortune. For this reason, European modernism and Russian constructivism had little influence during this era. However, this seclusion also helped engender a unique approach to graphic design. Graphic design from Spain and Portugal share similar aesthetic qualities and often ref lects a tranquil view of life: charming, warm, colorful and, at times, imbued with the sensual, the surreal, and the witty. It suggests the Iberian visual culture, including opulently textured architecture, local arts and crafts, and modernist art by Gaudí, Picasso, Miró, Dalí, José de Almada Negreiros, and Amadeo de Souza Cardoso.
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23-86. Paprika. François Leclerc (art director and designer), Louis Gagnon (creative director, Alain Pilon (illustrator), book covers for a series, Les Allusifs, 2008.
23–86
23–87
23–88 23–87. Emilio Gil, designs for the
23–89. Emilio Gil and Pablo Martín,
summary and chronology sections of
“La libertad es una libreria,” poster to
Pioneers of Spanish Graphic Design,
promote a Spanish bookshop, 2007.
2007. A book about the history of the
The upper half was designed by Gil
graphic design profession in Spain,
and the lower half by Martín. Different
this book surveys the work of fifteen
designs on the same theme, they
Spanish graphic designers from 1939
were intended to correspond when
to 1975.
placed together.
23–88. Emilio Gil, spread from Pioneers of Spanish Graphic Design, 2007. This spread highlights the work of Spanish designer Jordi Fornas (b. 1927), celebrating the illustrations and collages he uses to create book covers.
23–89
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Design in Spain, Portugal, and Latin America
23–90
23–93
23–91
23–92
23–94
23–90. Manuel Estrada, identity
23–92. Manuel Estrada, trademark for
for Fundación Repsol, 2009. The
the Emprende Fair, 2001. Intended
Repsol Foundation operates to further
for entrepreneurs and small busi-
social improvement and sustainable
nesses, this trademark is based on a
economies in the regions where the
lowercase e moving forward steadily
company operates.
and firmly.
23–91. Manuel Estrada, symbol of the
23–93. Manuel Estrada, Tauro-
Madrid Regional Traveling Exhibition,
machies, sign for a special-edition
2001. Among other missions, this
book on bulls from French publisher
organization provides towns in the
Plume, with works by photographer
Madrid region with cultural projects
Isabel Muñoz, 2010.
related to cinema, art, society, and
A former student of Glaser and Ed Benguiat (b. 1927) at the School of Visual Arts in New York, Emilio Gil (b. 1949) has been creative director of Tau Design in Madrid since its founding in 1980. Tau Design is one of the pioneering graphic design studios in Spain, specializing in visual communication and corporate identity programs. Gil is also creative director of Digital Tau, a company specializing in Web design. Clients have included the Madrid City Council, the Ministry of Education and Culture, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank Group. He has developed corporate identity programs for Natwest Bank, Centennial Carlos V and Felipe II, and Goya 96, among others. He wrote and designed the book Pioneers of Spanish Graphic Design (2007), the leading publication on this subject (Figs. 23–87 and 23–88). He teaches at the University of Salamanca, the Carlos III University, and the European University of Madrid, and he is adviser to the Board of Directors of the Spanish Association of Design Professionals (AEPD) for the Spanish Design Museum Project. Pablo Martín (b. 1964) studied graphic design at Eina Design School in Barcelona, where he has been teaching typography since 1995. Before establishing his own studio in 1990, he worked for Eskenazi & Asociados and Vignelli Associates. In 1993, he founded Grafica, working mainly in the areas of editorial design and corporate identity for both national and international clients (Fig. 23–89). Initially studying architecture, Manuel Estrada (b. 1953) and five colleagues founded the Sidecar graphics group in the early 1980s. After working for several years in advertising
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music. The brand is a five-pointed
23–94. Manuel Estrada, identity for
star that moves forward to become
Olé Imports, 2004. This Spanish com-
a human figure: the two lower points
pany was formed by two wine experts
become two legs running in front of
and focuses on distributing and ex-
a bold shadow, and the right arm, in
porting Spanish wine throughout Eu-
red, indicates the direction. The flag
rope, the United States, and Canada.
of the Madrid region includes seven
The sign shows two intertwined wine
five-pointed stars.
glasses that suggest both friendship between the two partners and a common business project.
design, Estrada opened his own graphic design studio in 1989. During the 1990s the studio expanded to a team of ten people involved with corporate design, book design and editorial projects, visual identities for museums, event graphics, signage, and architectural graphics. Striving for a balance between reflection, feeling, and intuition, Estrada works initially with words and drawings, developing and refining ideas before taking them to the computer (Figs. 23–90 through 23–94). In recent years, Estrada has directed a master’s degree program in editorial design at the Istituto Europeo di Design in Madrid, and for nine years has conducted a summer design workshop at the Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayao in Santander. He is currently chair of the Madrid Designers’ Association, which manages the Central de Diseño de Matadero in Madrid. He is a member of the Higher Council of Artistic Teaching and is executive chairman of the Advisory
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23–95. Manuel Estrada, identities
23–99. Pepe Carrio, posters for the
for the Istituto Europeo di Design
2010/2011 opera season at the Gran
(European Design Institute), 2000.
Teatre del Liceu, 2009. The represen-
Estrada’s studio created a system
tation of characters through a poetic
of colored icons for the European
dialogue between photographic im-
Design Institute, a private design
ages and objects creates a conceptual
school started in Milan that now has
identity for the new opera season.
branches in other cities, including Madrid, Barcelona, and São Paulo. The symbols represent the various disciplines taught at the institute: (top row) product, interior, and virtual design; (bottom row) graphic, digital, and fashion design.
23–95
23–96
23–97 23–96. Manuel Estrada, book covers
23–98. Isidro Ferrer, book covers for
for the series El País Aventuras (El Pais
Clásicos Universales paperback col-
Adventures), 2004.
lection, 1999–2000.
23–97. Manuel Estrada, book covers for the series Espacio abierto (Open Space) 2004–9.
23–98
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513
23–99
Council of the Ibero American Design Biennial (Figs. 23–95 through 23–97).
After first studying drama in Paris, Isidro Ferrer (b. 1963) began his work as a graphic designer in Barcelona in 1989 and formed his own studio in Huesca in 1996. His wide-ranging work includes editorial design, illustration, animation, exhibition design, and television graphics. His sculptural book covers often combine found objects with simple graphic elements resulting in whimsical, humorous, and diverse solutions (Fig. 23–98). Pep Carrio (b. 1963) heads his own studio in Madrid called Pep Carrio Diseño y Comunicación, where he creates designs for various cultural clients, including the Gran Teatre del Liceu, an opera house in Barcelona (Fig. 23–99). A graphic designer, illustrator, and visual artist, Carrio specializes in design applied to brand images, corporate communications, exhibitions, and cultural activities. In Portugal, as in Spain, graphic design in Portugal is a relatively new discipline. Although it came to the country long before the 1960s, it was only then that it came to be considered a profession in itself. Portugal was largely isolated from the political, economic, and artistic developments occurring in other parts of Europe from 1926 until the 1970s. During much of this time, Portugal was governed by the repressive
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dictatorship of António de Oliveira Salazar. Although the country experienced financial hardship during this period, the economy slowly began to improve starting in the 1950s. Real estate developers from across the globe discovered the beauty of Portugal’s shores and began buying land and building luxury resorts. By the 1960s, Portuguese designers had a new client base—the hotel industry and tourism—and all of these new ventures needed visual identities, including signage, advertising, and promotional material. During this time many Portuguese designers went to study in Switzerland, rapidly immersing themselves in the international style and bringing newly acquired skills back to Portugal. Although censorship was still very much in practice, corporate identity systems were largely considered apolitical, and their role as investments in Portugal’s growing tourist industry was deemed good for the economy. Thus, Portuguese graphic designers at last had an outlet for their creativity. Sebastião Rodrigues (1929–1997) is generally considered the father of Portuguese graphic design. His early designs reflected his research into indigenous Portuguese popular culture (Fig. 23–100). Between 1940 and 1941, he attended the Industrial School of the Marquis of Pombal, and in 1948 he began working at the studio of Manuel Rodrigues (1924–65). Beginning in the 1960s, Sebastião Rodrigues created the
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Chapter 23: National Visions within a Global Dialogue
23–101
23–100. Sebastião Rodrigues, “Visitez
23–103. João Machado, stamps for
le Portugal” (Visit Portugal) poster,
commemorating Cascais 2007 ISAF
1953.
Sailing World Championships, 2006.
23–101. Sebastião Rodrigues, cover
23–104. João Machado, “1º de
for Almanaque, 1960.
Maio” poster for the Almada municipal government, 2008.
23–102. Henrique Cayatte (art director), Mário Assis Ferreira (director), Egoísta magazine, issue 14, “Portugal,” February 2003. In this issue of Egoísta the guest writers explored the topic “Portugal: Pensar o futuro” (Portugal: Thinking the Future). The rooster, a traditional symbol of Portuguese culture, is embedded in a block of ice. Is it being frozen or is it thawing out? Is Portugal beating the economic crisis, or not? Readers were left to reach their own conclusions.
23–102
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Design in Spain, Portugal, and Latin America
identity for the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, a private Portuguese institution dedicated to the arts, charities, education, and science. The foundation maintains an orchestra and a choir, and it organizes solo and group exhibitions for both Portuguese and foreign artists. In addition, the foundation is active in publishing, especially university textbooks. It also supports projects with Portuguese-speaking African countries and East Timor and promotes Portuguese culture abroad. In 1959, Rodrigues was awarded a grant from the foundation, allowing him six months for exploring and collecting popular graphic material from the northern part of Portugal to use in his design projects. From 1959 to 1961, he was art director for the monthly magazine Almanaque (Fig. 23–101). Following Salazar’s death in 1970 and Portugal’s disastrous wars in its African colonies, the governing regime was weakened and started to crumble, leading to a peaceful revolution in 1974. Six decades of repression and dictatorship were over, and a new era of democracy and modernity flourished. Portugal joined the European Union in 1986 and in 1999 was one of the first countries to adopt the euro. Because of the country’s subsequent cultural, scientific, and economic development, it today has an increasingly service-based economy. Henrique Cayatte (b. 1957) attended the College of Fine Arts in Lisbon and early in his career was inspired by Sebastião Rodrigues. In 1990 he founded the Henrique Cayatte Studio in Lisbon, where he has been working with a large team on cultural, education, and scientific design; design for exhibitions, public spaces, and accessibility; illustration and editorial production; and signage. He also serves as a multimedia and communication design adviser (Fig. 23–102). Educated at the College of Fine Arts in Porto, João Machado (b. 1942) graduated with a degree in sculpture in 1968. In 1982 he opened his studio in Porto, concentrating on poster design, illustration, and packaging. His posters are typified by exuberant colors, a playful arrangement of geometric elements, and strong contrasts between flat surfaces and textured patterns (Figs. 23–103 and 23–104). Alva is a multidisciplinary design studio based in Lisbon, consisting of three principal designers: Ricardo Matos (b. 1974), Valdemar Lamego (b. 1975) and Diogo Potes (b. 1977). Their projects range include identities, books, posters, typography, illustration, Web sites, motion graphics, and environmental design. They are also involved in the promotion of cultural events and organizations in historic Lisbon (Figs. 23–105 and 23–106). Mexico has close to 111 million people, who speak Spanish as well as Mayan, Nahuatl, and other regional indigenous languages. European and pre-Colombian cultures are major resources for the Mexican design movement, and modern interpretations of ancient traditions have helped preserve Mexico’s cultural heritage. With energy and spirit, many Mexican designers have successfully expressed motifs and themes from their culture. In recent years, Mexico’s expanding business environment has provided contemporary Mexican graphic designers with incentives and challenges.
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23–104
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23–105
23–106
23–108
23–109
23–110
23–111
23–107
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Design in Spain, Portugal, and Latin America
23–105. Alva (Diogo Potes), visual
23–110. German Montalvo, “José
identity for Lisboa ao Carmo, 2008.
Gorostiza,” poster, 2002. This poster
Lisboa ao Carmo is a store in a histori-
celebrates one hundred years since
cal neighborhood in Lisbon that sells
the birth of Mexican poet José
products promoting the city, such as
Gorostiza.
517
T-shirts and pins, but it is considered a store for those who love the city
23–111. Gabriela Rodriguez, “I
rather than for tourists.
Don’t Need Legs if I Have Wings for Flying,” poster, 2001. This poster
23–106. Alva (Ricardo Matos, Valde-
from Mexico is an ode to Henri de
mar Lamego, and Diogo Potes), visual
Toulouse-Lautrec.
identity for Próximo Futuro (Next Future) for the Calouste Gulbenkian
23–112. Gabriela Rodriguez, Goya
Foundation, 2008. The foundation
Posada, poster, 2002. Poster for cul-
supports the development of the vi-
tural-exchange project and exhibition
sual arts in South America and Africa.
sponsored by the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Mexican Insti-
23–107. Félix Beltrán, cover of an
tute, Madrid. This poster concerns the
invitation for a graphic design exhibi-
Mexican Revolution of 1910. Spain
tion, 2001.
is symbolized by iconic imagery by Francisco Goya, once a court painter
23–108. Luis Almeida, “Cervantes
to the Spanish Crown. Mexico is
XXXII,” poster for the Thirty-second
symbolized by an engraving by José
International Festival of Cervantes,
Posada, a printmaker and cartoonist
2004. This poster won the judges’
credited with educating the general
award at the poster competition
public about political injustices and
“Premio Cervantino de Cartel” for its
the abuse of power leading up to the
technical qualities and its fresh and
revolution.
controversial message. 23–109. Luis Almeida, “Quixote,” poster, 2004; a variation on the original poster.
A number of Mexican designers, including Félix Beltrán were born in other countries. A native of Havana, Cuba, Beltrán moved to New York in 1956 to study painting and graphic design at the School of Visual Arts, the Art Students League, the American School of Art, and Pratt Institute. In 1962 he returned to Cuba, where he designed a series of social and political posters about the Cuban revolution, indigenous art, public safety, and the new economy. In recent years, Beltrán has lived in Mexico, where he works as principal designer for the Beltrán-Asociados Studio. With its architectural, structural framework, Beltrán’s graphic design follows the traditions of the international style (Fig. 23–107). Although from Mexico, Luis Almeida (b. 1946) has an international background, having studied architecture at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, industrial design at the University of Florence, Italy, and semiotics at the Sorbonne in Paris. The corporate identities he has designed include the Mexico City emblem and the National Council for Culture and the Arts, Mexico. His main work is as an editorial designer for the magazines Saber-Ver and Artes de Mexico and the journals El nacional and La cronica. As demonstrated by
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23–112
his poster “Cervantes XXXII,” honoring the Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes, Almeida’s designs are often direct and confrontational (Figs. 23–108 and 23–109). Like Almeida, German Montalvo (b. 1956) received a European education, studying at the National Institute of the Fine Arts and the Scuola del Libro, Società Umanitaria, both in Milan, Italy. His designs for the Fondo de Cultura Económico, the National University of Mexico City, the National Institute of the Fine Arts, and the Centro Cultural Arte Contemporaneo have placed him in the mainstream of Mexican graphic design. As indicated by his poster celebrating the poet José Gorostiza, Montalvo works clearly in the Polish poster tradition (Fig. 23–110). Gabriela Rodriguez (b. 1956) studied graphic design at the Escuela de Diseño del Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes. She has worked on many children’s books, magazines, posters, and contemporary art catalogues. Her whimsical designs, like Montalvo’s, are inspired by Polish poster designers such as Roman Cie lewicz (Fig. 23–111). Most recently, Rodriguez has engaged in designing for political, social, and cultural causes in Mexico. Her poster Goya Posada, designed for a cross-cultural exchange project and exhibition held in Mexico and Madrid, pays homage to two great artists from Spain and Mexico: Francisco Goya (1746–1828) from Spain and José Posada (1852–1913) from Mexico: Both are considered pivotal figures in the art of their respective countries (Fig. 23–112). The work of independent graphic designer Alejandro Magallanes (b. 1971) also has roots in the Polish conceptual realm. With overtones of surrealism, he employs collage and freehand drawing with wit and intellectual prowess (Figs. 24–113 and 24–114).
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23–114
23–115
23–113. Alejandro Magallanes, Las (a)versiones del ojo (Eyes’ (A)versions), exhibition poster, 2000. “This poster dwells on a pun: version/aversion,” explains Magallanes. “Several of my works reveal the influence of those designers whom I admire—Roman Cieslewicz is one of them.” 23–114. Alejandro Magallanes, Reflexiones en torno al libro (Reflections on the Book), exhibition poster,
23–116
2002. 23–115. Rico Lins, “Human Rights,” poster for the exhibition Artis 89, Paris, 1989.
23–117 23–116. Rico Lins, poster for Doces poderes (Sweet Powers), 1996. Poster for a film taking a behind-the-scenes look at the electoral campaign in Brazil. 23–117. Rico Lins, cover for the German magazine Kultur Revolution, February 1986.
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A new aesthetic of modern Chinese graphic design
23–118. Rubén Fontana, covers for TipoGráfica magazine, c. 2000.
23–118
Brazilian graphic designer Rico Lins (b. 1955) received a degree in industrial design in 1976 from the Escola Superior de Desenho Industrial in Rio de Janeiro. Later, he received a diplôme d’études approfondies (diploma of advanced studies) in the arts from Université de Paris VIII in 1981 and a master of arts degree from the Royal College of Art, London, in 1987. Over the years he has worked in Paris, London, New York, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo for clients such as CBS Records, Time Warner, the New York Times, the New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, MTV, Le Monde, and the Centre Pompidou. Highly acclaimed for his pioneering work in graphic design, Lins has received numerous awards from organizations such as the Society of Publication Designers and the New York Art Directors Club. Lins has taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York and the Istituto Europeo di Design in São Paulo, where he is director of the graphic design master’s program. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at solo exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. (Figs. 23–115 through 23–117). Headed by Rubén Fontana (b. 1942), the innovative design firm Fontana Diseño has been highly inf luential in increasing a public awareness of graphic design throughout Argentina. Fontana introduced typography at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, where he taught until 1997. In addition, he has lectured in graphic design at universities in Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Cuba, Chile, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Spain, and the Netherlands, and his design work is included in major collections such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York. From 1987 until 2006 he directed the international event Bienal Letras Latinas, and for twenty years he was the publisher of the magazine TipoGráfica (Figs. 23–118 and 23–119).
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A new aesthetic of modern Chinese graphic design A new aesthetic of graphic design arose in the confluence of intellectual, economic, social, and political forces that modernized greater China. Since 1980, as China has embraced international commerce, a dramatic change has occurred in design education programs, which have begun to emphasize modern Western design movements over five-thousand-year-old Chinese artistic and calligraphic traditions. Design education and practice in China has become an extraordinarily rich field, with a unique visual language for the rapidly growing environment of cross-cultural dialogue and collaboration that advances China’s objective of becoming a leader in the design industry. Two pioneers of contemporary Chinese graphic design who embrace modern design, Henry Steiner (b. 1934), and Bingnan Yu (b. 1933), continue to inspire a younger generation of graphic designers. Steiner is among the earliest Western-trained modern designers to be practicing in Hong Kong, and his work has had a significant inf luence on graphic design in the Pacific Rim. Steiner’s family escaped Nazi-controlled Vienna in 1939 and moved to New York City. He was educated at Hunter College and later at the Yale University School of Art, studying under Paul Rand, and he received a Fulbright scholarship to the Sorbonne. In 1961, he arrived in Hong Kong on a nine-month assignment as the Asia Magazine’s first design director, and in 1964 he founded the design firm Graphic Communications Ltd. in Hong Kong. Among his notable designs was a long-lasting series of banknotes for Standard Chartered Bank, developed in 1978 and modified in 1993 to include Hong Kong’s official f lower as a distinctive icon. Each banknote is based on mythical Chinese animals, giving the denominations an orderly arrangement and straightforward hierarchy (Fig. 23–120). In 1995, Steiner and Ken Haas wrote Cross-Cultural Design: Communicating in the Global Marketplace, the first anthology
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23–119. Rubén Fontana, signage for Morph, 1995. The identity system design reflects the surprising diversity of products and events happening within Morph, a bazaar for household items and gifts.
23–119
23–120 23–120. Henry Steiner, series of
23–121. Bingnan Yu, “Dream of
banknotes for the Standard Chartered
Flowers Blooming at Pen-tip,” poster,
Bank, 2003. The mythical animals
1997. Yu designed this poster for
have evolved over the three-odd
Communication, an invitational poster
decades since the designs were first
exhibition, 1997.
printed. There are some details of cultural relevance. The spherical “seethrough” features (in register on both faces) at the front top right represent the Chinese elements: water, earth, fire, wood, and metal. The historical scenes on the reverse look alternately toward the harbor and the mountains. Additionally, at the bottom of the reverse there is a set of five different latticework patterns.
23–121
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23–122
23–123
23–122. Min Wang, Adobe type library summer font catalogue cover, 1990. 23–123. Min Wang, font design, 1995. 23–124. Min Wang, “The Forbidden City,” poster and logotype identity, 1994. The Forbidden City was the royal palace during the last two Chinese dynasties, the Ming and Qing, and is a national park today.
to examine and document the accomplishments of leading graphic designers practicing for clients outside their own countries. An influential leader in Chinese graphic design, Bingnan Yu first studied art at the LuXun Academy of Fine Arts in China and continued his education at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig, Germany. In addition to being one of the earliest practitioners of modern graphic design in China, Yu is a former professor at the Academy of Arts and Design at Tsinghua University. As a teacher, he has inspired a generation of Chinese graphic designers by emphasizing the significance of traditional Chinese arts, painting, and calligraphy as well as the principles of both his Eastern and Western design education. In 1992 he became the first ethnic Chinese person admitted to the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI). In 1998, Yu received the Gutenberg Prize from the city of Leipzig for “rendering outstanding, exemplary services to the advancement of the book arts” (Fig. 23–121). A leader in both education and practice, in the Chinese embrace of Western design movements is Min Wang, the dean of the School of Design at the Central Academy of Fine Arts
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(CAFA) in Beijing. Educated at Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts, he later studied with Alvin Eisenman and Paul Rand at Yale University’s School of Art and joined Adobe Systems’ Creative Services Department in 1990. With Sumner Stone, he was a key member of the design team that developed Adobe’s first font catalogue (Fig. 23–122). Wang developed a strong cross-cultural perspective that would prove a prescient design strategy on his return to China. His ability to fuse East and West is clearly evident in his font designs for Adobe (Fig. 23–123), in the typography workshop he taught at Yale for ten years, and in the work in his design partnership, Square Two Design (Fig. 23–124). As discussed in chapter 20, Wang served as design director for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games graphics program. His skill in fusing modern Western design, traditional Chinese asthetic and cultural influences, and Olympic Game design traditions enabled the development of an extraordinary crosscultural design program. Jingren Lu (b. 1947) is one of China’s most inf luential modern book designers and illustrators. He is the principal of his own design firm, Jingren Art Design Studio, and a professor at the Academy of Arts and Design at Tsinghua University. He began his design career in the late 1970s at the China Youth Publishing House, where he became a senior art editor. In 1989, he studied with designer Sugiura Kohei at the College of Art Engineering in Kobe, Japan. Lu opened his own design agency in 1998 and has won a succession of book design awards including the Most Beautiful Book in the World award from the Graphic Arts Association of Hong Kong in 2009. In his extraordinary book designs he succeeds in creating multiple levels of texture and meanings focused on what he describes as the “five senses” of reading a book: cover
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23–125
23–126
23–125. Jingren Lu, book design,
23-127. Jianping He, poster advertis-
Flip, 2004. The book’s design features
ing Hesign Studio Berlin, 2004. The
two attached sections. The physical
numbers for the year 2004 become
structure emphasizes the design of
part of the landscape.
the books featured within. As with many of Jingren’s designs, there are
23–128. Jianping He, silkscreen
multiple entry points. Work from each
poster design for an exhibition of
major Chinese geographical area
design at the Beijing Olympics, 2008.
opens with a section divider featuring perforated flaps that peel back to reveal the area’s name. 23–126. Jingren Lu, Jingren Book Design No. 2, 2002. Two books within an incised shell case display his book designs in a perfect bound format and his illustrations in a spiral bound format.
23–128
23–127
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A new aesthetic of modern Chinese graphic design
523
23–130
23–129 23–129. Hua Jiang (art director and
23–130. Jian Zhao, book design for
designer), Chinese typeface for a
The Kite Art of Cao Xueqin, 2005.
poster for Eastern Zhejiang Culture Magazine, 2003. Eastern Zhejiang Culture Magazine is the official magazine of the Cultural Relics and Museum Association of China.
design, binding, text design, layout, and editing. His designs emphasize the book as an interactive three-dimensional object (Fig. 23–125) in which a text may unfold as a scroll as often as a single page to turn. His use of unique materials, elegant bindings, and incised cover treatments draws on China’s rich aesthetic traditions and expressively joins them with postmodern Western design style (Fig. 23–126). Among the new generation of Chinese graphic designers who embody a developing contemporary aesthetic are Jiaping He (b. 1973) and Hua Jiang (b. 1973). Jiaping first studied art at the China Academy of Art at Hangzhou. After continuing his studies at the Berlin University of the Arts he remained in Berlin, where he opened Hesign Studio. With their remarkable blend of type and photography, his posters retain the majesty and serenity of traditional Chinese landscape painting (Figs. 23–127 and 23–128).
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A graduate of the Design School, Wuxi University of Light Industry, Jiang also taught graphic design for ten years at Ningbo University. In 1998, he formed a design studio along with partner Pan Qin. Jiang is a member of the design faculty at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA). In his own design work, Jiang explores modern Chinese typography (meishuzi) and its development, basic structure, history, and calligraphic tradition. This research forms the basis of his unique working methodology, visual explorations, and creative approach toward his recent work (Fig. 23–129). Jian Zhao (b. 1966) studied at the Visual Communication Department of Academy of Arts and Design, Tsinghua University, under his mentor Jingren Lu. He currently serves as a professor at Tsinghua University and is an active graphic designer in Beijing, specializing in visual communication for several publishers. Frequently blending traditional Chinese illustrations with Chinese typography, his book designs express a harmonious refinement (Fig. 23–130). Fang Cao (b. 1956) is a professor at the Nanjing Arts Institute. Cao presents ancient Chinese themes and rich cultural symbolism in her work (Fig. 23–131). Cao’s designs reflect a complex layering of repetitive hand-drawings, musical notes, Western typography, Chinese calligraphy, and photographs collaged smoothly and inseparably together. Her work has been part of many exhibitions worldwide, including a series of exhibitions between 2000 and 2006 entitled Chinese Characters and Music at the Hong Kong Heritage Museum; Track 16 Gallery, Santa Monica; and the Zürich Design Museum. Born in Guangdong, China, Xu Wang (b. 1955) is a graduate of the Design Department of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts.
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23–132
23–133 23–131. Fang Cao, “High Mountains
23–132. Xu Wang (designer) and Zi
23–133. Tommy Li, cover and spread
23–134. Stanley Wong, “People”
and Flowing Rivers” poster, 2006.
Quan (art director), book design for
for Vision Quest magazine, no. 1,
poster series, 2007. Human body
The music implied in this poster is
Artistic Conception Writing, China
1999. The magazine, designed and
parts combine with strokes of Chinese
taken from an early method of musical
Youth Press, 2000. The book is based
published by Li, with contributions
characters to form a complete single
notation used for the gu qin (Chinese
on a collection of Chinese characters
from many Hong Kong designers,
enigmatic image.
harp). The Chinese characters refer to
and folk art. It is divided into Dragon
addressed a wide range of social and
the harmony of nature.
and Phoenix volumes and contains a
cultural topics.
mixture of graphs and patterns using paper-cuts, folk objects, woodcuts, embroidery, and architecture.
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A new aesthetic of modern Chinese graphic design
23–134
23–135
23-135. Ung Vai Meng, poster for
23–136. Victor Hugo Marreiros,
Tequila-Sangria, a cinema exhibi-
poster for Luís de Matos’s magic
tion featuring films from Mexico and
show, 1999. Marreiros uses a contrast
Spain, 2001.
of mechanical and scrawling textures to animate the image.
Between 1986 and 1995, Wang worked as a graphic designer in Hong Kong, before returning to Guangzhou and founding WX Design. His expressive designs reflect the grace and beauty of traditional Chinese calligraphy and brush painting (Fig. 23–132). Wang is also the design director of the Guangdong Museum of Art and a professor at the Design and Art College of Hunan University. Wang has edited and designed over eighty design books and magazines, including Design Exchange and numerous volumes of the book series Graphic Designers’ Design Life. Wang has received more than one hundred international design awards, including the Icograda Excellence Award and the International Biennale of Graphic Design Moscow. In his graphic design, Tommy Li (b. 1960) combines a decidedly Western and postmodern visual language emphasis with elements of Chinese traditional arts. Li incorporates layered, textured, and deconstructed digital design in his work, particularly in publication designs such as Vision Quest (Fig. 23–133), a bilingual (English and Chinese), large-format magazine he both designed and published (1999–2000). Li attended the School of Design at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He began his own design firm in 1993 in Osaka, Japan, and later returned to Hong Kong. His work has earned many awards from Chinese and international design organizations, including the One Show in New York. Another designer who embraces modern Western design is Hong Kong–based Stanley Wong (b. 1960). He graduated from the Hong Kong Technical Teachers’ College in 1980 and refers to himself as a “social worker of visual communications.”
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23–136
His designs juxtapose Chinese aesthetics and modern visual language to emphasize social messages that frequently call attention to interpersonal human relations (Fig. 23–134). He has won many awards worldwide in graphic design and advertising. His designs are in the permanent collections of Hong Kong museums and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. In 2005, his poster series on the “Spirit of Hong Kong” was one of two artworks from Hong Kong presented at the fifty-first Venice Biennale. Graphic design in the former Portuguese colony of Macau displays both Iberian and Chinese influences. Ung Vai Meng (b. 1958), a native of Macau, was educated first in Portugal and later at the Academy of Fine Art of Guangzhou, China. From 1985 until 1998, he was the designer for the Cultural Institute of Macau, and from 1999 until 2008 he was director of the Macau Museum of Art. He has also been the president of the Macau Cultural Affairs Bureau (Fig. 23–135). Victor Hugo Marreiros (b. 1960), also a native of Macau, studied painting and printmaking at the College of Fine Arts in Porto, Portugal. From 1984 until 1988, he was the art director of Macau Television and in 1990 began MARR Design in Macau. In 1990 he became art director of Revista de Cultura, the most important art publication in Macau, and that same year he became head of the Graphic Department at the Macau Cultural Institute. In 1998 Marreiros began Victor Hugo Design where his work continues to maintain a link between his Portuguese and Chinese design heritage (Fig. 23–136). In the decades since 1980, China has undergone a revolution in its design education and professional design practices to become an active participant in the modern design dialogue shared with many cultures worldwide. The Icograda World Design Congress and Design Week held in Beijing in 2009 was the first large-scale design event held in China, and it presented unique opportunities, through public forums
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23–137. Ahn Sang-Soo, poster for
23–138. Ahn Sang-Soo, spread from
23–139. Kim-jun Park, pages from
23–140. David Tartakover, poster
the Jeonju International Film Festival,
the underground art-culture magazine
the “Five Years Recycling Calendar,”
celebrating the Henri de Toulouse-
2002.
Bogoseo/Bogoseo (Report/Report),
2005–2008. Park collages recycled
Lautrec centennial, 2001. The beauty
c. 1990.
designs and adds new marks to form
of this poster comes from its minimal-
a progressive series of calendars.
ism and the tension created by the intersection of the horizontal and diagonal text.
23–137
23–139
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23–138
23–140
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The Middle East
527
23–141. Morteza Momayez, cover for Blue, A Collection of Forugh Milani’s Poetry, 1994.
and exhibitions, for a free exchange of ideas on the future of design in China. Accelerating economic and social development is producing a wealth of creativity in China and is offering Chinese designers great opportunities to advance a cross-cultural dialogue and meet the country’s stated goal of becoming a creative world leader in design. South Korea In the early 1980s, the Korean graphic designer Ahn Sang-Soo (b. 1952) designed a succession of experimental letters based on older Korean typefaces. This series was the first to deviate from the rigidity of Hangul typography, a Korean alphabet created in the mid-fifteenth century, and the square frame of Korean writing. In his poster and publication designs, Sang-Soo incorporates letters as free and playful elements (Fig. 23–137). Since 1985, he has been the art director, designer, and editor for the underground art-culture magazine Bogoseo/Bogoseo (Report/Report) (Fig. 23–138). Kum-jun Park (b. 1963) graduated from Hong-ik University’s Department of Communication Design in 1988 and received his master’s degree in advertising and public relations from the same university in 1999. From 1988 until 1998 he worked first as a designer in the public relations department of the SsangYong Group and later as the art director for the advertising agency Cheil Communications. In 1998 he founded his own design studio, 601bisang, and he continues to serve as its president and creative director. He has received numerous national and international design awards, including the New York Art Directors Club Gold and Silver Medals. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Denmark Danske Plakat Museum, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Center for Contemporary Art (Japan), and the Museum of Modern Art (Toyama, Japan). As in the pages from the “Five Years Recycling Calendar,” Park’s designs blur the border between typography and painting (Fig. 23–139). The Middle East The Israeli graphic designer David Tartakover (b. 1944) studied at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem before graduating from the London College of Printing in 1968. Since 1976 he has served as a senior lecturer in the visual communication department at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design and has been a frequent speaker at professional seminars and art colleges in Israel and elsewhere. Since 1975, he has operated his own studio in Tel Aviv, specializing in visual communications on cultural themes (Fig. 23–140). Graphic design in Iran has developed an increasingly idiosyncratic flavor. In the late 1960s, Morteza Momayez (1936– 2005), who is universally considered the father of Iranian graphic design, left Tehran to study at the Paris Decorative Arts School. While there, he was exposed to the work of his European contemporaries and was deeply influenced by the
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23–141
Swiss school of international typography and the Polish poster movement. Momayez did not seek to copy their work. Rather, he developed his own style, drawing from Iran’s distinctive visual culture. By combining Iran’s centuries-old traditions in illustration and calligraphy with new approaches to working with typography and image, he created something new and uniquely Iranian (Fig. 23–141). Momayez also did much to foster the practice of graphic design and design education in Iran. He established the Iranian Graphic Designers Society (IGDS), brought together the country’s most talented designers, involved them in education, and inspired and engaged new generations of artists. Today, the IGDS is one of the most vibrant, dynamic, and robust design associations in the world. A student of Momayez, Majid Abbasi (b. 1965) earned a degree in visual communications from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Tehran. He is part of a generation of designers who emerged after the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988), and in 1989 he opened his own studio, Did Graphics. Under Abbasi’s direction, Did Graphics became one of the most prestigious studios in Iran. Like Momayez, Abbasi has stylistically broken away from—but not abandoned—traditional approaches to Persian illustration and calligraphy. Abbasi embraces these traditions and recombines them in unique ways, often inspired by the Swiss and Polish poster schools and work from Germany and France. In his poster for Boof-e Kour (The Blind Owl) (Fig. 23–142), designed for the First Iranian Typography Exhibition,
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23–142
23–143
23–144
23–145
23–146
23–147
23–142. Majid Abassi, Boof-e Kour
23–144. Reza Abedini, film poster
23–147. Saed Meshki, cover for
(The Blind Owl), poster for the First
for Rêves de sable, 2003. The sable
Contemporary Poem, 2000.
Iranian Typography Exhibition, 2003.
cloak is created from a collage of Farsi
Sadeq Hedayat (1903–1951) and
lettering.
his literary masterpiece Boof-e Kour were the subjects of the First Iranian
23–145. Reza Abedini, poster for
Typography Exhibition.
Visual Experiments, an exhibition of his own work, 2002.
23–143. Majid Abassi, poster for an exhibition of photographs of Sadeq
23–146. Saed Meshki, book cover,
Hedayat, 2001.
1999.
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A voice from Africa
23–148. Chaz Maviyane-Davies, “Article 29,” UN human rights poster, 1996. Article 29 states that everyone has a duty to the community and the environment. 23–149. Chaz Maviyane-Davies, “Remember Vietnam,” poster, 1994. This poster refers to the use of the dangerous herbicide Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.
23–148
23–149
he arranges traditional Persian calligraphy with great restraint and a minimalist, almost Swiss, approach. The poster is also a visual pun, with blurred text creating the eyes, and crisp text the nose, of the “blind owl.” Other works, such as his poster for an exhibition of the photographs of Sadeq Hedayat (Fig. 23–143), suggest the surrealist influence of the Polish poster movement. Here he seamlessly combines iconic Persian imagery with Western-style photography. The resulting image is an arresting display of traditional Persian motifs melding into the form of a figure. The expressive typographic posters of the Iranian graphic designer Reza Abedini (b. 1967) reflect both his training in graphic design and his later education as a painter. Often combining Farsi with English or French, his posters radiate a graceful elegance. As with his prize-winning poster for the film Rêves de sable, his type and image frequently become one and the same (Figs. 23–144 and 23–145). The book covers of Saed Meshki (b. 1964) are ethereal and speak of a separate world. They transport the viewer to a spirited place and time indicative of the poetry and stories contained within. His work is painterly, yet every composition is made of individually scanned and digitally manipulated elements. Nevertheless, the work is organic and tactile and the sense of human touch is readily apparent. The incorporation of calligraphy produces an aesthetic strikingly different than that of Western design traditions (Figs. 23–146 and 23–147). A voice from Africa Chaz Maviyane-Davies (b. 1952), called “the guerilla of graphic design,” creates posters with richly metaphoric and hopeful messages. The risks he has taken in his personal life and in his work result in cross-cultural images that communicate with incisive effectiveness. Born and raised in Rhodesia,
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known as Zimbabwe since it became independent in 1980, Maviyane-Davies eventually went to London, where he studied graphic design. He has worked in Japan, where he studied three-dimensional design, and in Malaysia for the International Organization of Consumers Unions and the JUST World Trust. His professional experience in London has included time with Fulcrum Design Consultants; Newell and Sorrel Design, Ltd. and the graphic design department of the BBC. From 1983 until January 2001, he had his own design studio in Harare, Zimbabwe, creating a human rights poster series for which he has gained worldwide renown (Fig. 23–148). Maviyane-Davies believes that design is a powerful tool for social change. His last fourteen years in Zimbabwe saw a consistent loss of freedom and none of the economic improvement promised by the government of President Robert Mugabe. Maviyane-Davies has incorporated his political convictions into many of his own projects (Fig. 23–149). He originally produced the human rights series at his own expense, but it was eventually adopted by the United Nations. By the time he left Zimbabwe for Boston in 2001, he was Africa’s best-known graphic designer. The next and final chapter will address how, beginning in the 1980s, access to high-end computer systems and early generations of desktop microprocessors enabled designers to explore the digital realm. Phenomenal developments in digital technology continue to revolutionize the visual communications industry today. As the field of graphic design thus continues to expand and evolve, a process of revitalizing the very nature of visual communications is in progress. Graphic designers are now extending their profession into self-initiated and fine-arts experimentation, including a reinvestigation of past crafts such as letterpress printing. A dynamic transformation, with rapidly expanding technical capabilities, will continue to offer limitless creative possibilities.
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24 The Digital Revolution— and Beyond
24–1
24–1. Susan Kare, screen fonts for the Macintosh computer, 1984. The lowresolution dot pattern dictates the letterform design and jagged edges. 24–2. Sumner Stone, digitized data for Stone Medium b, 1985. The outline Bézier curves and filled laserprinted output are shown.
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During the last quarter of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century, electronic and computer technology advanced at an extraordinary pace, transforming many areas of human activity. Graphic design was irrevocably changed by digital computer hardware and software and the explosive growth of the Internet. Many years earlier, the Industrial Revolution had begun fragmenting the process of creating and printing graphic communications into a series of specialized steps. After phototype became prevalent during the 1960s, skilled specialists included graphic designers, who created page layouts; typesetters, who operated text and display typesetting equipment; production artists, who pasted all of the elements into position on boards; camera operators, who made photographic negatives of the pasteups, art, and photographs; strippers, who assembled these negatives together; platemakers, who prepared the printing plates; and press operators, who ran the printing presses. By the 1990s, digital technology enabled one person operating a desktop computer to control most—or even all—of these functions. New photooptical printing machines used computer-controlled lasers to photosensitize printing drums, making short-run and even individualized full-color press sheets possible. In spite of strong initial resistance by many designers, this new technology improved rapidly, inviting widespread acceptance. Computer users were empowered by greater control over the design and production process. Digital technology and advanced software also expanded the creative potential of graphic design by making possible unprecedented manipulation of color, form, space, and imagery. The growth of cable and satellite television in the last quarter of the twentieth century expanded the number of broadcast channels, inspired creative and technical advances in broadcast and motion graphics, and paved the way for consumers to embrace the power and flexibility of the Internet. The rapid development of the Internet and the World Wide Web during the 1990s transformed the way people communicate and access information, generating a revolution surpassing even Gutenberg’s in its magnitude. By the early twenty-first century, many people had become dependent on the Internet for access to information and entertainment. This technological development has continued to have widespread social, cultural, and economic implications. Technology has transformed the era of corporate communications for mass audiences into a period of decentralized media offering near limitless options
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The origins of computer-aided graphic design
24–2
for individuals. Computer graphics experimentation explored electronic techniques while churning through modern and postmodern design ideas, retro revivals, and eccentric work to create a period of pluralism and diversity in design. The origins of computer-aided graphic design The digital revolution came to the desktop of individual graphic designers as a result of affordable yet powerful hardware and software created primarily by three companies during the 1980s: Apple Computer developed the Macintosh computer; Adobe Systems invented the PostScript programming language underlying page-layout software and electronically generated typography; and Aldus created PageMaker, an early software application using PostScript to design pages on the computer screen. Apple Computer’s 1984 introduction of the first-generation Macintosh computer, based on technology pioneered in its Lisa computer, foretold a graphic revolution. The Macintosh displayed bitmapped graphics; that is, its screen presented information as dots called pixels, with 72 dots per inch (dpi) on a black-and-white screen. Its interface with the user was achieved via a desktop device, called a mouse, whose movement controlled a pointer on the screen. By placing the pointer on an on-screen icon and clicking a button on the mouse, the user was able to control the computer intuitively and focus on creative work rather than machine operation or computer programming. The first mouse, a small wooden box on steel wheels, was invented by scientist Douglas C. Engelbart (b. 1925) in the 1960s at the federal government’s Augmentation Research Center. It was called an “x-y position indicator for a display system” in the patent. A colleague dubbed Engelbart’s little position-indicator device “the mouse,” and the name stuck. The mouse made computers accessible through intuitive processes rather than tedious mathematical coding and empowered thousands of people, from accountants and writers to artists and designers, to use computers.
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531
Engelbart has been lauded as a visionary whose early innovations humanized computers by making their technology more accessible. Decades ago his research foreshadowed electronic mail systems, icon- and window-based computer operating systems, the Internet, networking software allowing several users to work on a document at the same time, and videoconferencing. Apple released software applications for word processing, drawing, and painting. Early bitmapped fonts (Fig. 24–1) were designed by Susan Kare (b. 1954), then of the Apple Computer design department. Letterform design was controlled by the matrix of dots in these early fonts. Adobe Systems’ PostScript page description language enabled printers to output text, images, and graphic elements, and determine their placement on the page. PostScript fonts are not simply made up of bitmapped dots; rather, they are stored as graphical commands and data. Type characters are generated as outlines that are then filled in as solid forms. The curved lines of the characters are formed of Bézier splines. Named after the French mathematician Pierre Bézier (1910–99), who invented them, these are mathematically generated nonuniform curves (in contrast to curves with uniform curvature, called arcs) defined by four control points. Bézier curves can create complex shapes with smooth endpoints, making them particularly useful for creating letterforms (Fig. 24–2) and computer graphics. In 1985, Apple Computer introduced its first laser printer, whose 300-dpi output of PostScript fonts enabled its typographic proofs to more closely duplicate typesetting. A controversy about resolution quality ended after the arrival of 600-dpi laser printers and high-resolution image-setters such as the Linotron, capable of either 1,270- or 2,540-dpi output. Page-layout programs made possible by PostScript permitted the design of complete pages on the screen. In 1984, a thirtysix-year-old former newspaper editor named Paul Brainerd (b. 1947) formed a company called Aldus (after the fifteenthcentury printer Aldus Manutius) to develop software enabling newspapers to produce advertisements more efficiently. In July 1985, Aldus introduced PageMaker software for the Macintosh computer. PageMaker could alter type size, choice of font, and column dimensions. It integrated text type with other elements, such as scans of pictures, ruled lines, headlines, and borders. A desktop metaphor enabled the user to create elements on the computer screen and then position these on the page in a manner similar to the traditional way elements are prepared and pasted into position for off set printing. Brainerd coined the term desktop publishing for this new method. Desktop publishing saved significant amounts of time and money in preparing pages for printing. Procedures including layout, typesetting, making position photostats, and pasting elements into position were all combined into a seamless electronic process. A comparison can be made to George Eastman’s invention of the Kodak camera. Just as photography was wrested from the exclusive use of specialists and made available to the general public in the 1880s, typography left the exclusive domain of professionals and became accessible to a larger sphere of people in the 1980s.
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Chapter 24: The Digital Revolution—and Beyond
24–3
Earlier digital hardware included digital typesetting systems, powerful electronic image processors such as Scitex systems, which electronically scanned images and permitted extensive editing, and Quantel Video and Graphic Paintboxes, which permitted precise color control and allowed images to be overlapped, combined, and altered. The LightSpeed system was a sophisticated early page-layout machine. All of these systems were very expensive and rarely available to designers for experimentation; the profound significance of Macintosh computers and software stems from their broad accessibility to individual graphic designers and laypersons. By 1990, the color-capable Macintosh II computer and improved software had spurred a technological and creative revolution in graphic design as radical as the fifteenth-century shift from hand-lettered manuscript books to Gutenberg’s movable type. An unprecedented expansion of design education and professional activity produced a larger field with vast numbers of trained practitioners. The number of individual designers and firms producing fine work rose exponentially. On the other hand, digital technology also enabled untrained and marginally trained practitioners to enter the field.
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24–4 24–3. April Greiman, poster for the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, 1986. Computer output, printed as layers of lavender, bluegray, red-orange, and tan, overlap and combine into an even fuller palette of color. 24–4. April Greiman, graphic imagery for Design Quarterly, no. 133, 1987. This poster composed of digitized images was output by a low-resolution printer.
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Pioneers of digital graphic design
24–5. Rudy VanderLans, cover for Emigre, no. 11, 1989. Three levels of visual information are layered in dimensional space. 24–6. Glenn A. Suokko (designer) and Emigre Graphics, cover for Emigre, no. 10, 1989. Traditional typographic syntax yielded to an experiment in unconventional information sequencing for a special issue about a graphic design exchange between Cranbrook and Dutch designers.
24–5
24–6
Pioneers of digital graphic design By providing designers with new processes and capabilities, new technology often enabled them to create unprecedented images and forms. While many designers rejected digital technology during its infancy and derided those designers who chose to explore it, many others embraced it as an innovative tool capable of expanding the scope of the field of graphic design as well as the very nature of the design process. Using a computer as a design tool enabled one to make and correct mistakes. Color, texture, images, and typography could be stretched, bent, made transparent, layered, and combined in unprecedented ways. Early pioneers who embraced the new technology and explored its creative potential include Los Angeles designer April Greiman (b. 1948), Emigre magazine designer/editor Rudy VanderLans (b. 1955), and typeface designer Zuzana Licko (b. 1961). Greiman explored the visual properties of bitmapped fonts, the layering and overlapping of computer-screen information, the synthesis of video and print, and the tactile patterns and shapes made possible by the new technology. In her first graphic design using Macintosh output (Fig. 24–3), bitmapped type and computer-generated textures were photostatted to a large size and pasted up through conventional typesetting. When asked to design an issue of Design Quarterly magazine for the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Greiman created a single-sheet magazine with a 61 by 183 centimeter (2 by 6 feet) digital collage executed entirely on the Macintosh computer (Fig. 24–4). She explored capturing images from video and digitizing them, layering images in space, and integrating words and pictures into a single computer file. As computers and their software became more powerful, a new spatial elasticity became possible in typography and imagery. In 1988, Greiman expressed an obligation to “take on
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the challenge of continuing forward toward a new landscape of communications. To use these tools to imitate what we already know and think is a pity.” In addition to using the new technology to make decisions about type and layout, she said, “I think there has to be another layer applied here. And that’s about ideas.” In 1984, VanderLans began to edit, design, and publish a magazine called Emigre. Joining him were two Dutch friends whom he had known at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts at The Hague and who were, at that time, also living in San Francisco. With the creation and publication of Emigre, they originally intended to present their unpublished works alongside the creative works of others. The journal’s name was selected because its founders believed that exposure to various cultures, as well as living in different cultural environments, has had a significant impact on creative work. VanderLans used typewriter type and copier images in the first issue and low-resolution Macintosh type for subsequent issues. A magazine with a printing run of seven thousand copies became a lightning rod for experimentation, outraging many design professionals while captivating those who embraced computer technology’s sense of infinite possibility for reinvigorating and redefining graphic design. Emigre’s experimental approach helped define and demonstrate the capabilities of this new technology, both in its editorial design and by presenting work that was often too experimental for other design publications (Figs. 24–5 and 24–6). In 1987, VanderLans left his newspaper design job and formed a partnership, Emigre Graphics, with designer Zuzana Licko, whose educational background included computer-programming courses. Dissatisfied with the limited fonts available for the early Macintosh, Licko used a public-domain charactergeneration software called FontEditor to create digital type-
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24–8
24–7. Zuzana Licko, digital typefaces, late 1980s. Oakland, Emperor, and Emigre were originally designed as bitmapped fonts for 72-dpi resolution. Modula and Matrix are higher-resolution versions of the latter two fonts. 24–8. Katherine McCoy, Cranbrook recruiting poster, 1989. A photographic collage of student projects is layered with a listing of polemic oppositions and a communicationstheory diagram.
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faces. Her first fonts were initially designed for low-resolution technology (Fig. 24–7) and then later converted to companion high-resolution versions as font-design software and printer resolution improved. Licko recalls the unpleasant experience of a college calligraphy class in which she was forced to write with her right hand despite being left-handed; she references this experience as a source of seminal inspiration for her original approaches to font design and complete departure from calligraphy, the traditional basis for conventional fonts. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, many art school and university design education programs became important centers for redefining graphic design through theoretical discourse and experimentation with computer technology. At Michigan’s Cranbrook Academy of Art, graphic designer Katherine McCoy (b. 1945) co-chaired the design department with her husband, product designer Michael McCoy (b. 1944), from 1971 until 1995, and it became a magnet for people interested in pushing the boundaries of design. Cranbrook has since continued to emphasize experimentation while rejecting a uniform philosophy or methodology. The faculty believes students should find their own directions while interacting with others engaged in similar searches. McCoy likened Cranbrook to “a tribal community, intense and immersive,” where she functioned as “a parade director and referee.” During McCoy’s twenty-four years at Cranbrook, the program evolved from a rational, systematic approach to design problem solving influenced by the International Typographic Style, to an approach that questioned the expressive limits of this style, in which complexity and layering, vernacular and premodern forms, and the validity of normative rules and conventions were explored. In 1989, McCoy designed a poster (Fig. 24–8) that challenged norms of college recruiting materials and demonstrated a complexity of form and meaning. Breaking away from prevailing notions of simple, reductive communications, McCoy overlaid different levels of visual and verbal messages, requiring her audience to decipher them. Edward Fella (b. 1939), a Detroit graphic designer with whom McCoy worked at the Designers & Partners studio before her appointment at Cranbrook, was a major force within the program. After serving as a frequent Cranbrook guest critic for many years, Fella attended the academy’s graduate program from 1985 to 1987 and then accepted a California teaching position. With roots in American vernacular design and early modernist typography, Fella’s experimental work became a major influence on a generation of designers. From 1983 until 1991, Fella contributed graphics to the Detroit Focus Gallery and produced flyers (Fig. 24–9) whose typography and lettering challenged the reader in the same way advanced art in the gallery challenged the viewer. He explored entropy, the disintegration of form from repeated copying, and an unbounded range of techniques, from found typography, scribbles, and brush writing to typesetting, rubdown letters, public-domain clip art, and stencils. Echoing futurism, Fella investigated the aesthetic potential of invented letterforms, irregular spatial intervals, eccentric characters, personal glyphs, and vernacular imagery. He combined these materials with
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24–9. Edward Fella, mailer for Detroit Focus Gallery, 1987. The “transparent” typography of mass communications yields to a typography that references its form, history, and production processes. 24–10. Edward Fella, announcement for a lecture, 1995. A medley of personal and eccentric letterforms is composed with connective logic and visual whimsy.
24–9
24–10
great compositional skill and often attached asides, notes, and addenda to the primary message (Fig. 24–10). Fella wryly observed, “Deconstruction is a way of exposing the glue that holds together Western culture.” By the mid-1990s, the complexity of form, theoretical concerns, and computer manipulations found in the work of early pioneers made their way into the mainstream of graphic communications. Revitalizing editorial design During the early 1990s, accelerating progress in computers, software, and output devices enabled graphic designers to achieve results virtually identical to those of conventional working methods, for the promise of seamless on-screen color graphics had been fulfilled. While designers explored the unprecedented possibilities of computers and graphics software, at the same time a renewed interest in handmade and expressionist lettering and images was growing. QuarkXPress, another page-design application, enabled designers to place elements on a page in increments of one hundred-thousandth of an inch and to kern type in intervals of one twenty-thousandth of an em (a horizontal measurement equivalent to the width of the letter m). Adobe Photoshop, an application initially developed for electronic photographic retouching, enabled unprecedented image manipulation and creation. New developments migrated from individual exploration and design education to the mainstream as editorial designers for specialized magazines applied computer experimentation to their pages. David Carson (b. 1956), a former professional surfer and schoolteacher, turned to editorial design in the 1980s. Carson eschewed grid formats, information hierarchy, and consistent layout or typographic patterns; instead, he
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chose to explore the expressive possibilities of each subject (Fig. 24–11) and each page or spread, rejecting conventional notions of typographic syntax and imagery. As art director and designer for Transworld Skateboarding (1983–87), Musician (1988), Beach Culture (1989–91), Surfer (1991–92), and Ray Gun (1992–96), Carson flouted design conventions. His revolutionary layouts included page numbers set in large display type, and normally diminutive picture captions enlarged into prominent design elements. Carson often letterspaced his article titles erratically across images or arranged them in expressive rather than normative sequences. He also required his reader to decipher his message by slicing away parts of letters. Carson’s text type often challenged the fundamental criteria for legibility. He explored reverse leading, extreme forced justification, text columns jammed together with no gutter, text columns the width of a page (and, on at least one occasion, a double-page spread), text with minimal value contrast between type and the image or color underneath, and text columns set in curved or irregular shapes (Fig. 24–12). White display type placed over text covered some of the words, but the text could still be understood. Writing and subject matter receive Carson’s careful attention, for his designs emerge from the meaning of the words, or comment on the subject, as he seeks to bring the layout into harmony. Unconventional treatment of images included “unnatural” cropping to express content. Although he was viewed as the epitome of the computer revolution, Ray Gun 14 (Fig. 24–13) was the first magazine Carson sent to the printer as electronic files. Before that he had generated elements by computer, then prepared camera-ready art on boards. Carson became quite controversial during the early 1990s. While he served as powerful inspiration for many young designers, he angered many others who believed he was crossing the
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24–11. David Carson (art director) and Pat Blashill (photographer), “Hanging at Carmine Street,” Beach Culture, 1991. Responding to the title of an editorial feature on a public swimming pool, Carson was inspired to “hang some type.”
24–11
24–12. David Carson (art director) and John Ritter (photographer), “Is Techno Dead?,” Ray Gun, 1994. Text type and spatial intervals join with computer-manipulated photographs in a rhythmic melody of white and dark shapes.
24–12 24–13. David Carson (art director) and Chris Cuffaro (photographer), “Morrissey: The Loneliest Monk,” Ray Gun, 1994. The unusual photographic cropping and deconstructed headline convey the musician’s romanticism and mystery.
24–13
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line between order and chaos. Carson’s typography was decried and denounced, but as he and others pushed their work to the edge of illegibility, designers discovered that many readers were more resilient than they had previously assumed, noting that messages could often be read and understood under less than ideal circumstances. Film and video techniques informed Carson’s magazine designs, for the hierarchical and regularized structure of page design in his work yielded to a shifting, kinetic spatial environment where type and image overlap, fade, and blur. Disparate visual and verbal elements jostle and collide in space the way sound and image bump and shove in film and video. Carson consciously made his pages cinematic by letting articles and headlines flow from spread to spread and by wrapping pictures around the edge of the page onto the other side. During Carson’s tenure as art director of Ray Gun magazine, he provided a rare open forum for major illustrators and photographers, introducing new artists and turning a half-dozen pages over to readers’ illustrations for song lyrics. This populist gesture recurred as zines, self-published personal magazines using desktop-publishing software and cheap printing or copier reproduction, began appearing in magazine racks. Carson left Ray Gun in 1996 and applied his approach to print and other media communications for mass-media advertisers such as Coca-Cola and Nike. He believes one should not mistake legibility for communication, because while many highly legible traditional printed messages offer little visual appeal to readers, more expressionist designs can attract and engage them. After art-directing Texas Monthly and Regardie’s, Fred Woodward (b. 1953) became art director of the semimonthly rockand-roll magazine Rolling Stone in 1987; Gail Anderson (b. 1962) became deputy art director later that year. As intuitive designers, Woodward and Anderson tried to match typefaces and images to the content. Rolling Stone’s tradition of editorial and graphic excellence (see Fig. 19–45) dated to its 1967 inception, so pressure to compete with this legacy prevailed. A turning point occurred when Woodward reinstated the Oxford rules (one name used for multiple-line thick-and-thin
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24–14. Fred Woodward (art director and designer) and Andrew Macpherson (photographer), “Sinead O’Connor…,” Rolling Stone, 1990. This breakthrough layout used largescale display type over two pages as a dynamic counterpoint to the photographic portrait.
borders) found in the magazine’s earlier periods. He felt these borders gave him great license, almost as though anything he put within them would look like Rolling Stone. The magazine had a Phototypositor and hundreds of typefaces; Woodward added to this stock and made audacious typography a hallmark of his work. A breakthrough design (Fig. 24–14) used large-scale type and a full-page photograph to make a strong visual statement about singer Sinead O’Connor. This layout changed the look and feel of Rolling Stone, for Woodward felt challenged to build on it. Text pages were punctuated by expansive double-page opening spreads juxtaposing full-page portraits opposite title pages dominated by display type; frequently these had little or no text. Content was expressed through unexpected selection, scale, and placement of type. Although the magazine converted to Macintosh computers in the early 1990s, Woodward sought for the publication a handmade quality. Rolling Stone used a wide range of fonts, freely exploiting not only digital manipulation but calligraphy, hand-lettering, found type, and graphic entropy achieved by running type through a copier many times. Saying that he preferred never to use a typeface more than once, Woodward expressed an interest in dynamic change and in creating a publication that constantly reinvented its design in response to content. Figure 24–15 demonstrates how the typeface, its treatment, the color palette, and the image all emerged from associations and interactions with the article topic.
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24–15. Fred Woodward (art director), Gail Anderson (designer), and Matt Mahurin (photographer), “The Making of the Soviet Bomb,” Rolling Stone, 1993. Blocky sans-serif letters evoke Russian constructivism, while reversed Bs, Rs, and a K connote the Cyrillic alphabet used in Russia. 24–16. Fred Woodward (art director), Geraldine Hessler (designer), and David Cowles (illustrator), “Man of the Year: David Letterman,” Rolling Stone, 1995. Visual cohesiveness between type and image is achieved, as both are constructed from broad flat shapes of interlocking color.
24–15 24–17. Erik Adigard/MAD (designer), John Plunkett, Barbara Kuhr, (art directors), Wired magazine contents spread with publishing mission, premiere issue, March 1994. Publisher Louis Rossetto’s manifesto of Wired’s editorial mission was conveyed by the text of the opening paragraph of Marshall McLuhan’s 1967 book, The Medium Is the Massage. 24–18. John Plunkett, Barbara Kuhr (designers and art directors), Wired magazine, front-of-book spread. The “Electronic Word” section used layered form, with text often running over layers of images to express the multidimensional content of the Internet and “shape” the readers’
24–16
experience. 24–19. John Plunkett, Barbara Kuhr (designers and art directors), Wired magazine feature spread. Photograph of David Byrne by Neil Selkirk. Postmodern text designs and florescent colors signaled a new paradigm for print communication about the new electronic media.
24–17
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24–18
24–19
Computer software allowed designers to control type interactively (Fig. 24–16) by changing the scale, color, and overlapping of forms until a dynamic equilibrium was achieved. The software gave illustrators and photographers the latitude and openness to achieve their finest work. In the mid-1990s, as the U.S. economy recovered from a devastating recession, a new cultural paradigm was emerging: personal computers and the Internet were launching the information age. The magazine that would give voice to, and act as a virtual roadmap of, the new “digital generation” was Wired. WIRED magazine’s design team, John Plunkett (b. 1952) and Barbara Kuhr (b. 1954), principals of Plunkett + Kuhr located in Park City, Utah, envisioned a magazine that would do for the emerging information highway what Rolling Stone had done for rock and roll a generation earlier: define it, explain it, and make it indispensible to the magazine’s readers. Plunkett and Kuhr came to Wired, a San Francisco publication, via Paris, France, where they had met the magazine’s founding publisher, Louis Rossetto, in 1984. In 1991, Kuhr designed a color-xeroxed prototype for WIRED, and after much searching for funding by Rossetto and his partner Jane Metcalf, Wired was born in 1994 (Fig. 24–17). Plunkett imagined the design problem as one of finding a way to use the convention of ink on paper “to report on this emerging, fluid, nonlinear, asynchronous, electronic world.” The pulse of the information age was presented in a decidedly nonlinear fashion, with florescent and PMS inks used rarely, if ever, in magazine publishing. “Electronic Word,” an eight-page front-of-book section of news and products (Fig. 24–18) was often cited as difficult to read but was, in fact, a layered design meant to emulate the emerging visual nervous system of the Internet, with its often overlapping and simultaneous information streams. The design was decidedly influenced by Quentin Fiori’s 1967 design for Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium Is the Massage. Feature article designs, clearly postmodern, used a wide range of edgy fonts in headlines (Fig. 24–19). Wired’s designers soon ordered their own text font, Wiredbaum, designed by Matthew Carter (b. 1937), and based on the modern serif font Walbaum. There was no other magazine that looked like Wired. The timing was perfect;
following close on the heels of the widespread introduction of the Internet, Wired’s machine-aesthetic design debut was an overnight success. Kit Hinrichs (b. 1941), a “visual storyteller,” graduated from the Art Center College of Design in California in 1963 and worked in a variety of New York design offices for three years before becoming a design consultant. In 1972, he founded Hinrichs Design Associates, which focused on reinterpreting the annual report with a concentration on the character of particular companies. In 1976 he began Jonson, Pedersen, Hinrichs & Shakery, a designers association situated on both the East and West Coasts of the United States. In 1986, he became a partner at Pentagram, and his organization became Pentagram’s San Francisco office. His editorial work is informed by his appreciation for typefaces and their designers, including those practicing in the predigital and postdigital revolution. Having worked closely with printers throughout decades of changes in technology and advancement in the industry, he has a deep understanding of the possibilities of print media. His expertise in both typography and printing yields exceptional product in the field of editorial design. In 1995 he cofounded @issue: The Journal of Business and Design with the Corporate Design Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the role of design in business. The Corporate Design Foundation recognized the need for (and benefits of) integration of all areas of design—including identity, print design, Web design, “new” media, product design, and architectural design—into brand and business strategy; @issue served as a major vehicle for promoting this vision. Hinrichs continues as its art director today (Fig. 24–20). His designs are distinguished by a keen understanding of the narrative and abundant interpretations on a theme; all covers of @issue, for example, explore and reinvent representation of the human face. A graduate of the Cooper Union School of Art in New York, Abbott Miller (b. 1963), together with Ellen Lupton (b. 1963), began the multidisciplinary studio Design/Writing/Research in 1989. Initiating the concept of “designer as author,” they developed a procedure through which content and form evolved in tandem, with one enhancing the other.
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24–20. Kit Hinrichs (Pentagram), @issue magazine, c.1997–2003. In these disparate designs, the unifying element becomes the masthead itself. 24–21. Abbot Miller, “How to Pass, Kick, Fall and Run,” 2wice magazine, 2007. This issue was dedicated to Merce Cunningham’s dance of the same name. Working closely with Cunningham, Miller transformed words and movements into a visual interpretation of the issue’s content.
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24–22. Martin Venezky/Appetite Engineers, cover of the Sundance Film Festival Identity and Film Guide, 2001. 24–23. Martin Venezky/Appetite
Venezky has taught typography at the California College of Arts in San Francisco since 1993. In 1997, he established the San Francisco–based firm Appetite Engineers. In the same year, he was included in ID magazine’s list of most influential designers, and in 2001, a retrospective of his work was held at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Engineers, double-page spread from the Sundance Film Festival program, 2001.
In 1999, Miller joined Pentagram’s New York office, where he heads a group working with books, magazines, and other editorial endeavors. His work on 2wice magazine, a biannual publication devoted to the visual and performing arts, further explores his dynamic union of form and the written word (Fig. 24 –21). Martin Venezky (b. 1957) earned his master’s degree at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1993, a time when the design industry—and graphic design education—had one foot in more traditional modes of production and one foot in the emerging digital technologies of the time. As mentioned earlier, Cranbook’s graphic design department, under the direction of Katherine McCoy, emphasized invention and encouraged students to develop their own design philosophies and methodologies. Students often worked with both hand tools and digital materials, combining them in the creation of experimental work. Venezky’s Cranbrook education still informs his work today. He is intrigued by patterns, rhythm, and the structural qualities of letterforms; he often uses collage material, digital images, and altered or distorted type in his work, which skillfully combines handwork with technology. His most influential work includes designs for the Sundance Film Festival (Figs. 24–22 and 24–23), Reebok, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Chronicle Books, Princeton Architectural Press, and Blue Note Records.
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The digital type foundry Early digital type-design systems, such as the pre-PostScript Ikarus system used in the 1980s by typesetting machinery manufacturers, were very expensive. When font-design software for desktop computers—for example, Fontographer— became available, it enabled designers to design and market original typefaces as electronic files on computer disks, with significant reductions in the high cost of designing and distributing fonts. A virtual explosion in the release of new typefaces occurred in the 1990s, as large type vendors were joined by independent type manufacturers. Adobe Systems became a prolific and influential digital type foundry. An early type family developed for its PostScript page-description language was Stone (Fig. 24–24), designed by Sumner Stone (b. 1945). Trained as both a calligrapher and a mathematician, Stone was type director of Adobe Systems before opening his own type foundry in 1990. The Stone family has three versions—serif, sans-serif, and informal—that share basic letterform proportions and structure. Each version has three roman and three italic fonts, for a total of eighteen typefaces in the family. At that time, reproduction quality of 300-dpi laser printers was a major factor for consideration in the type family’s character designs. Since the release of Stone, advances in technology have made possible the design of “superfamilies” of type, such as Stone’s Magma, which has forty-eight variants within the family. In the past, when designers developed a typeface for a proprietary system such as Linotype or Monotype, they took the specific nature of the typesetting equipment into account.
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24–24
24–26
24–25
24–24. Sumner Stone, the Stone
24–27. Robert Slimbach and Carol
type family, 1987. This typographic
Twombly, Myriad, a two-axis multiple-
arrangement by Min Wang shows the
master font, 1990. From left to right,
harmony of the serif, sans-serif, and
the set width of the characters goes
informal versions.
from condensed to extended; from top to bottom, the stroke weight
24–25. Carol Twombly, typefaces
becomes thicker.
Charlemagne, Lithos, and Trajan, 1989. The inscriptional spirit of the
24–28. Emigre fonts include P. Scott
ancient world is translated into the
Makela, Dead History, 1990; Jonathan
digital realm.
Barnbrook, Exocet, 1990; Jeffrey Keedy, Keedy Sans, 1989; Frank
24–26. Robert Slimbach, typefaces:
Heine, Remedy, 1991; Rudy Vander-
Adobe Garamond, 1989; Myriad
Lans, Suburban, 1994; Barry Deck,
(designed with Carol Twombly) and
Template Gothic, 1990; and Zuzana
Minion, 1990; Caflisch script, 1993;
Licko, Totally Gothic, 1990, Filosofia,
Poetica, 1992; Adobe Jenson, 1996;
1997, and Mrs Eaves, 1996.
and Cronos, 1997.
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Contemporary typeface designers create fonts adaptable for use on many output devices, including low- and high-resolution display screens, inkjet and high-resolution printers, as well as output systems that do not yet exist. Moreover, the environment in which type is used has expanded dramatically, as individuals in many fields, not just designers and typesetters, make typographic decisions and create typeset documents. Carol Twombly (b. 1959) and Robert Slimbach (b. 1956) emerged as outstanding staff typeface designers at Adobe, creating original designs and respected digital adaptations of classic typefaces. Twombly’s typefaces include three masterful families (Fig. 24–25) inspired by historical lettering. These were the first three display fonts in the Adobe Originals type program, a series of new designs created for digital technology. Charlemagne is freely based on the decorative capitals used as versals and titling in Carolingian-era illuminated manuscripts. Lithos was inspired by the monoline simplicity and even-textured economy of Greek stone inscriptions, but Twombly transformed these carved letters into a highly original family of five weights, each with inventive characters and a distinctive appearance. After its release, Lithos was adopted for on-screen graphics by the MTV cable-television channel and became wildly popular. The inscription on Trajan’s Column (see Fig. 2–17) has inspired numerous fonts, including Twombly’s version. Her font closely paraphrases the source, but the conversion from stone to a typeface required a less heavy N, a bolder S, and more prominent serifs. A master calligrapher, Slimbach seeks inspiration from classical typefaces as he designs text faces for digital technology. He also creates vibrant fonts based on calligraphy and handlettering (Fig. 24–26). Extensive research and documentation combined with meticulous craft have resulted in typefaces fully faithful to the originals. Slimbach’s fonts are hailed for maintaining the spirit of the original while making adjustments and refinements appropriate to digital technology.
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In 1992, Adobe released its first multiple-master typefaces. Two or more master designs combined to generate an extensive sequence of fonts. The master designs determined the range of fonts that could be generated through changes in a design axis. The design axis controlled weight, determined by stroke thickness and the resulting ratio of black form to white background; width, determined by making the letters wider (expanded) or narrower (condensed); style, in which visual attributes, ranging from no serifs to large serifs or wedge-shaped serifs to slab serifs, were altered; and optical size, involving subtle adjustments in proportion, weight, spacing, and contrast between thick and thin elements, optimizing legibility and design. The optical size axis was an important consideration. During the phototype era, one set of master characters was drawn for use in all sizes, even though small text characters needed sturdier serifs and heavier thin strokes than large display type sizes. Myriad, a two-axis sans serif (Fig. 24–27), was one of the first multiple master fonts. Twombly and Slimbach executed the actual drawing and digitization over a two-year period. Many cottage-industry type foundries vaulted into existence around the globe, owned and operated by independent designers and entrepreneurs who were empowered by the new technology to create and distribute their original typefaces. A rift arose between designers who believed the traditional values should be maintained and designers who advocated experimentation and even eccentricity. Quite often, this split formed along generational lines. Young designers were not trying to expand the range within existing categories of typefaces (for example, the way Univers extended the range of sans-serif types) (see Fig. 18–14) or create new decorative and novelty types; rather, they sought to invent totally new kinds of typefaces. These fonts could not be evaluated against proven typographic traditions.
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By 1990, Emigre Fonts began receiving many idiosyncratic and novel fonts from outside designers. Licko and VanderLans recognized the inherent formal inventiveness and originality of many of these submissions and began to license and distribute the designs. Often these fonts proved extremely controversial (Fig. 24–28), even as they were rapidly adopted and extensively used in major advertising campaigns and publication designs. Later in the decade Licko designed two significant revivals: Mrs Eaves, an exemplary interpretation of John Baskerville’s eighteenth-century transitional fonts (see Figs. 8–14 through 8–17), and Filosofia, which captures the spirit of modern-style fonts (see Figs. 8–23 and 8–24) while actually resolving some of the legibility issues inherent in the eighteenth-century originals. The digital type foundry decentralized and democratized the creation, distribution, and use of type fonts. In the 1990s access to typography increased, and experimental and novelty typefaces proliferated. Excellent and mediocre versions of traditional typefaces were released, and the glut of new designs included unprecedented innovations along with ill-conceived and poorly crafted fonts. From 1955 until 1957, London-born Matthew Carter (b. 1937) learned to cut punches for metal type by hand at the type foundry of the Enschedé printing house in the Netherlands. For well over forty years, Carter has continued to design scores of typefaces as typographic technology has evolved from metal type to phototype and digital type. Regarded by many to be the most important type designer of modern time, his work is used daily by millions of people. In 1960 he visited New York, where he was greatly inspired by the advanced, inventive typography of Herb Lubalin and others in the New York graphic design world. Upon returning to London, Carter produced a number of sans-serif faces with Alan Fletcher, Colin Forbes, and Bob Gill.
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24–29
24–30
24–31
24–29. Matthew Carter, typeface
24–31. Laurie Haycock Makela and
designs: Galliard, 1978; Mantinia,
Matt Eller, Walker Art Center graphics,
1993; Sophia, 1993; and Big Caslon
1995–96. Early applications of the
CC, 1994.
Walker typeface system explored only a small portion of its infinite range of
24–30 Matthew Carter, Walker typeface, 1995. Snap-on serifs and other variables extend the formal range.
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possibilities.
During an association with Linotype from 1965 to 1981, Carter’s designs included the ubiquitous Bell Centennial (1978), created for early high-speed digital and cathode ray tube (CRT) technology. It was designed for outstanding legibility in telephone directories using small type on coarse newsprint. After cofounding and directing the type-design activities of the Bitstream digital foundry from 1981 to 1992, Carter formed Carter & Cone Type of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Carter has the ability to combine classic qualities with modern aesthetics and produces outstanding fonts that make profound references to earlier models (Fig. 24–29). Galliard, designed for Mergenthaler Linotype in 1978 and issued in four weights with italics, is a masterful adaptation of a sixteenthcentury design by Robert Granjon. Mantinia is a titling face inspired by painted and engraved capital letters by the Renaissance painter Andrea Mantegna. Sophia is an original display typeface inspired by hybrid alphabets of capitals, Greek letterforms, and uncials from sixth-century Constantinople; it contains ten joining characters that fuse with other letters to form ligatures. While there are many twentieth-century revivals of William Caslon’s text types, his vigorous and somewhat eccentric display types had not been redesigned for digital typesetting until Carter released his Big Caslon CC. Matthew Carter’s typeface Walker (Fig. 24–30), designed for the Minneapolis-based Walker Art Center, provides a striking example of expanding typographic possibilities. Sturdy sansserif capitals have a series of five add-on serifs Carter called “snap-on (née Deputy) serifs,” which can be attached at will to the vertical strokes of each letter; further, these are available in a variety of widths. Carter also designed a series of ruled lines running over, under, or both under and over the letters,
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The digital type foundry
24–32. Matthew Carter, Yale Design,
24–35. Gerard Unger, Capitolium
roman and italic, 2004.
type family, 1998. Unger designed
545
this typeface for use by the Roman 24–33. Matthew Carter, Yale Adminis-
Catholic Church for its jubilee in 2000.
trative, roman and italic, 2004. 24–34. Matthew Carter, Yale Street, 2004.
linking their forms into a dynamic unity. Of the basic letterforms, Carter said, “I think of them rather like store window mannequins with good bone structure on which to hang many different kinds of clothing.” Ligatures and alternate characters complete a character set, allowing the Walker Art Center to modulate forms to suit the message at hand (Fig. 24–31). The typeface, as it functions through various permutations, becomes the corporate identity. Laurie Haycock Makela (b. 1956), Walker’s design director from 1991 until 1996, and Matt Eller (b. 1968), a senior designer who became design director in 1996, used the Walker system to achieve a freedom of typographic expression appropriate to a center for art, design, and performance. In 2004, Carter designed Yale, a signage typeface for Yale University, and refined the identity typeface for the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Yale was inspired by a Venetian typeface that first appeared in Pietro Bembo’s De Aetna, published by Aldus Manutius in 1495–96. Although it was initially designed for signage, the new version now includes roman and bold italic fonts appropriate for print and the Web. The new typeface is indicative of Yale University’s deep-rooted commitment to fine typography, while contributing to Yale’s contemporary graphic identity (Figs. 24–32 through 24–34). In September 2010, Matthew Carter made history by being the first type designer to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, which is commonly known as a “genius grant.” Typeface design has long been an integral component to graphic design curricula in Europe, most notably at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague, and the University of Reading in England. Gerard Unger (b. 1942) studied graphic design, typography, and type design from 1963 to 1967 at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. A freelance designer since 1975, he is currently a visiting professor at the University of Reading’s Department of Typography and Graphic Communication. He also taught at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy until January 2007. In September 2006 he was appointed professor of typography at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, a position that he currently holds. Unger’s graphic design work includes stamps, coins, magazines, newspapers, books, corporate identity, and many typefaces. In 1984, at a relatively early stage in his career, he was awarded the prestigious H. N. Werkman Prize for his typographic work, especially for his digital type designs and for his monumental contribution in reconciling technology and typographic culture (Fig. 24–35).
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24–32
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24–34
24–35
Frank Blokland (b. 1959), one of the many students of the brilliant designer and teacher Gerrit Noordzij (b. 1931), studied graphic and typographic design at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague from 1978 until 1982. Blokland lucidly expressed his ideas on typography with this statement: “Typography means more than bringing order to the passing on of information; it means elevating to the sublime the mould in which the process of passing on is cast.” During the 1980s, Blokland was responsible for the lettering on important Dutch monuments, including the Westerkerk in Amsterdam. Following years of groundwork, he established the Dutch Type Library (DTL) in 1990, currently the largest producer and publisher of digital typefaces in the Netherlands. Soon afterward, he di-
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24–36
24–37
rected the development of DTL FontMaster, a set of utilities for professional font production developed by DTL and URW++. Blokland’s numerous typeface designs include DTL Documenta, DTL Documenta Sans, DTL Haarlemmer (based on drawings by Jan van Krimpen), DTL Haarlemmer Sans, and DTL Romulus (also based on Van Krimpen originals) (Fig. 24–36). When Noordzij retired from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 1987, Blokland was the first of his former students chosen to succeed him. As senior lecturer, Blokland now teaches writing, letter and type design, and font production in the graphic design department. Petr van Blokland (b. 1956) and Erik van Blokland (b. 1967) also studied under Noordzij at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. After graduation, Petr van Blokland worked for Total Design (now Total Identity) in Amsterdam and Studio Dumbar in The Hague. Since 1980 he has been designer and partner in Buro Petr van Blokland + Claudia Mens in Delft. A brilliant addition to the Noordzij legacy, he has taught at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts since 1988 (Fig. 24–37). Erik van Blokland first collaborated with his classmate Just van Rossum (b. 1966) under the name LettError in Berlin. After experimenting with computer-aided type design, they designed Beowolf, released by FontShop in July 1990. Erik Van Blokland now lives in The Hague, working in type, illustration, magazine, corporate, interactive, and Web design. Lacking formal training in what would later be his chosen profession of type design, Erik Spiekermann (b. 1947) studied English and history of art in Berlin. His type designs include FF Meta, FF MetaSerif, ITC Officina, FF Govan, FF Info, FF Unit, LoType, Berliner Grotesk, and many corporate typefaces. In 1979 he established MetaDesign, the largest German
design firm, which now has offices in Berlin, London, and San Francisco. Corporate clients have included Audi, Skoda, Volkswagen, Lexus, and Heidelberg Printing. In addition, there have been signage projects for the Berlin transit system and the Düsseldorf airport. In 1988, he founded FontShop, a firm specializing in creating and distributing electronic fonts. Spiekermann left MetaDesign in 2001 and is currently a partner in Edenspiekermann, which has Berlin, Amsterdam, London, and San Francisco offices. His font family for Nokia was released in 2002, and in the following year the Royal Academy of Fine Arts at The Hague presented him with the Gerrit Noordzij Award. In 2007 he was appointed to the board of directors at Microsoft, where he is currently director of fonts. Ralph Oliver du Carrois (b. 1975), a Berlin-based graphic, product, and type designer, graduated in 2004 from the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung (State College of Design) in Karlsruhe. Beginning in 2000, he worked for different companies or agencies before founding the Berlin studio Seite4 in 2003, focusing mainly on corporate and type design. In 2008 he collaborated with Erik Spiekermann and Erik van Blokland on the design of the Axel type family for FontShop (Fig. 24–38). Jonathan Hoefler’s (b. 1970) work includes highly original typeface designs for Rolling Stone, Harper’s Bazaar, the New York Times Magazine, Sports Illustrated, and Esquire. In 1989 he began the Hoefler Type Foundry; when he became a partner of Tobias Frere-Jones (b. 1970) in 1999, the Hoefler Type Foundry was transformed into Hoefler & Frere-Jones. Tobias Frere-Jones, a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, worked for the Boston-based firm Font Bureau, Inc. for seven
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The digital type foundry
547
24–38
24–39
24–36. Frank Blokland,
years. In 1996 he joined the faculty at the Yale University graduate graphic design program, where he continues to teach typeface design today. The designer of over five hundred typefaces, Frere-Jones was the first American to be awarded the Gerrit Noordzij Prize by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts at The Hague for his role in type design and type education (Fig. 24–39). The advances in digital type design have allowed for the mechanization, stylization, and standardization of traditionally handwritten letterforms and calligraphy. In recent years, there has been great interest in the design of font families that include not only characters from the Roman alphabet, but from Cyrillic, Greek, and Arabic alphabets as well. Nadine Chahine (b. 1978) graduated from the American University of Beirut with a degree in graphic design, and during her studies there she became interested in Arabic typography. In 2003 she received a master’s degree in typeface design from the University of Reading, where she studied under Gerard Unger and the renowned French type designer Jean-François Porchez (b. 1964). While studying there, she concentrated on congruous relationships between Latin and Arabic scripts. Today she works at Linotype GmbH in Germany, designing custom Arabic fonts for international clients. Her typefaces include Koufiya (a dual-script font family, Latin and Arabic) (Fig. 24–40), Arabic versions of Latin typefaces, such as Frutiger Arabic (Fig. 24–41), Neue Helvetica Arabic (Fig. 24–42), and Palatino Arabic, as well as new Arabic fonts, including Janna and Badiya.
DTL Haarlemmer, 2002. 24–37. Petr van Blokland, Proforma, c. mid-1980s, digital version mid-1990s. 24–38. Erik Spiekermann, Erik van Blokland, Ralph Oliver du Carrois, Axel family, 2009. Axel is a family of simple, economical fonts designed for use in constricted spaces such as tables and spreadsheets. Axel fonts are highly legible, so similar characters are distinguishable from one another (l, i, I, 1, 7; 0, O; e, c). 24–39. Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones, Gotham typeface, c. 2000.
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24–40. Nadine Chahine, Koufiya
24–43. Pat Gorman of Manhattan
typeface, designed in 2003 and
Design, MTV press kit cover, 1982.
released in 2008. This is the first
Randomly generated color combina-
typeface to have matching Arabic
tions were selected and composed
and Latin parts created simultaneously
in a repeat pattern; visual elements
by the same designer.
convey the network’s character in a nonverbal manner.
24–41. Nadine Chahine, Frutiger Arabic, 2004. Frutiger Arabic was
24–44. Woody Pirtle, digital illustra-
originally designed as a companion to
tion for Mead Paper Company, 1985.
the Latin typeface Frutiger. Chahine
Original photographs, the wireframe
worked in consultation with Adrian
construct of early high-end digital
Frutiger during its development. Its
editing devices, and the printed im-
forms refer to the traditional handwrit-
age are shown.
ing of Arabic script, but the more simplified forms are suitable for signage
24–45. April Greiman, “Shaping the
applications as well as print.
Future of Health Care” poster, 1987. Color and composition transform easily
24–40
24–42. Nadine Chahine,
comprehended symbolic images into a
Neue Helvetica Arabic, 2009.
potent expression of future possibilities.
24–41
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24–43
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Digital imaging
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Digital imaging The photograph lost its status as an undisputed documentation of visual reality when electronic imaging software allowed seamless and undetectable image manipulation. The boundaries between photography, illustration, and the fine arts began to disappear, along with those separating designer, illustrator, and photographer. However, access to image-manipulation systems was at first very expensive, and often designers were denied hands-on access; they could only direct technicians rather than actually work with the system themselves. Before the advent of the Macintosh computer, the creative potential of electronic technology was seldom explored, as artists and designers seldom had unregulated access to advanced technology; hourly rental fees for mainframe computers and video-editing facilities were often unaffordable.
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An MTV press kit cover (Fig. 24–43), designed by Pat Gorman of Manhattan Design, is a forerunner of the image invention made possible by digital computers. Gorman created color variations of the MTV logo by exploring editing controls in a television studio. The studio engineer became so upset over her experimentation that he left her alone with the equipment, locking her in the studio so others would not view her audacious activities. Gorman referred to this design as the “bad television” logo because of its total contrast to the television industry’s insistence on “correct” color fidelity. Widely reproduced and appearing on the cover of Billboard magazine in 1983, this design at once illustrated the creative potential of electronic image manipulation. In an image for Mead Paper Company, designer Woody Pirtle created a surreal book in which the pages opened to permit objects and figures to float out into an expansive sky (Fig. 24–44). Many photographs were digitized, silhouetted, and electronically combined into an electronic montage. To create an advertisement for a health-care symposium (Fig. 24–45), April Greiman “built” a poster by combining digitized images—photographs of a flag and an eagle, an X-ray, and a drawing of the medical profession’s traditional caduceus symbol—with color shapes and gradations and a video clip of hands shot live into the Paintbox program. A wide variety of effects, including mosaic, fading, outline, overlap, and increasing and decreasing levels of transparency, enable complex iconography to evolve as an integrated and organic whole. These uncommon electronic montages from the 1980s were harbingers of the revolution in image making, in which thousands of designers, illustrators, and photographers used desktop computers with drawing, painting, and image-manipulation software to create imagery. The potent merging of video and print technology unleashed new graphic possibilities. Optical disks, video capture-and-edit capabilities, and interactive printand time-based media expanded graphic design activity further.
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24–46. Bill Hill and Terry Irwin (creative directors) and Jeff Zwerner (designer), MetaDesign San Francisco (design firm), VizAbility interactive CD-ROM screen design, 1995. 24–47 and 24–48. Jessica Helfand (creative director), Melissa Tardiff (art director), Jessica Helfand Studio; Interactive Bureau (agency); John Lyle Sanford (Discovery Channel design
24–46
24–49
director), Discovery Channel Web site, 1994–95. 24–49. Clement Mok and Brian Forst (designers), Scott Peterson (photographer), and Studio Archetype (design studio), iQVC main categories screen for Internet shopping, 1995. Drawers and cubbyholes make this screen adaptable to new and seasonal promotions, similar to a storefront.
24–47 24–50
24–50. Bob Aufuldish, fontBoy interactive catalogue Web site title page, 1995. The uninhibited aesthetic of the typefaces is conveyed. 24–51. Bob Aufuldish, fontBoy interactive catalogue Web site main holding page, 1995. The viewer has clicked on the floating g, bringing the typeface name and weights onto the screen. 24–52. April Greiman, RoTo Archi-
24–48
24–51
Interactive media, the Internet, and the World Wide Web Interactive media are a combination of audio, visual, and cinematic communications, connected to form a coherent body of information. Unlike books or films, which present information in linear sequences, interactive media have nonlinear structures, allowing each viewer to pursue information along a personally chosen path. Interactive media are usually created by teams of professionals, including audiovisual specialists, writers, computer programmers, content specialists, directors, graphic designers, information architects, image-makers, and producers. In contrast to printed communications that are finalized after they emerge from the printing press, interactive media programs are open-ended. Unlimited revisions are possible, and content can be continuously added or modified. VizAbility was an early interactive CD-ROM program that taught concepts relating to visual perception and helped users develop heightened visual awareness (Fig. 24–46). VizAbility was designed by MetaDesign San Francisco, an informationgraphics firm then headed by Erik Spiekermann.
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tects Web site, 2006.
Computer communications took a major step forward with the development of the Internet, a vast network of linked computers. The Internet had its origins in the late 1960s, when scientists at the United States Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) established the ARPAnet computer network so they could transfer data between sites working on similar research projects. Supercomputer sites around the United States were connected by the National Science Foundation (NSF) into NSFNET in 1986; this totally replaced ARPANET within two years. In 1991, the United States Congress passed legislation widening access in public schools, two-year colleges, and business organizations, generating a dramatic expansion of what was now called the Internet. By early 1997, over thirty million users in more than one hundred countries were linked into an electronic global community. By 2010, there were close to seven billion Internet users in the world, with more than 240 million in the United States alone. The now omnipresent World Wide Web provides a means to easily organize and access the vast and ever increasing content
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Interactive media, the Internet, and the World Wide Web
24–52
on the Internet, including text, images, sound, animation, and video. The Web was first developed in 1990 by physicist Tim Berners-Lee at the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva, Switzerland. Berners-Lee developed the three main building blocks of the Web: the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), and a specification for the “address” of every file on the Web called the Uniform Resource Locator (URL). At first limited to the scientific community, the Web started to take off in 1993, with the development of the graphical Mosaic browser at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) by a team including Marc Andreessen. Leaving NCSA, Andreessen cofounded Netscape Communications, which in late 1994 produced the first major commercial graphical browser, Netscape Navigator, causing the number of Web users to mushroom. Web use continues to grow at an incredible rate to this day, as the Web has become a ubiquitous tool of commerce, research, and expression for users and corporations around the world. In the 1990s, the phrase information superhighway was used to express the global access to enormous amounts of information provided by the World Wide Web. In 1997, an estimated 150 million Web sites were online, and by 2010 there were close to twelve billion Web sites. The Internet represents an unprecedented advance in human communications. Its explosive growth through the late 1990s opened new horizons for graphic design by professionals and individuals using computers and Internet access to produce Web sites. A previously inconceivable decentralization of media communications had occurred. The early years of Web site design posed significant constraints for graphic designers. A computer’s screen size and typographic defaults often reconfigured the intended page design until more sophisticated software-downloaded fonts were developed. Early in the Internet revolution, many feared a collapse of design standards due to the limitations of the HTML programming language and the widespread access to Web site design by individuals without design training. Nevertheless, in the infancy of the medium, many designers, including Jessica Helfand (b. 1960), whose distinctive Web projects include the initial design for the Discovery Channel’s
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site, demonstrated that graphic designers can create identity, aid navigation, and bring dynamic visual interest to Web sites. The Discovery Channel Web site became an early pioneer of Web design. The pages (Fig. 24–47) used geometric zoning to create areas for titles, subtitles, and a sidebar of information. Images were used as signifiers to direct viewers as they navigated the site. Opening screens for editorial features (Fig. 24–48) used arresting images and understated typography, in contrast to the strident jumble of competing small elements on many Web sites. In 1976, architect and designer Richard Saul Wurman (b. 1935) coined the term information architecture and predicted it would become a new profession of individuals who made complex information understandable. Twenty years later this term became widely used to denote a process of analyzing complex information and giving it structure and order, enabling audiences to glean its essence in an efficient and agreeable manner. Clement Mok (b. 1958), an Apple Computer creative director who left to open Clement Mok Designs in 1987 (renamed Studio Archetype in 1996), emerged as an early advocate of the graphic designer’s role in the rapidly changing world of interactive media. Mok realized that the digital revolution was merging commerce, technology, and design into a symbiotic entity (Fig. 24–49). Mok believed design should be defined not as an isolated entity, such as packaging or graphics added on to the product or service, but as an integral part of an organization’s overall vision and strategy. Interactive media permitted small firms and individuals to efficiently communicate with audiences and market products or services. This was demonstrated by the first fontBoy interactive type catalogue (Fig. 24–50), designed by Bob Aufuldish (b. 1961). On the main holding screen, letterforms floated randomly in space. When a viewer passed the cursor over a letterform, its movement stopped and the font name appeared (Fig. 24–51); double-clicking on the letter opened another screen that showed the entire font. Typefaces could be accessed from a menu page as well. Aufuldish also began a type foundry because he believed there was still room for experimentation and exploration in font design. He expressed interest in “a new typography waiting to happen—what I call baroque modernism for the new millennium—and I want to make and release type to inspire that new typography.” Among other advanced techniques, Flash, XML, and Java Script give designers the opportunity to make any Web site wholly distinctive. Interactive components, videos, and even games can be incorporated. Early on, April Greiman recognized the potential of the Internet as a new creative medium. She explored and developed new technologies in pursuit of a visual vocabulary that would enliven the virtual canvas. Greiman’s design for the RoTo Architects Web site exists as a dynamic extension of her unique vision (Fig. 24–52). An emerging interactive design firm, Render Monkey was founded in 2006 by Amelle Stein and Sastry Appajosyula. Their work combines creative interface design with inventive programming, providing for fluid, streamlined navigation
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24–53
24–54
24–55
24–56
24–53. RenderMonkey, home page,
24–58. Aaron Koblin, dynamic visu-
Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950
alizations for “Flight Patterns,” 2005.
to Today, 2006. This Web site was
Flight paths across North America are
created entirely in Flash.
traced, revealing changing patterns of air traffic and the key superstructures
24–54. RenderMonkey, inside page,
that guide the aviation network.
Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today, 2006. 24–55. Erik Adigard, “Money Is Just a Type of Information,” Wired, July 1994.
24–57 24–56. Erik Adigard, HotBot logo, 1996. 24–57. John Maeda, calendar, 1996.
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through multiple, complex layers of information. Their focus on the user experience extends to interactive solutions for mobile, online, and offline designs as well as architectural spaces. Render Monkey’s design for the exhibition Color Chart at the Museum of Modern Art allows users to interact with various interfaces for a customized approach to accessing dynamic content (Figs. 24–53 and 24–54). The digital vanguard Graphic design in the 1990s often incorporated the digital process in complex visual combinations of information architecture, media, technology, and culture. Erik Adigard (b. 1953) and Patricia McShane (b. 1953) of M.A.D. Design are two designers who have used the computer to explore the infinite possibilities of the digital process. Their frontispiece designs for Wired magazine built visual essays out of the cover stories. For “Money Is Just a Type of Information,” Adigard combined a collage of foreign currency designs with the verso design of the U.S.$1 banknote converted to red ink, financial and stock ticker data, vernacular images, and digital patterns and gradations to create a densely packed montage that comments on the effects of new technologies (Fig. 24–55). The work of Adigard and McShane exemplifies the development of the designer as illustrator working with what had, in just a few years, become powerful and revolutionary computer applications. Adigard designed the HotBot logo for the first commercial search engine with customized search features, launched by Wired Digital in 1996 (Fig. 24–56). The concentric Os were also navigation links. The typographic forms, ironically, have more in common with early twentieth-century typographic experiments, such as those of Russian constructivist Alexander Rodchenko, than with the new technologies the mark represents. John Maeda (b. 1966), a graduate of both the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Tsukuba University Institute of Art and Design in Japan, has been president of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) since 2008. Before arriving at RISD, Maeda spent twelve years teaching media arts and sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he
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also served as associate director of research at the mit Media Lab. He is widely acknowledged for his leading role in the transition of graphic design from print to digital media and is constantly seeking new ways to integrate artistic expression with the new digital technology (Fig. 24–57). Having received an MFA in design and media arts at UCLA, Aaron Koblin (b. 1982) is a graphic designer concentrating on the visualization of data. He transforms social and infrastructural information to portray cultural developments and evolving patterns (Fig. 24–58). Koblin received the National Science Foundation’s first place award for science visualization, and his work is included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He was the Abramowitz Artist in Residence at MIT in 2010 and is currently technology lead at Google’s Creative Lab. Design for portable devices Design for portable devices is critically linked to the development of portable technology and the devices themselves. The interactivity of the Internet has been joined with locationbased, real-time information and demand for intuitive user interfaces. Apple has been a pioneer in designing portable devices, including the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. The minimalist design of the devices, and the closed system of application development, has influenced the design of applications and the way users interact with them. A new field of design has been opened up to those who are willing to think outside of the proverbial box. In 2001, Apple unveiled its first iPod, a digital music player that fit in the palm of your hand. The iPod instantly became a cultural icon and changed the way we listen to music. At the same time, the iPod placed new demands on the design of the album cover, wich suddenly shrunk to less than one square inch. Since the 1960s, the album cover had been a canvas for designers and featured iconic, generational images. In the late 1980s, the album cover began to shrink with the introduction of the compact disc (CD). Many of the intricate LP designs did not hold up on the smaller format, and designers were forced to create more minimal, forthright images.
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24–59. The Apple iPod Touch, second generation, 2009. The iPod Touch features a large color display that embraces the new breed of thumbnail sized album art. 24–60. Hoshi Ludwig and the North Face, the North Face Snow Report App for iPhone, 2008. The app provides users with up-to-the-minute details on snow and weather conditions at ski resorts around the world.
24–59
24–60
24–61. Cover image and inside spread as seen in the November 2010 digital edition of Martha Stewart Living magazine, titled “Boundless Beauty.” The cover animates the blooming of a peonie over a ten-hour period, using 180 still photographs. The inside spread is a glossary of the different types of peonies; additional information appears for each when tapped.
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Typography and the built environment
The iPod’s thumbnail album covers placed further restrictions on designers, challenging them to create increasingly simple and clever graphics. The small covers demanded bold colors and an austere use of imagery and type. The combination of these elements resulted in mnemonic, logo-like images (Fig. 24–59). With the release of newer generations of the iPod and its competitors, the screen size has increased, allowing album art to regain some of its importance. In 2007 Apple released the iPhone, which combined cellular phone technology with the Internet to provide users with a new means of envisioning and interacting with the portable information experience. The iPhone and its competitors use existing cellular networks to access the Internet and associated information. The result is integrated communications and real-time data access. The iPhone is made even more powerful by its vast collections of “apps” (short for “application software”) that allow users to do everything from making a shopping list, to geting directions, to finding an updated snow report while skiing down a mountain (Fig. 24–60). In 2008, outdoor company the North Face introduced a comprehensive advertising campaign promoting its ski and snowboard equipment, including a free app that detailed snow conditions, trail maps, weather forecasts, and avalanche advisories at mountain resorts around the world. The simple and intuitive user interface was designed specifically to incorporate a large amount of data into the constrained space of the iPhone’s touch screen. Lead designer Hoshi Ludwig credited the success of his team to close collaboration between the visual designers and the engineers developing the user interface. This collaboration has come to mark the success, or failure, of many digital projects, as designers are forced farther out of the realm of two-dimensional information and into the sphere of integrated information access. In 2010 Apple released its latest “revolution” into the competitive market of portable devices: the iPad. Once again, the rules for portable design changed. The iPad’s large color touch screen, seamless user interface, and sleek design wooed consumers. Like the iPod, it could tap into local wireless Internet networks. Like the iPhone, it could use cellular technology to access the Internet. With the iPad’s release, supporters claimed that the tablet computer would replace everthing from the personal computer to the magazine; a new demand for more advanced apps was generated. Consumer lifestyle-magazine giant Martha Stewart took immediate advantage of the new opportunity. A special edition of Martha Stewart Living was produced with content created especially for the iPad, including an animated cover image and step-by-step “how-to” slideshows (Fig. 24–61). The launch of a digital magazine marked a change in how editorial design can be approached: interactivity increases reader engagement and creates a new kind of visual experience. The larger screen and core processor of the iPad allows this large amount of data to be retrieved and presented within the user interface. With the release of the iPad, Apple led the way in the field of tablet computers, but competitors were already following its lead with the release of their own tablets. With the advent of portable technology, designers had to change the way they presented information to an audience that
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has become increasing accustomed to nonlinear data. Portable devices, much like the Internet, allow users to interact directly with the information they are reciveing and manipulate it according to their interests. To meet these demands, graphic designers have become part of a team of information architects, developing sleek and intutive user experiences. As these technologies continue to grow and change, so will the role graphic designers play in the development of mobile communications. Film titles and motion graphics Imaginary Forces was launched in 1996 by Kyle Cooper (b. 1962), Chip Houghton, and Peter Frankfurt (b. 1958). It rapidly became the vanguard of film-title design by integrating graphic design, motion, and interactive media. Its multidisciplinary staff consists of designers, art directors, animators, editors, writers, and producers. In 2000, the founding members of Imaginary Forces were joined by Mikon van Gastel, Karin Fong (b. 1971), Kurt Mattila, Michael Riley, Linda Nakagawa, and Saffron Kenny. All partners have their own individual styles and areas of expertise, but work in other areas according to the demands of a particular project. Describing his methodology, Cooper stated: “Everything starts with the words. I read the script. If the script is based on a novel, I try to read the book. I like it when main titles tap into somebody’s obsession” (Figs. 24–62 through 24–64). Karin Fong has designed and directed motion graphics for advertising, entertainment, art, and installation (Fig. 24–65). Inspired by concrete poetry, Dada, and surrealism, the designers at Imaginary Forces are constantly experimenting with letters and finding inventive ways of transforming moving type into image (Fig. 24–66). Danny Yount (b. 1965), a self-taught designer, freelanced for Imaginary Forces in 2000. Today, he is one of the most influential title designers for film and television; he has designed and directed the opening sequences for many notable productions, including HBO’s Six Feet Under, for which he won an Emmy. As senior creative director at Prologue Films—a collective of designers, filmmakers, and artists—his focus has primarily been feature film main titles. His opening sequence for Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was described by the Hollywood Reporter as “a title sequence worthy of the late Saul Bass” (Fig. 24–67). Typography and the built environment Lisa Strausfeld (b. 1964) studied art history and computer science at Brown University. Later she received master’s degrees in architecture at Harvard University and in media arts and sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While at MIT she worked as a research assistant in the Visible Language Workshop of the Media Lab, where she explored and created new methods for presenting and interacting with complex data. Together with two MIT classmates, she founded Perspecta in 1996. Eventually sold to Excite@Home, Perspecta was a software company that developed sophisticated search and visual user interface technology for systematizing large collections of information. In 2002, Lisa became a partner at Pentagram, where her work involves the interaction of actual and virtual space. Her group focuses on digital information
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24–62. Imaginary Forces (Kyle Cooper), Se7en title sequence, 1995. 24–63. Imaginary Forces (Kyle Cooper), film title for Spiderman, 2002.
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24–64. Imaginary Forces (Kyle Cooper), film title for Spiderman, 2002. 24–65. Imaginary Forces (Karin Fong), Herman Miller “Get Real” promotion film, 2003.
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24–66. Imaginary Forces (Mark Gardner and Steve Fuller), Mad Men title sequence, 2007. This design received an Emmy Award in 2008 for Outstanding Title Sequence. 24–67. Danny Yount, main title design for Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, 2005.
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24–68. Pentagram (Lisa Strausfeld),
24–70. Pentagram (Paula Scher),
dynamic display of financial informa-
environmental graphics for the New
tion for the Bloomberg L.P. headquar-
42nd Street Studios, 2000.
ters in New York, 2005. 24–71. Pentagram (Paula Scher), 24–69. Pentagram (Paula Scher), envi-
painted exterior of the Lucent Tech-
ronmental graphics for Bloomberg L.P.
nologies Center for Arts Education, a
corporate headquarters, 2005.
school affiliated with the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, 2001.
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design projects including software prototypes, Web sites, interpretive displays, and extensive media installations. Her training as an architect allows her to incorporate the presentation of information into physical surrounds, as in the largescale dynamic media display in the corporate headquarters of Bloomberg LP (Fig. 24–68). For over forty years, Paula Scher has been at the vanguard of graphic design. More recently, her typography has spilled into the streets and onto buildings; requests for her typographic treatments in the built environment are steadily increasing. In 2005 she paired with Lisa Strausfeld on the design of the Bloomberg LP headquarters, incorporating large-scale typographic treatments throughout the interior spaces (Fig. 24–69). For the New 42nd Street Studios building in New York, she unabashedly applied giant words to doors, floors, ceilings, and walls (Fig. 24–70). In Newark, New Jersey, she painted the Lucent Technologies Center for Arts Education white and then placed words such as music, drama, and dance over the entire façade, communicating the energy and dynamism contained within (Fig. 24–71). Ruedi Baur (b. 1956) received his graphic design education at the Zurich School of Applied Arts. After establishing Studio BBV in 1983, he began Intégral Concept in 1989. Intégral is now five self-regulating studios working together on crossdisciplinary assignments. Baur has also been involved with identity and information programs, wayfinding systems, exhibition design, and urban design in Paris, Zurich, and Berlin. From 1989 until 1994 he coordinated the design department at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, and in 1995 he was appointed professor of corporate design at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst (Academy of Visual Arts) of Leipzig, where he created the Interdisciplinary Design Institute in 1999. Recent work includes the integration of typography and architecture for many prominent institutions and enterprises, among them the Centre Pompidou de Paris, the Cologne-Bonn airport, and the ESISAR school at the Grenoble Institute of Technology (Fig. 24–72). The Dutch graphic designer Karel Martens (b. 1939) was educated at the Academy of Fine Arts at Arnhem. Concentrating on typography, his work includes postage stamps, books, and signage. In the past several years he has also designed typographic façades for various buildings throughout the Netherlands, including the Philharmonie in Haarlem and the Veenman Printers building in Ede (Fig. 24–73). Committed to design education,
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24–72. Ruedi Baur, design of the
24–75. Shinnoske Sugisaki, poster
façade and signage for the ESISAR
for the exhibition Mackintosh and
school, 1997.
the Glasgow Style, 2000. Using symmetrical overlapping letterforms,
24–73. Karel Martens, façade design
Sugisaki deftly suggests the ascend-
for the Veenman Printers building,
ing elegance of the Glasgow style.
Ede, the Netherlands, 1996. 24–76. Minoru Niijima, poster for 24–74. Shuichi Nogami, poster for
Musashino Art University, 2003.
the architectural firm Shiki, which works exclusively in wood on residential buildings in Japan, 2002.
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Martens taught at the Academy of Fine Arts at Arnhem from 1977 until 1994 and at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht from 1994 until 1999. Since 1997 he has been a visiting lecturer in the postgraduate graphic design department at the Yale University School of Art. In the same year, he helped begin a pioneering school of postgraduate education within the ArtEZ Institute for the Arts in Arnhem, the Werkplaats Typografie, where he teaches today. New typographic expression The use of text as signs or as visual form began as far back as 33 bce, when it was referred to as pattern poetry. The cubists, Dadaists, and futurists all explored word-images and shaped text. The work of Guillaume Apollinaire (see Figs. 13–18 and 13–19), who shaped text to illustrate ideas in his calligrammes and editorial pages, has been an inspiration for others seeking to use text to illustrate a story. These pieces challenge viewers to “see” text as images as well as something to be read. Long before the arrival of the computer, artists and designers were liberating type from the page by turning it into expressionist signs. Futurist artist and designer Filippo Marinetti celebrated “words in freedom” in his Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature of 1912. The personal computer has enabled designers to freely stretch the limits of typographic
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form to create unbounded words or letters on the page. Shuichi Nogami (b. 1954) is a designer who creates posters using expressionist typographic forms. For a poster promoting an architect working with wood in Japan, the designer combined letterforms and stretched their shapes into a wooden sculpture floating in space (Fig. 24–74). Nogami often takes surprising letters and photographic images and combines, overlaps, merges, and stretches them into experimental letterforms that float as three-dimensional objects on the page. The designs of Shinnoske Sugisaki (b. 1953), both elegant and poetic, display a unique blend of Western and Japanese features (Fig. 24–75). Minoru Niijima (b. 1948) was educated in both Japan and the United States and received his MFA from Yale University in 1983. Shortly thereafter he returned to Japan and opened Minoru Niijima Design Studio in Tokyo. His work explores the interaction of typography and color, using bright colors and rigid typographic grids. It is a synthesis of the International Style and a Japanese sensitivity to light, color, line, and plane (Fig. 24–76). Among the leading figures in contemporary Swiss graphic design are Ralph Schraivogel (b. 1960) and Melchior Imboden (b. 1956). A graduate of the Zurich School of Design, Schraivogel established his own graphic design studio in 1982. He has developed posters for a wide range of institutions and cultural events, including Zurich’s Filmpodium, the Museum of Design Zurich, the Festival of African Films (CinemAfrica), and the Theatre am Neumarkt (Fig. 24–77). Imboden arranges elements of simple, geometric compositions through minimal and decisive use of color to create bold, visually arresting, and illusionistic typographical abstractions. His expressive work combines a penetrating and rhythmic use of space with abstraction, repetition, flat geometric planes of color, and experimental typography. Imboden has designed many posters, books, and catalogues for Swiss cultural institutions that have earned recognition at international exhibitions (Fig. 24–78). Paula Scher draws upon historical models while transforming them into her own unique form of expression. Her posters for the Public Theater’s productions of Bring in ’da Noise, Bring in ’da Funk; Hamlet and Hair; and Twelfth Night and The Bacchae, are refined and more expressive versions of nineteenthcentury typographic posters combined with the playful spirit of Dada (Figs. 24–79 through 24–81).
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24–77. Ralph Schraivogel, “Henry van de Velde,” poster, 1993. The spirit of Van de Velde is invoked as his name is placed in one of his chair designs. 24–78. Melchior Imboden, poster for the Swiss exhibition 30 Jahre Chäslager Stans (30 Years of the Gallery Chäslager Stans), 1997. 24–79. Pentagram (Paula Scher), poster for the 1995–96 season of the Public Theatre, New York.
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A graduate of the Massachusetts College of Art, Jennifer Morla (b. 1955) founded Morla Design in 1984. Since the studio’s founding, Morla has engaged in all facets of design, including branding, print, packaging, motion graphics, environmental design, and typography. She has won over three hundred awards of excellence and was admitted to the prestigious Alliance Graphique Internationale in 1998. She is known for her ability to combine wit and aesthetics with business pragmatics (Figs. 24–82 and 24–83). Her clients include Levi Strauss, Herman Miller, and AIGA, among many others. In addition to serving as Morla Design’s president and creative director, she also assumed the position of chief marketing officer for Design Within Reach in 2006. She has exhibited widely and her work is part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Denver Art Museum, and the Library of Congress. She teaches at the California College of the Arts and lectures internationally. Nancy Skolos (b. 1955) and Thomas Wedell (b. 1949), a husband-and-wife team of photographer and graphic designer, “work to diminish the boundaries between graphic design and photography—creating collaged three-dimensional images influenced by modern painting, technology and architecture. This unique collaboration, as well as the dialogue between the makers themselves and the pieces being made, is a process of continuous curiosity and discovery.” Their body of work includes posters, corporate identities, books, exhibits, Web sites, and videos for mainly high-technology clients. The intense energy, vibrant color, and textures of their pieces deftly evoke the spirit of technology itself (Fig. 24–84). In addition to their studio work, they both teach graphic design at the Rhode Island School of Design. Hans Dieter Reichert (b. 1959) first studied graphic design and visual communication with Willi Fleckhaus at the Univer-
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24–80. Pentagram (Paula Scher), poster for the Public Theater’s productions of Hamlet and Hair, 2008. 24–81. Pentagram (Paula Scher), poster for the Public Theater’s productions of Twelfth Night and The Bacchae, 2009. 24–82. Jennifer Morla, poster for AIGA/Landor Associates, 2003. Morla expresses the diversity of the AIGA with an explosion of images and textures. 24–83. Jennifer Morla, El Museo Mexicano promotional poster, 1995.
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sities of Essen (Folkwang School) and Wuppertal in Germany. Following a brief period of design studies in Switzerland, he eventually graduated from the London University of the Arts. He worked at BRS Premsela & Vonk with Guus Ros and at Total Design with Jelle van der Toorn Vrijthoff before returning to London to work at the London design company Banks & Miles, Ltd., for five years. In 1993, he launched his own company, HDR Visual Communication, in Kent, England, and in 1995 he cofounded Bradbourne Publishing, Ltd. Here he began the remarkable quarterly international typographic magazine baseline (Fig. 24–85), for which he serves as publisher, editor, art director, and designer. Book designs by HDR Visual Communication include Alexey Brodovitch, by Kerry William Purcell, Steven Heller’s 1999 monograph Paul Rand, and Merz to Emigre and Beyond, also by Heller. John Warwicker (b. 1955) studied graphic design at the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts in London and received a master’s degree is visual communication with a focus on electronic interactive media from Birmingham Polytechnic. In 1991 he cofounded tomato, a collective of artists, designers, musicians, and writers. Since its founding, tomato has offered an interdisciplinary approach to the design of advertising, architecture, fashion, public installations, music, television, film, and graphic design (Fig. 24–86). Today, Warwicker practices in both London and Melbourne, Australia. He has won numerous awards and in 2006 was made the first foreign member of the prestigious Tokyo Type Director’s Club. He also serves as advisor to the British Council’s European Design Board and is an adjunct professor of architecture and design at the University of Technology, Sydney. Bosnia and Herzegovina émigré Mirko Ilic (b. 1956) has exploited the computer to design word-image pieces in book designs and op-ed pieces for the New York Times, where he has been a frequent contributor. He began as an editorial illustra-
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24–84. Nancy Skolos and Thomas Wedell, poster for the IDSA IDEA Award call for entries, 1999. In this photomontage one is invited to “enter” the industrial design awards competition. 24–85. Hans Dieter Reichert, covers for baseline magazine, 2000 and 2001. 24–86. John Warwicker, poster for Tokyo Type Director’s Club, 2007. His typographic constructions retain vestiges of futurist poetry. 24–87. Mirko Ilic, shaped text spread for Elvis + Marilyn 2X Immortal, 1994. 24–88. Wladyslaw Pluta, poster for the exhibition Pollnische Plakate des 21. Jahrhunderts (Polish Posters of the Twenty-First Century), 2003.
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tor and designer and has worked as an editorial art director for Time magazine as well as the New York Times. His firm, Mirko Ilic, Inc., is based in New York City. Mirko is as adept at design as he is at illustration, and he uses both as devices of visual analogy to communicate ideas. In both his designs and illustrations, he uses the computer to develop an immediate and detailed style. In his book design for Elvis + Marilyn 2X Immortal, full pages of text are shaped as the iconographic signs +, 2, and X, the signs used in the title. This style is directly inspired by early twentieth-century text designs such as Apollinaire’s pages for SIC magazine in 1917. Apollinaire shaped negative space and text painstakingly, using hand-set type. Ilic’s shaped text designs, which challenge the reader both to see text as image and to read it, would be impractical or impossible without the computer and the page-design applications available today (Fig. 24–87). The Polish graphic designer Władysław Pluta (b. 1949) skillfully uses type to evoke the content of his designs. Humor, expressive color, and the attempt to play “intellectual games with the viewer” are all aspects of his work (Fig. 24–88). Devoted to graphic design education, Pluta serves as chair of the visual communication department of the Faculty of Industrial Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow, his alma matter. It is clear from the work of Michael Bierut (b. 1957) and Helmut Schmid (b. 1942) that the International Typographic Style is both alive and thriving. Before becoming a partner in Pentagram’s New York office in 1990, Bierut worked for ten years at Vignelli Associates, eventually becoming vice president of graphic design (Fig. 24–89). Now a German citizen, the Austrian-born Schmid first apprenticed as a type compositor in Germany and then studied under Emil Ruder, Robert Buechler, and Kurt Hauert at the Basel School of Design in Switzerland. Since 1977, he has worked as a graphic designer
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in Osaka, Japan, where he produces packaging and brand identities for consumer products. A typographic master, he has written valuable essays on typography for international magazines, including TM (Switzerland), Idea (Japan), Graphic Design (Japan), Grafisk Revy (Sweden), Graphische Revue (Austria), and baseline (United Kingdom). His inspiring book The Road to Basel: Typographic Reflections by Students of the Typographer and Teacher Emil Ruder was published in German, English, and Japanese in 1997 and reprinted by Robundo Publishers, Tokyo, in 2004. Schmid’s design clearly reflects the teaching of Ruder, but he has given it an additional refinement that is totally his own (Fig. 24–90). Experimental typography in the Netherlands remains on the cutting edge of the field. Selecting a few leading designers to profile in this section was not only a difficult task—it was virtually an impossible one. The Netherlands has a design culture so rich and diverse that it warrants a separate volume. A design studio that clearly stands out is Koeweiden-Postma in Amsterdam, begun by Jacques Koeweiden (b. 1957) and Paul Postma (b. 1958). As with the scope of Dutch graphic design as a whole, the graphic design of Koeweiden-Postma is
so varied that describing a particular project can only touch upon the wide range of the studio’s creations. Its work is influenced by global visual cultures, as in the interpretation of Islamic pattern and ornament for the identity and posters for Marhaba, an Islamic cultural center in Amsterdam (Fig. 24–91). Max Kisman (b. 1953) started his own graphic design studio soon after graduating from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in 1977. During the mid-1980s, he applied digital technology to his graphic design for Vinyl and Language Technology magazines, posters for the Paradiso Theater in Amsterdam, and Red Cross stamps for the Dutch postal service. In 1986, he cofounded TYP/Typografisch Papier, a magazine devoted to typography and art. From 1989 until 1992 he lived in Barcelona, where he digitized many of his early typefaces for FontShop International in Berlin. From 1992 until 1996 he worked as a graphic designer and animator for VPRO Television in the Netherlands. In 1994 he became involved in graphic design for interactive media for VPRO-Digital, a Dutch agency specializing in new media, and the online magazine HotWired in San Francisco, and in 1997 he began working for Wired
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24–89. Michael Bierut and Marian Bantjes (b. 1963), poster for the Seduction Symposium. A collaboration between designer Bierut and calligrapher Bantjes, expressive calligraphy conforms to a strict, yet flexible, geometric grid. 24–90. Helmut Schmid, poster for the exhibition On Typography, at Kobu Design University, Japan, 2000. Schmid has added an additional expressive quality to the International Style. 24–91. Koeweiden-Postma, visual identity and posters for Marhaba, 2006. Koeweiden’s poster series reflects the celebratory atmosphere surrounding the opening of an Islamic cultural center in Amsterdam.
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Television and then as art director for Wired Digital, also in San Francisco. Kisman maintains his studio MKDSGN in Mill Valley, California, and founded Holland Fonts to market his own typeface designs in 2002. As shown in his poster celebrating the century-old legacy of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Kisman approaches his work with openness and wit (Fig. 24–92). After working together since 1993, Nikki Gonnissen (b. 1967) and Thomas Widdershoven (b. 1960) founded the Amsterdam design firm Thonik in 2000. From its inception, Thonik has been at the vanguard of a new generation of Dutch graphic designers. Working simultaneously as designers, art directors, and conceptual and media artists, the firm has undertaken a steady stream of largely unrelated assignments, and not a single solution has fallen within the realm of the predictable. Gonnissen and Widdershoven are concerned with the world of ideas, and their uncompromising designs are not for easy consumption. As stated in a 2001 monograph on their work, “Thonik’s approach is a breath of fresh air. Intellectual but not intellectualized” (Fig. 24–93). The studio of Niessen & de Vries was formed in 2006 by Richard Niessen (b. 1972) and Esther de Vries (b. 1974). Both graduates of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam (Niessen, 1996, and de Vries, 1998), they believe in close collaboration with clients and strive to produce work that is inventive and unique. They describe their typographic work as system-
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24–92. Max Kisman, poster celebrating a century of Henri de ToulouseLautrec, 2001. 24–93. Thonik. “n8,” poster, 2004. This announcement for “museumnacht” (museum night) in Amsterdam advertises the event without emphasizing a particular museum. The title “n8” is a pun derived from the letter n and the number 8, which in Dutch is spelled acht. Thus, combined with n it becomes nacht meaning “night.” 24–94. Niessen & de Vries, poster celebrating the seventieth anniversary of the French railway SNCF, 2008. The slogan “Donner au train des idées d’avance,” is incorporated into the poster and the words are cropped as
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if they were a panorama seen through the window of a moving train. The high-speed trains of the SNCF run through eight different countries; the flags of these countries are incorporated in different patterns depicting a journey through Europe.
atic, gridlike, readable, and usable. Their work is also rich and highly expressive, qualities achieved by the use of layers, vibrant colors, and texture (Fig. 24–94). Their clients include the Stedelijk Museum, PTT (the Dutch postal service), the Gemeente Museum, and the French railway SNCF, among many others. Besides their work for clients, they work on self-commissioned projects and run their own small publishing house.
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Letterpress revival In the midst of the technological revolution, designers using centuries-old techniques and processes are enjoying a renaissance, particularly those artisans concerned with preserving the art of letterpress printing. Alan Kitching (b. 1940), an eminent specialist and teacher of letterpress typographic design and printmaking, is internationally renowned for his innovative use of wood and metal letterforms. In typographic compositions, books, packaging, and monoprints, Kitching skillfully adapts type from the past for modern communication. He began his career as an apprentice compositor at the age of fourteen. In 1989 he founded the Typographic Workshop in Clerkenwell, London, for students and professionals, and in 1999 he formed a partnership with designer and teacher Celia Stothard (1949–2010) and moved the Typography Workshop and presses to Lambeth in South London. In 1992, Kitching set up letterpress workshops as a senior tutor of typography at the Royal College of Art and as a visiting professor at the University of the Arts in London (Figs. 24–95 and 24–96).
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24–95. Alan Kitching, Hamlet I, letterpress edition print, 2001. 24–96. Alan Kitching, Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat, letterpress edition print, 2004. This print was created for the exhibition Public Address System in London and Berlin, 2004. 24–97. Hammerpress (Brady Vest), concert poster for the band Yo La Tengo, 2005. 24–98. Hammerpress (Robert Howsare and Brady Vest), poster for
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After graduating with a degree in printmaking from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1994, Brady Vest (b. 1972) founded Hammerpress with just one printing press and one cabinet of type. The shop now has an expansive collection of antique type, blocks, and presses, along with new, custom-engraved plates. Hammerpress incorporates not only type and block printing but also found art and original illustration into their work. The use of many layers of vivid inks and overlapping letters and ornaments also characterizes its prints. Experimentation and play are integral to Hammerpress’s process. In his poster for the band Yo La Tengo (Fig. 24–97), Vest approached the project by throwing type onto the press bed while trying to visualize how it would look when broken into different colors. He then pulled type from the composition piece by piece, saving it for the second or third pass of color, while trying to maintain registration. Other experiments yield highly tactile results, such as the use of broken type in the poster for Explosions in the Sky (Fig. 24–98), designed by Vest and Robert Howsare (b. 1977). The work is unique, unexpected, and unconventional. Founded by Charles and Herbert Hatch in April 1879 in Nashville, Tennessee, Hatch Show Print is one of the oldest continuously running letterpress shops in the United States. For well over one hundred years, Hatch has designed posters and handbills advertising entertainment of all forms, including state fairs, traveling circuses, sporting events, comedy troupes, movies, musicians, and concerts. In the 1940s, Hatch began designing posters for country music stars.
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Explosions in the Sky, 2009.
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Their association with Nashville’s music scene allowed them to work with musicians such as Hank Williams, Dolly Parton, and Elvis Presley. They have also worked with many rock musicians, including Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, R.E.M., and Radiohead. Jim Sherradon (b. 1957), Hatch’s chief designer, printmaker, and manager, joined the shop in 1984. He views Hatch as a working museum, maintaining the philosophy of “preservation through production.” While Hatch artisans still carve original images into basswood and maple blocks, Sherradon also takes plates and blocks from the archive and uses them in contemporary work. He does not introduce new typefaces, as he does not want to “pollute the integrity of the original archive.” Sherradon’s combination of vintage plates, blocks, and original movable type—often scratched, dented, or worn—has created an identifiable Hatch aesthetic. Now owned by the Country Music Hall of Fame, Hatch Show Print is synonymous with Nashville’s musical and cultural heritage (Figs. 24–99 through 24–101). At the beginning of the twenty-first century, access to personal computers and the Internet is nearly universal. This rapidly proliferating flow of text and images has become the chosen domain of the designer, an uncharted territory of exploration and possibility for professionals and amateurs alike. The widening of the design profession was ignited through not only the creation of new computer software and the Internet but also the expansion and increased quality of design education. New designers, with new ways of solving visual challenges, are rising up to meet the demands of an ever-changing field. At the same time, time-honored design theories and methods of production continue to inspire and spark innovation. 24–101
24–99. Hatch Show Print, “6-Panel Rodeo,” monotype, 1996. 24–100. Hatch Show Print, “Three Baseball Shoes,” monotype, 2008. 24–101. Hatch Show Print (Jim Sherradon and Lauri Young), poster paying tribute to H. N. Werkman, 2006. This poster was based on a preexisting plate, monotype, and an additional linoleum plate.
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Epilogue
The need for clear and imaginative communication has never been greater. People are seeking new visual means to relate to their cultural, economic, and social lives. As shapers of messages and images, graphic designers have an obligation to contribute to the public understanding of environmental and social issues. By adapting to new technologies and means of production, graphic designers are able to invent new forms and vehicles to express ideas and embody the spirit of their time. At the time of this writing, human affairs continue to undergo a transformation comparable to the Industrial Revolution that launched the machine age. Electronic circuitry, microprocessors, imaging software, and programming languages have radically altered our culture’s images, communication processes, and the very nature of design itself. Like many other spheres of creativity, graphic design has experienced profound changes. The graphic design community has responded to the digital age by pushing the limits of systems design, digital imagery, interactive design, and motion graphics. As so often in the past, the tools of design are changing with the advance of technology. The essence of graphic design however, remains unchanged. That essence is to give order to information, form to ideas, and expression and feeling to artifacts that document human experience. The new generation of graphic designers must take it upon themselves to define new aesthetics in electronic media and not allow the technology to define them. In doing so, they can lead the way to new and more effective approaches to their field.
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Cover image and inside spread as seen in the November 2010 digital edition of Martha Stewart Living magazine, titled “Boundless Beauty.� The cover animates the blooming of a peonie over a ten-hour period, using 180 still photographs. The inside spread is a glossary of the different types of peonies; additional information appears for each when tapped.
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Bibliography
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Breathnach, Teresa, and Brenda Dermody. New Retro: Classic Graphics, Today’s Designs. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2009.
Appel, Alfred, Jr. Jazz Modernism: From Ellington and Armstrong to Matisse and Joyce. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.
Byers, Mel. The Design Encyclopedia. London: Laurence King Publishing; New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2004.
Ambrose, Gavin, and Paul Harris. The Visual Dictionary of Graphic Design. New York: AVA Publishing, 2006.
Carter, Rob, Ben Day, and Philip B. Meggs. Typographic Design: Form and Communication. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1985.
Febvre, Lucien, and Henri-Jean Martin. The Coming of the Book. New York: Verso Classics, 1997. Fischer, Steven Roger. A History of Writing. London: Reaktion Books, 2005. Gallo, Max. The Poster in History. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001.
Barker, Nicolas, and the Curatorial Staff of the British Library. Treasures of the British Library. London: British Library, 2005. Bartram, Alan. Five Hundred Years of Book Design. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. ———. Typeforms: A History. London: British Library; New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2007. Barthes, Roland. Image, Music, Text. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977. Bayley, Stephen, and Terence Conran. Design Intelligence Made Visible. New York: Firefly Books, 2007. Bennett, Audrey. Design Studies: Theory and Research in Graphic Design. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006. Blumenthal, Joseph. The Printed Book in America. Boston: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 1977. ———. Typographic Years: A Printer’s Journey through a Half Century, 1925– 1975. New York: Frederic C. Beil, 1982.
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Claeys, Gregory, Lyman Tower Sargent, and Roland Schaer. Utopia. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Cohen, Elaine Lustig, and Ellen Lupton. Letters from the Avant Garde Modern Graphic Design. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996. Denman, Frank. The Shaping of Our Alphabet: A Study of Changing Type Styles. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1955. Drew, Ned, and Paul Sternberger. By Its Cover: Modern American Book Cover Design. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2005. Drucker, Johanna, and Emily McVarish. Graphic Design History: A Critical Guide. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009.
Garrigan, John, Margaret Cogswell, Milton Glaser, Dore Ashton, and Alan Gowans. Images of an Era: The American Poster, 1945–75. Washington: National Collection of Fine Art, 1975. Gay, Peter. Modernism: The Lure of Heresy; From Baudelaire to Beckett and Beyond. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008. Haley, Allan. Typographic Milestones. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1992. Heller, Steven. Design Literacy (Continued): Understanding Graphic Design. New York: Allworth Press, 1999. Heller, Steven, and Seymour Chwast. Graphic Style. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1988. Heller, Steven, and Louise Fili. Style Pedia: A Guide to Graphic Design Mannerisms, Quirks, and Conceits. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2006.
Eskilson, Stephen J. Graphic Design: A New History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.
Heller, Steven, and Mirko Ilic. The Anatomy of Design: Uncovering the Influences and Inspirations in Modern Graphic Design. Beverly, MA: Rockport Publishers, 2007.
Fawcett-Tang, Roger. New Typographic Design. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.
Howard, Nicole. The Book: The Life Story of a Technology. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005.
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Chapter 1
Hughes, Robert. Things I Didn’t Know: A Memoir. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006.
Morison, Stanley. On Type Faces. London: Medici Society, 1923.
Jubert, Roxane. Typography and Graphic Design: From Antiquity to the Present. Paris: Flammarion, 2006.
Morison, Stanley, and Brooke Crutchley, eds. A Tally of Types with Additions by Several Hands. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1973.
Kinross, Robin. Modern Typography: An Essay in Critical History. London: Hyphen Press, 2004. Knuttel, Gerhardus Wzn. De Letter Als Kunstwerk. Amsterdam: N.V Lettergieterij, 1951. Kramer, Hilton. The Triumph of Modernism: The Art World, 1985–2005. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2006. Levarie, Norma. The Art and History of Books. London: British Library; New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 1995. Louth, Andrew. Greek East and Latin West: The Church, AD 681. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2007. Loxley, Simon. Type: The Secret History of Letters. New York: I. B. Tauris, 2005. Lucie-Smith, Edward. Lives of the Great 20thCentury Artists. London: Thames and Hudson, 1999. Macaria, Joyce Walsh. Graphic Design Essentials: Skills, Software, and Creative Solutions. New Jersey: Laurence King Publishing, 2009. Macmillan, Neil. An A–Z of Type Designers. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Margolin, Victor. The Politics of the Artificial. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Margolin, Victor, Ira Brichta, and Vivian Brichta. The Promise and the Product: 200 Years of American Advertising Posters. New York: Macmillan, 1979. McLean, Ruari. How Typography Happens. London: British Library; New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2000. Meggs, Philip B. Meggs: Making Graphic Design History. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2008.
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Muller, Sheila D. Dutch Art: An Encyclopedia. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1997. Nakanishi, Akira. Writing Systems of the World: Alphabets, Syllabaries, Pictograms. Rutland, VT, and Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, 1991. Petrucci, Armando. Public Lettering: Script, Power, and Culture. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Pflughaupt, Laurent. Letter by Letter: An Alphabetical Miscellany. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007. Pollard, Alfred W. Last Words on the History of the Title-Page with Notes on Some Colophons and Twenty-seven Fac-similes of Title-Pages. New York: Burt Franklin, reprint, 1971.
575
Smithuijzen Abifares, Huda. Arabic Typography: A Comprehensive Sourcebook. London: Saqi Books, 2001. Southall, Richard. Printer’s Type in the Twentieth Century: Manufacturing and Design Methods. London: British Library; New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2005. Spencer, Herbert. Typographica 9. London: Lund Humphries, 1964. Tigerman, Stanley. The Archeworks Papers: Volume 1, Number One. Chicago: Archeworks, 2004. Twyman, Michael. The British Library Guide to Printing: History and Techniques. London: British Library, 1998. Woodham, Jonathan M. Twentieth-Century Design. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Woodham, Jonathan M., ed. Oxford Dictionary of Modern Design. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Yelavich, Susan, ed. Profile Pentagram Design. London: Phaidon, 2004.
Powers, Alan. Front Cover: Great Book Jackets and Cover Design. London: Mitchell Beazley, 2006.
Zukowsky, John. Chicago Architecture and Design, 1923–1993. New York: Art Institute of Chicago and Prestel, 2000.
Poynor, Rick. Typographica. London: Laurence King Publishing, 2001.
Chapter 1 Andrews, Carol. The British Museum Book of the Rosetta Stone. New York: Dorset Press, 1991.
Ronell, Avital. The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech. London: University of Nebraska Press, 1991. Sanders, Ewond. Boekengeluk (Book happiness). Amsterdam: De Buitenkant; The Hague: Museum Meermanno, 2008. Shillingsburg, Peter L. From Gutenberg to Google. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Simon, Oliver, ed. Signature: A Quadrimenstrial of Typography and Graphic Arts. London: Baynard Press, 1938.
Hooker, J. T. Reading the Past: Ancient Writing from Cuneiform to the Alphabet. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1998. Mertz, Barbara. Temples, Tombs, and Hieroglyphs: A Popular History of Ancient Egypt. 1964. 2nd ed. New York: William Morrow, 2007. Ray, John. The Rosetta Stone and the Rebirth of Egypt. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. Robinson, Andrew. The Story of Writing: Alphabets, Hieroglyphs, and Pictograms. London: Thames and Hudson, 1995.
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576
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Lacey, Barbara E. From Sacred to Secular: Visual Images in Early American Publications. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2007.
Saggs, H. W. F. The Babylonians: A Survey of the Ancient Civilization of the Tigris– Euphrates Valley. London: Folio Society, 2007.
Sullivan, Sir Edward. The Book of Kells. London: Studio Limited; New York: Studio Publications, 1952.
Solé, Robert, Dominique Vabelle, and W. V. Davies. The Rosetta Stone: The Decipherment of the Hieroglyphs. Preface by Neil MacGregor. London: Folio Society, 2006. First published as La Pierre de Rosette (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1999).
Chapter 5 Butler, Pierce. The Origin of Printing in Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968.
Orcutt, William Dana. The Book in Italy during the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. London: George G. Harrap, 1928.
Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe. 2 vols. New York: Cambridge University Press, reprint, 2008.
Slater, John Rothwell. Printing and the Renaissance: A Paper Read before the Fortnightly Club of Rochester, New York. New York: Battery Park Book Company, 1978.
Chapter 6 Hamilton, Frederick W. A Brief History of Printing in England: A Short History of Printing in England From Caxton to the Present Time. Chicago: United Typothetae of America, 1918.
Soepnel, Ine. Festina Lente: Aldus Manutius, drukker/uitgevers. Zutphen, Netherlands: De Walburg Pers, 1986.
Walker, C. B. F. Reading the Past: Cuneiform. London: British Museum, 1987. Chapter 2 Catich, Edward M. The Trajan Inscription. Boston: Society of Printers, 1973. Cook, B. F. Reading the Past: Greek Inscriptions. London: British Museum,1987. Daniels, Peter T., and William Bright. The World’s Writing Systems. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Healey, John F. Reading the Past: The Early Alphabet. London: British Museum, 1990. Jean, Georges. Writing: The Story of Alphabets and Scripts. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1992. Sacks, David. Language Visible: Unraveling the Mystery of the Alphabet from A to Z. New York: Broadway Books, 2003. Chapter 4 Backhouse, Janet. The Illuminated Page: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Painting. London: British Library, 1997. Diringer, David. The Book Before Printing: Ancient, Medieval, and Oriental. New York: Dover, reprint, 1982. Meehan, Bernard. The Book of Kells: An Illustrated Introduction to the Manuscript in Trinity College Dublin. London: Thames and Hudson, 1994. Netzer, Nancy, ed. Secular Sacred: 11th–16th Century Works from the Boston Public Library and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Chestnut Hill, MA: McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, 2006. Distributed by University of Chicago Press.
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Moran, James. Wynkyn de Worde: Father of Fleet Street. London: British Library; New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2003. Wilson, Adrian, and Joyce Lancaster Wilson. The Making of the Nuremberg Chronicle. Amsterdam: A. Asher & Co., 1978. Winship, George Parker. Gutenberg to Plantin: An Outline of the Early History of Printing. New York: Burt Franklin, 1968. Chapter 7 Barolini, Helen. Aldus and His Dream Book. New York: Italica Press, 1992. Bühler, Curt F. The Fifteenth-Century Book: The Scribes, the Printers, the Decorators. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1960. Carter, Harry. A View of Early Typography Up to About 1600. London: Hyphen Press, reprint, 2002. Colonna, Francesco. Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: The Strife of Love in a Dream. Translated by Joscelyn Godwin. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2005. Kallendorf, Craig, and Lisa Pon. The Books of Venice. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 1986.
Chapter 8 Ball, Johnson. William Caslon: Master of Letters. Kineton, UK: Roundwood Press, 1973. Benton, Josiah Henry. John Baskerville: Type-Founder and Printer, 1706–1775. New York: Burt Franklin, reprint, 1968. Hutt, Allen. Fournier: The Compleat Typographer. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1972. Lane, John A. Early Type Specimens in the Plantin-Moretus Museum. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press; London: British Library, 2004. Malcolmson, Anne. William Blake: An Introduction. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967. Pardoe, F. E. John Baskerville of Birmingham, Letter-Founder and Printer. London: Frederick Muller, 1975. Chapter 9 Annenberg, Maurice. Type Foundries of America and their Catalogs. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 1994. Bullen, Henry Lewis. Catalogue of Type Specimen Books: United States and Foreign. San Diego, CA: Frontier Publishing, 1972.
9/9/11 8:35 PM
Chapter 14
Clouse, Doug. MacKellar, Smiths and Jordan: Typographic Tastemakers of the Late Nineteenth Century. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2008. Isaac, Peter. William Davison’s New Specimen of Cast-Metal Ornaments and Wood Types, 1780–1858. London: Printing Historical Society, 1990. Johnston, Alastair. Alphabets to Order: The Literature of Nineteenth-Century Typefounders’ Specimens. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press; London: British Library, 2000. Ray, Gordon N. The Illustrator and the Book in England from 1790 to 1914. New York: Dover, 1976. Chapter 10 Abbe, Dorothy, Louise Fili, and Steven Heller. Typographic Treasures: The Work of W. A. Dwiggins. Woburn, MA: International Typeface Corporation, 1986. Bennett, Paul A. Postscripts on Dwiggins, 2 vols. New York: Typophiles, 1960 Dooijes, Dick. Over de drukletterontwerpen van Sjoerd H. de Roos. Zutphen, Netherlands: Bührmann-Ubbens Papier, 1987.
Chapter 11 Appelbaum, Stanley. The Complete “Masters of the Poster”: All 256 Plates from “Les Maîtres de I’Affiche.” New York: Dover, 1990. Jong, Cees W. de; Martijn F. Le Coultre, and Alston W. Purvis. Posters NL. Amsterdam: Muller Visual Communication, 2007. Koch, Robert. Will H. Bradley: American Artist in Print; A Collector’s Guide. Manchester, VT: Hudson Hills Press, 2002. Margolin, Victor. American Poster Renaissance. Secaucus, NJ: Castle Books, 1975. Ockman, Karol, and Kenneth E. Silver. Sarah Bernhardt: The Art of High Drama. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Chapter 12 Holliday, Peter. Edward Johnston: Master Calligrapher. London: British Library; New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2007. Langmead, Donald. Frank Lloyd Wright: A Bio-bibliography. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003.
Lommen, Mathieu. De grote vijf. Amsterdam: Bührmann-Ubbens Papier, 1991.
Chapter 13 Bartarm, Alan. Futurist Typography and the Liberated Text. London: British Library; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.
McCrillis, John O. C. Recollections of Daniel Berkeley Updike. Newport, RI: Redwood Library, 1991.
Dachy, Marc. Dada: The Revolt of Art. London: Thames and Hudson; New York: Abrams, 2006.
Morris, William. Giftwraps by Artists. New York: Joost Elffers, 1985.
Hemus, Ruth. Dada’s Women. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.
Needham, Paul, ed. William Morris and the Art of the Book. New York: Pierpont Morgan Library and Oxford University Press, 1976.
Mansbach, S. A., and Wojciech Jan Siemaszkiewicz. Graphic Modernism: From the Baltic to the Balkans, 1910–1935. New York: New York Public Library, 2007.
Thompson, Susan Otis. American Book of Design and William Morris. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press; London: British Library, 1996.
Milner, John. Symbolists and Decadents. London: Studio Vista; New York: E. P. Dutton, 1971.
Updike, Daniel Berkeley. The Well-Made Book: Essays and Lectures. Edited by William S. Peterson. West New York, NJ: Marc Batty, 2002.
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Orchard, Karin, Isabel Schulz, Sjarel Ex, Karin Orchard, Gerda Wendermann, Anna MüllerHärlin, Gwendolen Webster, Götz-Lothar Darsow, and Patrick Beurard-Valdoye.
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Kurt Schwitters: en de avant-garde. Rotterdam, Netherlands Dumont. 2006 Perloff, Marjorie. The Futurist Movement: Avant-Garde, Avant Guerre, and the Language of Rupture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. Poggi, Christine. Inventing Futurism: The Art and Politics of Artificial Optimism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009. Chapter 14 Aguirre y Gil de Biedma, Esperanza, et al. Cámara panorámica 120º Aniversario. Madrid: Cámara de Comercio, 2007. Aulich, James. War Posters: Weapons of Mass Communication. London: Imperial War Museum; New York: Thames and Hudson, 2007. Edelstein, Teri J., Oliver Green, Neil Harris, Peyton Skipwith, and Michael Twyman. Art for All: British Posters for Transport. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010. Estrada, Manuel. El diseño nos es una guinda. Madrid: Aldeasa, 2003. Games, Naomi, Catherine Moriarty, and June Rose. Abram Games: Graphic Designer. Aldershot, UK: Lund Humphries, 2003. Gil, Emilio. Pioneros del diseño gráfico en España. Barcelona: Index Book, 2007. Haworth-Booth, Mark. E. McKnight Kauffer: A Designer and His Public. London: V&A Publications, 2005. Heller, Steven, and Louise Fili. Euro Deco: Graphic Design between the Wars. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2004. Jammes, Isabelle, and Paul Jammes. Collection de spécimens de caractères, 1517–2004. Paris: Librairie Paul Jammes, Éditions des Cendres, 2006. Luckert, Steven, and Susan Bachrach. State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda. New York: W. W. Norton, 2009.
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578
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Orwell, George. Homage to Catalonia. London: Martin Secker & Warburg, reprint, 2008. Paret, Peter, Beth Irwin Lewis, and Paul Paret. Persuasive Images: Posters of War and Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992. Rawls, Walton H., Wake Up, America!. New York: Abbeville Publishing Group, 1988. Satué, Enric. El diseño gráfico en España: Historia de una forma comunicativa nueva. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1997. Tisa, John. The Palette and the Flame: Posters of the Spanish Civil War. New York: International Publishers, 1979. Chapter 15 Bury, Stephen. Breaking the Rules: The Printed Face of the European Avant Garde, 1900–1937. London: British Library, 2007. Hearn, Michael Patrick, and John Larson. Introduction: Russian Literature and Art. New York: Bloomsbury Auctions, 2008. ———. Reconsidering the Constructivists: The Ivan Collection, Russian Literature & Art. New York: Bloomsbury Auctions, 2008. Hellyer, Peter W. A Catalogue of Russian Avant-Garde Books, 1912–1934 and 1969–2003. London: British Library, 2006. Houston Museum of Fine Arts. Czech Modernism, 1900–1945. Boston: Bulfinch Press, 1990. Seuphor, Michel. Piet Mondrian: Life and Work. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1960. Spencer, Herbert. Typographica 9. London: Lund Humphries, 1964. Chapter 16 Barker, Nicolas. Stanley Morison. London: Macmillan London, 1972. Bartram, Alan. Bauhaus, Modernism, and the Illustrated Book. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.
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Bergdoll, Barry, and Leah Dickerman. Bauhaus, 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2009.
Rose, Jonathan. The Holocaust and the Book. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001.
Bookbinder, Paul. Weimar Germany: The Republic of the Reasonable. New York: Manchester University Press, 1996.
Smock, William. The Bauhaus Ideal Then and Now: An Illustrated Guide to Modern Design. Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 2004.
Brewer, Roy. Eric Gill: The Man Who Loved Letters. London: Frederick Muller,1973.
Tschichold, Jan. Treasury of Alphabets and Lettering. New York: W. W. Norton,1952.
Burke, Christopher. Active Literature: Jan Tschichold and New Typography. London: Hyphen Press, 2007.
Van Dam, Peter. N. P. de Koo. The Hague, Netherlands: [Z]OO Producties, 2008.
Cinamon, Gerald. Rudolf Koch: Letterer, Type Designer, Teacher. New Castle: Oak Knoll Press, 2000. Droste, Magdalena. Bauhaus: 1919–1933. Cologne: Taschen, 2006. Gay, Peter. Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001. Girard, Xavier. Bauhaus. New York: Assouline, 2003. Jong, Cees W. de, Alston W. Purvis, Martijn F. Le Coultre, Richard B. Doubleday, and Hans Reichardt. Jan Tschichold: Master Typographer; His Life, Work, and Legacy. Laren, Netherlands: VK Projects; London: Thames & Hudson, 2008. Le Coultre, Martjin F., and Alston W. Purvis. Jan Tschichold: Posters of the Avantgarde. Laren, Netherlands: VK Projects, 2007. MacCarthy, Fiona. Eric Gill: A Lover’s Quest for Art and God. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1989. Mann, Dick. Paul Schuitema: Beeldend organisator. Rotterdam: Uitgeverij 010, 2006. Mertens, Ferdinand. Otto Neurath en de maakbaarheid van de betere samenleving: Fragmenten uit de vorige eeuw. The Hague: Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau, 2007. Peukert, Detlev J. K. The Weimar Republic. New York: Hill and Wang, 1993.
Weitz, Eric D. Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007. Wingler, Hans M. The Bauhaus: Dessau, Weimar, Chicago, Berlin. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1976. Chapter 17 Bauret, Gabriel. Alexy Brodovitch. New York: Assouline, 2005. Carter, Ennis. Posters for the People: Art of the WPA. Philadelphia: Quirk Books, 2008. DeNoon, Christopher. Posters of the WPA. Los Angeles: Wheatley Press, 1987. Hansen, Thomas S. Classic Book Jackets: The Design Legacy of George Salter. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2005. Landau, Ellen, and Claude Cernuschi. Pollock Matters. Chestnut Hill, MA: McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, 2007. Distributed by University of Chicago Press. Remington, R. Roger. American Modernism: Graphic Design 1920 to 1960. London: Laurence King Publishing, 2003. Remington. Roger R., and Robert S. P. Fripp. Design and Science: The Life and Work of Will Burtin. Aldershot, UK, and Burlington, Vermont: Lund Humphries, 2007. Ryan, David. Letter Perfect: The Art of Modernist Typography, 1896–1953. Rohnert Park, CA: Pomegranate Communications, 2001.
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Chapter 23
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Chapter 20 Bayley, Stephen. Design Classics: The Lucky Strike Packet by Raymond Loewy. Frankfurt, Germany: Verlag Form, 1998.
Beeke, Anton. “Chaz Maviyane-Davies.” In Area, edited by Valérie Vago-Laurer and the editors of Phaidon Press, 212–15. London: Phaidon, 2003.
Zapf, Hermann. Hermann Zapf and His Design Philosophy. Introduction by Carl Zahn. Chicago: Society of Typographic Arts, 1987.
Loewy, Raymond. Never Leave Well Enough Alone. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.
———. “Saed Meshki.” In Area, edited by Valérie Vago-Laurer and the editors of Phaidon Press, 220–223. London: Phaidon, 2003.
Chapter 18 Englemann, Michael. Poster Collection. Switzerland: Lars Müller Publishers, 2004. Hollis, Richard. Swiss Graphic Design, 1920–1965. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Osterer, Heidrun, and Philipp Stamm. Adrian Frutiger Typefaces: The Complete Works. Berlin: Birkhäuser Verlag, 2009. Purcell, Kerry W. Josef Müller-Brockmann. New York: Phaidon, 2006. Ruder, Emil. Typographie. New York: Visual Communication Books Hastings House, 1967. Von Moos, Stanislaus, Mara Campana, and Giampiero Bosoni. Max Huber. New York: Phaidon, 2006. Zapf, Hermann. About Alphabets: Some Marginal Notes on Type Design. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1970. Chapter 19 Challis, Clive. Helmut Krone: The Book– Graphic Design and Art Direction (Concept, Form and Meaning) after Advertising’s Creative Revolution. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Enchorial Press, 2005.
Chapter 21 Heller, Steven, and Paula Scher. Seymour. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2009. Moscoso, Victor. Sex, Rock, and Optical Illusions. Seattle, WA: Fantagraphics Books, 2005. Wolff, Laetitia. Massin. London and New York: Phaidon, 2007.
Bos, Ben, and Elly Bos, eds. AGI: Graphic Design since 1950. London: Thames and Hudson, 2007.
Chapter 22 Gibbs, David. Pentagram: The Compendium. London: Phaidon , 1993.
Bourquin, Nicolas, Sasha Thoma, and Ben Wittner. Arabesque: Graphic Design from the Arab World and Persia. Berlin: Gestalten Verlag, 2008.
Hofland, H. J. A. Affiches Posters Plakate: Gielijn Escher. Amsterdam: Stichting Prent & Publiciteit, 1996.
Broos, Kees, and Paul Hefting, Dutch Graphic Design: A Century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997.
McLuhan, Marshall. The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man. Hamburg, Germany: Gingko Press, 2002.
Cato, Ken. “Isidro Ferrer.” In Area, edited by Valérie Vago-Laurer and the editors of Phaidon Press, 100–3. London: Phaidon, 2003.
Polano, Sergio, and Pierpaolo Vetta. ABC of 20th-Century Graphics. Milan: Electa Architecture, 2003. Purvis, Alston W., and Cees W. de Jong. Dutch Graphic Design: A Century of Innovation. London: Thames and Hudson, 2006. Chapter 23 Abedini, Reza, and Hans Wolbers. New Visual Culture of Modern Iran. Amsterdam: BIS Publishers, 2006.
Heller, Steven, and Seymour Chwast. Illustration: A Visual History. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2008.
AIGA. 365: AIGA Year in Design 29. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2009.
Meggs, Philip B. six Chapters in Design: Bass, Chermayeff, Glaser, Rand, Tanaka, Tomaszewski. Hong Kong: Chronicle Books, 1997.
Andersen, Kurt. “All-American: Kurt Andersen on Michael Bierut.” In Profile Pentagram Design, edited by Susan Yelavich, 92–101. London: Phaidon, 2004.
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Bell, Nick. “Experimental Jetset.” In Area, edited by Valérie Vago-Laurer and the editors of Phaidon Press, 92–95. London: Phaidon, 2003.
———. “Siobhan Keaney.” In Area, edited by Valérie Vago-Laurer and the editors of Phaidon Press, 164–67. London: Phaidon, 2003. ———. “Gabriela Rodriguez.” In Area, edited by Valérie Vago-Laurer and the editors of Phaidon Press, 196–299. London: Phaidon, 2003. Farias, Agnaldo, Adélia Borges, Rafael Cardoso, André Stolarski, and Rico Lins. Rico Lins: Graphic Borderlines. São Paulo: Solisluna Editora, 2009. Fishler, Karen D. On the Edge: Breaking the Boundaries of Graphic Design. Gloucester, MA: Rockport Publishers, 1998.
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Poynor, Rick. Jan van Toorn: Critical Practice. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2008. ———. No More Rules. London: Laurence King Publishing, 2003. Rattermeyer, Volker. Plakate von Gunter Rambow im Museum Wiesbaden. Wiesbaden: Museum Wiesbaden, 1988. Schemo, Diana Jean. “The Overseas Odyssey of Rico Lins.” Graphis 321 (1999): 66–75. Serov, Serge. “Reza Abedini.” In Area, edited by Valérie Vago-Laurer and the editors of Phaidon Press, 12–15. London: Phaidon, 2003. ———. “Ahn Sang-Soo.” In Area, edited by Valérie Vago-Laurer and the editors of Phaidon Press, 304–7. London: Phaidon, 2003.
King, Emily. “Picture Story: Emily King on Angus Hyland.” In Profile Pentagram Design, edited by Susan Yelavich, 62–71. London: Phaidon, 2004.
Stanic, Elena, and Corina Lipavsky. Atlas of Graphic Designers. Beverly, MA: Rockport Publishers, 2009.
King, Emily, Louise Schouwenberg, and David Snellenberg. The ABC of De Designpolitie. Amsterdam: Valiz, 2008.
Taborda, Felipe, and Julius Wiedemann. Latin American Graphic Design. Hong Kong and Los Angeles: Taschen, 2008.
Kirkham, Pat, ed. Women Designers in the USA, 1900–2000: Diversity and Difference. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.
Triggs, Teal. Type Design: Radical Innovations and Experimentation. New York: Collins Design, 2003.
Trulove, James Grayson, ed. New Design: Amsterdam. Gloucester, MA: Rockport Publishers, 2001. Vago-Laurer, Valérie, ed. Area. London: Phaidon, 2003. Vit, Armin, and Bryony Gomez-Palacio. Women of Design: Influence and Inspiration from the Original Trailblazers to the New Groundbreakers. Cincinnati: F+W Publications, 2008. Why Not Associates. Why Not? London: Booth-Clibborn, 2000. Wlassikoff, Michel. The Story of Graphic Design in France. Corte Madera, CA: Gingko Press, 2006. Woodham, Jonathan M., ed. Oxford Dictionary of Modern Design. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Yelavich, Susan, ed. Profile Pentagram Design. London: Phaidon, 2004. Chapter 24 Abrams, Janet. “The Choreography of SiteSpecific Media: Janet Abrams on Lisa Strausfeld.” In Profile Pentagram Design, edited by Susan Yelavich, 52–61. London: Phaidon, 2004. AIGA. 365: AIGA Year in Design 29. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2009. Bourquin, Nicolas, Sasha Thoma, and Ben Wittner. Arabesque: Graphic Design from the Arab World and Persia. Berlin: Gestalten Verlag, 2008. Boutros, Mourad. Arabic for Designers. New York: Mark Batty Publisher, 2005. Celant, Germano, and Gianfranco Maraniello. Vertigo: A Century of Multimedia Art from Futurism to the Web. Milan: Skira Editore, 2008. Dietwee. New Dutch Graphic Design. Amsterdam: BIS Publishers, 2002.
Troxler, Niklaus. The Master of Design. Singapore: Page One Publishing, 2006.
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Chapter 24
Edwards, Owen. “Hunter Gatherer: Owen Edwards on Kit Hinrichs.” In Profile Pentagram Design, edited by Susan Yelavich, 182–91. London: Phaidon, 2004. Fiell, Charlotte, and Peter Fiell. Contemporary Graphic Design. Cologne, Germany: Taschen, 2007. ———. Graphic Design for the 21st Century. Cologne, Germany: Taschen, 2003. Foster, John. New Masters of Poster Design: Poster Design for the Next Century. Beverly, MA: Rockport Publishers, 2008. Gomez, Edward M. New Design: London. Gloucester, MA: Rockport Publishers, 2001. Greiman, April, and Liz Farrelly. April Greiman: Floating Ideas into Time and Space. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1998. He, Jianping. All Men Are Brothers: Graphic Designers. Antwerp: Tectum Publishers, 2008. Heller, Steven, and Gail Anderson. New Vintage Type: Classic Fonts for the Digital Age. New York: Watson-Guptill, 2007. Jacobs, Karrie. “Three Letters: e.V.O.: Karrie Jacobs on Paula Sher.” In Profile Pentagram Design, edited by Susan Yelavich, 72–81. London: Phaidon, 2004. Jong, Cees W. de, Stefanie Burger, and Jorre Both. New Poster Art. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2008. Kirkham, Pat, ed. Women Designers in the USA, 1900–2000: Diversity and Difference. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. Krasner, Jon. Motion Graphic Design and Fine Art Animation Principles and Practice. Burlington, MA, and Oxford, England: Elsevier, 2004. Livingston, Alan, and Isabella Livingston. The Thames and Hudson Dictionary of Graphic Design and Designers. London: Thames & Hudson, 2003.
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Maeda, John. Creative Code: Aesthetics + Computation. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2004. Nakajima, Hideki. Clear in the Fog. Tokyo: Rockin’ On, 2006.
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Wild, Lorraine. “Designer = Editor = Curator = Collaborator = Designer: Loraine Wild on Abbot Miller.” In Profile Pentagram Design, edited by Susan Yelavich, 132–41. London: Phaidon, 2004.
Re, Margaret, Johanna Drucker, and James Mosley. Typographically Speaking: The Art of Matthew Carter. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2003. Sherraden, Jim, Elek Horvath, and Paul Kingsbury. Hatch Show Print: The History of a Great American Poster Shop. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2001. Skolos, Nancy, and Thomas Wedell. Type, Image, Message: A Graphic Design Layout Workshop. Gloucester, MA: Rockport Publishers, 2006. Stanic, Elena, and Corina Lipavsky. Atlas of Graphic Designers. Beverly, MA: Rockport Publishers, 2009. Tabatabai, Nahid. Bouf-e Kour Iranian Typography. Tehran: Yassavoli Publications, 2003. Triggs, Teal. Type Design: Radical Innovations and Experimentation. New York: Collins Design, 2003. Trulove, James Grayson, ed. New Design: Amsterdam. Gloucester, MA: Rockport Publishers, 2001. VanderLans, Rudy. If We’re Standing on the Shoulders of Giants, What Are We Reaching For? New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2003. Venezky, Martin. It Is Beautiful—Then Gone. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007. Vit, Armin, and Bryony Gomez-Palacio. Women of Design: Influence and Inspiration from the Original Trailblazers to the New Groundbreakers. Cincinnati: F+W Publications, 2008. Why Not Associates. Why Not? London: Booth-Clibborn, 2000.
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Image Credits
Abbasi, Majid: 23-142, 23-143 Abedini, Reza: 23-144, 23-145 Adigard, Erik- 1996 M-A-D: 24-55, 24-56 Adobe Systems, Inc; Carol Twombly: 24-25, 24-27 Adobe Systems, Inc; Robert Slimbach: 24-26 AICI ((Beijing) Armstrong International Corporate Adentity Co. Ltd.): 20-62 Alcorn, Steven, © 2010: 19-52 Alva, Diogo Potes: 23-105 Alva, Ricardo Matos: 23-106 Anderson, Charles S.: 22-45, 22-49, 22-50 Apeloig, Phillpe: 23-79 © 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York: 13-51 © 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ ADAGP, Paris: 13-5, 13-6, 13-7, 13-45 (Image courtesy of the Beinecke Library), 1350, 14-59, 14-60, 14-61, 17-30, 21-9, 21-10, 21-14 © 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ ADAGP, Paris/ Succession Marcel Duchamp: 13-27, 13-28 © 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ c/o Pictoright Amsterdam: 15-54, 1556, 15-57, 15-58, 16-46, 16-50, 23-27, 24-73 (Photo courtesy of Scagliola/ Brakkee) © 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ ProLitteris, Zurich: 14-20 (Image courtesy of the International Poster Gallery), 18-4, 18-5 © 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ SIAE, Rome: 13-13 (Image courtesy of the Beinecke Library), 13-14 (Image courtesy of the Beinecke Library), 13-20, 13-23, 13-24, 13-44 © 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn: 13-29, 13-34, 1335 (Image courtesy of the Beinecke Library) 13-36, 13-37, 13-38, 13-39, 13-40, 13-41, 14-8, 14-9, 14-15, 14-16, 14-17, 14-18, 14-24, 14-25, 14-40, 14-41, 14-42, 15-21, 15-22, 1523, 15-24 (Image provided by the Beinecke
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Library), 15-25, 15-42, 15-59, 16-17, 16-18a, 16-20, 16-22, 16-23, 17-35 Asaba, Katsumi: 23-85 Asia Society, New York: 3-6 (from the collection of Dr. Paul Singer) Aufuldish, Bob: 24-50, 24-51 Baer, Roger: 16-13 Bass, Saul: 19-19, 19-21, 19-22, 20-32 Bauer, Ruedi: 24-72 Bayer, Estate of Herbert: 16-16, 16-21, 1736, 17-37, 17-41, 17-42, 17-57 Beall, Estate of Lester: 17-6, 17-7, 17-8, 20-26, 20-27 Beeke, Anthon: 23-42, 23-43 Beinecke Library: 4-12, 4-17, 4-20, 4-21, 4-24, 5-13, 5-14, 5-15, 6-3, 6-4, 6-7, 6-8, 6-9, 6-10, 6-11, 6-12, 6-13, 6-16, 6-20, 6-21, 6-23, 6-24, 6-31, 7-12, 7-13, 7-17, 7-18,7-19, 7-20, 7-21, 7-23, 7-35, 7-36, 7-37, 7-41, 7-42, 7-43, 7-45, 7-46, 7-47, 7-48, 7-50, 7-51, 8-14, 8-19, 8-20, 8-25, 8-29, 8-30, 9-40, 9-44, 10-17, 10-20, 10-42, 11-18, 11-21, 12-30, 13-8, 13-9, 13-10, 13-11, 13-12, 13-16, 13-17, 13-18, 1319, 13-21, 14-6, 16-3, Beltran, Felix: 23-107 Binder, Joseph: 17-23 Bierut, Michael and Marian Bantjes: 24-89 Bingnam Yu: 23-121 Blokland, Frank: 24-36 Blumenfeld, Erwin/ Vogue. Copyright 1945, Conde Nast: 17-21 Boom, Irma: 23-56 Brade, Helmut: 23-59 Brody, Neville: 22-51, 22-52, 22-53 Bruwhiler, Paul: 23-75, 23-76 Burns, Bob. © Paul Rand archive: 19-5, 19-7, 20-16, 20-17, 20-18, 20-19, 20-22, 20-24, 21-34 Carrio, Pepe: 23-99 Carson, David: 24-11, 24-12, 24-13 Carter, Matthew: 24-29, Carter, Matthew. Designed by Matthew Carter. © 2003. Carter & Cone Type, Inc. Under Exclusive License to Yale University:
24-32, 24-33, 24-34 Cayatte, Henrique: 23-102 CBS: 20-5, 20-6, 20-8, 20-9 CBS Records: 19-13, 21-32, 21-39, 21-40 Chahine, Nadine, Linotype Gmblt: 24-40, 24-41, 24-42 Chermayeff & Geismar Associates: 19-25, 19-27, 20-28, 20-29, 20-30 Chermayeff, Ivan/ Chermayeff & Geismar: 19-26 Chwast, Seymour: 21-23 (Image courtesy of the International Poster Gallery), 21-24, 2125, 21-26 (Alston W. Purvis Collection), 21-27 Cieslewicz, Roman: 21-7 Cook and Shanosky Associates, Inc: 20-42, 20-43 Cooper, Kyle (Imaginary Forces) SEVEN © New Line Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved: 24-62 Cooper, Kyle (Imaginary Forces) “SPIDERMAN” © 2002 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Courtesy of Columbia Pictures. Spider-Man Character ® & © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved: 24-63, 24-64 Cooper Union, Courtesy of the Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography: 19-53, 19-54, 19-55, 19-56, 19-57, 19-58, 19-59, 19-60, 19-64 Corita Art Center, Immaculate Heart Community, Los Angeles: 21-49, 21-50 (Photo by Joshua White) Craine, Jon: 20-20, 20-21 Cronan, Michael: 22-36 Crouwel, Wim: 23-35 Danziger, Lou: 21-35, 21-36 Davis, Paul: 21-31 (Image courtesy of the International Poster Gallery) de Harak, Rudolph: 18-43, 18-44, 18-45, 18-46 Dijk, Bob van (Studio Dumbar): 23-48, 23-49 Doyle Dane Bernbacj, New York: 19-46, 19-49 Duffy Design Group: 22-46, 22-47, 22-48
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Image Credits
Dumbar, Gert (Studio Dumbar): 23-47 Eisenman, Alvin: 19-28, 19-29 Ellis, David: 12-48 Émigré Graphics: 24-5, 24-6, 24-6, 24-28 Emory University: 6-27, 7-5 Estrada, Manuel: 23-90, 23-91, 23-92, 23-93, 23-94, 23-95, 23-96, 23-97 Ex Libris, New York: 19-8, 19-9, 19-10, 19-11 Experimental Jetset: 23-57, 23-58 Fang Cao: 23-131 Federico, Gene: 19-50 Fella, Edward: 24-9, 24-10 Ferrer, Isidro: 23-98 Fili, Louise: 22-40 Fong, Karin (Imaginary Forces); Fairly Painless Advertising: Herman Miller “Get Real” promotion film, 2003: 24-65 Fontana, Ruben: 23-118, 23-119 Friedman, Dan: 22-18, 22-19, 22-20 Frost, Vince, Issue 3 Spring 2004: 23-10 Frutiger, Adrian: 18-14, 18-15 Fukuda, Shigeo: 23-28, 23-29, 23-30 Fuller, Rosalinde: 13-52 Gardner, Mark and Steve Fuller (Imaginary Forces): 24-66 (Still taken from “Mad Men” provided through the courtesy of Lionsgate) Gentl & Hyers: 24-61 (photograph), © 2010 Geissbuehler, Karl Domenic: 23-74 Geissbuhler, Steff: 22-8, 22-9 Gil, Emilio: 23-87, 23-88, 23-89 Giusti, George: 17-52 Glaser, Milton: 21-18, 21-19 (Image courtesy of the International Poster Gallery), 21-20, 21-21, 21-22 Goddard, Keith: 23-81, 23-82 Goines, David Lance: 21-48 Goldberg, Carin: 22-42 Gorman, Patricia: 20-65, 20-66, 20-67, 20-68, 24-43 Gowan, Al: 20-33, 20-34 Grapus: 21-66 Greiman, April: 22-21, 22-22, 22-23, 24-3, 24-4, 24-45 Greiman, April/ Made in Space: 24-52 Greiman, April/Willi Kunz: 22-24 The Grolier Club: 4-13, 4-22, 6-29, 6-34, 7-3, 7-4, 7-25, 7-28, 8-7, 8-8, 8-9, 8-12, 9-5, 9-50, 9-51, 10-1, 10-2, 10-3, 10-18, 10-23, 10-26, 10-44, 11-17, 16-38 © Hammerpress: 24-97, 24-98 Hanson, Thomas: 17-9, 17-10, 17-11 Hard Werken (now Inizio Group bv, Amsterdam): 23-51 Harper’s Bazaar Magazine: 17-18 Hatch Show Print: 24-99, 24-100, 24-101 He, Jianping, Hesign Studio Berlin: 23-127
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Helfand, Jessica: 24-47, 24-48 Helmut Schmid Archives: 18-20, 18-21 Herdeg, Walter: 16-64 Herrera, Luis Almeida (Photography by Lourdes Almeida): 23-108, 23-109 © 2011 C. Herscovici, London/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York: 13-46 (Image courtesy of the Beinecke Library) Hiebert, Kenneth: 22-27 Hill, John: 17-47, 17-49, 17-50, 20-12, 20-13 Hinrichs, Kit (Studio Hinrichs): 24-20 Hoefler & Tobias Frere-Jones; “Gotham” used with permission of Hoefler & FrereJones, www.typography.com: 24-39 Hofmann, Dorothea: 18-22, 18-23, 18-24, 18-25, 18-26 Houghton Library: 5-7, 5-8, 7-9, 7-11, 7-26, 7-27, 7-30, 7-38, 7-40, 7-44, 8-6, 8-26, 8-27, 8-31, 9-1, 10-45, 12-15 Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University: 10-19, 10-22 Hua Jiang: 23-129 Huber, Max: 18-7, 18-8 (Image courtesy of the International Poster Gallery), 18-9 (Image courtesy of the International Poster Gallery) Hyland, Angus: 23-8 Igarashi, Takenobu: 23-21, 23-22, 23-23, 23-24 Ilic, Mirko: 24-87 Imboden, Melchior: 24-78 International Poster Gallery: 11-26, 11-29, 11-30, 11-79, 11-81, 11-84, 11-85, 11-86, 1414, 14-21, 14-30, 14-31, 14-48, 14-52, 14-54, 15-4, 15-26, 15-27, 15-28, 15-29, 15-30, 1539, 15-40, 16-61, 16-62, 17-22, 19-48, 20-4 Ives, John S.: 19-30, 20-14 Jeker, Werner, c. 2000; Photography by Maria Del Curto: 23-69 Jefferson Smurfit Corporation: 17-28, 17-29, 17-38, 17-40, 17-58, 17-59 Jian Zhao: 23-130 Jianping He: 23-128 Jingren Lu: 23-125, 23-126 Johns Hopkins Library: 6-28, 7-22, 7-49, 10-21 Johnson Banks- Michael Johnson, Designer: 23-6 Kabelfabriek, Delft: 16-47, 16-48, 16-49 Kamekura, Yusaku: 23-14, 23-16 Kath, Gitte, c. 2000: 23-60 Katsui, Mitsuo, c. 1998 GALA: 23-67 Kauffer, E. McKnight: 17-33 Kazumasa, Nagai: 23-18 Keaney, Siobhan: 23-11 Kidd, Chip: 23-83 (Photography by Peter Zeray/ Photonica), 23-84 (Photography ©
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Corbis/UPI) Kieser, Gunther: 21-51, 21-52 Kim, Kum: 2-21, 2-22, 2-23 Kisman, Max: 24-92, 24-95, 24-96 © 2011 Estate of Gustav Klutsis/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York: 15-34, 15-35, 15-36, 15-37 (Images courtesy of the International Poster Gallery) Koblin, Aaron: 24-58 Koeweiden Postma: 24-91 Koot, Dennis (Studio DUmbar): 23-50 Kunz, Willi: 22-25, 22-26 Lenz, Annette: 23-80 Levy, Jean-Benoit; Photography by Robert Schlatter: 23-70 Li, Tommy: 23-133 Library of Congress: 17-1 Linotype GmbH, a Monotype imaging company: 24-40, 24-41, 24-42 Lins, Rico: 23-115, 23-116, 23-117 Loesch, Uwe: 23-77 Lois, George: 19-66, 19-67, 19-68, 19-69, 19-70, 19-71 (art direction and concept. Photography by Carl Fischer) Longhauser, William: 22-29 Louie, Lorraine: 22-43 Lukova, Luba: 23-61, 23-62 Lustig Cohen, Elaine: 15-63, 19-12 Machado, Joao: 23-103, 23-104 Maeda, John: 24-57 Magallanes, Alejandro: 23-113, 23-114 © 2011 Man Ray Trust/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY/ ADAGP, Paris: 13-54, 13-55, 13-57, 17-13 Manwaring, Michael: 22-34, 22-35 Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc. As seen in the November, 2010 digital edition of Martha Stewart Living magazine entitled Boundless Beauty. Photograph © 2010 Gentl & Hyers: 24-61 Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 1847, 18-48, 18-49, 18-50, 18-51, 18-52 Massin/ Alston W. Purvis Collection: 21-61, 21-62, 21-63, 21-64, 21-65 Matsunaga, Shin: 23-66 Matter, Herbert: 16-63, 17-48 Matthies, Holger: 23-78 Maviyane-Davies, Chaz: 23-148, 23-149 Max, Peter: 21-47 McCoy, Katherine: 24-8 McGraw Hill/ Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague: 17-53, 17-54, 17-56 McMullan, James: 21-30 Meggs, Philip B.: 1-25, 3-10, 5-4, 6-19, 6-26, 7-6, 7-7, 7-32, 10-24, 13-2, 14-12, 14-46, 1449, 14-55, 14-67, 15-61, 15-62, 17-43, 17-
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Image Credits
Meggs, Philip B. (cont.) 44, 18-1, 18-6, 18-11, 18-27, 19-20, 19-42, 20-38, 20-40, 21-5, 21-6, 21-8, 21-16, 21-33, 21-53, 21-54, 21-67, 21-68, 22-32, 22-38, 2239, 22-41, 23-12, 23-13 Meng, Ung Vai: 23-135 Meshki, Saed: 23-146, 23-147 © The Metropolitan Museum of Art/ Art Resource, NY: 2-16 Meyer, Rudi and Theatre du Chatelet, c. 2004: 23-71 Miller, Abbot (designed by Abbot Miller/ Pentagram): 24-21 Min Wang: 20-63, 20-64, 23-122, 23-123, 23-124 Moguzzi, Bruoe: 22-10 Moholy-Nagy, Estate of Laszlo: 16-7, 16-8, 16-9, 16-10, 16-11, 16-12, 16-18b, 16-18c Mok, Clement: 24-49 Momayez, Morteza: 23-141 Montalvo, German: 23-110 Morla, Jennifer: 24-82, 24-83 Moscoso, Victor, © 1967 Neon Rose, www. victormoscoso.com: 21-45 (Image provided by the International Poster Gallery), 21-46 Mosley, James (photographer): 2-20 Ms. Magazine. Reprinted by permission of Ms. magazine, © 1972: 19-43 Muller-Brockmann, Josef: 18-28, 18-29, 1830, 18-31, 18-32, 18-34, 18-36, 18-37 Muroga, Kiyonori: 20-44, 20-45, 20-46 Museum of Decortative Arts, Prague: 17-55 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: 1-18, 1-19, 1-20, 1-24, 1-26, 1-27, 1-28, 1-29, 2-9, 2-11, 2-12, 2-15, 3-7 The Museum of Modern Art/ Licensed by SCALA/ Art Resource, NY: 17-31, 17-32, 182, 18-3, 18-33, 18-35 Nakajima, Hideki: 23-63 National Archives: 17-34 Niessen & de Vries: 24-94 Niijima, Minoru: 24-76 Nogami, Shuichi: 24-74 The North Face: 24-60 Odermatt & Tissi: 18-38, 18-39, 18-40, 1841, 18-42, 22-3, 22-4, 22-5, 22-6, 22-7 Olden, Estate of Georg/ Terri Baker Weiss: 20-7 Oliver, Vaughn: 23-5 Oxenaar, R.D.E.: 23-39 Palazzo, Peter: 19-41 Paprika: 23-86 Park Kum-jun: 23-139 Pelavin, Daniel: 22-44 Pentagram Design: 23-1, 23-2, 23-3, 23-4 Pentagram/ David Hillman: 23-9
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Photofest: 14-66 Pierpont Morgan Library: 5-12, 6-32, 6-36, 7-24 Pineles, Estate of Cipe; Photograph courtesy of Rochester Institute of Technology, Pineles Archive: 19-31 Pintori, Giovanni: 20-2, 20-3 Pirtle, Woody: 21-41, 21-42, 24-44 Pluta, Wladyslaw: 24-88 Pohl, George: 22-1 PWS Publishing Co., Boston, MA: 24-46 Purvis, Alston W., collection of: 1-8, 1-9,217, 2-24, 6-17, 8-1, 8-2, 8-3, 8-4, 8-5, 8-11, 8-15, 8-16, 8-17, 8-18, 8-23, 8-28, 9-65, 9-66, 9-67, 9-68, 9-71, 10-15, 10-31, 10-32, 10-33, 10-34, 10-35, 10-36, 10-37, 10-43, 11-28, 1132, 11-33, 11-47, 11-66, 11-67, 11-68, 11-69, 11-70, 12-6, 13-26, 14-3, 14-28, 14-29, 14-32, 14-33, 14-57, 14-58, 15-31, 15-45, 15-49, 1569, 15-70, 16-37, 16-36, 16-39, 16-40, 16-51, 16-52, 16-53, 16-54, 16-59, 16-60, 17-2, 17-4, 17-14, 17-15, 17-17, 17-39, 18-18, 18-19, 1962, 19-63, 24-59 (The Prophetic album cover by Herbie Nichols, Blue Note, 1955, design by Martin Craig) Rambow, Gunter: 21-57, 21-58, 21-59, 21-60 Rambow, Gunter & Michael van de Sand: 21-55, 21-56 Rand, Paul: 19-1, 19-2, 19-3, 19-4, 19-6, 2015, 20-23, 20-25 Raymond Loewy™/ ® by CMG Worldwide, Inc./ www.RaymondLoewy.com: 20-10, 20-11 Reichert, Hans Dieter: 24-85 Reinhold Brown Gallery, New York: 14-50, 14-51, 14-53 Remington, Roger: 17-3 (on behalf of St. Bride Printing Library), 19-12, 19-18, 19-32 RenderMonkey: 24-53, 24-54 RIT: 17-5 (Lester Beall Collection), 17-19 (Hearst Magazine) RIT Graphic Design Archives, Wallace Library, Rochester Institute of Technology: 17-43, 17-45 Robert Miles Runyan & Associates: 20-58 Rodrigues, Sebastiao: 23-100, 23-101 Rodriquez, Gabriela: 23-111 (copyright 2001. Photography by Maria Lopez and Mario Jimenez), 23-112 Rolling Stone magazine, Fred Woodward, Art Director: 24-14, 24-15, 24-16 Rotis Buros, Otl Aicher, Leutkirch, Germany: 20-36, 20-52, 20-53, 20-54, 20-55, 20-56, 20-57 Royal PTT Nederland NV (KPN): 23-33, 2338, 23-52
Ruffins, Reynold: 21-17 Sagmeister, Stefan, © 1996 Warner Brothers Music, Inc.: 23-68 Saito, Makoto: 23-64, 23-65 Saks, Arnold: 18-53 Salisbury, Mike/ Mikesalisbury.net: 19-44, 19-45 © Salvador Dali, Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 2011: 13-47 (Image courtesy of the Beinecke Library) Sang-Soo, Ahn: 23-137, 23-138 Sato, Koichi: 23-31, 23-32 Scher, Paula (designed by Paula Scher/ Pentagram): 22-37, 22-54, 24-69, 24-70, 24-71, 24-79, 24-80, 24-81 Schmid, Helmut: 24-90 Schraivogel, Ralph: 24-77 © 2011 Sevenarts Ltd./ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ DACS, London: 17-12 Skolos & Wedell: 24-84 Solomon, Barbara Stauffacher: 22-2 Stankowski, Anton: 18-10, 18-12, 18-13 Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam: 15-6 (from the collection of Mrs. A. M. Daalder-Vos), 15-53 Steiner, Henry: 23-120 Stone, Sumner: 24-2, 24-24 Storch, Otto: 19-33, 19-34, 19-35, 19-36 Strausfeld, Lisa (Pentagram): 24-68 Studio Anton Beeke: 23-41 © 2011 Successio Miro/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ ADAGP, Paris: 13-48 (Image courtesy of the Beinecke Library) Sugisaki, Shinnoske: 24-75 Sussman/Prejza & Co.: 20-59, 20-60, 20-61 Sutnar, Ladislav by permission of the Ladislav Sutnar family: 15-66 Tadashi, Masuda & Mitsu Doki: 23-17 Tanaka, Ikko: 23-19, 23-20 Tartakover, David: 23-140 Tscherny, George: 19-23 Testa, Armando, S.p.A: 21-1, 21-2 Tholenaar, Jan- Collection of: 2-5, 2-7, 2-8, 8-22, 8-24 Thonik: 24-93 The Times of London: 16-41 Tomaszenwski, Henryk: 21-4 Toorn, Jan van: 23-40 Total Design: 23-34 Troxler, Niklaus: 23-72, 23-73 Tscherny, George: 19-24 Tschichold, Estate of Jan: 16-24, 16-25, 1626, 16-27, 16-28, 16-29, 16-30, 16-31, 16-32, 16-33, 16-34, 16-35 Unger, Gerard: 24-35
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Image Credits
585
The Upjohn Company: 17-27 van Blokland, Petr: 24-37 Vanderbyl, Michael: 22-30, 22-31, 22-33 Venezky, Martin (copyright Martin Venezky’s Appetite Engineers): 24-22, 24-23 Volkswagen Group of America: 19-47 VU Magazine, by Alexander Liberman: 17-20 Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Matt Eller, Design Director: 24-30, 24-31 Warwicker, John: 24-86 Weingart, Wolfgang: 22-11, 22-12, 22-13, 22-14 Westvaco, New York: 19-14, 19-15, 19-16, 19-17 Why Not Associates: 23-7 Wild Plakken, Amsterdam: 23-53, 23-54, 23-55 Wilson, Wes: 21-43 Wired Magazine, Plunkett & Kuhr: 24-17, 24-18, 24-19 Wissing, Benno: 23-36 Wolf, Henry: 19-37, 19-38, 19-39, 19-40 Wong, Stanley: 24-134 Wyman, Lance: 20-47 (Image courtesy of the International Poster Gallery), 20-48, 20-49, 20-50, 20-51 Xu Wang: 23-132 Yale Babylonian Collection: 1-6, 1-10, 1-11, 1-12, 1-13 Yokoo, Tadanori: 23-25, 23-26, 23-27 Young & Rubicam, New York: 19-51 Yount, Danny, Š Prologue Films: 24-67 Zaid, Barry: 21-28, 21-29 Zapf, Hermann: 18-17
28_9780470168738-bother03.indd 585
9/9/11 8:34 PM
Index
Abbasi, Majid, 527–29 Abedini, Reza, 528, 529 abstract design, cave paintings, 7 achrophonic adaptation, 23 Acier typeface, 293, 294 Adamson, Robert, 159 Adigard, Erik, 538, 552, 553 Adler, Mortimer, 363 Adobe Garamond typeface, 542 Adobe Jensen typeface, 542 Adobe Photoshop, 535 Adobe Systems, 531, 541–43 advertising. See also corporate identity and design; poster art; trademarks; specific advertising agencies and specific companies and corporations art nouveau style, 201–5, 220 Arts and Crafts movement, 179 digital technology, 537 Industrial Revolution, 172–74 International Typographic Style, 382–84 lithography and chromolithography, 165–67 modern movement (America), 351, 359, 363 New York School, 391, 398, 400, 403–4 pictorial modernism, 276–97 Roman Empire, 31 Russian constructivism, 320–21 Vienna Secession, 237 advertising cards, 164–65 Aerosmith, 503 aesthetics, photography, 158 Africa, 7, 256–57, 529 Agha, Mehemed Fehmy, 353, 355, 398 agriculture, 8, 55 Ahiram (king of Byblos), 24 Aicher, Otl, 374, 397, 423–24, 429, 430, 431, 432 Akzidenz Grotesk type family, 242–43, 244, 373, 376, 377, 386 Albers, Josef, 333, 373, 393, 396, 416, 417 Albert (prince of England), 162 album cards, 164–65
29_9780470168738-bother04.indd 586
album covers. See record album covers Alcorn, John, 405, 406 Alcuin of York, 50 Aldine Poets, 176 Aldine Press, 102, 104 Aldus, 531 Alexander III (king of Macedon, the Great), 15, 29 Alexandria, Egypt, 29, 47 Alfred A. Knopf (publishing house), 192, 350, 509 Ali, Muhammad, 410, 411 Allen, Greer, 397 Allgemeine Elektrizitåts-Gesellschaft (AEG), 226, 228, 229, 242, 245, 247–49, 250, 412 Almada Negreiros, José de, 509 Almeida, Luis, 516, 517 alphabets, 22–33 Aramaic alphabet, 24–25 Cretan pictographs, 22–23 defined, 22 French Renaissance, 109–11 Greek alphabet, 25, 27–29 Korean alphabet, 32–33 Latin alphabet, 29–32 North Semitic alphabet, 23–24 Alt, George, 84, 86–87 Altamira (Spain) cave paintings, 7 Altmann, Andrew, 484–85 Alva (design studio), 515–17 Alvise, Alberto, 100, 102 Alvise, Giovanni, 100, 102 American Broadcasting Company (ABC), 420, 421 American colonies, 116–21, 127, 128, 129 American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), 391–92, 427 American modern movement. See modern movement (America) American Revolution, 139, 145 American Type Founders Company (ATF), 153, 175, 194, 195, 217, 280 analytical geometry, 130–31. See also geometry
Anderson, Charles S., 478, 479 Anderson, Gail, 538 Anderson, Hans Christian, 318 aniconism, 58 animal domestication, 8 antimony, 73 anti-Semitism, 353 Anton Schöb (printing firm), 462, 463 Apeloig, Philippe, 506, 507 Apicella, Lorenzo, 485 Apolinaire, Guillaume, 261–63, 398, 561, 565 Appajosyula, Sastry, 551–53 Apparel Arts (magazine), 390 Apple Computer, 531, 553–55 Applegarth, Ambrose, 151–52 Arabic alphabet, 24–25, 26 Arabic typefaces, 547–48 Aragon, Louis, 270 Aramaic alphabet, 24–25 Arbus, Allen, 401 Archer, Frederick, 155, 157 Architectural Forum (magazine), 357 architecture De Stijl movement, 317–18 digital technology, 555, 558–61 geometry, 245 postmodern design, 461 Arena (magazine), 479, 481 Aristophanes, 207 Aristotle, 27, 102, 153 Armitage, Merle, 350, 351 Armory Show (1913), 290–91, 350 Arntz, Gerd, 341 Arp, Jean (Hans), 265, 271, 304, 398 Arrighi, Lodovico degli, 105, 106 ars moriendi, 70–71 art. See also specific art forms and movements bookmaking, 183 lithography and chromolithography, 165 photography, 158 art concrete (concrete art), 373 art deco, 239, 290, 353 ARTnews (periodical), 393
9/9/11 8:34 PM
Index
art nouveau style, 196–231, 232 art deco, 290 Belgium, 220–22 bookmaking, 188 conceptual image, 449 development of, 200–201 England, 205–9 France, 209–14 Germany, 224, 225–28 Italy, 228–31 Japan, 218 Netherlands, 222, 224, 225, 226 retro design, 475 transition to, 201–5 ukiyo-e influence on, 196–200 United States, 214–19 Vienna Secession, 237 Arts and Crafts Exhibition (London, 1896), 235 Arts and Crafts movement, 175, 176–95, 201, 214, 220, 226, 245, 375 bookmaking, 176, 177, 179, 181–95 Century Guild, 178, 179–81 Kelmscott Press, 181–85, 186 overview, 176–79 private press movement, 185–87 Art Workers Guild, 181 Asaba, Katsumi, 509 Ashbee, Charles R., 184, 185 Ashendene Press, 186 Asia Magazine, 519 Association of Arts and Industries, 357 Assyria, 11, 12 Athen, Greece (ancient), 27 Atherton, John, 359 @issue: The Journal of Business and Design, 539, 540 Atlantic Richfield petroleum company, 425 Auerbach, Johannes, 326, 327 Auerswald, Fabian von, 90, 92 Aufuldish, Bob, 550, 551 August, J. R. C., 405 Augustine of Hippo, Saint, 95, 98, 99 Auriol, Georges, 209 Auvergne Press, 233 Avant Garde (magazine), 407–8, 409 Avedon, Richard, 363 Axel type family, 546, 547 Ayer, N. W. (N. W. Ayer and Son advertising agency), 172, 293, 359, 362, 363, 398 Aztec art, 429, 479 Babylon, 11–12, 29 Badiya Arabic fonts, 547–48 Baghdad, 69 Ball, Hugo, 264, 265
29_9780470168738-bother04.indd 587
Balla, Giacomo, 263 Ballester, Arturo, 289 Ballmer, Théo, 372, 373 bamboo, China, 37, 39 Bantjes, Marian, 566, 567 Barbou, Jean Joseph, 124, 133 Barclay, Robert, 167 Barnbrook, Jonathan, 542 Barry, Charles, 162, 163 Basel, Switzerland, Renaissance, 113–16. See also Switzerland Basel realism, 281 Baskerville, John, 127–31, 543 Baskerville typeface, 192 Bass, Saul, 393–95, 418, 422, 507, 555 batik, 224 Batista, Fulgencio, 457 Bauhaus, 290, 301, 302, 326–49, 358, 363, 373, 374, 397, 423, 424 closing of, 334–35, 357 Dessau years, 331–34, 361, 373 founding of, 326–27 Moholy-Nagy, Laszlo, 328–31 Weimar years, 327–28 Bauhaus Manifesto, 326 Baumberger, Otto, 281, 282 Baur, Ruedi, 558, 560, 561 Bayer, Herbert, 328–35, 339, 344, 357, 359, 360, 361, 363, 367, 465 BBDO (advertising firm), 414 Beall, Lester, 350–53, 397, 418, 421 Beardsley, Aubrey, 205, 206–8, 214, 217, 233 Beaton, Cecil, 355 Beatus of Fernando and Sancha, 54, 56 Beatus of Liebana (monk), 54 Beck, Henry C., 342, 343 Beeke, Anthon, 495, 496, 497, 499, 501 Beggarstaffs, 276–77, 287 Behne, Adolf, 320 Behrens, Peter, 226, 227, 228, 229, 242–50, 298, 327, 358, 412 Behrensschrift, 243–44 Beilby, Ralph, 137 Belgium, 220–22 Beltrán, Félix, 457, 458, 516, 517 Bembo, Pietro, 102, 103, 104, 545 Benguiat, Ed, 511 Bensusan, Ester, 187 Benton, Morris F., 195 Berg, John, 448, 449 Berkeley Free Press, 450 Berlewi, Henryk, 320 Berlin, Germany, 242, 244, 280, 376. See also Germany Bernard, Pierre, 455, 457 Bernbach, Bill, 391, 403
587
Bernhard, Lucian, 277–79, 280–81, 283, 287, 296 Bernhard Fashion typeface, 479 Bernhardt, Sarah, 159, 211, 213 Berry, Jean, duc de, 61–63 Berté, Jim, 432 Berthold, Hermann, 134 Berthold Type Foundry (Berlin, Germany), 242, 244, 280 Besley, Robert, 146, 147 Better Living (magazine), 399 Bewick, Thomas, 137, 139, 157 Bézier, Pierre, 530, 531 Bible German illustrated book, 83–84 Gutenberg, Johann, 75–79 printing, 81 Washburn College Bible, 393 Bickman, George, the Elder, 126, 127 Bierut, Michael, 565 Bifur typeface, 293, 294 Big Cason CC typeface, 544 Bigg, Chris, 484 Bill, Max, 373–75 Binder, Joseph, 295, 297, 355, 356, 357, 359, 360, 365 Bing, Samuel, 200, 211, 213, 214 Binnenhuis, Het, 188 Bischof, Werner, 380 Black and White (magazine), 235 Black Death, 71 Blake, William, 135–36, 138, 139, 201 Blashill, Pat, 536 Der Blaue Reiter painters, 327 Blau monument (Sumeria), 11 block books. See also woodblock print color, 71–72 illustrated book (German), 81–90 woodblock prints, 69–72 block printing. See woodblock print Blokland, Frank, 545–46 Boccioni, Umberto, 263 Bogoseo/Bogoseo (magazine), 526, 527 Bohm, Adolf, 237 Bolsheviks, 298–99, 302 Bodoni, Giambattista, 26, 131, 133–35 Bodoni typeface, 192, 195 bone-and-shell script (chiaku-wen), 35, 434 Bonnell, Bill, 470 Bonset, I. K. (Théo Van Doesburg). See Van Doesburg, Théo (I. K. Bonset) Booklet Press, 192 bookmaking. See also specific publishing houses and specific bookmaking styles Arts and Crafts movement, 176, 177, 179, 181–95
9/9/11 8:34 PM
588
Index
Arts and Crafts movement (cont.) Baskerville, John, 127–31 Bondoni, Giambattista, 133–35 China, 521–23 conceptual images, 509 digital technology, 564 International Typographic Style, 372–75, 376–77, 386 Japan, 198 mechanization, 153 modern movement (America), 350–53 new typography, 338–39 New York School, 392–93 retro design, 475–79 Russian constructivism, 320–21 Spain, 511–13 Book of Durrow, 48–50, 51 Book of Hours, 61, 62 Book of Kells, 49–50, 51, 52 Book of the Dead, 19, 47 bookplate (ex libris design), 80, 81 book production, movable type, 73–75 books, value of, 68 Boom, Irma, 500, 501 Bosse, Abraham, 118, 120 Boston Type and Stereotype Foundry, 149 Botticelli, Sandro, 205 Bouche, René, 413 boustrophedon style, 27 Bowles, J. M., 192 Bowyer, William, 127 Boydell, Josiah, 137 Bradbourne Publishing, Ltd., 564 Brade, Helmut, 501, 502 Bradley, William H., 214, 216, 217, 218, 441 Brady, Matthew, 157–58, 160–61 Brainerd, Paul, 531 Brain (magazine), 488, 489 branding. See trademarks brands of ownership, writing, 12, 13 Braque, Georges, 257–58 Brattinga, Pieter (Peter), 397, 494, 495 Braun, Lily, 224 Brazil, 518–19 Brecht, Bertolt, 502 Breidenbach, Bernardus de, 83 Breton, André, 269, 270 Breuer, Marcel, 334–35, 357, 417 Brinkers, Erwin, 501 British Monotype Corporation, 339, 340 broadsides and broadsheets, 90 Brocar, Arnao Guillén de, 97 Brodovitch, Alexey, 353, 354, 355, 363, 364, 397, 398, 399, 451–52 Brody, Neville, 479–81 Bronze Age, 8
29_9780470168738-bother04.indd 588
bronze script (chin-wen), 35, 434 Broom (magazine), 302, 303 Brown, Ford Madox, 178 Brownjohn, Chermayeff, and Geismar (design firm), 396 Brownjohn, Robert, 396, 397 Brucz, Stanley, 320 Bruguière, Francis, 274, 275 Brühwiler, Paul (Pabrü), 506, 507 Brusse, J., 188 Brusse, W. L., 188 Buck, Frank, 352, 353 Buddhism, 40, 41 Buechler, Robert, 565 Buffalo typeface, 444 Bufford, John H., 163, 164 Bulmer, William, 137 Burden, Jane, 177 Burliuk, David, 298 Burliuk, Vladimir, 298 Burne-Jones, Edward, 177, 183 Burnett, Leo, 503 Burns, Aaron, 408 Burtin, Will, 357, 358, 398 Burton, Philip, 397 Byblos (Phoenician city-state), 23, 24 Byrne, David, 503, 538 Byrne, Oliver, 176 Byzantium (Constantinople, Turkey), 32, 51 Cadmus of Miletus, 25 Caesar, Julius, 47 Café de Unie (Rotterdam, J. J. P. Oud), 317, 318 Caflisch script typeface, 542 Caldecott, Randolph, 168, 170 Calder, Alexander, 365 Caledonia typeface, 192, 350 Calendarium (Record Book) (Regiomontanus), 100 calligraphy, 25 China, 34–37, 39, 42–43, 519 Islamic illuminated manuscripts, 58, 60–61 typography, 72, 105, 122 calotype, 155, 159 Cambridge University Press, 192, 340 Camelot Press, 192 Camelot typeface, 192 camera obscura, 152, 153 Cameron, Julia Margaret, 159, 161 cancelleresca script, 105, 106 Canterbury Tales (Chaucer), 92, 95 Cantor, Fredrich, 469 Cao, Fang, 523, 524 Capiello, Leonetto, 228, 230, 231
capitalism, 313, 457–59 capitals France, 108–9, 110, 122 German illustrated book, 88 illuminated manuscripts, 48, 51, 52 Italian Renaissance, 104 Latin alphabet, 30, 31 Capitolium type family, 545 Cardinaux, Emile, 281 Carlu, Jean, 294–95, 357, 359, 361 Carnase, Tom, 408 Caroline minuscule, 50–51, 52, 54, 55 Caroline renewal, 50–52, 54, 55 Carqueville, William, 218, 221 Carrà, Carlo, 263 Carrio, Pep, 513 Carroll, Lewis, 261, 262 Carson, David, 535–37 Carter, Matthew, 397, 539, 543–45 Cartier-Bresson, Henri, 355 cartooning, 171, 173 Casey, Jacqueline S., 387–89 Caslon, Henry, 146, 147 Caslon, William, 126–27, 130, 144, 145, 544 Caslon, William, II, 144 Caslon, William, III, 147 Caslon, William, IV, 147, 149 Caslon style, 149, 176, 192 Cassandre, A. M. (Adolphe Jean-Marie Mouron), 290, 291–94, 298, 348, 354, 355, 358, 359, 365, 476 Castro, Fidel, 457, 459 Catholic Church. See also Christianity; Protestantism; Reformation; religion printing, 81, 90 Protestantism, 81, 118 Reformation, 81, 90, 114, 116, 118 Cato, Bob, 448 cave paintings, 6, 7 Caxton, William, 91–92, 94–95, 181 Cayatte, Henrique, 514, 515 CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System), 413–17 CBS Radio Network, 415 CBS Records, 393, 446, 448, 475, 476 Celtic book design, 48–50, 52 censorship, 107, 118 Centaur typeface, 192 Center for Advanced Research in Design, 425 Century (magazine), 172, 214, 217 Century Guild, Arts and Crafts movement, 178, 179–81 Cercle des XX (Group of 20), 220, 222 Cervantes, Miguel de, 116, 517 Cézanne, Paul, 257–59
9/9/11 8:34 PM
Index
Chagall, Marc, 301 Chahine, Nadine, 547 Champollion, Jean-François, 15 chapbook(s), 217 Chap Book (magazine), 216, 217, 285 Charlemagne (king of the Franks), 50–52, 54, 55 Charlemagne typeface, 542 Charles V (king of France), 61, 105 Charles VII (king of France), 98 Charles VIII (king of France), 105 Charles S. Anderson Design Company, 479 Charles the Bald (Holy Roman Emperor), 54, 55 Charm (magazine), 398 charms (dharani), 41–43 Chase Manhattan Bank, 421–23 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 92, 95, 182, 183 Chelenham family typeface, 195 Cheng Miao, 36 chen-shu (kai-shu, regular style), 36, 37 Chéret, Jules, 201–3, 205, 209, 211, 213, 228 Chermayeff, Ivan, 396, 397 Chermayeff, Serge, 396 Chermayeff & Geismar Associates (design firm), 396, 418, 421, 422, 463 Chevreul, Michel Eugène, 159 chiaku-wen (bone-and-shell script), 35, 434 children, Industrial Revolution, 168–70 China, 34–45 calligraphy, 34–37 contemporary, 519–27 paper, 37, 39 printing, 39–45, 72 chin-wen (bronze script), 35, 434 Chi-Rho, 49–50, 51 Chirico, Georgio de, 270, 271 Chiswick Press, 176, 180 Choffard, Pierre Phillipe, 124 chop (seals), 38, 39–40 Christianity, 31–32. See also Catholic Church; religion illuminated manuscripts, 46, 48, 50, 52, 54–55 printing, 81, 90 Protestantism, 81, 118 Reformation, 81, 90, 114, 116, 118 Renaissance, 102 Christiansen, Hans, 226, 227 Christmas cards, 164–65 chromolithography, 163–67, 175 Churchill, Winston, 291 Chwast, Seymour, 440–43, 475 Cicero, 77, 98, 128, 129 Cieslewicz, Roman, 438, 440, 441, 517 City (magazine), 403 City Medium typeface, 418
29_9780470168738-bother04.indd 589
civilizational culture hearths, writing, 8–9, 34 Civil War (U.S.), 157–58, 160, 161, 171, 415 Clarendon style, 146, 147 clay mud tablet, 9–11 Cleland, Thomas Maitland, 195 clerical style (Li-shu), 36, 37 Cleveland, Grover, 164 Cloister family typeface, 195 Cobden-Sanderson,T. J., 185 Coburn, Alvin Langdon, 274, 275 Coburn, Ralph, 387, 388 Code of Hammurabi (Babylon), 11, 13 codex design, 31–32, 47 Cohen, Henry, 455 Coiner, Charles, 359 cold war, 457–59 Colin, Paul, 294, 295 Colines, Simon de, 107, 108, 109, 111, 112, 113, 116 collage conceptual images, 438, 452 New York School, 391 pictorial modernism, 276 surrealism, 271 Collier’s (magazine), 153, 217, 219, 285, 287 collodion, 157 Colonna, Francesco, 103 colophon, 77, 79, 86 color art nouveau style, 198, 201 Arts and Crafts movement, 176, 177, 189 cave paintings, 7 chromolithography, 163–67 De Stijl movement, 316–18 expressionism, 273 hieroglyphs, 15 illuminated manuscripts, 46, 49, 54–55 magazines, 172 photography, 158 Plakatstil (Poster Style), 277–81 rococo design, 123 Colors (magazine), 485 Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). See CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) Columbia Records. See CBS Records Combaz, Gisbert, 222, 223 Commission for Revolutionary Action (COR), 457, 458 Communication Arts (magazine), 400 communism, 457–59 compass, 34 computer, corporate identity, 422–23 computer-aided graphic design, 531–32. See also digital technology conceptual images, 436–59 bookmaking, 509
589
conceptual images (cont.) origin of, 436 poetry, 451–57 Poland, 437–40 posters, 448–51, 501–9 third-world, 457–59 United States, 440–48 Condak, Henrietta, 446 Condé Nast publications, 355 Confucianism, 35, 39–40, 43 Constantine (emperor of Rome), 32 Constantinople, Turkey, 32, 60 Container Corporation of America (CCA), 357–59, 361, 362, 363, 365, 367, 398, 424–25 Cook, Roger, 426, 427 Cooper, Austin, 295, 296, 297 Cooper, Kyle, 555–57 Cooper, Muriel, 422–23, 424 copper, Bronze Age, 8 copperplate engraving, 79, 116, 118, 122, 214 Coronation Gospels, 52, 53 Coronet (magazine), 390 corporate identity and design, 412–35. See also advertising; trademarks CBS, 413–17 Federal Design Improvement Program, 425–27 International Typographic Style, 386 Music Television (MTV), 435 New Haven Railroad, 417 Olivetti, 412–13 Olympic games design systems, 428–34 overview, 412 postmodernism, 463–65 post-war years, 417–23 programmed visual systems, 423–25 transportation signage, 427–28 United States, 353, 387 Corrall, Charles, 176 corruption, political cartoons, 171, 173 Cosmopolitan (magazine), 172 Coster, Laurens Janszoon, 72 Cotterell, Thomas, 144, 145 counterfeiting, 43 Couperus, Louis, 224, 225 Cowles, David, 538 Cowper, William, 151–52 Craftsman (magazine), 186–87 Craine, Jon, 419 Cranach, Hans, 90, 92 Cranach, Lucas, the Elder, 90 Cranach, Lucas, the Younger, 90, 92 Cranbrook Academy of Art (Michigan), 534, 541 Crane, Stephen, 406
9/9/11 8:34 PM
590
Index
Crane, Walter, 168, 169, 170, 180, 181, 183, 205, 207 Cranmer, Thomas, 185 Cretan pictographs, 22–23 Crete, Minoan civilization, 22–23 Cronin, Michael, 473 Cronos typeface, 542 Cronyn, Melissa, 426 Crosby, Theo, 483 Crouwel, Wim, 493 crusades, 55 Crystal Palace Exhibition (Great Exhibition of 1851, London, England), 162 CSA Archive, 479 Cuba, 457–58 cubism, 239, 256–59, 390 pictorial modernism, 289–97 Russian constructivism, 298–313 typography, 298 Cuffaro, Chris, 536 Cummings, John F., 174, 175 cuneiform writing, 9–11 Cunningham, Ben, 362, 363 Cunningham, Merce, 540 currency China, 43, 520 Netherlands, 494, 495 Currier & Ives, 167, 168, 169 cylinder seals, 12, 13, 19–21 Czechoslovakia, 213 da Carpi, Ugo, 105, 106 Dada movement, 263, 264–69, 270, 275, 301, 309, 317, 342, 344, 442, 470, 479, 497, 555, 561 Daguerre, Louis Jacques, 153–55 daguerreotype print, 154–55 Daily Herald (newspaper), 291 Dalí, Salvador, 270, 271, 355, 509 Damascus, 69 Danziger, Lou, 446, 447 da Spira, Johannes, 98, 99 da Spira, Wendelin, 98, 99 Davida bold typeface, 406 Davis, Paul, 445 Dayan Pagoda (Xi’an, China), 36 Daye, Matthew, 118 Daye, Stephen, 116, 118 Dead History font, 542, 543 Deberny and Peignot type foundry, 348, 377 de Bretteville, Sheila, 397 Deck, Barry, 542 de Colines, Simon, 107, 108, 109, 111, 112, 113, 116 De Groot, J. H., 222, 224, 225 De Groot, Jacoba M., 222, 224, 225
29_9780470168738-bother04.indd 590
de Harak, Rudolph, 384, 386, 397 De Jong & Co. (Hilversum, Netherlands), 494 de Larmessin, N., 118, 121 Delessert, Etienne, 408 Dell (publishing house), 398–99 democracy, 27, 69 demotic script, 18 Depero, Fortunato, 263, 264 Der Blaue Reiter painters, 327 De Roos, Sjoerd Hendrik, 187, 188, 189, 224, 226 Descartes, René, 130 Design Quarterly (magazine), 532, 533 design systems, corporate identity and design, 428–34 Design/Writing/Research (design studio), 539–41 desktop publishing, 531 Dessau, Germany, Bauhaus, 331–34 Dessolis, Jacobus de, 91–92 De Stijl movement, 263, 290, 296, 301, 313–18, 322, 324, 328, 342, 373 de Tournes, Jean, 114, 116–17 Deutsche Werkbund, 245, 247, 327 de Verona, Nicolai, 102 De Vinne, Theodore Low, 172 de Vries, Esther, 567–68 de Worde, Wynkyn, 92 dharani (charms), 41–43 Diamond Classics, 176 Diamond Sutra, 41, 43 Dicker, Friedl, 326, 327 Dickinson Type Foundry (Boston, Massachusetts), 175 Didot, Firmin, 134–35 Didot, François-Ambroise, 134 Didot, Pierre, 134–35, 136 digital imaging, 549 Digital Tau (design studio), 511 digital technology, 530–71. See also technology architecture, 555, 558–61 computer-aided graphic design, 531–32 editorial design, 535–41 interactive media, 550–53 letterpress revival, 568–71 motion graphics, 555 overview, 530–31 photography, 549 pioneers in, 533–35 portable devices, 553–55 type foundry, 541–49 typography, 561–68 vanguard in, 553 Direction (magazine), 390–91 DiSpigna, Tony, 408 Disteltype typeface, 191
Döblin, Alfred, 353 Dollar, Jim (Marietta Shaginian), 309 Dome, Paul, 399 Domela, César, 322 Donatus, 75 Dorfsman, Lou, 414, 415, 416, 476 Doric style, 149 Douce Apocalypse, 57 Doves Press, 185 Doyle Dane Bernbach (advertising firm), 403, 405, 409 Dritzehen, Andreas, 72 Dritzehen, Claus, 72 Dritzehen, Georg, 72 Druckery, Inge, 397 Druzstevni Prace (publishing house), 321–22 DTL FontMaster, 546 du Carrois, Ralph Oliver, 546, 547 Duchamp, Marcel, 264, 265, 357 Dudovich, Marcello, 228, 230, 231 Duffy, Joe, 478, 479 Duffy Design Group (Minneapolis, Minnesota), 478, 479 Dumbar, Gert, 497–99 Dünne, Hans, 72 Dupré, Jean, 95 Dürer, Albrecht, 54, 86–89, 103, 109 Dutch East Indies, 222, 224, 225, 226 Dwiggins, William Addison, 192, 350, 351 Dylan, Bob, 442, 443 Dymaxion Projection map, 367 Eastern Han Dynasty (China), 36 Eastman, George, 156, 157, 531 Eckerstrom, Ralph, 424–25 Eckmann, Otto, 226, 227, 228, 229 Edison, Thomas A., 245 editorial design. See also specific magazines and design styles American origins, 170–75 New York School, 399–403 education. See also literacy rates cuneiform writing, 11 papyrus, 16 universities, 55 Egensteiner, Don, 404–5 Egypt illuminated manuscripts, 47 paper, 69 papyrus, 16–18 writing, 12–21 Egyptian style, 147, 149 Ehrenburg, Ilya, 302 Eisen, Charles, 124 Eisenman, Alvin, 396–97, 398 Electra Seminegra typeface, 476
9/9/11 8:34 PM
Index
Electra typeface, 350 Elektra Productions, 443 Elizabeth I (queen of England), 483 Ellis, David, 484–85 Éluard, Paul, 270 Elzevir, Louis, 118 Emancipation Proclamation, 414, 415 Emigre (magazine), 533 Emigre Fonts, 542, 543 Empire typeface, 479 Engelbart, Douglas C., 531 England alphabet, 29 art nouveau style, 205–9 Arts and Crafts movement, 175, 176–77 contemporary, 483–85 Holy Roman Empire, 50 Industrial Revolution, 139, 144 photography, 154–57 pictorial modernism, 296 post-war years, 483 rococo design, 126–27 typography, 91–92, 94–95, 134, 145–49 Victorian era, 161–62 English alphabet, 29 engraving. See copperplate engraving Enschedé (printer), 189 Eragny Press, 187 Erasmus, Desiderius, 114 Erbar, Jakob, 339–40 Erdt, Hans Rudi, 279, 280, 283, 284, 285 Ernst, Max, 270, 271, 357 Eros (magazine), 406, 407, 408 Erté (Romaine de Tirtoff), 352, 353 Escher, Ghislain (Gielijn) Daphnis, 497 Esquire (magazine), 390, 400, 401, 409–11 Essex House Press, 184, 185 Estienne, Charles, 107, 111 Estienne, François, 107, 111 Estienne, Henri, the Elder, 107, 108 Estienne, Henri, the Younger, 108, 110, 111 Estienne, Robert, 107, 110, 111 Estrada, Manuel, 511–13 Etruscans, 29, 30 Euclid, 100, 101, 176, 177 Eumenes II of Pergamum (king of Egypt), 31 Europe, printing, 68–79. See also specific European countries and cities Eusebius, 98 Evans, Walker, 250, 397 evolution, writing, 6 ex libris design (bookplate), 80, 81 Exocet font, 542, 543 Experimental Jetset (design studio), 501 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (Paris, 1925), 290
29_9780470168738-bother04.indd 591
expressionism, 273, 327, 443 Face (magazine), 479–81 Fact (magazine), 407 factory system, 179, 188. See also Industrial Revolution Fang Cao, 523, 524 Fang Tao, 43 fascism, 357. See also Nazi Party; World War II fat-face typestyle, 145–47, 149 Faulkner, William, 353 Faust, Johann, 77 Federal Arts Project (Works Progress Administration, WPA) Poster Project, 357 Federal Design Improvement Program, 425–27 Federico, Gene, 404–5 Feininger, Lyonel, 326, 328 Feitler, Bea, 402 Fella, Edward, 534–35 Ferdinand, Duke of Parma, 131, 133 Ferrer, Isidro, 512, 513 Fertile Crescent, 8–9 feudalism, illuminated manuscripts, 55 Figgins, Vincent, 146, 147–49 Fili, Louise, 475–77 film titles, 394, 395, 396, 555 Filosofia font, 542, 543 Finé, Oronce, 111–13 Fiori, Quentin, 539 First Circle of Lectures (Pervyi tsikl lektsii), 299 Fischer, Carl, 410, 411 Flagg, James Montgomery, 284, 285, 442 flax, 69 Fleckhouse, Willy, 451–52, 453, 562, 564 Fletcher, Alan, 482, 483, 543 fleurons (printers’ flowers), 100, 102, 114, 116 Flisak, Jerzy, 438 Fluxus movement, 497 Fogleman, James K., 425 Fong, Karin, 555 Fontana, Rubén, 519, 520 Fontana Diseño, 519 fontBoy interactive catalogue, 550, 551 Forbes, Colin, 482, 483, 543 Forst, Brian, 550 Fortune (magazine), 357, 365, 366, 398 Fourdrinier, Henry, 152 Fourdrinier, Sealy, 152 Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 54, 56 Fournier le Jeune, Pierre, 123–26, 131, 133 Fragonard, Jean-Honoré, 202 Fraktur (Gothic) style, 88 France art nouveau style, 200, 201–5, 209–14 lithography, 168 papermaking, 152 photography, 153–54
591
France (cont.) Reformation, 114, 116 Renaissance, 105–13 surrealism, 271–73 typography, 92, 95, 122–27, 134–35 Francis I (king of France), 105 Franco, Francisco, 289 Frank, Robert, 397 Frankfurt, Peter, 555 Franklin, Benjamin, 127, 128, 129, 130 Freiburger, Michael, 92 Frellonius, Joannes, 115 Fremont rock painting (San Raphael Swell, United States), 7 French Revolution, 131, 133, 139, 145, 152 Frere-Jones, Tobias, 546–47 Freud, Sigmund, 256 Friedman, Dan, 397, 466–67, 468, 470 Frizzall, S. S., 164 Froben, Johann, 113–15 Froshaug, Anthony, 374 Frost, Vince, 485, 486 Frutiger, Adrian, 376–77, 397 Frutiger Arabic typeface, 547–48 Fukuda, Shigeo, 397, 490, 491, 492 Fuller, R. Buckminster, 367 funerary texts, 18–19 Fust, Johann, 75–79 Futura typeface, 340, 350, 418 futurism, 259–64, 275, 298–313. See also Russian constructivism Gage, Bob, 403 Gagnon, Louis, 509, 510 Gailliard typeface, 544 Gamble, John, 152 Games, Abram, 296, 297 Gan, Aleksei, 301 Gannett, William C., 233 Gaozong (emperor of China), 38 Garamond, Claude, 107, 110, 111, 116 Garamond typeface, 114, 192, 195, 402 Gardner, Alexander, 161 Gaudí, Antoni, 509 Gauguin, Paul, 201, 220 Geismar, Thomas H., 396, 422, 427 Geissbuhler, Karl Dominic, 505–7 Geissbuhler, Steff, 397, 463–65, 470 General Electric, 214, 215 Gensfleisch, Friele, 72 geometry architecture, 245 cave paintings, 7 cubism, 256–59, 313 Euclid, 100, 101 German illustrated book, 88
9/21/11 10:01 AM
592
Index
geometry (cont.) Greek alphabet, 27 information graphics, 130–31 Latin alphabet, 30, 31 Gere, C. M., 183 Gering, Ulrich, 92 German illustrated book, 80–97 development of, 88–90 dispersion of, 90–97 Nuremberg, 83–88 origins of, 81–83 overview, 80–81 Germany anti-Semitism, 353 art nouveau style, 224, 225–28 Arts and Crafts movement, 186, 191 Dada movement, 265–69 Gesamkultur, 245 illustrated book, 80–97 International Typographic Style, 372 lithography and chromolithography, 164 pictorial modernism, 296 Plakatstil (Poster Style), 277–81 typography, 148, 149 Gerstner, Karl, 379 Gesamkultur (Germany), 245 Gestetner, Sigmund, 417 Gibson, Charles Dana, 171–72, 173, 284, 285 Gil, Emilio, 510, 511 Gill, Bob, 397, 482, 483, 543 Gill, Eric, 339–40, 378 Gillot, Charles, 205 Gill Sans typeface, 339 Ginzburg, Ralph, 407 Gipkins, Julius, 279, 280, 283, 284, 285 Giusti, George, 357, 365–66 Glamour (magazine), 398 Glaser, Milton, 440–44, 511 Glasgow School, 233–35, 239, 298 Glass Packer (magazine), 390 Gleason, Vincent, 426 globalization, technology, 482 Glover, Anne, 116 Glover, Jesse, 116 Godard, Keith, 507, 508 Goines, David, 449–50 Goldberg, Carin, 475, 476–77 Golden, William, 413–15 Golden Cockerel typeface, 339 Golden typeface, 181 gold leaf, illuminated manuscripts, 46, 55 Gonda, Tomás, 423–24 Gonnissen, Nikki, 567 Good Housekeeping (magazine), 217 Goodhue, Bertram Grosvenor, 183 Gorman, Pat, 435, 549
29_9780470168738-bother04.indd 592
Gotham typeface, 547 Gothic illuminated manuscripts, 55–58, 95 Gothic Revival style, 161–62, 163 Gothics style, 149 Gothic style, 88, 92, 95 Goudy, Frederic W., 191–92, 193, 214, 350 Goya, Francisco, 517 Grandjean, Philippe, 122, 123 Granjon, Robert, 114, 116, 544 Grant, Ulysses S., 171 Graphic Paintboxes, 532 Graphics (magazine), 349, 462, 463 Graphis (magazine), 482 Grapus studio, 456, 457 Grasset, Eugène, 188, 201, 204, 205, 209, 212, 213, 214, 215 Graves, Michael, 471, 473 Grear, Malcolm, 397 Great Exhibition of 1851 (Crystal Palace Exhibition, London, England), 162 Greco Rosart typeface, 475 Greece (ancient), 29 alphabet, 25, 27–29 culture of, 25, 27 illuminated manuscripts, 47 language, 15 sculpture, 29 Greek alphabet, 25, 27–29 Green, Elizabeth Shippen, 287 Greenaway, Kate, 170 Greenhalgh, Howard, 484–85 greeting cards, 164–65 Grego, Valentina, 471 Gregory the Great (pope of Rome), 52, 54, 55 Greif, Gene, 476–77 Greiman, April, 397, 466, 467–69, 470, 532, 533, 549, 551 Grien, Hans Baldung, 90, 92 Grierson, Nigel, 484 Griffo, Francesco da Bologna, 102, 103, 104–5 Gris, Juan, 258 Grolier, Jean, 104 Gropius, Walter, 245, 326–28, 330, 331, 333, 357, 373 Grosz, George, 267, 269, 270 grotesque style, 149 Growald, Ernst, 279 Grunenberg, Johannes, 90 Guerin, Maurice de, 192, 193 Guevara, Ernesto (“Che”), 459 Guggenheim Museum (New York, New York), 365 Guild of Handicraft, 185 Guillén de Brocar, Arnao, 97 Gujarati Type Foundry (Bombay, India), 26 Gumiel, Diego de, 97
gunpowder, 34 Gutenberg, Johann Gensfleisch zum, 45, 72–79, 80, 81, 90, 261, 406, 530, 532 Gutiérrez, Fernando, 485 Haas, Ken, 519, 521 Hadders, Gerard, 499 Haggadot, 58, 59 Hague and Gill, Printers, 339 half-uncials, 48, 49–50 Hammerpress, 569 Hammurabi (king of Babylon), 11 handicrafts Arts and Crafts movement, 183, 185, 186 Industrial Revolution, 145 hand-typesetting, 152–53 handwriting style. See also language; speech; writing Italian Renaissance, 105, 106 rococo style, 126 Handy, John, 128 Han dynasty (China), 39 Hang Hai, 434 Hangul (Korean alphabet), 32–33 Hanson, Rosalie, 467 Han style, 36 Hard Werken (design group), 495 Hard Werken (magazine), 499 Hardy, Dudley, 277, 278, 279 Harper, Fletcher, 170–71 Harper, James, 170–71 Harper, John, 170–71 Harper’s magazines, 214 Harper’s Bazaar (magazine), 171, 293, 353, 354, 365, 398–99, 401 Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 171 Harper’s Weekly (magazine), 171–72, 173, 214, 218, 221, 276, 277, 287 Harper’s Young People (magazine), 171 Harrild and Son (London, England), 150 Harunobu, Suzuki, 197 Harvard College (Cambridge, Massachusetts), 116 Hatch, Charles, 569–71 Hatch, Herbert, 569–71 Hauert, Kurt, 565 Hausmann, Raoul, 265 Hayes, Harold, 409 Headliners Process Lettering, 405 Hearst, William Randolph, 217 Heartfield, John, 267–69, 309 heart-scarab, 21 Hebrew alphabet, 24–25 Hedayat, Sadeq, 528, 529 Hefner, Hugh, 409 Heine, Frank, 542
9/9/11 8:34 PM
Index
Helfand, Jessica, 550, 551 heliogravure, 153 Heller, Steven, 397, 564 Hellmann, Andreas, 72 Helvetica typeface, 377, 408, 427, 448 hemp, 69 Hendricks, Thomas A., 164 Henkis, Conrad, 77 Henry VIII (king of England), 114 Herculaneum, 31 Herdeg, Walter, 348–49 Herodotus, 12 Herschel, John, 155 Herzfelde, Helmut, 267–69 Herzfelde, Wieland, 267–69 Hess, Richard, 445, 446 Hessler, Geraldine, 538 Hidy, Lance, 99 Hiebert, Kenneth, 397, 470 hieratic script, 18 hieroglyphs papyrus, 16–18 printer’s trademarks, 99 writing, 12–18 Hill, Bill, 550 Hill, David Octavius, 158, 159 Hill, John T., 397 Hillier, Bevis, 290, 444 Hillman, David, 485 Hinkle, Warren, 400 Hinrichs, Kit, 539 Hiroshige, Ando, 199–200 Hitler, Adolf, 277–88, 338, 359, 366, 437 Höch, Hannah, 265, 266 Hoe, Richard M., 163 Hoefler, Jonathan, 546–47 Hoffman, Edouard, 377 Hoffmann, Josef, 235, 239 Hofmann, Armin, 379, 380, 397, 465, 467, 505 Hofmann, Dorothea, 379 Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, 502 Hohenstein, Adolfo, 228 Hohlwein, Ludwig, 228, 286, 287–88 Hoist, A. Roland, 189 Hokusai, Katsushika, 197–98, 199 Holbein, Hans, the Younger, 114, 115 Holiday (magazine), 366 Hollerbaum and Schmidt (lithography firm), 279 Holwein, Ludwig, 289 Holy Lands, 55 Holy Roman Empire, 50–52 Holz, Arno, 261 Homer, 25, 27, 104, 105 Homery, Conrad, 77, 79 Hooper, William H., 183 Horace, 29, 126
29_9780470168738-bother04.indd 593
Horgan, Stephen H., 158, 159 Horne, Herbert P., 179, 180 Horsley, John Callcott, 165 Horta, Victor, 200, 220 Houghton, Chip, 555 Houghton Mifflin Company, 192 House & Garden (magazine), 355 Howard, Helen, 499 Howsare, Robert, 569 hsiao chuuan (small-seal style), 35–36, 434 Hua Jiang, 523 Hua Shan Pagoda, 36 Hubbard, Elbert, 186 Huber, Max, 374, 375 Huelsenbeck, Richard, 265 Huguenots, 114, 116 human evolution, writing, 6 Hunter, E. K., 405 Huszár, Vilmos, 313, 314, 315, 318, 320 Hutchins, Robert M., 363 Huxley, Aldous, 291, 326 Huxley typeface, 479 Hyland, Angus, 485 IBM (International Business Machine), 15, 418–20 Igarashi, Takenobu, 489, 490 Ihlenburg, Herman, 174, 175 Iliad (Homer), 25, 27, 104, 105 Ilic, Mirko, 564–65 illuminated manuscripts, 46–64 Caroline renewal, 50–52 Celtic design, 48–50 classical style, 47–48 Islamic, 58, 60–61 Judaic, 58, 59 late medieval, 61–63 overview, 46–47 Romanesque and Gothic, 55–58 Spain, 52, 54–55 illusionistic revival, 55 illustrated book (German). See German illustrated book illustrated manuscripts, 18–19 L’Illustration (magazine), 158 Image, Selwyn, 178, 179, 180, 181 Imaginary Forces, 555–57 Imboden, Melchoir, 561, 562 immigration, modern movement (America), 353–57, 390 incunabula, 80–81, 84, 183 India, 12, 25 indulgences, 75 Industrial Revolution, 139, 144–75, 530 advertising, 172–74 children, 168–70
593
Industrial Revolution (cont.) factory system, 179, 188 lithography and chromolithography, 162–67 magazines, 170–72 mechanization, 152–53 photography, 153–62 printing press, 151–52 signboards, 167–68 typography, 145–49, 175 Victorian era, 161–62 wood-type poster, 149–51 information graphics corporate identity, 423 International Typographic Style, 375–76, 387 modern movement (America), 366–67 origin of, 130–31, 132, 133 ink bookmaking, 128 illuminated manuscripts, 46 International Typographic Style, 375 movable type, 73 Inland Printer (trade journal), 216, 217, 285 Insel Verlag (publishing house), 335 interactive media, digital technology, 550–53 International Business Machine (IBM), 15, 418–20 International Paper Company, 421 international perspective Africa, 529 China, 519–27 conceptual images, 501–9 Japan, 485–92 Latin America, 515–19 Middle East, 527–29 Netherlands, 492–501 Portugal, 509, 513–15 South Korea, 527 Spain, 509–13 United Kingdom, 483–85 International Typeface Corporation (ITC), 408 International Typographic Style, 372–89, 565 characteristics of, 372 conceptual image, 446 corporate identity, 423–24 development of, 379–84 pioneers in, 372–75 postmodernism, 461, 470 sans-serif type, 376–77 scientific graphics, 375–76 United States, 384, 386–89 Zapf, Hermann, 377–78 Internet, 550–53 L’Intransigeant (newspaper), 291, 292, 293 Ionesco, Eugene, 452, 456
9/9/11 8:34 PM
594
Index
Ionic style, 147 iPad, iPhone, and iPod, 553–55 Iran, 527 Iron Agitator (newspaper), 214 Irving, Henry, 276, 277 Irwin, Terry, 550 Islam illuminated manuscripts, 46, 52, 58, 60–61 paper, 68–69 Spain, 52 Victorian era, 162 Islamic illuminated manuscripts, 60–61 Isotype movement, 341–42 Israel, 527 @issue: The Journal of Business and Design, 539, 540 italic type, 104, 105, 114 Italy Arts and Crafts movement, 179 German illustrated book, 88 Renaissance, 55, 98–105, 127 surrealism, 271 typography, 90–91, 127 i10 (magazine), 322, 324–25 Itten, Johannes, 326, 327, 505 Ives, Frederick E., 158 Ives, Norman, 397–98, 399, 416, 417 Jackson, Joseph, 145, 147 Jacobs, S. A., 350, 351 Jacobson, Egbert, 358, 359, 363 Janiszewski, Jerzy, 440 Janna Arabic fonts, 547–48 Japan Chinese calligraphy, 35 conceptual posters, 503–4 contemporary, 485–92 printing, 41 ukiyo-e, 196–200 Jardins des modes (magazine), 507 Jaugeon, Nicolas, 122 Java, 224 Jefferson Smurfit company, 425 Jeker, Werner, 503, 504, 505 Jenson, Nicolas, 98–99, 181, 187, 192, 195 Jerde, Jon, 433 Jiang, Hua, 523 Jian Zhao, 523 Jiaping He, 522, 523 Jingren Lu, 522, 523 Johnson, Lionel, 180 Johnson, Lydon B., 403 Johnson, Michael, 484–85 Johnston, Edward, 185, 251, 377 Johnston’s Railway Type, 339, 342 Jones, Owen, 162, 163
29_9780470168738-bother04.indd 594
Jones, Robert M., 405 Jones, Thomas H., 159 Joseph P. Horne & Co., 446 Judaic illuminated manuscripts, 46, 58, 59 Jugend (magazine), 224, 226, 227, 287 Jugendstil movement, 224, 225–28, 242 Julius II (pope of Rome), 80 Kabel typeface, 340, 350 Kafka, Franz, 273 kai-shu, (chen-shu, regular style), 36 Kamekura, Yusaku, 428–29, 487, 503 Kandinsky, Wassily, 220, 272, 273, 301, 327, 333, 373, 390 Kandinsky Jubilee Exhibition, 361 Kane, Art, 363 Kare, Susan, 530 Kath, Gitte, 501–2, 509 Katsui, Mitsuo, 503, 504, 505 Katsumi Asaba Design Office, 509 Katzumie, Masaru, 428–29 Kauffer, Edward McKnight, 290–91, 294, 298, 359–61 Keaney, Siobhan, 485, 486 Keedy, Jeffrey, 542 Keedy Sans font, 542, 543 Keller, Ernst, 372, 505 Kelly/Mouse Studios, 449 Kelmscott Press, 180, 181–85, 186, 191, 192, 207, 209, 217 Ken (magazine), 390 Kennedy, John F., 406, 407, 411 Kenny, Saffron, 555 Kent, Sister Corita, 450–51 Kenya, 6 Kepes, Gyorgy, 293, 329 Kerensky, Aleksandr, 301, 302 Kerver, Jacques, 111, 112, 113 Kidd, Charles I. (“Chip”), 508, 509 Kieser, Gunther, 451–53 King, Jessie Marion, 234, 235 Kirilloff, Nicholas, 426 Kisman, Max, 566–67, 568 Kitchener, Horatio, 284, 285 Kitching, Alan, 568, 569 Klee, Paul, 272, 273, 327, 333, 373, 390, 398 Klimt, Gustav, 235–37, 476 Klinger, Julius, 279, 280, 283 Klingspor, Karl, 243 Klingspor foundry, 243 Klutsis, Gustav, 309, 311 Knight & Leonard (printing company), 214 Knopf, Alfred A, 350 Koberger, Anton, 83–87, 88, 103, 181 Koblin, Aaron, 552, 553 Koch, Rudolf, 190, 191, 340, 377
Koenig, Friedrich, 150, 151, 237 Koenig, Julian, 404 Koeweiden, Jacques, 566, 567 Kollewe, Chuck, 404 Kollwitz, Käthe Schmidt, 272, 273 Konstruktivizm (brochure), 301 Koot, Dennis, 499 Koppel, Terry, 474, 475 Koppel and Scher studio, 474, 475 Koran (Qur’an), 25 Korea, moveable type, 45 Korean alphabet, 32–33, 527 Koufiya typeface, 547–48 Kramer, Frisco, 493 Kranz, Martin, 92 Krone, Helmut, 403, 404 Kufic form, 24–25 Kuhr, Barbara, 538, 539 Kunera Press, 191 Künstlerhaus (Viennese Creative Artists’ Association), 235, 237 Kunz, Willi, 466, 468–70 Kwadraatblad (journal), 494 labels, 165–67, 220. See also advertising; corporate identity and design; trademarks La Fontaine, Jean de, 124 Lake Turkana (Kenya), 6 La Libre Esthétique, 222 Lamego, Valdemar, 515–17 Lane, John, 217 language, 81. See also handwriting style; speech; writing Lanston, Tolbert, 153 Lanston Monotype Company, 192 Lantingji Xu, 37 Laocoön, 46, 47 Larmessin, N. de, 118, 121 Lascaux, France, cave paintings, 6, 7 laser printer, 531 Laskoff, Franz, 228, 230, 231 late medieval period, illuminated manuscripts, 61–63 late modernism, 460 Latin alphabet, 25, 29–32 Latin America, contemporary, 515–19. See also specific Latin American countries Laughton, James, 392 Lauweriks, J. L. Mathieu, 245, 246 law, cuneiform writing, 11 lead, type mold, 73 Leavenworth, William, 150 Lebeau, Chris, 224, 225 Lebedev, Vasilevich, 309, 312, 313 Leclerc, François, 510
9/9/11 8:34 PM
Index
Le Corbusier, 471 Leete, Alfred, 284, 285 Lefebvre, Joanne, 509 Le Feure, Raoul, 91 Léger, Fernand, 258–59, 289, 348, 359 Lehmann, Otto, 283, 284, 285 Lehning, Arthur Müller, 322 Leica camera, 355 Leitz Company (Germany), 355 Le Matin de Paris (newspaper), 485 Lemmen, Georges, 220 Lenica, Jan, 438, 439 Lenz, Annette, 507 Leo Burnett (advertising agency), 503 Leo III (pope of Rome), 50 Leo X (pope of Rome), 81 Lepère, Auguste, 187 Leslie’s Weekly (magazine), 171 letterforms, Roman Empire, 30, 31 letterpress revival, digital technology, 568–71 letters, movable type, 72 Leu, Olaf, 482 Leupin, Herbert, 281, 282, 446, 447 Levy, Emile, 168 Lévy, Jean-Benoît, 503–5 Levy, Louis, 158 Levy, Max, 158 Leyendecker, Joseph C., 217, 285 li (tripod), 36–37 Li, Tommy, 524, 525 Liberman, Alexander, 353, 355, 356, 398 libraries, 11, 29, 31, 68 La Libre Esthétique, 222 Licko, Zuzana, 533–34, 542, 543 Lienemeyer, Gerhard, 452, 453 Li Fangying, 36–37 Life (magazine), 400 LightSpeed system, 532 L’Illustration (magazine), 158 Limbourg brothers (Paul, Herman, and Jean), 61–63 Lincoln, Abraham, 161 Lindisfarne Gospels, 48–50, 51 Linotype, 152–53, 377 Lins, Rico, 518, 519 L’Intransigeant (newspaper), 291, 292, 293 Lionni, Leo, 362, 363, 398, 399 Lippincott & Margules, 418 Lippincott’s magazine, 218, 221 Li-shu (clerical style), 36, 37 Lissitzky, El (Lazar Markovich), 267, 300, 301, 302, 303, 304–7, 317, 318, 320, 322, 344, 468 Li Ssu, 35 literacy rates, 22, 29, 32, 33, 55. See also education
29_9780470168738-bother04.indd 595
literacy rates (cont.) Europe, 68 Industrial Revolution, 172 Italian Renaissance, 105 printing, 81 lithography and chromolithography, 162–67 Lithos typeface, 542 Li transformation, 36 Livemont, Privet, 222, 223 Loesch, Uwe, 506, 507 Loeser, Judith, 476–77 Loeslein, Peter, 100, 101 Loewy, Raymond, 416, 417 Löffler, Berthold, 239, 240–41 logo. See advertising; corporate identity and design; poster art; trademarks; specific advertising agencies and specific companies and corporations logogram, Chinese calligraphy, 34–37 Lohse, Richard P., 375 Lönberg-Holm, Knut, 366 London Opinion (magazine), 285 London Underground, 250–51, 275, 290, 291, 295, 296, 297, 342, 343 Longhauser, William, 471 Look (magazine), 393, 400 Loos, Adolf, 237, 298 Los Angeles Times (newspaper), 402 Loubier, Hans, 242 Louie, Lorraine, 476–77 Louis XI (king of France), 98 Louis XIV (king of France), 122, 131 Louis XV (king of France), 123, 133 Louis XVI (king of France), 133 Louis the Pious (Holy Roman Emperor), 52, 54, 55 Lu, Jingren, 521–23 Lubalin, Herb, 405–10, 475, 543 Luce, Louis René, 131, 133 Ludwig, Hoshi, 554, 555 Lufthansa German Airlines, 423–24 Lu Jingren, 522, 523 Lukova, Luba, 502 Lumley, Saville, 284, 285 Lupton, Ellen, 539 Lustig, Alvin, 392–93, 396, 397 Lutetia typeface, 189 Luther, Martin, 81, 90 Lutz & Company (printing company), 461, 462, 463 Lyons, France, 113–16 Macau, China, 525 Macdonald, Frances, 233 Macdonald, Margaret, 232, 233 Macedonia, 29
595
Machado, João, 515 Macintosh computer, 531, 532, 533 MacKellar, Smiths, & Jordan foundry (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), 175 Mackintosh, Charles Rennie, 233, 234, 235 Mackmurdo, Arthur H., 178, 179–81 Macpherson, Andrew, 537 Mademoiselle (magazine), 398 Madonna (singer), 481 Maeda, John, 552, 553 Magallanes, Alejandro, 517, 518 magazines. See editorial design; specific magazine names magic, cave paintings, 7 Magritte, René, 270, 271, 445 Mahurin, Matt, 538 Mainz Haggadah, 58, 59 Makela, Laurie Haycock, 544, 545 Makela, P. Scott, 542 Maler, Bernhard, 100, 101 Malevich, Kasimir, 299–301, 322, 324 Malik Verlag publishing house, 269 Mallarmé, Stéphane, 261, 262 Malory, Thomas, 92 Manifesto du Surréalisme, 270 Manifesto of Futurism, 259 Manifesto of Futurist Architecture, 263 mannerism, 460, 461 Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky), 274, 275, 355, 359 Mansion, Colard, 91–92.94 Mantegna, Andrea, 544 Mantinia typeface, 544 Manutius, Aldus, 102–5, 107, 113, 545 Manwaring, Michael, 472, 473 maps, 342, 343 Marinetti, Filippo, 259–61, 263, 269, 298, 398, 561 Marreiros, Victor Hugo, 525 Marshak, Samuil, 313 Martens, Karel, 558, 560, 561 Martha Stewart Living (magazine), 554, 555 Martín, Pablo, 510, 511 Martin, Robert, 128 Martin, William, 137 Martínez, Rául, 457, 458 Marxism, 313 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 386–87, 422–23 mass communications, 153, 157–61 Massey, John, 426 Massin, Robert, 452, 455, 456 Master of the Playing Cards, 79 Mataloni, Giovanni, 228, 230 materialism, 144–45 Le Matin de Paris (newspaper), 485
9/9/11 8:34 PM
596
Index
Matisse, Henri, 273 Matos, Ricardo, 515–17 Matsunaga, Shin, 503, 504, 505 Matter, Herbert, 348–49, 357, 359, 361, 362, 363, 364, 365, 375, 397, 416, 417 Mattila, Kurt, 555 Maviyane-Davies, Chaz, 529 Max, Peter, 449, 450 Maximilian I (Holy Roman emperor), 88 Mayakovski, Vladimir Vladimirovich, 298–99, 302, 304, 307 Mayes, Herbert, 399 McCall’s (magazine), 399, 401 McClure’s (magazine), 172 McConnell, John, 485 McCoy, Katherine, 534, 541 McCoy, Michael, 534 McGinnis, Patrick, 417 McGraw-Hill Publishers, 386 McLaughlin, Dennis, 426 McLuhan, Marshall, 469, 483, 538, 539 McMullan, James, 444, 445 McNair, J. Herbert, 233 McShane, Patricia, 553 measures and weights, 11, 12 mechanization, Industrial Revolution, 152–53 Meckel, David, 433 medieval period, illuminated manuscripts, 47–48, 54–55, 61–63 “Me Generation,” 460 Meggs, Philip B., 324 Meidoorn typeface, 188 Melior typeface, 378 Memphis school, postmodern design, 470–71 Menes (king of Egypt), 12 Mergenthaler, Ottmar, 152–53 Mergenthaler Linotype, 350 Merrymount Press, 183, 184 Merz (magazine), 302, 322 Meshki, Saed, 528, 529 Mesopotamia, writing, 8–12 Metcalf, Jane, 539 Metheny, Pat, 503 Metlicovitz, Leopoldo, 228, 230 Metro typeface, 350 Mexico, 515–18 Meyer, Hannes, 334, 373 Meyer, Johann Heinrich, 148, 149 Meyer, Rudi, 505 Meyers, Linda, 426 Middendorp, Jan, 72 Middle East, 527–29 Miedinger, Max, 377 Miehe, François, 455 Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig, 245, 334, 357, 471 Miller, Abbott, 539–41
29_9780470168738-bother04.indd 596
Miller, Lee, 355 Milton, John, 129 Minion typeface, 542 Minoan civilization, Cretan pictographs, 22–23 Miró, Joan, 271, 272 mirrors, 72 MIT Press, 423 Mitsuo, Doki, 489 Mobil Oil Corporation, 422, 425 modern art, 256–75 cubism, 256–59 expressionism, 273 futurism, 259–64 photography, 273–75 surrealism, 270–73 Modern Art (magazine), 192 Modern Art Quarterly (journal), 165 modern movement (America), 350–67 corporate identity, 421 fascism, 357 immigration, 353–57 informational graphics, 366–67 New York School, 390 overview, 350–53 packaging industry, 357–59 post-war years, 363–66 Works Progress Administration Poster Project, 357 World War II, 359–63 modern style, typography, 131, 133–35, 232 Modley, Rudolf, 341 Moholy-Nagy, Laszlo, 313–14, 322, 324–25, 328–35, 348, 355, 357, 358, 373, 396 Mok, Clement, 550, 551 Momayez, Morteza, 527 monarchy, 55 monastery, 46–47 monasticism, 55 Mondrian, Piet, 313, 314, 324, 333, 357 money. See currency Monguzzi, Bruno, 464, 465 Monotype Corporation, 339, 340 Monotype machine, 153 montage, New York School, 391 Montalvo, German, 516, 517 monumental capitals, Latin alphabet, 30, 31 Moore, Charles W., 462 Moorish ornament, 162 Moors, Spain, 52, 54, 55 Morandi, Giorgio, 440 Moretus, John, 116 Morgan Press typeface, 405 Morison, Stanley, 339, 340 Morla, Jennifer, 562, 563 Moronobu, Hishikawa, 196 Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company, 177–79
Morris, May, 177, 186 Morris, Talwin, 234, 235 Morris, William, 122, 177–79, 181–85, 186, 188, 192, 195, 207, 208, 209, 214, 234, 245 Morse, Joseph, 168 Moscoso, Victor, 449 Moser, Koloman, 235, 236, 237–39 Moss, John Calvin, 156, 157 Moss Engraving Company, 174, 175 Most Advanced Yet Acceptable (MAYA) credo, 417 motion graphics, digital technology, 555 Mouron, Adolphe Jean-Marie (A. M. Cassandre). See Cassandre, A. M. (Adolphe Jean-Marie Mouron) movable type, 45, 72–79 Mrs. Eaves font, 542, 543 Ms. (magazine), 402 MTV, 549 Mucha, Alphonse, 211, 212, 213, 222, 441 Mugabe, Robert, 529 Müller-Brockman, Josef, 381–83, 384 Munkacsi, Martin, 355 Museum of Modern Art (MoMA, New York, New York), 353, 485, 545 Musselwhite, Phillip, 426 Muthesius, Hermann, 245 Muybridge,Eadweard, 160, 161 Myriad typeface, 542 Nabis group, 201 Nadar, F. T., 159 Nadar, Paul, 159 Nagai, Kazumasa, 488, 489 Nakagawa, Linda, 555 Nakajima, Hideki, 503, 504 Napoleon Bonaparte (emperor of France), 12, 147 Napoleonic era, 135 Naskhi form, Aramaic alphabet, 25 Nast, Condé, 353, 355 Nast, Thomas, 171, 173 National Endowment for the Arts, 425 nationalism, globalization, 482 National Park Service, 426–27 National Recovery Act (NRA), 359 Nazi Party, 269, 288, 334, 337–38, 357, 361. See also World War II Nebuchadnezzar (king of Babylon), 12 neoclassical revival, 135, 233 Neolithic period, 7 Neruda, Pablo, 440, 441 Netherlands, 118–21, 127 art nouveau style, 222, 224, 225, 226 Arts and Crafts movement, 186–87, 188–91
9/9/11 8:34 PM
Index
Netherlands (cont.) contemporary, 492–501 De Stijl movement, 263, 290, 296, 301, 313–18 typography, 342–47, 545–46, 566 Neuberg, Hans, 381 Neue Haas Grotesk type family, 377 Neue Helvetica Arabic typeface, 547–48 Neue Helvetica typeface, 377 Neue Jugend (journal), 269 Neuland typeface, 190, 191 Neurath, Otto, 341 New Advertising, 403–4 New Bauhaus, 357 Newberry, Francis H., 233, 235 New Deal, 357 New Graphic Design (journal), 381 New Haven Railroad, 417 New Objectivity, 242–50 new typography, 338–49 new-wave typography, 465–70 New West (magazine), 403 New York Daily Graphic (newspaper), 158 New York Herald Tribune (newspaper), 400 New York School, 390–411 advertising, 403–4 editorial design, 399–403 Lois, George, 409–11 pioneers of, 390–96 typography, 404–9 Yale University School of Art, 396–98 New York Times (newspaper), 291, 429, 435, 565–66 New York Tribune (newspaper), 153 New York World’s Fair (1939), 355, 356, 366 Next Call (magazine), 344–45 NeXT computer company, 420, 421 Nicholas II (czar of Russia), 298 Nicholas V (pope of Rome), 75 Nicholson, William, 276–77, 279 Nickel Library, 172 Nicol, George, 137 Nicol, W., 137 Niépce, Joseph, 153–55 Niessen, Richard, 567–68 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 220 Nieuwe Kunst, 222, 224 Niijima, Minoru, 561 Nine Forces (artists’ group), 322 Nixon, Richard M., 410, 411 Nogami, Suichi, 561 Noordzij, Gerrit, 545–46 North America, 116–21, 127, 128, 129 North Semitic alphabet, 23–24, 25, 27 Nowinski, Marian, 440 Noyes, Eliot, 419
29_9780470168738-bother04.indd 597
Nuremberg, Germany, illustrated book, 83–88 N. W. Ayer and Son (advertising agency), 172, 293, 359, 362, 363, 398 Nypels, Charles, 188, 189 Oakley, Violet, 287 Odermatt, Siegfried, 383–84, 385, 462, 463, 465 Odgers, Jayme, 468 Odyssey (Homer), 25, 27, 104, 105 Olbrich, Joseph Maria, 235, 236, 242 Olden, Georg, 414–15 Old Style typeface, 393 Olinsky, Frank, 435 Oliver, Vaughan, 484, 485 Olivetti, Adriano, 412 Olivetti, Camillo, 412 Olivetti Corporation, 412–13 Olm Institute of Design, 423 Olympic Games, 428–34, 489, 521 O’Neill, Eugene, 444, 445 Oporinus, Johann, 114, 115 Oppenheim, Moses ben Nathan, 58, 59 Optima typeface, 378 Orazi, Emmanuel, 213–14, 215 Organization for Solidarity with Asia, Africa, and Latin America (OSPAAAL), 459 Ormesby Psalter, 57, 58–59 Orsi, Luigi, 134 Ortiz, Martinez, 289 Orwell, George, 289 O’Sullivan, Timothy H., 160, 161 Otto III (Holy Roman Emperor), 52 Ottoman Empire, 60 Oud, Jacobus Johannes Pieter, 313, 317, 318 Oui (magazine), 403 overprinting, 346 Oxenaar, R. D. E., 495 packaging. See also Container Corporation of America (CCA) lithography and chromolithography, 165–67 modern movement (America), 357–59 Paepcke, Elizabeth Nitze, 358–59, 363 Paepcke, Walter P., 357–59, 363, 367 PageMaker, 531 painting, 81 Palatino, Giovanni Battista, 105 Palatino Arabic typeface, 547–48 Palatino typeface, 378 Palazzo, Peter, 400, 401 Paleolithic period, 7 Pannartz, Arnold, 91, 93, 98, 186 Pan Qin, 523 Pantheon Books (publishing company), 475 pantograph, wood-type poster, 150–52
597
paper Baskerville, 129–30 China, 34, 37, 39 Industrial Revolution, 152 spread of, 68–69 paper money. See currency Papert, Koenig and Lois (advertising firm), 409 Papini, Giovanni, 259 Paprika (art studio), 509, 510 papyrus, 16–18, 29, 31 Papyrus of Ani, 20 Papyrus of Hunefer, 20 Papyrus of Turin, 19 parchment, 31, 46, 47, 48, 68 Paris, France, 55 Paris-Clavel, Gérard, 455, 457 Park, Kum-jun, 526, 527 Parrish, Maxfield, 217, 218, 221 Parsons, Charles, 171–72 Patrick, Saint, 48 Pauline Epistles, 55, 56 Peckolick, Alan, 408 Pefield, Edward, 217 Peignot typeface, 293, 294 Pelavin, Daniel, 476–77 Pella (Macedonian city-state), 29 Penfield, Edward, 218, 220, 221, 286, 287 Penguin Books (publishing house), 338 Penn, Irving, 355, 363 pens, Greek alphabet, 27 Pentagram (design firm), 483–85, 539, 540, 541, 555, 558, 559, 562, 565 Pen ts’ao, 43–45 perception, printing, 81 Pere Miguel, 99 Perlmutter, Jerome, 425 Perpetua typeface, 339 Perry, Matthew C., 199 Persian Empire, 12, 13, 29 Persian miniature painting, 60 The Persians (Timotheus), 27 perspective painting, 81 Pervyi tsikl lektsii (First Circle of Lectures), 299 Peterson, Scott, 550 petroglyphs (United States), 7, 7–8 Pevsner, Nikolaus, 200 Pfintzing, Melchoir, 88 Pfister, Albrecht, 81, 82 Phaistos Disk, 22–23 Phillip II (king of Spain), 116 Phoenicia, North Semitic alphabet, 23–24, 25, 27 phonograms, hieroglyphs, 15 photoengraving, 158, 159 photogenic drawing, 154 photograms, 154, 155
9/9/11 8:34 PM
598
Index
photography, 531 Bauhaus, 329–31 conceptual image, 452–55 digital technology, 535–41, 549 International Typographic Style, 380, 381, 382 invention and development of, 153–62, 172 Iran, 528, 529 modern art, 273–75 modern movement (America), 355, 363–65 new typography, 348–49 New York School, 391, 399, 405 postmodernism, 468 photolettering, 405 photomontage, 265 phototype, 405–8 Phyllis typeface, 475 Picasso, Pablo, 256–58, 409 Pick, Frank, 250–51 Pickering, William, 176, 177 pictogram, corporate identity and design, 428–34 pictographs Chinese calligraphy, 34–37 Cretan pictographs, 22–23 hieroglyphs, 15 Mesopotamia, 9–11 pictorial modernism, 276–97 Beggerstaffs, 276–77 cubism, 289–97 Plakatstil (Poster Style), 277–81, 287–88 Spanish Civil War, 288–89 Switzerland, 281–82 World War I, 283–87 Pigouchet, Philippe, 95, 96 pilgrimage routes, 55 Pilon, Alain, 509, 510 Pine, John, 127–28 Pineles, Cipe, 398, 399 Pintori, Giovanni, 412–13 Pirtle, Woody, 448, 449, 549 Pi Sheng, 45 Pissarro, Camille, 187 Pissarro, Lucien, 187, 191 Pittman, Bob, 435 Pläffli, Bruno, 377 Plakatstil (Poster Style), 277–81, 283, 287–88 planographic printing, 163 Plantin, Christophe, 116, 117, 118 Plantin typeface, 192 Playboy (magazine), 409 Playfair,William, 130–31, 132, 133 playing cards China, 43–45 copperplate engraving, 79 Europe, 69
29_9780470168738-bother04.indd 598
Pleydenwurff, Wilhelm, 84, 86, 87 Pliny the Elder, 16 Plunkett, John, 538, 539 Pluta, Michael, 565 PM (magazine), 291, 361 Poetica typeface, 542 poetry, conceptual image, 451–57 Poland, conceptual images, 437–40 politics advertising, 403, 404 Africa, 529 Arts and Crafts movement, 179 cartoons, 171, 173 cold war, 457–59 Industrial Revolution, 144 printing, 81 Vietnam War, 400 Pompeii, 31 pop art, 402 Porchez, Jean-François, 547 portable devices, digital technology, 553–55 Portfolio (magazine), 363 Portugal, 509, 513–15, 525 Posada, José, 517 postcubist pictorial modernism, 289–97 poster art. See also typography Africa, 529 art nouveau style, 201–5, 209–13, 214, 216–18, 220–23, 228 Bauhaus, 333–35 Behrens, Peter, 248, 249–50 China, 520–21, 525 chromolithography, 163–70 computer-aided graphics, 532, 533 conceptual, 437–40, 444, 448–51, 501–9 corporate identity and design, 412–13, 418–19 digital technology, 561–68 Glasgow School, 235 graphic poetry, 451–57 Hammerpress, 569 International Typographic Style, 372–75, 380, 381, 382–83, 388 Iran, 527–29 Japan, 489–92 Mexico, 516–17 modern movement (America), 351–53, 355, 356, 357, 358–59 Netherlands, 492–97, 499–501 new typography, 338, 348–49 New York School, 391, 406, 409, 410 pictorial modernism, 276–97 postmodern design, 461, 471–75 postmodernism, 465–66 Roman Empire, 31 Russian constructivism, 298–313
poster art (cont.) third-world, 457–59 United Kingdom, 484–85 Vienna Secession, 235–36, 240 World War II, 359–63 Poster Style (Plakatstil), 277–81, 283, 287–88 Postma, Paul, 566, 567 postmodern design, 460–81 Memphis school, 470–71 precursors to, 461 retro and vernacular design, 460–81 San Francisco school, 471–75 Switzerland, 461–65 term of, 460–61 PostScript, 531, 541 Potes, Diogo, 515–17 Prang, Louis, 164–65, 167, 192 Prang’s Chromo (journal), 165 prehistory, 6–8 Prejza, Paul, 433 Preminger, Otto, 395 Print (magazine), 398, 400, 448, 469 printers’ flowers (fleurons), 100, 102, 114, 116 printer’s trademark, 77, 92, 95, 99, 104, 105, 108 printing. See also typography China, 39–45 Europe, 68–79 German illustrated book, 80–97 Industrial Revolution, 151–52 movable type, 45 photographic applications, 157–58 private press movement, 179, 181, 185–87 resistance to, 80 printing press, Industrial Revolution, 151–52 private press movement, 179, 181, 185–87 programmed visual systems, corporate identity and design, 423–25 property ownership, writing, 12 proportion, standardization, 123–24 proprietary marks, 12, 13, 19–21 Protas, Judy, 403, 404 Protestantism, 81, 118. See also Catholic Church; Christianity; Reformation; religion PROUN, 300, 301, 468 Pryde, James, 276–77 psychedelic posters, 448–51, 461 Ptolemy V (pharaoh of Egypt), 12, 15, 31 Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil), 46, 47 Pugin, A. W. N., 161–62, 163 Pullman, Christopher, 397 Purcell, Kerry William, 564 Push Pin Almanack (publication), 440, 441 Push Pin Studios, 415, 440–41, 444, 445, 446, 448, 459, 461, 475
9/9/11 8:34 PM
Index
Push Pin style, 444 Pyle, Howard, 172, 173, 218, 287 pyramid texts, 19 Qing style, 36, 38 Qin Pan, 523 Quantel Video, 532 QuarkXPress, 535 Quarterly (journal), 476–77 Quarterly Bulletin (journal), 374 Querengässer, Fritz, 423–24 Qur’an (Koran), 25, 58, 60–61 Radl, Christoph, 471 Rambow, Gunter, 452, 453, 454 Ramparts (magazine), 400, 402 Rand, Paul, 15, 390–92, 393, 395, 397, 403, 417–21, 446, 447, 470 Rand McNally, 214 Random House (publishing house), 353 Ras Shamra script, 23–24 Ratdolt, Erhard, 100, 101, 183, 192 Rathenau, Emil, 245, 250 Ravenna, Italy, 32 Ray Gun (magazine), 535, 537 RCA Victor Records, 405 Read, Herbert, 228 rebus writing, 11, 15 record album covers conceptual images, 441, 442, 443, 446, 448, 449, 503 International Typographic Style, 386 New York School, 393, 396, 405 retro design, 475, 479 United Kingdom, 484 record keeping, writing, 9 Red House (Webb), 177 Reed, Ethel, 217–18, 219 Reed, Lou, 503 Reformation, 81, 90, 114, 116, 118. See also Catholic Church; Christianity; Protestantism; religion Regiomontanus, 100 regular style (chen-shu, kai-shu), 36, 37 Reichert, Hans Dieter, 562, 564, 565 Reid, Whitelaw, 153 Reidermeister, Marie, 341 relief printing, 39–40 religion. See also Catholic Church; Christianity; Protestantism; Reformation Egypt, 18–19 illuminated manuscripts, 46, 54–55 printing, 81 woodblock prints, 69–71 writing, 8, 12 Remedy font, 542, 543
29_9780470168738-bother04.indd 599
Renaissance, 55 German illustrated book, 88 late medieval period, 61–63 printing, 81 Renaissance graphic design, 98–122 Basel, Switzerland, 113–16 France, 105–13, 192 Italy, 98–105, 127 Lyons, France, 113–16 seventeenth century, 116–21 Render Monkey, 551–53 Renner, Paul, 340 reportage, photography, 160–61 retro design, postmodern design, 460–81 Reuwich, Erhard, 83, 84 Rhead, Louis, 186, 214, 215 Rich, A. L., 214, 215 Richards, Stan, 448 Ricketts, Charles, 207–9 Ricordi, Giulio, 228 Rietberg Museum (Zürich, Switzerland), 372 Rietveld, Gerrit, 317 Riley, Michael, 555 Rimmel, Eugène, 201–2 Ritter, John, 536 Rivera, Diego, 320 Riverside Press, 192 Robert, Nicolas-Louis, 152 Robinson, Phyllis, 403 Rockner, Vincenz, 88 rococo design, 122–27, 201, 211, 232 Rodchenko, Alexander, 301, 307–9, 479, 553 Rodrigues, Manuel, 513 Rodrigues, Sebastião, 513–15 Rodriguez, Gabriela, 517, 518 Roericht, Nick, 424 Rogers, Albert Bruce, 191, 192, 193, 194, 214, 350 Rogers, Richard, 421 Rogoff, Patti, 435 Roklama Mechano (advertising agency), 320 Roller, Alfred, 236, 237, 238, 239, 295, 449 Rolling Stone (magazine), 402–3, 537, 538, 539 Rolling Stones (band), 503 Rollins, Carl Purington, 396–97 Romain du Roi typeface, 122, 123, 124, 131 Roman alphabet, 91 Roman Empire, 29–32, 46, 47 Romanesque illuminated manuscripts, 55–58 Rondthaler, Edward, 405, 408 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 357 Roosevelt, Theodore, 171 Ros, Guus, 564 Ros, Lies, 499 Rosetta Stone, 12, 14, 15 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 177, 178, 188
599
Rossetto, Louis, 538, 539 ROSTA, 298–99, 309 Rot, Dieter, 397 Rouault, Georges, 273 router, wood-type poster, 149–51 Roycroft Press, 186 rubbings, China, 40–41 Rubeis, Laurentius de, 99 Ruder, Emil, 379, 465, 505, 565, 566 Ruffins, Reynolds, 415, 440, 441 Ruggeri, Costantino, 131 Runyan, Miles, 432 Rural Electrification Administration, 351, 352 Rushworth, John, 485 Ruskin, John, 177, 179, 185 Russian constructivism, 296, 298–313, 318–25, 335, 417, 475, 487, 538, 553. See also futurism Russian Revolution, 298, 313 Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA), 298–99 Russolo, Luigi, 263 rustic capitals, 31, 52 Rutherford Photolettering Machine, 405 Saarinen, Eero, 365, 416 Sagmeister, Stefan, 503 Saint Albans scriptorium, 55, 57 Saint Hieronymous Press, 450 St. John Hornby, C. H., 186 saints, woodblock prints, 69–70. See also specific saints Saito, Makoto, 502–3 Saks, Arnold, 387, 389 Salazar, António de Oliveira, 513, 515 Salis, Rodolphe, 209 Salisbury, Mike, 402–3 Salomon, Antoinette, 114 Salomon, Bernard, 114 Salter, George, 352, 353 Samarkand, 68–69 Sandberg, Willem, 346–47 Sanford, John Lyle, 550 San Francisco school, 471–75 Sang-Soo, Ahn, 526, 527 San Raphael Swell, Fremont rock painting (United States), 7 Sanskrit, 25, 26, 42–43 sans-serif type. See also serifs; typography; specific typefaces Behrens, Peter, 242–47 Industrial Revolution, 149 International Typographic Style, 376–78 modern movement (America), 358 new typography, 338–40 Sant’Elia, Antonio, 263 Saspach, Conrad, 72
9/9/11 8:34 PM
600
Index
Sato, Koichi, 491–92 Saturday Evening Post (magazine), 153, 285, 287, 359, 400, 407 Saul Bass & Associates, 422 Savignac, Raymond, 397, 446, 447 scarab emblems, 19, 21 Scarab of Ikhnaton and Nefertiti, 21 Schäufelein, Hans, 88 Schedel, Hartmann, 84 Scheer, Robert, 400 Schelter and Giesecke foundry, 149 Scher, Paula, 474, 475, 476, 481, 558, 559, 561, 562 Schlemmer, Oskar, 328 Schmid, Helmut, 565–66, 567 Schmidt, Joost, 328, 334 Schöb, Anton, 462, 463 Schoeffer, Peter, 76–79, 91, 181 Schoenmakers, M. H. J., 313 Schoensperger, Johann, the Elder, 88, 89 Schraivogel, Ralph, 561, 562 Schröder, Rob, 499 Schroeder House (Utrecht, Gerrit Rietveld), 317 Schuitema, Paul, 344, 346, 492 Schulz-Neudamm, Heinz, 296, 297 Schwitters, Kurt, 265–67, 317, 322 scientific graphics. See also information graphics corporate identity, 423 International Typographic Style, 375–76, 387 modern movement (America), 366–67 Scitex systems, 532 Scott, Douglas, 397 Scottsass, Ettore, 471 scribes, 16–18, 27, 80 Scribner’s Monthly (magazine), 158, 172, 214, 221, 285 scrolls, 29, 31, 43 sculpture, Greek, 29 seals, 12, 13, 19–21, 28, 29, 39 Sebastian, Saint, 410, 411 Sedaris, David, 508, 509 Sejong (king of Korea), 32 Selkirk, Neil, 538 semiotics, International Typographic Style, 374–75 Senefelder, Aloys, 162–63 serial painting concept, 309 serifs, 31, 149. See also sans-serif type; typography; specific typefaces Serrano, Elena, 459 Seventeen (magazine), 363, 398, 399 seventeenth century, 116–21 Severini, Gino, 263
29_9780470168738-bother04.indd 600
S. Fischer-Verlag (publishing house), 452, 453 Shaginian, Marietta (Jim Dollar), 309 Shah Jahan, 60–61 Shahn, Ben, 360, 361, 413, 414 Shakespeare, William, 116, 137 Shannon, Charles, 207 Shanosky, Don, 426, 427 sheepskin, 68 Sherradon, Jim, 571 Shih Huang Ti (emperor of China), 35 Shi Tao, 37, 38 Shotoku (empress of Japan), 41 Show (magazine), 399, 401 SIC (magazine), 565 signboards Industrial Revolution, 167–68 Roman Empire, 31 silver leaf, illuminated manuscripts, 46 Simias of Rhodes, 261 Simon and Schuster (publishing house), 353 Simonneau, Louis, 122, 123 Sinai Peninsula, North Semitic alphabet, 23 Sinaitic script, 23 Sirowitz, Len, 403 Sixtus IV (pope of Rome), 99 Skolos, Nancy, 562, 564, 565 Slimbach, Robert, 542–43 small-pox epidemic, 41 small-seal style (hsiao chuan), 35–36, 434 Smith, Ernie, 408 Smith, Jesse Willcox, 286, 287 Smithsonian (periodical), 393 Snow, Carmel, 355 socialism, 179 socialist realism, 313 Soffici, Ardengo, 260, 261 software, graphic design, 423 solarization, 275 Solidarity Union (Poland), 440, 441 Solomon, Barbara Stauffacher, 462, 463, 464 Sophia typeface, 544 Sorel, Edward, 440 Sorg, Anton, 82, 83 South Korea, 527 Souza Cardoso, Amadeo de, 509 Spain contemporary, 509–13 illuminated manuscripts, 52, 54–55 typography, 95–97 Spanish Civil War, 288–89 speech. See also handwriting style; language; writing Chinese calligraphy, 35 writing, 6, 9, 11, 15 Spencer, Herbert, 483 Spiekermann, Erik, 546, 547, 550
Spurius Carvilius, 29 square capitals, Latin alphabet, 31 Staehelin, Georg, 483 Stalin, Josef, 309 stamp-cylinder seals, 12, 13, 28, 29 stamps, 39, 414, 415 standardization, 123–24 Stanford, Leland, 161 Stanhope, Charles, 150, 151 Stankowski, Anton, 375–76, 397 Stanton, Frank, 413, 414, 415–17 Starowieyski, Franciszek, 438, 439 steam engine, 151–52 Steiglitz, Alfred, 264 Stein, Amelle, 551–53 Steiner, Henry, 519–21 Steinhauser, Bert, 403, 404 Steinitz, Kate, 266 Steinlen, Théophile-Alexandre, 209, 211, 212 Steinweiss, Alex, 393 Stenberg, Georgii Augustovich, 309, 310 Stenberg, Vladimir Augustovich, 309, 310 Stephenson Blake foundry, 146, 147 stereoscope, 161 stereotyping, 134–35 Stermer, Dugald, 400, 402 Stern, Bert, 408 Stern, Sol, 400 Stettler typeface, 406 Stickley, Gustav, 186–87 Stoecklin, Niklaus, 281, 282 Stolk, Marieke, 501 Stols, A. A. M. (Sander), 188, 189, 190 Stone, Sumner, 530, 541, 542 Stone type family, 541, 542 Storch, Otto, 398–99, 401 Strausfeld, Lisa, 555, 558 Street, G. E., 177 Strzeminski, Wladyslaw, 321 Studio Boggeri (Milan, Italy), 465 Studio Dumbar (Netherlands), 494, 495, 497, 498, 499 stylus, cuneiform writing, 9–11 Suburban font, 542, 543 Sugisaki, Shinnoske, 561 Sumeria, 9–12 Suokko, Glenn A., 533 supermannerism, 461 suprematism, Russian, 299 surrealism, 555 conceptual images, 436, 442 modern art, 270–73 Sussman, Deborah, 432, 433 Sutnar, Ladislav, 321, 322, 323, 357, 366–67 Sweet’s Catalog Service, 366 Sweynheym, Conrad, 91, 93, 98, 186
9/9/11 8:34 PM
Index
Swierzy, Waldemar, 438, 439, 440, 441 Switzerland International Typographic Style, 372, 379–84 pictorial modernism, 281–82 postmodern design, 461–65 Tadashi, Masuda, 487–89 Taj Mahal (India), 61 Talbot, William Henry Fox, 154, 155, 156, 158, 161 Tanaka, Ikko, 488, 489 Tang dynasty (China), 38 Tao, 36–37 Tardiff, Melissa, 550 Tartakover, David, 526, 527 Tassel, Emile, 200 Tatlin, Vladimir, 301 Tau Design (design studio), 511 Taubin, Bill, 403, 404 Team, Virginia, 449 technology, 482, 501. See also digital technology Teige, Karel, 322, 323 television, 400, 402–3, 413–17 Telingater, Salomon, 309 Template Gothic font, 542, 543 temple culture, writing, 9, 12 Tepl, Johannes von, 81, 82 Terrazas, Eduardo, 430 Terry, Shannon, 473 Testa, Armando, 436 textura, 57, 72 Thailand, 8 third-world posters, 457–59 Thompson, Bradbury, 393, 394, 397 Thorne, Robert, 145–47 Thorowgood, William, 147, 148, 149 Thothmic photographic composing machine, 405 Tietze, Richard G., 171 Tiffany, Louis Comfort, 200 Time (magazine), 565 Times of London (England, newspaper), 151, 340–41 Times New Roman typeface, 340–41, 427 Timotheus, 27 tin, type mold, 73 TipoGráfica (magazine), 519 Tirtoff, Romaine de (Erté), 352, 353 Tissi, Rosmarie, 384, 385, 461, 462, 463, 465 Tokugawa period (Japan), 196 Tomaszewski, Henryk, 437–38, 457 tools, invention of, writing, 6 Toorop, Jan, 205, 206, 224, 225, 233 Topolski, Feliks, 413
29_9780470168738-bother04.indd 601
Torresanus, Andreas, 99 Tory, Agnes, 108 Tory, Geoffroy, 107–11, 114 Total Design (TD, Amsterdam, Netherlands), 493–94 Totally Gothic font, 542, 543 Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de, 209–11, 213, 279, 567, 568 tourism posters, 348–49 Tournes, Jean de, 114, 116–17 trademarks. See also corporate identity and design; poster art; specific advertising agencies and specific companies and corporations advertising, 174, 175 art nouveau style, 214, 215, 226, 228, 229 Arts and Crafts movement, 180, 184 CBS, 413–17 corporate identity and design, 416, 420–22, 426 digital technology, 549 England, 483 International Typographic Style, 376, 380, 384 printer’s trademark, 77, 92, 95, 99, 104, 105, 108 Roman Empire, 31 Vienna Secession, 241 writing, 12, 13 Trajan typeface, 542 transitional roman typeface, 122, 124 transportation signage, 427–28 Treitler, Leo, 47 Trepkowski, Tadeusz, 437 Trio typeface, 475 tripod (li), 36–37 Troxler, Niklaus, 505 Troy typeface, 181, 183 Trump, George, 418 Ts’ai Lun, 39 Tsang Chieh, 34 Tscherny, George, 395–96, 397 Tschichold, Jan, 307, 335–39, 344, 348, 350, 351, 397, 465 Turin Papyrus, 19 Turkana, Lake (Kenya), 6 Turner, J. M. W., 202 Tuscan style, 147 Tuthmosis III (king of Egypt), 16–17 Twain, Mark, 152 Tweed, William Marcy, 171 Twen (periodical), 451–52, 453 2wice (magazine), 540, 541 Twombly, Carol, 542–43 type mold, 72–73 Typografische Monatsblätter (magazine), 466
601
typography. See also poster art; specific typefaces art deco, 293 art nouveau style, 217, 226 Arts and Crafts movement, 181–85, 187–95 Bauhaus, 326–49 Behrens, Peter, 242–47 conceptual images, 443–44, 448, 452, 455 corporate identity, 386, 412, 416, 418–22, 426–27 cubism, 298 De Stijl movement, 314–18 development of, 46, 80–81 digital technology, 535–41, 561–68 France, 105–13, 122, 134–35 futurism, 260–63 German illustrated book, 80–97 Industrial Revolution, 145–49, 151–53, 175 International Typographic Style, 372–89 (See also International Typographic Style) invention of, 68 Iran, 527–29 Italian Renaissance, 98–105 Japan, 485–92 London Underground, 251, 342, 343 modern art, 259–61 modern movement (America), 350–53 modern style, 131, 133–35 Netherlands, 342–47, 492–501 new typography, 338–49 New York School, 397, 398, 399, 400, 402, 404–9 pictorial modernism, 280, 293–94 postmodernism, 463, 465–70 retro and vernacular design, 460–81 rococo design, 122–27 Russian constructivism, 302–15, 321–25, 335 spread of, 90–97 Tzara, Tristan, 264, 265, 270 U&lc (journal), 408, 410, 485 ukiyo-e, art nouveau style, 196–200, 201 Unas, Pyramid of, 19 uncials, 27, 28, 48, 49–50 Underground Electric Railways of London, Ltd., 250–51 Unger, Gerard, 545, 547–48 Ung Vai Meng, 525 Unigrid, 426–27 Unimark (design firm), 425 United Kingdom, 483–85. See also England
9/9/11 8:34 PM
602
Index
United States art nouveau style, 214–19 Arts and Crafts movement, 186–87, 191–92, 195 Civil War, 157–58, 160, 161, 171, 415 conceptual images, 440–48 International Typographic Style, 384, 386–89 lithography and chromolithography, 162–67 United States Department of Labor, 425, 426 United States Department of Transportation, 427 United States National Park Service, 426–27 universities, 55 Univers typeface, 377, 379, 408 Updike, Daniel Berkeley, 183, 184 Upjohn pharmaceutical company, 357 urbanization, 55, 144 Utamaro, Kitagawa, 196, 197 Valencia, Debra, 432 Vale Press, 209 Valturio, Roberto, 102 van Blokland, Erik, 546, 547 van Blokland, Petr, 546, 547 van den Dungen, Danny, 501 Vanderbyl, Michael, 472, 473 van der Haspel, Tom, 499 VanderLans, Rudy, 533, 542 van der Leck, Bart Anthony, 313, 315, 318 van de Sand, Michael, 452, 453, 454 van de Velde, Henri Clemens, 213, 220, 222, 245, 247, 326, 327 van de Woestijne, Karel, 189 van Dijk, Bob, 499 van Doesburg, Théo (I. K. Bonset), 267, 313–14, 317, 322, 328, 333, 373 van Dyck, Christoffel, 118, 121 van Gastel, Mikon, 555 Van Gogh, Vincent, 201, 220, 313 Vanity Fair (magazine), 294, 295, 355 van Krimpen, Jan, 187, 188–89, 546 van Pieterson, Lex, 497, 498 van Royen, Jean François, 187–88, 190, 191, 494–95 van Toorn, Jan, 495–97 Varga, Arnold, 446 Vatican Vergil, 46, 47 Vázquez, Pedro Ramírez, 429 Veen, Lambertus Jacobus, 224 vellum, 46 Venezky, Martin, 541 Venturi, Robert, 460, 461 Vergil (Publius Vergilius Maro), 46, 47, 104, 129
29_9780470168738-bother04.indd 602
Vermeulen, Rick, 499 vernacular design, 460–81 Verneau, Charles, 211 Verneuil, Maurice, 213, 214 Verrees, Paul, 285, 286 Ver Sacrum (magazine), 236, 237 Vesalius, Andreas, 114 Vest, Brady, 569 Victoria (queen of England), 161–62 Victoria and Albert Museum, 483, 485 Victorian style, 161–62, 167–68, 174–75, 232, 475 Vienna Method, 341 Vienna Secession, 235–42, 280, 283, 290, 298, 475 Vienna Workshops, 476 Viennese Creative Artists’ Association, 235, 237 Vietnam War, 400 Vignelli, Leila, 425 Vignelli, Massimo, 425, 426 Vignelli Associates, 425, 426 Vikings, 50 Village Press, 192 Villazón, Manuel, 430 Visible Language (journal), 466 Visible Language Workshop (VLW), 422–23 Visigoths, 32 Visual Graphics Corporation, 407 Vivarelli, Carlo L., 380, 381 VizAbility, 550 Vogue (magazine), 355, 365, 398 Volney Palmer (advertising agency), 172 votive stele, 27, 28 Vrijthoff, Jelle van der Toorn, 564 Vu (magazine), 355 Wald, A. H., 171 Waldfoghel, Procopius, 72 Walker, Emery, 179, 181, 185, 192 Walker typeface, 544 Walter, John, II, 151 Wang, Min, 429, 433–34, 521, 542 Wang, Xu, 523–25 Wang Chieh, 42–43 Wang Jie, 434 Wang Xizhi, 37, 38 Warde, Beatrice, 192 Ward Ritchie Press, 392 Warhol, Andy, 411, 480, 481 Wärndorfer, Fritz, 239 Warwicker, John, 564, 565 Washburn College Bible, 393 Wat, Aleksander, 320 watermark, 68, 69 Watt, James, 144
Watteau, Jean Antoine, 202 Watts-Russell, Ivo, 484 wayfinding, 429–34 Wayside Press, 217 Webb, Philip, 177 Wedell, Thomas, 562, 564, 565 weights and measures, 11, 12 Weil, Daniel, 485 Weimar Art Academy, 326 Weimar Arts and Crafts Institute, 220, 222, 326 Weimar Republic (Germany), 269 Weingart, Wolfgang, 397, 461, 464, 465–66, 467, 468–69 Weintraub advertising agency, 391 Wells, Darius, 150 Wendingen (magazine), 302, 317–19 Werkman, Hendrik N., 344–45, 346, 497 West (magazine), 402 Westinghouse Corporation, 419–20 Westvaco Inspirations (journal), 393, 394 wheel, 8 Whitehead, Alfred North, 80 Whitman, Walt, 186 Widdershoven, Thomas, 567 Wiener Werkstätte, 239, 241, 242 Wijdeveld, Hendricus Theodorus, 301, 317–19 Wilde, Oscar, 207, 209 Wild Plakken (design group), 495, 499, 500 Williams, Edward Bennett, 400 Wils, Jan, 342 Wilson, Robert Wesley (“Wes”), 449 Wilson, Wes, 449 Wingler, Hans, 423 Winkler, Ditmar, 387, 389 Winslow, William H., 233 Wired (magazine), 538, 539, 553 Wiredbaum text font, 539 Wissing, Benno, 493 Wittingham, Charles, 176 Wolf, Henry, 399, 401 Wolfe, Tom, 404 Wolgemut, Michael, 84, 86, 87 women, art nouveau style, 202 Wong, Stanley, 524, 525 woodblock print. See also block books art nouveau, 207 China, 43, 45, 72 Europe, 63, 69–72 French Renaissance, 109 Holbein, Hans, the Younger, 114 illustrated book (German), 81–90 lithography and chromolithography, 167–70 Netherlands, 344
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Index
woodblock print (cont.) photoengraving, 157–58, 171 surrealism, 271 ukiyo-e, 196–200 wood-type poster, 149–51, 157 Woodward, Fred, 537, 538 Works Progress Administration (WPA) Poster Project, 357 World Geo-Graphic Atlas (CCA), 367 World War I, 185, 222, 229, 242, 263, 273, 283–88, 291, 296, 298, 313, 318, 326, 344, 355, 436 World War II, 213, 267, 269, 287–88, 295, 296, 304, 346, 348, 355, 357, 359–63, 375, 384, 387, 398, 417, 436, 437, 457, 491, 494–95. See also Nazi Party World Wide Web, 550–53 Wren, Christopher, 178, 179 Wright, Frank Lloyd, 232–33, 298, 318, 319 writing. See also handwriting style; language; speech China, 34–45 civilizational culture hearths, 8–9, 34 Egypt, 12–21 illuminated manuscripts, 46–64 Mesopotamia, 8–12 papyrus, 16–18 prehistory, 6–8 Wurman, Richard Saul, 551 Wu Zetian (empress of China), 38 WX Design, 525 Wyman, Lance, 428, 429–30 Wynn, Dan, 399
603
Zhao, Jian, 523 Zhao Meng-fu, 39, 40–41 Zhou Dunyi, 37 ziggurat, 9, 12 Zilverdistel typeface, 191 Zilvertype typeface, 191 Zum Himmel guild, 114 Zwart, Piet, 342–44, 470, 492 Zwerner, Jeff, 550
Xing-shu, 37 xylography, 68 Yale signage typeface, 545 Yale University School of Art, 396–98 Yamashiro, Ryuichi, 486, 487 Yeager, Herb, 422 Yokoo, Tadanori, 489–91 Yo La Tengo (band), 569 Young, Lauri, 571 Young, Thomas, 12, 15 Yount, Danny, 555 Yu, Bingnan, 519, 520, 521 Zaid, Barry, 444, 445 Zainer, Günther, 81–83, 181 Zainer, Johann, 81–83 Zapf, Hermann, 377–78 Zdanevich, Ilja, 264, 265, 298, 299 Zembla (magazine), 485, 486 Zen Buddhism, 491 Zetlin, Mitchell, 426
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Design and composition Cees W. de Jong, VK Projects, Naarden, Netherlands
Set in Sabon Next and Avenir, courtesy of Linotype GmbH
Assisted by Asher Hazelaar and Karin Cools, Puls Ermelo, Netherlands
The fonts are available in various formats from Linotype GmbH (www.linotype.com)
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Sabon Next Jean François Porchez
Avenir Adrian Frutiger
The design of Sabon Next, a revival of a revival, involved a double challenge: to discern Jan Tschichold´s intentions concerning the original Sabon and to interpret the complexity of a design originally made in two versions for different systems. The first version of Sabon was designed for use on Linotype and Monotype systems, whereas the second was for Stempel handsetting and seems closer to a pure interpretation of Garamond. Porchez based Sabon Next (2002) on this second version, while also referring to original Garamond models and carefully improving the proportions of the existing digital Sabon.
Avenir (1988) is a sans serif based on the principles of the New Objectivity of the 1930s. The typeface reflects Adrian Frutiger’s careful analysis of other geometric sans typefaces, such as Neuzeit Grotesk, Kabel, Avant Garde, and Futura, but Avenir is not purely geometric. Harmony of the form was more important to Frutiger than exact geometry, and the typeface has a strong and sensible appearance, eminently suitable for complex design solutions. It offers a wide range of individual application options, while still ensuring a unified overall appearance.
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