The Arts and Crafts Movement and The Private Press

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The Impact of the Industrial Revolution on Workers, Artists and Society in the 19th Century

1. Industrial Revolution First in England, later the world. James Watt's improvements to the steam engine and its subsequent application to manufacturing in the late 18th and early 19th century resulted in a major societal shift. Traditionally manual laborers learned their trade by progressing through stages of apprenticeship under a master craftsman. The new steam engine driven machines replaced the craftsmen system with faster and cheaper production but often greatly inferior results. The critical eye and artistry of the craftsman was sacrificed for speed. The worker now served the machine, feeding it raw materials, allowing it to determine the final product. Tradesmen and agricultural workers displaced by newly mechanized or improved farming methods flocked to cities to seek work in factories. The lives of the laborers declined as factory owners treated their workers as if they were commodities and not human beings. Lowly paid men, women and children worked 12 hour days in deplorable conditions. The new arrivals settled in cheaper areas of the cityoften dangerous and disease-ridden slums. Numerous critics of this new industrialized society advocated for the rights of workers and the return to a connection between the individual craftsman and their work.

2. Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations 1851 London, England (Also known as the Crystal Palace Exhibition) Awash with pride and profits from the Industrial Revolution the English upper class, spearheaded by Prince Albert (husband of Queen Victoria) organized a showcase for modern industrial technology and design. England and a number of invited countries displayed their achievements in four categories: Raw Materials, Machinery, Manufacturers and Fine Arts. The exhibition was a popular success but the critical reviews were not complementary of the exhibitors. Critics found the work created by industrialized methods to be shoddy and poorly designed, full of superfluous ornaments that did not enhance the product. The Victorian propensity for over-decoration and a hodgepodge of unrelated styles was seen as symptomatic of a tasteless and over-capitalistic society. Ornamentation has fallen in and out of favor over time. To read an interesting article on ornamentation check Alice Twemlow's "The Decriminalization of Ornament" in which she discusses the recent surge of ornamentation in graphic design and the inevitable connection between form, content and ornament." Looking Closer 5 Click here for a complete list of links on the Crystal Place and the Exhibition on the Victorian Web.

3. The Grammar of Ornament Owen Jones, 1856, S ee iit h er e Se e t he re In response to the call for better quality design, Owen Jones published an exhaustive inventory of international and historical decorative styles. Printed in colorful lithographs, the book includes 20 sections of illustrated motifs and Jones's 37 Propositions on what makes good design." Modern, scientific and devoid of deliberate historicism, operating by principles to create an ornament for every kind of decoration." (Jespersen, 2008) Proposition 5 Construction should be decorated. Decoration should never be purposely constructed." That which is beautiful is true; that which is true must be beautiful." Proposition 37 No improvement can take place in the Art of the present generation until all classes, Artists, Manufacturers, and the Public, are better educated in Art, and the existence of general principles is more fully recognized. Owens books... "pioneered new standards in chromolithography. Jones used his printing press to enter the lucrative market for illustrated and illuminated gift books ... He developed innovative new binding techniques ..., papier mch and terracotta ...much of which could trace its aesthetic lineage back to sumptuous medieval illuminated manuscripts and religious bindings." Read more...

4. John Ruskin England, 1819 1900 Born to wealth, John Ruskin was an author, poet and art critic whose socialist convictions were strong enough to cause him to reject his fortune to fulfill his ideologies. Ruskin's theorized that the Industrial Revolution's division of labor made work monotonous and was the main cause of the unhappiness of the poor. He looked backward to an idealized medieval period, to him it was a paradigm of the union of art in labor in service to society. He romanticized "The organic relationship ... between the worker and his guild, the worker and his community, between the worker and his natural environment, and between the worker and his God."Read more... Ruskin's writings greatly influenced the thinking of Victorian society in a large range of topics. His critical art reviews could make or break the careers of contemporary painters. His strong support of the Pre-Raphaelites, a group of artists who rejected the 'decadence' of the established Royal Academy, gave the group the credibility they needed to be accepted as serious artists. Both Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites believed that art should communicate truth not merely in a display of skill but also as expressed by the artist's whole moral outlook.

William Morris and the Birth of the Arts and Crafts Movement

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5. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood Toward the middle of the 19th century, a small group of young painters in England reacted against what they felt was "the frivolous art of the day." They deeply admired the simplicities of the early 15th century and wanted to bring English art back to a greater "truth to nature." While the academy and art historians worshiped Raphael as the great master of the Renaissance, these young students rebelled against what they saw as Raphael's theatricality and the Victorian hypocrisy and pomp of the academic art tradition. The friends decided to form a secret society, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, to emulate Renaissance painting before Raphael developed his grand manner. They adopted a high moral stance that embraced a sometimes unwieldy combination of symbolism and realism, religious or romantic subjects with an insistence on painting everything from direct observation. The model for the painting above was Jane Burden, muse for the Pre-Raphaelites who discovered her and proclaimed her to be a perfect example of Renaissance beauty.(She later married William Morris) To read more about the Pre-Raphaelites check out the Delaware Art Museums site.

6. William Morris William Morris, a wealthy British theology student,"developed an interest in art and literature and a deep love for everything medieval, not only art and design, but also architecture. Morris (and friend Pre-Raphaelite Edward BurneJones) joined the gothic revival architectural practice of George Edmund Street. Here they met Philip Webb who was to become a lifelong friend and, together with Webb, they formed the Arts & Crafts movement. To members of the Arts & Crafts, the Industrial Revolution separated humans from their own creativity and individualism; the worker was a cog in the wheel of progress, living in an environment of shoddy machine-made goods, based more on ostentation than function. These proponents sought to reestablish the ties between beautiful work and the worker, returning to an honesty in design not to be found in mass-produced items. In both Britain and America the movement relied on the talent and creativity of the individual craftsman and attempted to create a total environment."http://anc.graycells.com/Intro.html

7. Morris & Co, 1861 Morris married Jane Burden and moved into his commissioned home, Red House. Unhappy with the quality of products available for furnishings, Morris worked, along with his friends to create wallpaper, tapestries and furniture demonstrating good craftsmanship and design. At the project's end they joined together to form a business. "He then set up a studio in 1861 with several associates, including architect Philip Webb and English artists Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones. In 1875 he reorganized the partnership into Morris & Co. Morris' designs were realistic. He pulled from the nature around him as did the medieval tapestry artists before him.... using traditional methods, often obtaining dyes from vegetables. He perfected the use of woodblocks for printing wallpaper and textiles. The idea of the house as a total work of art, with all of the interior objects designed by the architect, emerged from this studio and remained standard practice throughout the Arts and Crafts movement." As part of his attempt to reintroduce handmade quality Morris used only natural dyes and hand production processes. His refusal to use modern production techniques meant that his products were only affordable by the rich and therefore anathema to his socialist beliefs." Read more
Morris was a socialist and was an active member in the Hammersmith Socialist League.

"The wallpapers and prints became the height of fashion but Morris realized that he was bound to lose his one man battle against the degradation of capitalist production. Success itself was proof of this. He hated 'spending ... life ministering to the swinish luxury of the rich', and the more involved he became in production the more evidence he found of the injustices and misery caused by exploitation. By the 1870s he had come up against the limits of artistic rebellion. 'What business have we with art unless all can share it?' he asked." Read more

William Morris and the Kelmscott Press

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8. The Kelmscott Press England, 1890 "William Morris established the most famous of the private presses, the Kelmscott Press, at Hammersmith in January, 1891. Over the next seven years the press produced 53 books (totaling some 18,000 copies). Kelmscott was the culmination of Morris's life as a craftsman in many diverse fields. The books Morris produced were medieval in design, modeled on his studies of incunabula of the fifteenth century."
From University of Glasgow Library

The Type of the Kelmscott Press Ever consistent in his rejection of industrialized processes, Morris designed and produced his own typefaces, manufactured his own paper, and printed using a hand press. He set out to prove that the high standards of the past could be repeated - even surpassed - in the present. His books were designed to be read slowly, to be appreciated, to be treasured, and thus made an implicit statement about the ideal relationships which ought to exist between the reader, the text, and the author a statement which we have, by and large, continued to ignore. (Source: Victorian Web) Numerous other British presses were founded in the style of Kelmscott including the Doves, Eragny, Ashendene and Vale Presses.

Troy, Chaucer, Golden Morris's roman 'Golden' type was inspired by the work of the early punch cutter Nicolas Jenson of Venice. Troy (above left) is based upon studies of manuscript blackletter. Please note that the versions shown here are digital recreations of Morris's type. *Remember that digital designers often try to emulate the ink spread and paper surface from historical letterpress work to recreate the character of the original printed type, rather than the actual type design. Noteworthy for their harmony of type and illustration, Morris' main priority was to have each book seen as a whole: this included taking painstaking care with all aspects of production, including the paper, the form of type, the spacing of the letters, and the position of the printed matter on the page. Kelmscott books re-awakened the lost ideals of book design and inspired higher standards of production at a time when the printed page was at its poorest.

Morris was fascinated not only with the design of books but wrote a number of books. His fantasy stories were a direct inspiration for C. S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia and influenced Tolkein's,The Lord of the Rings. Read more)
The Kelmscott Chaucer is considered Morris's masterpiece. 425 copies of the book were completed by a total of 11 master printers. See this spread from McCune Collection, CA, USA.

Other Private Presses Inspired by William Morris

11. Doves Press (at Bridwell Library) 1900 "The Doves press was in direct reaction to Morris's strongly decorative approach to bookmaking. T. J. CobdenSanderson, a friend of Morris, (and Emery Walker, the proprietor of the press) was a difficult, demanding and highly idealistic man. He was a great bookbinder, and designer of book bindings who had bound for Morris. For all the superb ornamentation of his bindings, he chose an austere approach in his printing.
Ashendene Printers Mark

9. Golden Cockerel Press (link) England, 1920 The Golden Cockerel Press distinguished itself not only for its high quality of printing but for the rich wood cuts by various artists including Eric Gill. The masterpiece of the Press is the Four Gospels, which used Gill's wood cut illustrations as well as his type face design. 10. Ashendene Press (link) England, 1895 - 1935 Wealthy book publisher St.John Hornby founded this small private press. Most Ashendene editions used a trademark font: Subiaco, which was based on a 15th century semi-humanistic Italian type created by Sweynheim and Pannartz in Subiaco, Italy.

The typeface they designed... was also based on Jenson, but it was as if he had looked at an entirely different book from Morris. Where Morris's face was rather heavy, with comparatively short ascenders and descenders crowned with strong serifs, Cobden-Sanderson's version was much lighter in feel. Unfortunately after an internal dispute the punches and matrices of this typeface ended up at the bottom of the Thames, for Cobden-Sanderson could not bear the thought of anyone else using them, even his partner." (Quote source) The Dove's masterpiece is the Dove's Bible,1903. Stark in comparison to Morris, the text type was cut by Edward Prince (also Morris's punchcutter) in a Jenson style roman; the large red initial letters were by Edward Johnston. Read more about Johnston at the Edward Johnston Foundation site.

P.S. The English private press movement did not end with the passing of the century. After WWI was over and done, a new generation of private presses formed. The Golden Cockerel, the Nonesuch, the Shakespeare Head, the Gregynog continued the tradition. In Europe, De Zilverdistel, the Cranach, the Bremer, the Officina Bodoni and the Ernst Ludwig presses produced magnificent work. The tradition continued then, and continues today, and probably will continue for as long as there are readers and lovers of books who understand that the printed book is more than the text it contains. (Quote source)

Two American Private Presses: Printing and Type Design by Bruce Rogers and Frederic Goudy

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"Goudy's fonts were a modern marriage of craft & technology."

12. Bruce Rogers The Riverside Press, 18951912 In 1895 Rogers began work at the Riverside Press in Cambridge, Massachusetts and appointed as head of the department responsible for the production of limited-edition books in 1900. The freedom of constraints on his budget and time allowed the production of some notable books. During a period in Britain from 1928-32 Rogers produced some of his finest books, including his Bible and The Odyssey of Homer (1932). After returning to the States, Rogers settled in his home in New Fairfield, Connecticut. He designed some good books for the Limited Editions Club of New York, notably an illustrated, thirty-seven-volume folio of Shakespeare. 13. Frederick Goudy The Village Press, 1903-1939 "Frederic Goudy (1865-1947), commands a special place in the American book arts. In addition to his work as printer, book designer, and author, he was the first American to make the designing of type a separate profession. He was successful and prolific, designing 124 different typefaces and executing many of these from the drawing stage to the casting. Printing and type design for Goudy were activities that required all of the skills of fine craftsmanship while still operating in the framework of the Machine Age." Goudy and his wife, Bertha, operated the Village Press modeled after the style of William Morris from 1903 to 1939. (Source Library of Congress) Bertha M. Sprinks Goudy (right) cut the 24-point italic of the presses's Deepdene font. She set the type for much of the output of the Village Press which the Goudy's founded together with Will Ransom in 1903. Printing, an Essay by William Morris & Emery Walker, was their first publication. Their designs continued the Morris legacy of fine craftsmanship in the book arts. (Source: Unseen hands, Women Printers, Binders and Book Designers)
Above:Caricature of Goudy par Cyril Lowe

Typologia. Studies in type design and type making", Berkeley 1940

12. Bruce Rogers In 1915 Rogers produced a translation of Maurice de Geurins The Centaur in his own type design, and named it after the title of the book. Just the same as so many other private press fonts, Centaur was based on a design cut by Nicolas Jenson in the 1400's. The entire edition was hand-set by Rogers and printed in a limited edition of 135 copies at the Montague Press in Massachusetts. The design was originally commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Rogers hired Frederic Warde to design the accompanying italic based upon the work of 16th century Italian calligrapher, Ludovico degli Arrighi Roger's masterpiece, The Bible for Oxford University Press, was completed in 1935. A lectern-sized format, the pages measured 12 x 16 inches. The type is a special version of Centaur, 22 points, set on a 19 point body to save space. The type was set using Monotype's typecasting machine, in a pioneering demonstration that beautiful, well-designed books could be produced using modern methods. See his bible and a collection of Bruce Roger's Press Books are the Minnesota Center for Book Arts

Here you can watch a charming silent movie of Goudy drawing and cutting type using a pantograph. Goudy designed fonts for American and British foundries. He sold 8 to the Caslon Foundry in London and several for Lanston Monotype Co. Some of Goudy's most well known fonts, Copperplate Gothic and goudy Old Style. Follow this link to a specimen of Goudy's Monotype Kennerley font from the Progressive Composition Company of Philadelphia. The font was created for a H. G. Wells anthology published by M. Kennerly.

(Above) Bruce Rogers, contribution to a type sample book entitled Peter Piper's Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation, for Mergenthaler Linotype Co. Brooklyn, 1936. Fulltable.com

Image source http://tipografos.net /designers/goudy.html

The Pantograph: The Most important Advance in Type Technology after Gutenberg (It essentially ended the punch cutter)

14 The Pantograph eliminates the Punchcutter An Interview with Matthew Carter By:Mark Solsburg Q. Is there a seminal event that marked the beginning of 20th century typography in America?

Q. What prompted the major American foundries to merge? A. ... a Milwaukee engineer named Linn Boyd Benton put the first nail in the coffin of local foundries in 1884 when he invented a pantographic punchcutter, a router-like engraving machine for

Bored with reading about type? See the movies about Monotype, Linotype and Goudy at TypeCulture.

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Stanley Morison and Monotype "From 1923 to 1967 Morison was typographic consultant for the Monotype Corporation. In the 1920s and 1930s, his work at Monotype included research and adaptation of historic typefaces, including the revival of the Baskerville and Bembo types. He pioneered the great expansion of the company's range of typefaces and hugely influenced the field of typography to the present day."(Wikipedia link) A typographer, scholar, and historian of printing, Morison is particularly remembered for his design of Times New Roman, later called "the most successful new typeface of the first half of the 20th century." He was inspired by William Morris' ideals of quality but at the same time aware of the need to adapt them to the new mass-production techniques.

15. Linotype, 188 Bentons punchcutt enabled Ottmar Mer German immigrant to create the Linoty Instead of setting fo the Linotype cast a slug, of hot-metal t matrices brought in

16. Monotype, 1887 Tolbert Lanston of Wa invented the Monotyp individual letters thro driven process. To sur inroads made by Lino Monotype, the ATF (A Founders Company) w supply precast metal nationwide.

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Early Poster History

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Historical Function of a Poster?

Announcement | Advertisement | Propaganda | Social Activism | Artistic Vehicle

1. Broadsides (Letterpress) Posters for Public Announcement. Printed on one side only, broadsides were used to issue public decrees, new laws and general announcements. Usually they were quickly and crudely produced in large quantity and distributed free in town squares, taverns, and churches or sold by chapmen for a nominal charge. Broadsides are intended to have an immediate popular impact and then to be thrown away. Posters and items printed for short term consumption are referred to as printed ephemera. (Above: Declaration of Independence

2. Making Large Type Broadsides were meant to be posted and read from a distance and therefore required larger type. Metal type could not be cast much larger than an inch and still retain the flat surface required for letterpress relief printing. Also it was just incredibly heavy to work with large type. If a printer did have large type, it was likely that there weren't enough letters available to set all the words in one face so type headlines styles were mixed and matched depending on what was in the shop collection.

3. Wooden Type "With the expansion of the commercial printing industry in early 19th century America, it was inevitable that someone would perfect a process for cheaply producing the large letters so in demand for broadsides. Wood was the logical material because it's lightness, availability, workability and known printing qualities were enhanced by it's low cost. Darius Wells of New York found the means for mass producing wooden letters in 1827 and published the first known wood type catalog in 1828. Wells' basic invention, the lateral router was capable of cutting wood into intricate curves and silhouettes. The router was used in combination with William Leavenworth's pantograph (1834) to create decorative wooden letters of all sizes and shapes. For much more wood type information visit the Hamilton Wood Type Museum online or in beautiful Two Rivers, Wisconsin.

4. Lithographic Posters The process of lithography depends on the mutual repulsion of grease and water. It was invented by Alois Senefelder in 1796 as he searched for an alternative process to expensive metal plate engraving. His method involved drawing with a greasy crayon on finely surfaced Bavarian limestone. Lithography is one of the most direct processes in printing because one draws directly onto the stone (later metal plates were also used.) The final printed image is in reverse so the images and lettering need to be drawn backwards (often reflected in a mirror or traced backwards on a transfer paper). Two great visuals on how lithography works: UTube movie explanation of lithography See the MOMA animation of the process here.

The Sale of a Wife example above is from the National Library of Scotland 1776 Last known sale price for one of these and makes a very entertaining read.
broadside by John Dunlap, a government printer and publisher in Philadelphia in broadsides, $8.14 million.)

5. Poster Craze of the Belle poque (in France from 1880 -1914) For some the Industrial Revolution created a better life style with a surplus of leisure time and expendable income a

6. Japanese Ukiyo-e prints In 1637 the emperor of Japan closed its borders secluding it from the outside world for the next few hundred years. The art of Japan focused inward

7. Jules Cheret Cherets "three stone lithographic process," was a printing breakthrough which allowed printers to achieve every color in the rainbow with as little as

8. The "Matres de l'Affiche Partially due to the Arts and Crafts integration of artist and craftsman and partly due to the growing prestige of the poster with the public, reputable

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middle class. In France economic growth coincided with a period of peace and frivolity known as the Belle poque (Beautiful Era) Contributing to the beauty of this period was the lithographic poster, first solely used to market new goods and theatrical entertainment and then embraced as a popular art form. Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923) designed the Eiffel Tower for the Paris Exposition of 1889 at the height of the Belle poque. Two factors that contributed to the French Poster Style: The influence of art Ukiyo-e wood print posters recently arrived from Japan Jules Cheret 3 color process lithography

on the "floating world" or the cultural pleasures of theatres, restaurants, teahouses, geisha and courtesans. Many Ukiyo-e prints were posters advertising theatre performances and brothels, or idol portraits of popular actors and beautiful teahouse girls. The early woodblock prints were spare and monochromatic, printed in black ink only, but later grew rich in color. Japan opened its borders in the 1850's partly due to US pressure applied by Admiral Matthew Perry. Western artists were deeply influenced by newly imported Japanese textile design, lacquer ware and wood block prints (Ukiyo-e). Ukiyo-e stylistic characteristics were incorporated by impressionist painters Degas, Van Gogh and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. Of greatest importance to the Europeans was the Black contour outline Flat bright colors Flat Figures Europeans did not adopt the ukiyo-e use of empty space or spirituality.

three separate lithographic stones usually red, yellow and blue transparent inks overlapping to create new colors. His early subject matter dealt mainly with the gaieties of Parisian night life in theatres and cafes. Cheret was among the first to use images of pretty young women to advertise retail products. These wasp waisted provocative beauties were named "Cherettes" A first step towards media advocating for impossible body types for women. Starting in the 1870s in Paris, posters became the dominant means of mass communication in the rapidly growing cities of Europe and America. The streets of Paris, Milan and Berlin were quickly transformed into the art gallery of the street, and ushered in the modern age of advertising.

artists were willing to design and illustrate posters. Among those was Toulouse-Lautrec who created many theatrical advertisements. These artistic prints were so popular that they were stolen off of walls virtually as soon as they were hung. Cheret capitalized on this by organizing the first group exhibition of posters in 1884 then published the first book on poster art 1886."Cheret's recognition announced to Europe that the art of the poster has arrived" from Graphic Design a New History Cheret arranged for 97 artists to create posters at reduced size suitable for in-home display and marketed them under the name "Matres de l'Affiche" (Masters of the Poster). He sold serial editions, each containing five prints, to advance subscribers. These posters are sometimes available today from antique print dealers. FYI here is one.

Poster Art Spreads through Europe and the United States "The Industrial Revolution in full swing, once basic consumer need's were covered, marketers found it profitable to create new needs, ones consumer's never knew they had. Posters were an ideal way to educate consumers about what they should want. To convince consumers that fashion, status and convenience were as valid reasons to buy as necessity, marketing experts soon discovered the persuasive technique of showing products being enjoyed by beautiful people in beautiful settings. Pretty women soon smiled out of billboards selling everything imaginable... Posters for alcoholic beverages provide a good example of art leading the way to break a taboo. In the 19th century, drinking by women was regarded with scorn. As a result liquor ads were addressed almost exclusively to men. Knowing how persuasive men find a pretty face (and a good figure), the posterists put women in liquor posters and showed them not only praising the product but actually sampling it (such as Dubonnet, Vin Mariani, Absinthe Robette, and Mumm Champagne). This panel from First Ladies of the Poster: The Gold Collection, by Laura Gold,

The Mucha Foundation

9. Alphonse Mucha, a Czech in Paris Mucha was a painter who moved to Paris and found instant fame when he was asked to make a theater poster for the renowned actress Sarah Bernhardt in 1894. A brilliant series of lithographic prints followed. He was well known for his exaggeratedly abundant hair which exemplified the Art Nouveau style. Try to see his work in person, the PMA has several of these prints. If you are in Europe, The Belvedere Museum in Vienna is having a show of Mucha 02.09 06.09. It's great. 10. Privat-Livemont, Belgium Belgium poster designer Privat Livemont combines the romance of the Pre-Raphaelites and the sensuous style of Art Nouveau with the line and color of Japanese ukiyo-e prints. "An excellent example of female sensuality used in the service of commerce." (Laura Gold, Ladies of the Poster: The Gold Collection.) See the entire poster here Another ridiculously sexist illustration is his poster advertising the Casino de Cabourg. Note the swimmer, her costume, her "companions" and the casino. 11 Edward Penfield, American Penfield, an art director of Harper's Magazine was a prolific illustrator art editor, graphic designer, writer, painter, educator and mentor. Along with Will Bradley he brought an American spin to the European Styleand that spin did not include naked women in sheer drapes. Quite the opposite, American women wore high collars and were chaste, sporty and independent.

L'Aliment le plus concentr 1898

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12 Henri Van de Velde Tropon Poster 1898 Van de Velde was one of the originators of the style known as Art Nouveau. The curved line was the dominant theme in his architecture and furniture. This, his only poster design has gained iconic stature among art historians. As described on the American National Gallery web site, "It was created for the Tropon food company as part of a comprehensive design program, the first of its kind for a commercial enterprise. The rhythmic lines -- purely graphic -- appeared on everything from packages of powdered egg white to advertisements and the company's stationery." For more information about Van de Velde on the National Gallery web site...

13 The 20th Century: Beyond Art Nouveau "Art Nouveau began to lose its vitality in France with the departure of the three major posterists. Toulouse-Lautrec died in 1901; both Mucha and Cheret turned largely away from the poster and dedicated themselves to painting. Artists everywhere found new ways of expressing themselves. The Beggarstaff Brothers in England were the first designers to emphasize more than just the enlarged illustrations with text. They reduced the text to a minimum and designed large, strict compositions. (Quote Source). The Beggarstaff Brothers were William Nicholson & James Pryde, fine artists who used pseudonyms when they produced "commercial art."

14 Lucian Bernhard, German The Sachplakat Poster, 1906 "The Priester Match poster is a watershed document of modern graphic design. Its composition is so stark and its colors so starling that it captures the viewer's eye in an instant. When the poster first appeared on the streets of Berlin, persuasive simplicity was a rare thing in most advertising: posters, especially tended to be wordy and ornate. No one had yet heard of its young creator, who, thanks to this poster, was to influence the genre of advertising know as the Sachplakat, or object poster." Quote from Steven Heller's profile on Bernhard on the AIGA web site.

15 Russian Cinema Posters Stenberg Brothers 1928 In Russia, political ideology caused the avant-garde to reject fine arts. In a new Communist society "art for use" was in the service of the state. Key in the evolution of the poster was advertising (now a morally superior occupation with ramifications for the new society.) Vladimir and Georgii Stenberg were prominent members of this group. (*This is material quoted from the Museum Of Modern Art web site "Stenberg Brothers.") To read more... Most importantly posters can be used for ideological propaganda by any government.

Posters for the Great Wars Leveraging the Nationalistic Sense of Honor and Responsibility

12. WWI Recruiting Soldiers At the start of WWI in 1914 there was no draft for the British Army. As newly mechanized war equipment and gas warfare caused huge casualties it was increasingly difficult to get men to enlist. Posters were used to inspire, or shame, men into joining up. (above) After the sinking of the ship Lusitania, a report circulated about the discovery of a deceased English mother clutching her child,both innocent victims of the attack. No explanation was needed to connect between the image and the word ENLIST. (right above) Alfred Leete's craftily designed image looks as if it is pointing at you from any vantage point. It James Montgomery Flagg's 1916 depicts England's Secretary of State for magazine cover of Uncle Sam was War, Lord Kitchener, in 1914. circulated on 4 million posters in 1917.

13. German Call to Arms & War Bonds The poster above and below were designed by Lucien Berhardt, the same artist as #14 on this page. His style here has made a dramatic shift from a clean and modern approach back to a conservative German Gothic motif using both traditional lettering style and images of the motherland.

There were dramatic changes in the roles of women between WWI and WWII. Posters from WWI urge women to stay home and conserve food for the troops or grow victory gardens. They were depicted as weak and too feminine to "join the navy." By WW2 women were asked to leave home and join the work force or the armed services.

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Niklaus Stoecklin's Binaca (toothbrush), 1941

14 Photomontage John Heartfield, German ex-patriot

15 Sachplakat or Object Poster First introduced by The Priester Match Poster (see #14) after World War Two, the Sachplakat or Object Poster style reached new heights in Switzerland.

16 Herbert Matter, Swiss Tourist Posters

17 The Swiss International Style

Emerged in Switzerland in the 1950s to become the predominant graphic style in the world by the 70s. Because of its strong reliance on typographic elements, the new style came to be known as the International Typographic Style. The style was marked by: 1.) the use of a mathematical grid to provide an overall orderly and unified structure 2.) sans serif typefaces (especially Helvetica, introduced in 1961) in a flush left and ragged right format 3.) black and white photography in place of drawn illustration. The overall impression was simple and rational, tightly structured and serious, clear and objective, and harmonious. The new style was perfectly suited to the increasingly global post- WWII marketplace. See Professor Bez Ocko, Hofstra University, The Swiss Poster: Art of Ten Masters...link here

Various methods can be used to combine two or more photographs into a singe image several negatives (combination printing) or multiple exposures. The term photomontage came from the German Dada at the end of WWI, most notably from the work of John (Helmut) Heartfield. He would cut and paste together different photographs often depicting his strong objections to Hitler and the Nazi Party. Many of his best works utilize famous quotes of leading Nazis, and subtly undermine the intended message by quite ingenious visual puns. See Heartfield's "Millions Stand Behind Me" showing Hitler's true "millions."

"Herbert Matter studied at the Acadmie Moderne in Paris in the late 1920s before returning to Switzerland to design a series of Swiss travel posters using his signature "In 1923 Otto Baumberger completed a photomontage technique. He arrived uniquely Swiss variant of the object poster in the US in 1936, designing work for for PKZ. The poster was a drawing of a Museum of Modern Art, Cond Nast, life-size coat with wool fibers, silk lining the Guggenheim Museum, Knoll and PKZ label so realistic that most Furniture and the New Haven Railroad. viewers assumed it was a photograph. Aside from the label, the Matters advanced techniques in poster had no text. In 1934, Peter graphic design and photography Birkhuser's PKZ poster of a hyperbecame part of a new visual narrative realistic button took the sachplakat to its that began in the 1930s, which have minimalist extreme." since evolved into familiar design
Appealing to the Swiss sense of precision, and perhaps due to its use of a universal language of symbols, the sachplakat became the leading style for Swiss product posters during and immediately following World War II. Four artists in Basel - Birckhauser, Stoecklin, Leupin and Brun - became leaders of a style both playful and elegant, with lithographic standards the envy of the world." Quote Source :International Poster

idioms such as overprintingwhere an image extends beyond the frameand the bold use of color, size, and placement in typography. Such techniques often characterize both pre-war European Modernism and the post-war expression of that movement in the United States." (Source, Stanford University Library)

Social Activism in Posters

18 Lester Beall Rural Unification Project Philip Meggs credits Lester Beall with "almost single-handedly launching the Modern movement in American design." He studied the dynamic visual form of the European avant-garde, synthesized parts into his own aesthetic and formed graphic design applications for business and industry that were appropriate, bold, and imaginative.

19 The Non-commercial Poster Posters have been used to support the causes or protests of disenfranchised Women, Blacks, Latinos, Gays, Native Americans, Environmental Activists and countless other groups. They were especially abundant in the 1960's and 70's when artists would labor over silkscreens to produce strong color fields and bold type at low cost. The Silence = Death poster 1986, Offset lithography

20 Polish Political Posters Poland has a long tradition of posters from ww2 until 1990. Freedom on the Fence is a documentary project about the history of Polish posters and their significance to the social, political and cultural life of Poland. Examining the period from WWII through the fall of Communism, Freedom on the Fence captures the paradox of how this unique art form flourished within a Communist regime. The documentary

21 Political Posters Today Unfortunately there will be no end to the need to make messages to counter war, injustice or abuse in the world. However with competition from the internet, television, and lack or available public space, can the poster stay relevant in the 21st century? If you want to see a good international on line site for the current poster scene visit Rene Wanner's Poster Page.

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In his Rural Unification Posters his "deceptively simple message is that rural life and American values are indistinguishable.

Act up AIDS activists See also,The Art of Protest Culture and Activism from the Civil Rights Movement to the Streets of Seattle)

contains interviews with older and younger generations of poster artists, examples of past and current poster work, historic and current film footage of where and how the poster is viewed, and commentaries from both American and Polish scholars and artists on the significance of the Polish poster as a cultural icon.

The Artist and the Posters..

22 Wes Wilson(above) Clifford Charles Seeley (below) Fillmore East, San Francisco 1960's

23 Milton Glaser

24 Nancy Skolos + Tom Wedell Husband and wife, the two work to diminish the boundaries between graphic design and photography creating collaged three-dimensional images influenced by cubism, technology and architecture. Go to their web site to see an archive of their amazing collaborative work.

25 Ralph Schraivogel Swiss Posters Today In the early 1990s, Swiss designers employed abundant visual effects in their poster production, dramatically different from the previous refined and rational Swiss style, thus enriching Swiss graphic design with a new, individual dimension. The experimental and independent approach to design employed by Wolfgang Weingart, was successfully adopted by a group of younger, talented graphic designers in the late 1990s, such as Melchior Imboden and Ralph Schraivogel. With new technologies dominating the scene, Ralph Schraivogel opts for a traditional creative approach through which he accomplishes visual creations in his posters that, in their final effect, approximate to digitally manipulated images.

In 1955, along with Seymour Chwast, Edward Sorel, and Reynold Ruffin, Milton Glaser co-founded the Pushpin graphic Wilson pioneered the psychedelic rock design studio in New York. The studios poster. Intended for a particular surprising style, which combined aspects audience, "one that was tuned in to the of Victorian art, Arts and Crafts, Art psychedelic experience," his art, and Nouveau, and Art Deco with especially the exaggerated freehand contemporary typography and lettering, emerged from Wilson's own illustration, captured the imagination of involvement with that experience and the world through its refreshingly organic the psychedelic art of light shows. His approach to design and illustration. While influential lettering was derived from at Pushpin, Glaser designed the incredibly Vienna Secessionist lettering he popular poster for Bob Dylans 1967 discovered in a University of California album, Bob Dylans Greatest Hits. At the exhibition catalogue, and his time, Glaser was interested in Islamic experimentation with the form led to miniatures and the psychedelic images his recognizable pulsating pictures with emerging from the West Coast. Working undulating letters. from a photograph hed taken of a striking sign in Mexico, Glaser designed the Babyteeth typeface used on the poster. The poster features Dylan's silhouette in black with his wildly dramatic hair looking exotic in electric colors. The expressiveness of the hair contrasts with the soft, geometric lettering, producing a sense of depth and vision that complements Dylans music.

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Gesamtkunstwerk, the German work for a 'total art work' The synthesis of all arts, including painting, graphics, sculpture, decorative arts, architecture and performing arts, into a single expressive whole.

1. Art Nouveau | International Art Movement of Decorative Arts

Nature and Design (England) Charles Darwin in The Origin of the Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871) theorized the evolution of man through natural selection. The influence of these popular works plus an influx of Japanese art inspired strong connections between art and nature. The connection is manifested in the work of The Century Guild, one of the most successful of the many guilds formed during the Arts and Crafts period. The Guild members integrated sensuous and natural motifs in early examples of the Art Nouveau style. Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo founded Century Guild in 1882 "to render all branches of art the sphere no longer of the tradesman but of the artist...to restore building, decoration, glass-painting, pottery, wood-carving and metal to their right place beside painting and sculpture."

Art Nouveau (1880-1910) Work of Century Guild members was featured in the fine press publication, The Hobby Horse, which introduced the Arts and Craft Movement to Europe in 1884. Although the Arts and Crafts period overlapped the Art Nouveau movement, it was Art Nouveau that took hold internationally, becoming the first popular art movement of the 20th century. Art Nouveau reacted against the 19th century revival styles taught in the established art academy. It was expressed mainly in decorative arts and architecture, characterized by whip lash curves and the absence of any straight line or right angle. Artists integrated elements of living organisms (animals, insects and birds especially swans, dragonflies, peacocks and swallows) all rich with symbolic meaning. The term Art Nouveau first was used by a group of modern Belgian artists known as "The XX" in 1884. By 1895 the term was established and the "new art form" was displayed for the public in exhibitions at prestigious galleries such as Bing's Department Store in Paris. The French cities of Paris and Nancy (where mile Gall started the Academy in Nancy) were centers of Art Nouveau for artists Rene Lalique, Louis Majorelle, and the Daum Brothers. In the US, Art Nouveau workshops such as the company of Tiffany and Wheeler (Louis Comfort Tiffany Studios and Candace Wheeler) adopted the French organic style.

Organic or Geometric? Art Nouveau evolved into two distinct styles organic and geometric. France, Belgium, Italy, Spain and the United States adhered to the organic style. In Scotland, Rennie Macintosh and his associates at the Glasgow College of Art developed a more geometric style which highly influenced artists in Vienna, Austria. Art Nouveau had different names in several countries ('Jugendstil' in Austria, 'Stile Liberty' in Italy, Modernista in Spain.) The streamlined designs favored by the geometric Art Nouveau paved the way for the abstraction and reductionism that would later dominate 20th century art and design.

2 Art Nouveau Organic | England, France, Italy, Spain and the United Statesouveau

Organic

Victor Horta Belgium Architect Victor Horta interpretation of Art Nouveau into architecture included a revolutionary openness to the space, the inclusion of diffused light from walls and roof and integrating the curved lines of decoration with the structure of the building. See his work at the Horta

Henry Van de Velde Belgium Originally a painter, Van de Velde was inspired to turn to architecture by the Arts and Crafts movement. He adhered to William Morris's utopian ideal that artists could reform society through design. He believed that 'Ugliness corrupts not only the eyes, but also the heart and mind'. His

Aubrey Beardsley England Dead at age 25, prolific illustrator Aubrey Beardsley left behind an extensive, albeit controversial body of work in the Art Nouveau style. His inked compositions featured large dark areas contrasted with large blank ones, and areas of fine detailed patterns and dots contrasted with areas

Candice Wheeler United States Candice Wheeler was America's first important woman textile and interior designer. In 1879 Wheeler co-founded the interior-decorating firm of Tiffany & Wheeler, serving as the partner specializing in textiles. Wheeler was one of the first women to work in a field

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Museum on line or visit it in Brussels.

Tropon Poster utilizes elements of the Ukiyo-e, flattened surface, contour lines and negative space. A perfect example of how style can trump content. A true master of the Art Nouveau poster was Alphonse Mucha, his work is currently featured in the Belvedere Museum in Vienna or see the poster page on this site.

with none at all. He was the first art editor of The Yellow Book, a leading English arts publication. Read more about Beardsley's life and art here. In the United States illustrators emulated Beardsley's style. Ethel Reed, (the first American woman graphic designer )and Will Bradley (nicknamed 'The American Beardsley)

dominated by male upholsterers, architects, and cabinetmakers. She was asked to serve as the interior decorator of the Woman's Building at the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition, and to organize New York's applied arts exhibition. (Source quote Harvard Library Open Collections)

4. Art Nouveau Geometric | Scotland and Austria

'Glasgow Girls' Glasgow School of Art was unique in Scotland in the number and type of courses that it offered women partly due to the support of Headmaster Fra Newbery and his wife Jessie. The school's enrollment in 1901 was 47% women. (quote source) Two of the most renown student, sisters Margaret and Frances MacDonald, enrolled in 1890. Their paintings combined Art Nouveau with Celtic mysticism demonstrated in the above work, The Pond, by Francis. After graduation the sisters set up an independent studio where they collaborated on graphics, textile designs, book illustrations and metalwork. Influences from William Blake and Aubrey Beardsley are reflected in the use of elongated figures and linear elements. The McDonalds sisters exhibited their work in London, Liverpool and Venice. Partial source and more information

Margaret McDonald Margaret became the better known of the McDonald sisters due to her association with artist and husband Charles Rennie Macintosh. She is best known for her brilliant painted gesso panels that incorporated 3-dimensional or built-up linear elements which she frequently embedded with glass and semi-precious stones. Macintosh derived much inspiration from Margaret and fully recognized the importance of her contribution to his work, Margaret has genius, I only have talent. Margaret's collaboration on one of Rennie Mackintoshs most famous commissions, Mrs Cranstons Tea Rooms (shown above right), included much of the internal design including the famous paneling on O Ye, all Ye that Walk in the Willow Wood.' She also designed the graphics for the menus and other printed works. Link to the Glasgow School of Art

Charles Rennie Mackintosh Mackintosh trained in architecture at the Glasgow School of Art. His early influences included the Pre-Raphaelites, Whistler, Aubrey Beardsley and Japanese art. In the 1890's a distinct Glasgow style was developed by Mackintosh in collaboration with three other Glasgow artists Margaret McDonald, Francis McDonald and Herbert McNair. Linked by their similar artistic interests they established an international reputation as members of The Glasgow Four. Mackintosh believed in the synergy of artist, designer and craftsman. He could not compromise his control of "total design" even though it resulted in severely limiting his professional practice. Many Glasgow residents looked upon his original styles as weird and consequently he did not garner the sort of recognition or acclaim at home as he did abroad. Today the Glasgow School of Art features his work in a large and permanent gallery exhibition.

Macintosh's Geometric Influence Macintosh and McDonald were embraced enthusiastically by the Austrian Secessionist movement who quickly adopted their geometric style. Macintosh's designs, as seen above in a chair designed for the Willow Tea Room, was preferred over the Continental organic Art Nouveau Style. In 1900 the Mackintoshes participated in the 8th Vienna Secession, where they made a critical connection with designer Josef Hoffmann. The couple was awarded numerous important commissions including the Warndorfer Music Salon and a Macintosh room at the Turin International Exhibition. Although today Mackintosh's original furniture is included in important design collections and there has been a resurgence in popularity of his style, by 1914 the Art Nouveau style had waned and Mackintosh's work was considered pass. A dejected Macintosh retired to France with Margaret where they spent their remaining days painting in the countryside.

The Emergence of Modernism At the turn of the 20th century Vienna was in a state of unrest and change caused by the impending end of the Hapsburg Empire and a surge of intellectual energy in art, music and thought. Breakthroughs such as Sigmund Freud's study of the unconscious mind and Schnitzler's exploration of sexual and social conventions began to shape the modern psyche. Artists questioned the established Art Academy which they argued was mired in stodgy Historicism. Additionally the limitations of what constituted fine art were tested Was art limited to painting and sculpture or could it also include

The Vienna Secessionist 1897 The Viennese Secessionists were artists who broke away from the conservative Austrian Association of Artists. They adopted the name, Union of Austrian Artists, taken in solidarity with artist unions in Paris and Munich. The Secessionists adopted many of the ideals of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement, particularly in areas of art education and social improvements. They encouraged all artistic mediums and introduced the new art movements of Impressionism, Art Nouveau and artistcraftsmen in their exhibitions. Their priorities were to build relationships with

Secessionist Building & Exhibitions The Secessionists hoped to create a new art that owed nothing to historical influence above all else they wanted to explore the possibilities of art outside the confines of academic tradition. In this way they were very much in keeping with the iconoclastic spirit of turn-of-the-century Vienna. Shown above is Gustav Klimt's poster announcing the first show of the Secessionist artists. Its spare reductive style and san serif lettering was wildly different than the Academy's posters. Klimt included the naked figure of Thesus which was immediately censored by the authorities. (image source) Olbrich, it features 'double-filtered' light from the domed roof, the first 'white cube' of art history. Above its entrance is carved the phrase "to every age its art and to art its freedom' from art critic Ludwig Hevesi. Kolomon Moser covered the front facade with frescos of laurel bush canopy to articulate the "return of a paradisiacal era, to the unity of art and life. The laurel symbolizes the "fertility of the mind's subconscious." Critics blasted the design, 'a bastard begot of a temple and a whore house, a temple for bullfrogs, a cross between a blast furnace and a green house." Despite extensive bombing

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furniture, glass, textiles and functional items?

artists abroad and to select art on the basis of merit, not marketability. ("Only the weak and false get sponsored") Gustav Klimt was the first elected president of the group but left over artistic differences in 1905. Above, his famous painting, The Kiss, is closely aligned in style to Margaret McDonald.

The Secessionists were associated with the German Jugendstil style of Art Nouveau, evident in the decoration of their 'temple of art' built in 1898 directly across the street from the Austrian Fine Arts Academy. Designed by architect Joseph M.

damage during WWII it is was refurbished and is open to the public today. It continues in the the spirit of the Secession, presenting experimental work. Of course the one time I get to see it artist Katrin Plavcak has draped a giant mustache over the dome. See it here

5 Weiner Werkstatte : Practicing Gesamtkunstwerk (Living a life of total and integrated art work)

Josef Hoffmann L: Writing cabinet for the Waerndorfer 1901 T: Sitzmaschine Chair, 1905 B: Sketch for flatware, 1904

To Ornament or not to Ornament? The Power of Ornament Ornament, so loved by the Victorians and The Art and Crafts guilds, loses favor in the 20th century. Especially influential against ornament was the Adolf Loos 1908 essay,"Ornament and Crime," in which he declares ornament merely an embellishment with superfluous deceit. In Loos's estimation ornament is criminal because it ties an object to a style and when the style is obsolete, so then is the object. He believed the time wasted on ornament held certain cultures back from advanced development, especially cultures that practiced tattooing. Loos influenced many 20th century designers, including 'less is more' Mies van der Rohe. In the current (2009) exhibit The Power of Ornament at the Belvedere Museum in Vienna the curator, Sabine B. Vogel, writes of ornament as "the harmonious intersection of both high art and folk lore, important because ornament encompasses history and the present, full of symbolism and allusions." Contemporary graphic design is full of heavily ornamented type, layered and complex imagery... will there be a Loos for the 21st century?

Wiener Werksttte 1903-1932 Joseph Hoffmann and Koloman Moser left the Secessionist Movement to establish an association of artists and craftspeople working together to manufacture well designed household goods in the spirit of the British Arts & Crafts Movement. Funded by 1903, with backing from the industrialist Fritz Wrndorfer, artists in various workshops produced furniture, glass, metals, ceramics textile, fashion, graphic design and book design. Stylistically the Werksttte found itself between the heavy ornamentation of the 19th Century and the functional aesthetic of the Modern design world. The early workshop design was greatly influenced by Rennie Mackintosh simplified shapes, geometric patterns, and minimal decoration as created by Hoffman and Moser. The workshops were a working partnership of designer and craftsman. Objects produced in the Wiener Werksttte were stamped with a number of different hallmarks; the trademark of the Wiener Werksttte and the monogram of the designer the craftsman who produced it.

Bertold Lffler, above, Below textiles, 1925

(Image source MAK Museum of Applied Arts. Vienna.)

About 100 WW workers strove to provide good quality design but eschewed mass production. "Better to work 10 days on one product than to manufacture 10 products in one day" was their idealistic credo but the reality was that the work of the WW was only affordable by the wealthy. A New York shop was established for several years but the cost of running the venture could not be sustained.

Dress by Emilie Flge. In 1910 textile and fashion workshops were added to the WW.

6 Deutsche Werkbund| A Union of Design and Industry, "Vom Sofakissen zum Stdtebau" (From Sofa Cushions to City-Building)

Werkbund Glass Pavilion, 1914

Deutsche Werkbund Germany The German Union or German Association of Craftsmen was a state sponsored organization formed in 1907 in an attempt to reestablish the national identity and stature of German manufacturing. Germany wanted to compete against British and American markets by producing economic high-quality goods for mass

Form givers replace artist-craftsman There were two diverse factions in the Werkbund, one lead by Hermann Muthesius, and the other by Henri Van de Velde. Their differences were debated in a famous meeting at the Werkbunds 1914 Cologne exhibition in which the merits of standardization were compared to those of the hand craftsmanship "type vs individuality"

Ludwig Mies Van de Rohe One of the most influential designers to emerge from the Werkbund was Mies van der Rohe. He eradicated ornament but retained a sense of richness by using the highest quality materials. Above, the Barcelona Chair, 1929, designed for the German exhibition in Barcelona.

Women in the Deutsche Werkbund "Lilly Reich began her career as a designer of textiles and women's apparel, one of the few fields in design open to women at that time. In 1912 she became a member of the Deutsche Werkbund ...Before WWI she worked in the studio of Josef Hoffman and by 1915 she had developed a professional reputation sufficient enough to be placed in charge of a fashion show for the Werkbund held in Berlin.

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consumption. The Werkbund promoted the development of crafts skills that could be used to standardize and rationalize forms for machine production. Their challenge was to produce manufactured goods equal in quality to hand-crafted products. The Werkbund originally included twelve architects and twelve business firms. The architects include Peter Behrens, Theodor Fischer, Josef Hoffmann and Richard Riemerschmid. The most famous member was Mies Van der Rohe. Activities of the organization included holding exhibitions to educate the public consumer about good design as well as encouraging industrialists to employ professional designers. Muthesius prevailed with his argument that aesthetics could be independent of material quality, standardization could be a virtue, and that abstract form could be the basis of aesthetics in product design. He proposed modernity, opposing ornament and advocating for practicality as the basis for the expression of contemporary cultural values. He believed that beauty came through form not decoration, and that this was not achieved individually but by using standardized designs. Henry van de Velde unsuccessfully opposed Behrens with an argument that standardization compromised individual artistic creativity.

Van der Rohe was architectural director of the 1927 Die Wohnung (The Dwelling) at the Weissenhof-Settlement in Stuttgart. The exhibition featured architecture, interiors and furniture showcasing the Werkbund Modernist aesthetic. The estate of working class housing was designed in consultation with the residents as a blue print for worker's homes. It was controversial due to its un-German like appearance.

Lilly partnered with Mies van der Rohe, professionally and personally for about a dozen years. They co-designed much of the furniture that become icons of modern design still in production today although they are usually attributed solely to Mies. Imagine these chairs without the upholstery that was designed by Lilly? In 1920 Reich became the first woman to be made director of the Deutsche Werkbund, an unprecedented achievement because women at that time were not expected to have the same abilities in the arts as men." From A Chat with Lily Reich

The MR Chair, 1927, Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich. "It is interesting to note that Mies did not fully develop any contemporary furniture successfully before or after his collaboration with Reich." Albert Pfeiffer (Source)

Peter Behrens | Winning the Werkbund Debate on the Merits of Standardization

Peter Behrens, Typography Originally a member of the Munich Secessionists and the Jugendstil school, architect, artist and designer Peter Behrens later became a major force in modern corporate identity and industrial design. Among Behrens's many talents was typography design, especially the design of sans serif type. He released a sans serif type with heavy blackletter overtones, Behren Schrift, through the Klingspor type foundry. In 1900 the Duke of Hessen invited Behrens to join the Mathildenhhe artist colony created to encourage a creative fusion of art and manufacturing. Each of the seven residents were granted land on which to build and design a home and entire contents - a Gesamtkunstwerk. Behrens's "Haus Behrens" was a sensation.

Peter Behrens, Modern Design Educator Behrens was appointed director of the Dusseldorf School of Arts and Crafts in 1903. His vision to create a studio pedagogy of geometrically-based systems lead him to search for faculty in Holland where mathematical systems were emphasized. Dutch architect J.L Mathieu Lauweriks was hired as head of the Dusseldorf architecture department. Behrens was deeply influenced by Lauwerik's proportional system of arithmetic arrangements of cubes, squares, and rectangles based, in part, on the theories of ancient Roman Vitruvius. Behrens developed an introductory course for the modern study of art in which students analyzed organic natural forms and reconstructed them into universal forms of harmony. Behrens courses and studio were a training ground for important Modernists Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius. The Dusseldorf course of study would influence Gropius when he started the Bauhaus school in 1919.

The AEG Corporate Standardization In 1907 Behrens was appointed artistic director for AEG, (manufacturer of electrical machines). Behrens oversaw the design of the company, from architecture to product design to graphics. The work was all done in a neutral and standardized style, undecorated and without reference to class or history. The AEG program's "standardization" was the perfect manifestation of Mathesiuss ideal of collaboration between the artist and major industry. The program is one of the first examples of a complete corporate identity. Behrens pioneered and defined the field of modern industrial design with his product design for AEG. His innovation was expressed in the design of electric tea kettles that utilized standardized and interchangeable components. Pardoxically his standardization actually allowed for economical variations, in the case of the tea pot, 80 different affordable variations. See one of the teapots at the MOMA.
The AEG high tension factory 1910

The factory had special meaning for the Modernists. It was a site of production associated with the worker. The purpose of a factory was clear: it housed, or was, a product of the latest technology. In his design for the AEG factory, Behrens appreciation for Classical architecture was synthesized with Modernist ideals in a new styleNeoclassical Modernism. Particularly striking was his use of external steel columns, at once referring to the classical past yet also to Modernism, exposing the steel skeletal structure to create a metaphorical Greek temple to industry. (Behren's source link)

7. El Lissitzky : Linking Geometric Abstraction With Graphic Design

"In the opening decades of the 20th century, the printed word became

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increasingly important to the visual and verbal explorations of modern artists. Revolutions in printing, typography, and advertising saturated modern life with printed words. Although diverse in their goals and expressive strategies, artists working in a variety of styles and locations including Italian Futurists, Berlin Dadaists, and Russian Constructivists cohered around a shared interest in deploying modern typography. Co-opting the raw material of industrial, technological culture into their critiques of the artistic and social status quo, artists used the printed word as a key medium for communicating the avant-garde perspective. They eagerly sought out new typographical styles, which represented the graphic embodiment of one of the central tenets of the artistic vanguard: fusing form with function."
Above: Cover of Die Kunstismen/Les isms de l'art/the isms of art, 1925

Lissitzky's used his art to promote his beliefs in the political and social issues of the turbulent early 20th century. His revolutionary typographical layouts were a synthesis of the composition of the Proun style and his understanding of page layout in his earlier book designs. In 1920 he created The Story of Two Squares, a symbolic narrative in which the protagonists are a red square and a black square, the setting is the earth (a red circle), and the enemy is chaos (a jumble of geometric shapes). Kazimar Malevitch & El Lissitzky In 1915 Kazimir Malevich introduced an abstract, non-objective geometric painting style he named Suprematism. Malevitch's explorations of Impressionism and Cubo-Futurism (also a fascination with aerial landscape photography) inspired his 1915 manifesto From Cubism to Suprematism.* (Black Square,1915 above) Lazar Markovich Lissitzky trained as an architect but started his career illustrating Yiddish children's books. In 1919 he met and was greatly inspired by Malevitch and the Suprematist style while they were both teachers at the People's Art School. El Lissitzky adopted the reductive geometric style, producing in 1920 his famous poster Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge (above)
*Julia Bekman Chadaga

Proun Lissitzky went on to develop his own variant of Suprematism, Proun (an acronym for "Project for the Affirmation of the New) Proun was Lissitzky's exploration of the visual language of Suprematism but with 3D elements, existing half-way between painting and architecture, utilizing shifting axes and multiple perspectives. Prouns, initially paintings, were later expressed as fully dimensional works. In 1920 he moved to Berlin as an artistic ambassador for Russian art, bringing the language of Constructivism and Suprematism to Europe. He began experimenting heavily in typographic design and photographic montage. For a very complete site on the work of El Lissitzky visit this link at the Getty Museum.

The Story of Two Squares is a powerful demonstration that art could be used as a graphic means of communication. When it was first published in Berlin in 1922, About 2 [Squares] presented a radical rethinking of what a book was, demonstrating a new way of organizing typography on a page and relating it to visual images. It marked the beginning of a new graphic art and is among the most important publications in the history of the avant-garde in typography and graphic design. See all of the pages of The Story of Two Squares on ibiblio.org

Program sheet, Victory over the Sun, 1923

Victory Over the Sun, 1923 Performed in 1913, the "first Cubo-Futurist opera" Victory over the Sun was the basis for the a 1923 German commission for a series of lithographic prints. Lissitzky analyzed the text as a celebration of man's technological capabilities: 'the sun as the expression of old world energy is torn down from the heavens by modern man, who by virtue of his technological superiority creates his own energy source.' The cover sheet is composed with a compositional arrangement of bold and light type aligned on a grid. Horizontal and vertical bars are balanced with the type in a vocabulary of space and organizational relationships that will be emulated by many designers in the following decades.

Lissitzky's Influence in Europe Lissitzky's fluency in German helped him advance his theories in Europe through lectures, articles, and commercial graphic design. Dada artist Kurt Schwitters commissioned Lissitzky to work on a special issue of the Dada journal Merz. His work had a great deal of influence over the Bauhaus school through his relationship with Walter Gropius and the New Typography of Jan Tschichold. He also influenced the De Stijl movement. Lissitzky fell ill to tuberculosis in 1923 and went to Switzerland for treatment. He financed his recovery by designing advertisements for Gnther Wagner's Pelikan division, an office supply company. With this assignment he combined his new typographic techniques with Proun spatial composition to create a new visual vocabulary for advertising.

Designing Communism Lissitzky aligned his art with the social and political goals of statethe core purpose of the Russian Constructivist Style. He promoted his country's optimism for social welfare and Communism via print and exhibition design. His designs for USSR in Construction, a propaganda magazine begun by Maxim Gorky, featured the Stalinist Constitution, Soviet Georgia, and the Red Army. Published in several languages, it provided foreign audiences with information about Soviet industry, economy, and culture. Lissitzky's poster above, designed for the Russian Exhibition in Zrich in 1929, depicts the egalitarian status of women and men in the new society. His photomontage style featured startling juxtapositions of real objects with naturalistic and abstract forms. Alexander Rodchenko, another Russian Constructivist, broke new photographic ground with his innovative use of the Leica camera. See his work on Utube here or Rodchenko Montage.

9 Futurism - Speed, Technology and (ooops!) Fascism

10 De Stijl : The Horizontal The Vertical (+ To Some the Diagonal)

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The Bolted Book (1927)

Futurism 1909 According to art historian Irina D. Costache, Futurism (largely an Italian movement) sought more than a stylistic change but rather to redefine art. At the core was a desire to transform the arts into a process rejecting the value of individual objects and instead emphasizing a harmonious fusion of the modern environment and man. The Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti was the first to produce a manifesto of Futurist philosophy in his Manifesto del futurismo (1909), first released in Milan and published in the French paper Le Figaro. Marinetti summed up the major principles of the Futurists, including a passionate loathing of ideas from the past, especially political and artistic traditions. He and others also espoused a love of speed, technology, and violence. Marinettis Manifesto of Futurism promised to celebrate and exalt all aspects of modern life (urbanity, industry, technology, electricity, speed, force, dynamism, action, violence, transport), and furthermore, it was hoped that this philosophical and artistic progress would be realized at the cost of everything that came before ("We will destroy museums and libraries" cried Marinetti a cry which was more or less ignored in all but metaphorical context, thank goodness.) In short, if Marinetti had an enemy, it was The Past, and Futurism was seen as a way of liberating Italy from its Renaissance aesthetic, the world from its Classical tradition. The Futurists explored every medium of art, including painting, sculpture, poetry, theatre, music, architecture and even gastronomy. Futurists dubbed the love of the past passisme. The car, the plane, the industrial town were all legendary for the Futurists, because they represented the technological triumph of people over nature.

Fortunato Depero was a Futurist painter who brought the Futurist vision to graphic design in posters and magazine design. He is most

DeStijl 1917-1931 This Dutch nonfigurative art movement was also called neoplasticism. In 1917 a group of artists, architects, and poets was organized under the name de Stijl, and a journal of the same name was initiated. The leaders of the movement were the artists Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian. They advocated a purification of art, eliminating subject matter in favor of vertical and horizontal elements, and the use of primary colors and noncolors. Their austerity of expression influenced architects, principally J.J.P.Oud and Gerrit Rietveld. The movement lasted until 1931.

Piet Zwart Piet Zwart did not adhere to traditional typography rules, but used the basic principles of Constructivism and "De Stijl" in his commercial work. His work can be recognized by its primary colors, geometrical shapes, repeated word patterns and an early use of photomontage. He created a total of 275 designs in 10 years for the NKF Company (a cable company in the Netherlands), almost all typographical works. He resigned in 1933 to become an interior, industrial and furniture designer

recognized for his "Bolted Book," a publication bound with metal bolts to link the work to the industrial age.
He worked for a number of commercial clients believing that "Art of the future will have a strong advertising feel." His international

reputation brought commissions from as far as the United States.

"Had Vanity Fair wanted an 'illustrator', they'd have hired one. They did not. They chose Depero because he was 'in'; to use a modern idiom, he was considered 'trendy'. His work screamed 'Europe'. It screamed 'Modern'. Vanity Fair considered Depero a 'coup'; it would be akin to using Andy Warhol in the Sixties. They were showing off by being daring, and daring to them meant hiring a 'trendy' young Italian artist to do covers which were considered shocking. So yes, Depero's work for Vanity Fair can be considered as 'Art', because that is what they considered it to be and, more importantly, what they hoped their readers would consider it. Whether or not Depero did is another matter." He also produced a number of posters for Campari and designed their soda bottle.

Around 1921, the group's character started to change. From the time of Van Doesburg's association with Bauhaus, other influences started playing a role. These influences were mainly Malevich and

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20th Century Modernist Inuences on Graphic Design

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Russian Constructivism, to which not all members agreed. In 1924 Mondrian broke with the group after Van Doesburg proposed the theory of elementarism, proposing that the diagonal line was more vital than the horizontal and the vertical.

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The Bauhaus was the first model of the modern art school. The Bauhaus curriculum combined theoretic education and practical training in the educational workshops. It drew inspiration from the ideals of the revolutionary art movements and design experiments of the early 20th century. A woodcut (shown right) depicted the idealized vision of Walter Gropius, a "cathedral" of design.
Lyonel Feininger, Cathedral, woodcut, Cover of 1st program of Bauhaus April 1919 Gropius was greatly affected by the horrors of WWI and wanted to create a school where industrial methods were used not used for destructive wars but for the betterment of social conditions.

1. Bauhaus (Building House) Germany What was new about the school was its attempt to integrate the artist and the craftsman, to bridge the gap between art and industry. The unity of arts had of course been a central tenet of the late 19th-century Arts and Crafts movement, and the ideals of William Morris influenced Gropius's planning for the school. But the Bauhaus was the antithesis of the Arts and Crafts movement in fundamental ways. No more romance of handmaking in the countryside: its emphasis was urban and technological, and it embraced 20th-century machine culture. Mass production was the god, and the machine aesthetic demanded reduction to essentials, an excision of the sentimental choices and visual distractions that cluttered human lives. Quote Fiona MacCarthy

2. Walter Gropius Henry van de Velde (Belgian), headmaster at the School of Arts and Crafts in Weimar, Germany, was asked to leave the country at the outbreak of World War I. He was replaced by the German architect Walter Gropius who, in 1919, reorganized the school under the name Bauhaus School of Design. Gropius began his career working under architect Peter Behrens, a founder of the Deutsche WerkbundGropius applied the principles of the Werkbund to the Bauhaus curriculum, in effect creating a laboratory to teach and expand the existing Deutsche Werkbund theories of design.

3. The Basics Curriculum "Students at the Bauhaus took a six-month preliminary course that involved painting and elementary experiments with form, before graduating to three years of workshop training by two masters: one artist, one craftsman. They studied architecture in theory and in practice, working on the actual construction of buildings. The creative scope of the curriculum attracted an extraordinary galaxy of teaching staff. Among the stars were Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Oskar Schlemmer, the painter and mystic Johannes Itten, Lszl Moholy-Nagy, Josef Albers and Marcel Breuer. Bauhaus students were in day-to-day contact with some of the most important practicing artists and designers of the time. The school, masterfully marketed, acquired a reputation and an influence out of all proportion to its physical reality as a single institution in the German provinces. The name Bauhaus soon became a bogey word to adherents of the bourgeois style that it so vigorously opposed. German mothers told their children: "If you don't behave, I'll send you to the Bauhaus." But to those who responded to its uncompromising vision of the future, the term Bauhaus had a certain magic. The school came to be known for the marvelous masked balls and kite processions, experimental light and music evenings, and "Triadic" abstract ballets that it organized. These occasions welded students of many ages and nationalities together into a community. The Bauhaus was the beginning of the art school as an alternative way of life. Quote Fiona MacCarthy

The Three Locations of the Bauhaus

4. Bauhaus/Phase 1 Weimar, Germany "Let us create a new guild of craftsmen without the classdistinctions that raise an arrogant barrier between craftsman and artist!" In Weimar, students started with a six month foundation course followed by classes taught by both craftsman and artists. The Bauhaus manifesto proclaimed that the ultimate aim of all creative activity is "the building". Students participated right from the start in building projects. This phase was influenced by the Expressionist and Arts & Crafts Movements. Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and Oskar Schlemmer were among the faculty. Despite a successful first exhibit the school was perceived as too liberal by the city of Weimar and was forced to leave for Dessau.
The second location in Dessau Germany.

5. Bauhaus/ Phase 2 Dessau, Germany The Bauhaus was welcomed by the mayor of Dessau in 1925. Dessau was suitable location because its heavy industry could be used to produce Bauhaus The first location of the Bauhaus was in the products. A modern building complex was erected out of School of Art & Crafts in Weimar. That concrete glass and steel. Gropius school was originally created using the designed classrooms, dormitories ideals of Henri van de Velde. and faculty housing that were grouped in a complete artistic community. In response to the past criticisms of the school's curriculum, Gropius emphasized the merger of the arts and industry in studios which produced textiles, home appliances and accessories and furniture. Gropius and his successor, Hannes Meyer, were removed for their political views, and replaced by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. To eradicate the subversive elements in the student body, Mies expelled all of the students and then readmitted only the ones who were perceived as politically acceptable.

6. Bauhaus/Phase 3 Berlin, Germany The Bauhaus moved to Berlin briefly in 1933 but it had no chance to reestablish. A rise of the National Socialist Party (Nazis) in Dessau forced the closure of the school in 1932. In 1979, the Bauhaus Archive, (below) designed by Gropius, was built in West Berlin. In 1997 the building was placed under historical protection and has been completely renovated under unified Germany.

Graphic Design at the Bauhaus

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Lszl Moholy-Nagy, Title page of: "Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar 1919-1923", 1923, Letterpress print

Title Page of Bauhaus-Zeitschrift no. 1, 1928. 7. Bauhaus Typography At first, practical fields of type application were restricted to small, miscellaneous printed matters. With the appointment of Moholy-Nagy in 1923, came the ideas of "New Typography" to the Bauhaus. He considered typography to be primarily a communications medium, and was concerned with the "clarity
of the message in its most emphatic form".

8. Herbert Bayer Austrian Herbert Bayer was trained in the Art Nouveau styles but gained interest in Gropius' Bauhaus-Manifest. He enrolled in the Bauhaus and studied there for four years. After passing his final examination, Bayer was appointed by Gropius to direct the new "Druck und Reklame" (printing & advertising) workshop to open in the new Dessau location. In 1925, Gropius commissioned Bayer to design a typeface for all Bauhaus communiqus and Bayer excitedly undertook this task. He took advantage of his views of modern typography to create an "idealist typeface." The result was "universal" - a simple geometric sans-serif font.(below).

8. Joseph Albers In Bayer's philosophy for type design, not only were serifs unnecessary, he felt there was no need for an upper and lower case for each letter. Part of his rationale for promoting this concept was to simplify typesetting and typewriter keyboard layout.The Bauhaus set forth elementary principles of typographic communication, which were the beginnings of a style termed "The New Typography." 1. Typography is shaped by functional requirements. 2. The aim of typographic layout is communication (for which it is the graphic medium). Communication must appear in the shortest, simplest, most penetrating form. 3. For typography to serve social ends, its ingredients need internal organization (ordered content) as well as external organization (the typographic material properly related). These ideals were adopted by Jan Tschichold who never attended the Bauhaus, nor worked there, but visited and corresponded with teachers at the school. He was greatly influenced by the Bauhaus approach to typography. Created when he was at the Bauhaus, Albers' "Kombinationschrift" alphabets exemplify the school's ethos. Using 10 basic shapes based on the circle and the rectangle, he created a system of lettering that was meant to be efficient, easy to learn, and inexpensive to produce. These 10 shapes in combination could form any letter or number.

Characteristic for the design were clear, unadorned type prints, the articulation and accentuation of pages through distinct symbols or typographic elements highlighted in color, and finally direct information in a combination of text and photography, for which the name "Typofoto" was created.

9. Johannes Itten Bauhaus Teacher Itten was a master color theorist whose teachings and books on color and design are still used today. "Johannes Itten was one of the first people to define and identify strategies for successful color combinations. Through his research he devised seven methodologies for coordinating colors utilizing the hue's contrasting properties. These contrasts add other variations with respect to the intensity of the respective hues; i.e. contrasts may be obtained due to light, moderate, or dark value." (see quote source and more...)

Women in the Bauhaus

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Women were about one quarter of the Bauhaus student body. Most were assigned to the textile shop. however some were able to break out into other areas such as metals and woodworking. 9. Alma Buscher Alma Buscher produced children's furniture and toys after she was able to convince Gropius to allow her to transfer to the woodcarving workshop. She gained quick success with her furnishing of a child's room shown at the Bauhaus Exhibition of 1923. She graduated to a successful career in the furniture industry. (Toy and nursery furniture by Alma Buscher : Bauhaus Museum)

10. Mariann Brandt

(Photo: Bauhaus Museum) Mariann Brandt was a gifted metalsmith who became the temporary director of the metal shops when Maholy-Nagy left the Bauhaus in 1928. From the mid-1920's and 1930's she experimented in photomontage.

(Mariann Brandt, Photo:Busch-Reisinger Museum)

(Photo: Design Addict)

Gertrud Arndt, Mask,1930 Photo: Bauhaus Museum

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Advertising History

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1. The Home of Advertising In 1729 Benjamin Franklin published the Pennsylvania Gazette in Philadelphia with pages of "new advertisements." By 1784 The Pennsylvania Packet & Daily Advertiser, America's first successful daily newspaper, starts in Philadelphia.

2. Newspaper Advertising Agents Early advertising agents were essentially resellers of newspaper space. The field had a shady reputation from the unscrupulous practice of buying large blocks of newspaper space at a discount and reselling tiny bits at highly inflated prices.

3. Early Philadelphia Agencies Volney Palmer opened the first advertising agency in Philadelphia in 1841 and is possibly the first person to use the term "advertising agency."

Many publications banned advertising while others limited the space to one column width. However by 1870 there were over 5,000 newspapers in circulation which carried advertising and the demand for advertising services was gave way to elaborate stories of rapidly growing. purchases that rewarded the buyer with success, popularity or romance.
Image from The Duke Library From The Gilded Age, Joel Shrock Greenwood Publishing 2004

N. W. Ayers & Son. In 1869, 21 year old Francis Wayland Ayer opens a firm named after his father, N. W. Ayer. Despite rejecting alcoholic beverage and patent medicine accounts, the firm was so successful that by 1877 it acquired the remains of the original Volney Palmer agency and therefore laid claim to the claim "oldest advertising The strategy of early advertising was to firm in the US." convince the buyer of the quality of the N.W. Ayer & Son introduced the open contract, a practice which would alter the product. A flattering illustration of the history of advertising forever. The open contract guaranteed clients the lowest possible product, numerous descriptions rates the agency could negotiate with publications. Commission was later added and extolling its virtues or testimonials ranged from 8.5% to 15%. By 1909, the open contract became known as "O.C. + 15" from prominent citizens were by the agency, and the 15% commission later became an industry standard. commonly used. Later product claims By 1884 the firm started to offer advertising but it was wasn't until 1892 that writers and artists worked together in creative teams. N. W. Ayer moved to New York City in 1973 and closed when acquired by the Publicis Groupe (based in Paris, France) in 2002.

4. The Science of Advertising Psychologist and professor Walter Dill Scott introduced the study of psychology as an important element in advertising in his book The Psychology of Advertising in Theory and Practice (1902). As part of his work he questioned consumers about their reactions to various advertisements the beginning of market research. In the advertising magazine, Printers Ink, he declared "The successful advertiser, either personally or through his advertising department, must carefully study psychology. He must understand how the human mind acts. He must know what repels and what attracts. He must know what will create an interest and what will fall flat. He must be a student of human nature and he must know the laws of the human mind." Ernest Elmo Calkins's Business Triangle from The Art of Modern Advertising, 1905. Caukins made the link between advertising and the consumer, retailer and manufacturer."The mediums have been analyzed and classified; the goods manufactured, wrapped and named with a better idea of the purchaser's habits and needs, the consumers located and studied; their purchasing power tabulated; their shopping habits ascertained."

"American forged from her press a power which has made her shop keeping the most wonderful in the world. The shop and the newspaper joined forces and the result is modern advertising." ...Caukins

Caukins's diagram illustrated the necessity for successful modern manufacturers to utilize both an identifiable trademark and advertising to directly reach potential customers. The customers would then request the advertised products from their retailers and remove the intermediaries jobber, wholesaler, etc who previously

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determined what products would be carried by the retailer.

Excerpts from Stephen Heller's Essay "Advertising, The Mother of Graphic Design" Graphic Design History, 2001. An argument for acknowledging advertising as the root of graphic design.
5. Acknowledge Advertising "Though graphic design as we know it today originated in the late 19th century as a tool for advertising, any association with marketing, advertising or capitalism deeply undermines the graphic designer's self image. Graphic Design History is an integral part of advertising history, yet in most accounts of graphic design's origins advertising is virtually denied, or hidden behind more benign words such as "publicity" or "promotion." This omission not only limits the discourse but misrepresents the facts. It is time for graphic design historians, and designers generally, to remove the elitist prejudices that had perpetuated a biased history." Heller, p.294 Heller points out that in 1922 William Addison Dwiggins first used the term "Graphic Designer" while describing his diverse practice of book, type and advertising design. Heller also notes that Jan Tschichold's books Die Neue Typographie (1928) and Typographische Gestaltung (1935) were intended to present "dynamic new possibilities for advertising compositions in archaic and cluttered printed environmentnot some "idealistic notion of visual communication in an aesthetic vacuum." Now review the poster section on this web site each poster is really an advertisement. For those of you who watch Mad Men you may recall Don Draper and his process of conceptualizing the "It's Toasted" campaign. The slogan was actually

already in existence many decades before the imaginary 60's TV show as seen at the base of the Lucky Strike ad (left) aimed at women. Here we see the cigarette offered to women as an aid for weight loss. All part of the decades old campaign to reinforce the mandate that women must stay slender at all costs.

The American Art Director Comes from Europe

6. Art Direction "The economic interdependence of magazines and advertising was reflected in the similar design of the editorial and advertising pages. Each had headlines, text columns and some kind of illustration. As journalism and advertising depended increasingly on imagesthe 'art' elementtheir reproduction and the layout as a whole became the responsibility of an 'art director.' In America, art direction proceeded the profession of graphic design. Americans looked to Europe for modern culture and sophistication." The influx of European art directors and artists would greatly influence graphic design.*
* From Richard Hollis, Graphic Design, A American Vogue Concise History, Thames and Hudson, 2001, p 99.

8. Dr. Mehemed Fehmy Agha

9. Cipe Pineles (American) As a young woman she worked under Dr. Agha at Vogue but later became "The first autonomous woman art director of a mass-market American publication (Seventeen.)" Pineles is credited with the innovation of using fine artists to illustrate mass-market publications. Important because it brought fine art and modern art to the attention of the young mainstream public, it also allowed fine artists access to the commercial world. Some young artists "discovered" by the magazine became well known: Richard Anuskiewicz and Seymour Chwast. An artist and illustrator herself, Pineles was the perfect art director: she left the artists alone. She asked them to read the whole story and choose what they wanted to illustrate. Her only direction was that the commissioned work be good enough to hang with their other work in a gallery... Read and see more about her on the AIGA web site.

Born to Turkish parents in the Ukraine in 1896, Agha left behind the Russian revolution to find work as a designer in American Graphic Design was finally Europe. He came to the US in 1929 born out of two new factors. As the after being recruited from German twentieth century got underway, an Vogue in Berlin by Cond Nast. Nast made Agha the art director for Cond explosion of new reproductive Nast Publications."He [Agha] had a technologies stimulated specialization, separating conception complete understanding of photographic techniques and and was and form-giving from the technical aware of the avant-garde. He production activities of typesetting encouraged his designers to plunder and printing. Simultaneously the the treasures of 'the temple of United States received its first Constructivism.'" European modernist emigrs, the migration reached it height in he Agha introduced the use of double 1930's. These men understood page spreads ("rather than a sequence design as a balanced process of single pages"), Constructivist involving the powerful multiple compositions, bleeds, and the use of modes of seeing and reading,and famous illustrators and photographers sends the possibility of theory in advertising. (See right + above) and methods as guiding the 7. American Graphic Design creative processthe first rudimentarily seeds of

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professionalism. These designers, including Bayer, Sutnar, Burtin, Maholy-Nagy and Matter, brought with them Modernism's dual paths of ambiguity and objectivity. They shared an interest in ambiguity and the unconscious with new work in fine art, literature and psychology. Interpretive typography and asymmetrical compositions seemed more appropriate in a new world where tradition was rapidly disappearing. On the other hand these European designers believed that rationalism and objectivity were appropriate for a new word ordered by commerce and industry They continued early Modernisms interest in abstraction and dynamic compositions. For the first time in the United States, they persuaded their clients to minimize copy into brief essential statements rather than the text-heavy literal descriptions favored in early American advertising.
From Katherine McCoy's American Graphic Design Expression, The Evolution of American Typography, Design Quarterly 149, MIT Press, 1999.

10. Alexey Brodovitch Philadelphia + Bazaar Magazine He started out in the Russian military as an officer in the Czar's Imperial Hussars but by 1920 Brodovitch fled Russia for Paris. Untrained and unskilled as an artist he nevertheless found work as a set painter for the Ballet Russe, which brought him much closer to the spirit and thrust of contemporary artistic thought. Shortly thereafter he was expanded to fabric design and layouts for Arts et Mtiers Graphiques magazine. Within a few short years, Brodovitch's talents were to develop rapidly in several directions, finding their application in everything from drawing to interior design to experimental graphic design. In 1930 he was invited by the Philadelphia Museum of Art to create an advertising art department in its museum school.(Now University of the Arts.) Oddly enough, staid Philadelphia gave birth to the first of Brodovitch's revolutionary design laboratories, whose flame of inspiration was carried to other cities and was to illuminate new pathways of personal vision in the decades to come. Brodovitch resumed his role as an advertising designer for N. W. Ayer with Charles Coiner, the creative director. In 1934, Carmel Snow, the editor of Harper's Bazaar, urged Brodovitch to become the art director of her magazine. Brodovitch remained with Harper's Bazaar for twenty-five years. The magazine's effect on editorial design, style, conception, taste and visual intellect continues to resonate throughout the broad compass of editorial design.
(Brodovitch segment condensed from the article," Brodovitch" on the Art Director's Club site)

11. Herbert Bayer Bringing the Bauhaus Ideals to the US* Herbert Bayer came to New York in the 1938 to organize an exhibit about the Bauhaus for the Museum of Modern Art and stayed. Life in NEw York did not suit him and he felt that his life was not moving toward his Bauhaus ideal of a "complete human being." He moved to Aspen, Colorado to work with patron Walter P. Paepcke, (visionary owner of Container Corporation of America.) They organized various conferences and cultural festivals in Aspen to promote virtues of democratic values and love for nature. Container Corporation wanted to be associated with high-quality design as well as social and environmental responsibility. The design program hosted avant-garde artists to build the Corporation's trademark. Their advertisements reflected social or artistic topics of their choice. As a result, the company was hailed as having "the most creative program in today's advertising," thanks to its use of Bauhaus designs. Bayer saw working for Paepcke at a commercial company as a way in which an artist could most effectively engage society at large on important topics. One of his chief concerns was recycling and resource management. With this in mind he designed a series of eleven advertisements for the Container Corp-oration, nearly all of which focused on the importance of recycling. * This article is condensed from Peder Anker's fascinating piece: Herbert Bayer's Environmental Design documenting Bayer's global humanism and environmental design. Millcreek Canyon Earth Work.

Portfolio (1950-1951) Portfolio was a general arts and culture magazine published in Cincinnati by Zebra Press. Co-edited by Alexey Brodovitch and Frank Zachary and under the art direction of Brodovitch, Portfolio is often called the quintessential arts magazine as well as Brodovitch's best work. Portfolio contained the work of pioneering photographers, many of whom were students of Brodovitch and features many articles on influential artists and designers.

Brodovitch won the first prize in a poster competition for the Bal Banal. and he began to focus on graphic design.

Americans : No Manifestos but Plenty of Wit and Enthusiasm

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12. Paul Rand

13. Lester Beall

14. Bradbury Thompson Bradbury Thompson's mark is impeccable taste applied with great elegancean elegance of simplicity, wit, and vast learningand an intimate knowledge of the process of printing, always with style, with informed taste. "How did he become "architect of prize winning books, consulting physician to magazines," pre-eminent typographer, designer of stamps, multiple medallist? It all started in Topeka, where he learned the printing business, from typesetting to binding. His career highlight were his 18 years with Westvaco 's Inspirations, art director for Mademoiselle and Art News Annual, and teaching at Yale's School of Art and Architecture. Excerpt from the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame Also see his Alphabet 26

15. Louis Danziger An AIGA Design Award Medallist, in Louis Danziger's early career he "stood on the shoulders of pioneer Modernists." His design exemplifies the diversity of Modernism and his teaching promotes the diversity of design. He has significantly affected many design genresadvertising, corporate work, books and catalog design, and exhibitionsand influenced the hundreds of students who attended his classes. He is one of the first Americans to study and teach the history of graphic design, "One thing that I have observed is that the students develop a greater commitment to their work which they now see as a part of a continuum. They see themselves as part of something, perhaps the next contributors to this history." (Excerpt from this AIGA site)

A self-taught designer, Beall was one of Born Peretz Rosenbaum in Brooklyn, the first American's whose work was New York in 1914, Paul Rand is shown in the influential German considered one of the most magazine, Gebrauchsgraphik. Beall's influential designers in American body of silkscreen posters for the Rural History. His work combined the Electrification Administration during the European Modernist aesthetic with Depression projected a simple and American optimism and wit. Rands clear theme of a new American frontier most widely known contribution to for energy and growth potential." graphic design are his corporate identities but he did his share of Beall proved to American business that print and advertising. I cannot do the graphic designer was a profession justice to his career as a designer that could creatively solve problems and teacher in a short paragraph so and at the same time deal with I encourage you to visit the pragmatic issues of marketing and comprehensive site www.paulbudget. (AIGA) rand.com. "If you want to be as good as Rand, don't look at Rand; look at what Rand looks at" Danziger

The Creative Revolution on Madison Avenue (& in Chicago) In his classic Public Opinion, journalist Walter Lippmann maintained that pictures are "the surest way of conveying an idea. A leader or an interest that can make itself master of current symbols is master of the current situation. Hmmm. Joe the Plumber anyone? 16. Leo Burnett Chicago Leo Burnett could certainly be considered a master of symbols, his Marlboro Man, Pillsbury Doughboy and the Jolly Green Giant are all iconic symbols from his career that started in 1935. Burnett forged his reputation around the idea that "share of market" could only be built on "share of mind," the capacity to stimulate consumers' basic desires and beliefs.

Burnett employed a range of masculine archetypes. Some were designed to appeal to female consumers. With the Jolly Green Giant, he resurrected a pagan harvest god Burnett was obsessed with finding to monumentalize "the bounty of the good visual triggers that could effectively earth" and to sell peas. Years later, with circumvent consumers' critical thought. the creation of the Doughboy, Burnett Though an advertising message might employed a cuddly endomorph to be rejected consciously, he maintained symbolize the friendly bounce of Pillsbury that it was accepted subliminally. home-baking products. Aiming at male Through the "thought force" of audiences in the '50s, a time when filter symbols, he said, "we absorb it cigarettes were viewed as effeminate, through our pores, without knowing we Burnett introduced a tough and silent do so. By osmosis." tattooed cowboy on horseback, "the most masculine type of man," he explained.

To Burnett visuals appealed to the "basic emotions and primitive instincts" of consumers. Advertising does its best work, he argued in 1956, by impression, and he spent much of his career encouraging his staff to identify those symbols, those visual archetypes, that would leave consumers with a "brand picture engraved on their consciousness."
(This section is excerpted from the Time 100 People of the Century)

17. William Bernbach New York At the start of his career in the late 1930's Bill Bernbach partnered with modernist art director Paul Rand who greatly influenced Bernbach's ideas about ad layout. Later in his Volkswagen headline that urged the public to "Think Small," the Bernbach's concepts had a trademark simplicity that permeated both the copy and visual elements. Bernbach worked at Grey Advertising. where he chaffed at the constraints of market testing and scientific analysis of advertising .In a now-famous 1947 letter to his bosses at Grey, he commented, "I'm worried...that we're going to worship techniques instead of substance. Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art." Bernbach eventually joined with partners to start Doyle Dane Bernbach advertising agency in 1948. The agency developed the 'concept approach' to advertising.

Bernbach eventually joined with partners to start Doyle Dane Bernbach advertising agency in 1948. The agency developed the 'concept approach' to advertising. Bill Bernbach was the first to team up art directors with copywriters. The result was high-impact images twinned with memorable slogans. His agency, Doyle Dane Bernbach, created the "Lemon" and "Think Small" ads for Volkswagen, "You dont have to be Jewish to love Levys real

The most famous of these is Volkswagen, for which DDB provided the quintessential campaign of the 1950-60s Creative Revolution. "Think Small," "Lemon," and other self-deprecating headlines presented the Beetle in an offbeat manner and afforded an opportunity to make things right with honest, explanatory body copy. Think small in terms of price and the efficiency of a non-gas guzzler.

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Jewish rye" and "We try harder" for Avis.

A link to the story behind the Cooper Black typeface

18. Gene Federico New York Pioneered the idea of visual puns in advertising by blending copy and image. Awarded the AIGA medal for stretching the boundaries of advertising design with typographic elegance and conceptual acuity. His wife worked as a designer for Paul Rand who suggested that Federico take a job at Grey Advertising. There he met Bill Bernbach and later joined him at Doyle Dane Bernbach. He was given the Womans Day magazine account for whom he created a series of ads memorable ads. 11.Otto Storch New York Otto Storch, a graduate of Pratt, also studied at NYU, the Art Students League and "the school of hard knocks." evening classes with Alexey Brodovitch, the legendary art director of Harper's Bazaar who taught a course at the New School. Brodovitch emphasized conceptual thinking and pictorial storytelling. The class was comprised of art directors, illustrators, fashion artists, package, stage, and set designers, photographers, typographers, and me. 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." Link to original on the Art Director's club site. Otto Storch became an art director for whom idea, copy, art and typography were inseparable.

If people weren't crying, screaming and yelling, we rarely got big ideas."

Mary Wells Lawrence, Phyllis Robinson, and Shirley Polykoff, held their own in the famously male world of 1950s and 1960s Mad Ave. Question, Why decades after she founded Wells Rich Greene aren't more women running major ad agencies? "This will probably get me in hot water, but maybe women are too smart," she says, without blinking. "Maybe women have quietly decided to let the men do all that. Women want more meaningful lives that are richer, with more feeling, more variety and more possibilities." This from the woman who ran one of Madison Avenue's hottest ad agencies for 23 years.

Coming in 2009:Helen Federico, Marget Larsen and Deborah Calkins

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1968

1. Computer Graphic without a Screen The term computer graphics was first used in the 1960's by William Fetter, a graphic designer for Boeing Aircraft Co. Computer images were created from plotting points on a mathematical field without the advantage of a screen.

2. The Screen The CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) allowed for visualization of data. At first the screen was one color and display was a very crude bit map image. The first bit maps were vertical, but later square pixels improved screen clarity. All commands were input by keyboard until the advent of the GUI, Graphic User Interface.

3. GUI & WYSIWYG The Graphical User Interface (or GUI pronounced "gooey) uses pictures rather than just words to represent the input and output of a program. A GUI allows the user to control a program via the use of icons, buttons and pointers. 1981 the first consumer GUI was made available and was the inspiration for the Macintosh which followed in 1983 at a cost of $9,950. ($20,000 in 2008 dollars). WYSIWYG is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get screen content appears very similar to the final product.

4. Digital Type is Born In 1965, Dr. Ing. Rudolf Hell introduced the Digiset typesetting system. It was the first device to produce characters on a CRT entirely from digital masters. By the 1970's phototypesetting was replaced by stored information which was set as a series of small dots or closely spaced vertical lines that appeared solid in the finished product. The output speed was 1,000 to 10,000 characters per second. DigiGrotesk was the first digital type font and was designed in 1968 by the Hell Design Studio and was available in seven weights from light to bold. Hermann Zapf, Gudrun von Hesse and Gerard Unger were early type designers for this new technology.

"By the 1960's a "variety of typesetting machines appeared that could image type directly from a CRT onto photographic lm. Images were not generated by photographs of letters; instead mathematical formulas electronically generated the images on the screen. These were the rst electronic fonts."
"The Complete Manual of Typography" A Guide to Setting Perfect Type" James Felici, Peachpit Press, 2003.

5. Bit Map Fonts Also known as a "raster font," bitmap fonts are built from dots or pixels representing the image of each glyph in each face and size. The first bit map fonts were crude in appearance. Some type designers worked on improving the look, some created fonts that embraced the crudeness. Currently font studios such as Atomic Media create bit map fonts for Flash, Web and screen-based design.

6. Original Mac Screen Icons by Susan Kare "My career in user interface graphic design began when I worked for Apple Computer between 1983 and 1986. My job: icon and font designer for a new computer, the Macintosh. The task: to transform small grids of black and white pixels into a family of symbols that would assist people in operating the computer. The design process involved the search for the strongest metaphors, and the craft of depicting them. My work also focused on developing a set of proportional typefaces for the computer screen; a departure from the monospaced characters typically found on typewriters and earlier computers. With the icon and font work, I hoped to help counter the stereotypical image of computers as cold and intimidating."

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NOTE: This section images and content from the excellent "Digital Typography: A Primer" Shared by permission of Professor Keith Chi-hang Tam School of Design Hong Kong Polytechnic University Hung Hom, Kowloon Hong Kong Outline fonts Outline fonts use Bzier curves, (shown above) for drawing instructions and mathematical formulas to describe each glyph, which make the character outlines scalable to any size. In objectoriented software programs, a bezier curve is one whose shape is defined by anchor points set along its arc.

7. Post Script Language Type 1 Adobe, 1985 A device independent system that allows the transfer of vector art to any output printing device. The quality of the final output will be determined by the printer. The first versions needed to have several sizes installed to appear sharp on screen, (if not installed the fonts looked jaggy and rough). The release of Adobe Type Manager allowed for the type to be scaled to infinite sizes and was a necessity until Mac OS9. Post Script is the most frequently used font system despite the fact that it requires 2 files a bit map suitcase file and a PostScript font file. Files made in this format are limited to 256 characters in a font which is limiting for special small cap or titling fonts and other international language use. To obtain advanced characters such as small caps, ligatures, fractions, etc one is required to buy an "expert" set,

8. True Type (Late 1980's) Apple & Microsoft This rival system to Post Script also used a scalable curve system this time quadratic curves. True Type fonts only require one suitcase and are often the default system font for macs and pcs. Because True Type fonts have more points for screen hinting, they appear sharper on screen than Post Script fonts. That is why some of the True Type fonts, such as Matthew Carter's Verdana and Georgia are so well suited to web page design. Hopefully you are reading copy in Verdana because I have asked your computer to render Verdana as the face for this text.

Figure 1a. An outline that hasn't been grid-fitted. Note how poorly the outline corresponds to the pixel pattern, and the awkwardness of the bitmapped M.

Figure 1b. The same outline grid-fitted. Now the outline has been adjusted to fit snugly around each pixel, ensuring that the correct pixels are turned on.

The bitmap, outline, and metric data are combined into a single, cross-platform file in an OpenType font, simplifying font management.

9. Rendering Type on Screen: Font Hinting At low resolutions, with few pixels available to describe the character shapes, features such as stem weights, crossbar widths and serif details can become irregular, inconsistent or even missed completely. These irregularities detract substantially from the legibility and overall attractiveness of a text setting. To increase legibility type designers use hinting, a method of defining exactly which pixels are turned on in order to create the best possible character bitmap shape at small sizes and low resolutions. Since it is a glyph's outline that determines which pixels will constitute a character bitmap at a given size, it is often necessary to modify the outline to create a good bitmap image; in effect modifying the outline until the desired combination of pixels is turned on. A hint is a mathematical instruction added to the font to distort a character's outline at particular sizes.

10. Open Type Adobe & Microsoft 1990's Open Type is a cross-platform font useable on Macs and PC's. It utilizes Unicode encoding which allows for 65,000 characters in a single font which can accommodate every language in the world plus all of the small caps, and additional sets of characters to make a complete font OpenType fonts can be distinguished by the word "Pro." Adobe Pro sets include small caps, swash and alternative characters, ligatures, ordinal numbers and letters, ornaments, fractions and Greek and Cyrillic characters.

11. Microsoft ClearType and CoolType 2000 ClearType and CoolType are new sub-pixel font rendering technologies developed by Microsoft and Adobe respectively. Different color values at the sub-pixel level are used (instead of simply tints of the font color) to give a crisper image of the character. This technology is built in to the current version of Adobe Acrobat and Microsofts e-book Reader, but it only works on LCD displays. Click this link for a good explanation and examples of sub-pixel rendering.

Some Pioneers of Early Digital Type

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12. Bitstream 1981 Founded by traditionally trained type designers, Bitstream was the first type foundry founded solely on digital technology. Founder Mike Parker came from Linotype where he turned the metal to digital designs. Partner Matthew Carter applied his expertise of traditional punch cutting and calligraphy to the new demands of digital typesetting. Carter left to start the digital foundry, Carter and Cone with Cherie Cone in 1991

13. Macintosh"City" Type 1983 Chicago was one of a series of city-named bitmapped screen fonts designed by Susan Kare for the first Apple Macintosh. Chicago was the most important since it was used for the operating system. Chicago was an original design while the other city fonts were reasonable facsimiles of familiar commercial typefaces: New York was derived from Times New Roman; Geneva from Helvetica; and Monaco from Courier. A smoothed TrueType version of Chicago was created by Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes in 1990. Five years later, Charcoal, designed by David Berlow of The Font Bureau, replaced it as the operating system font for System 8.0. Yet, the original bitmapped Chicago remains one of the quintessential identifiers of Apple computers

14. Bigelow and Kris Holmes Bigleow is a native of Michigan, where he attended the Cranbrook school. He was a professor of digital typography at Stanford University for thirteen years, where he taught type design, typography, and the history and theory of writing. He previously taught typography at the Rhode Island School of Design. Kris Holmes is a calligrapher and lettering artist who has created over 100 typefaces, including the extensive Lucida family co-designed with Charles Bigelow. Lucida font family was one of the first serious attempts to make type look good on low-resolution output. She also designed the popular script faces Isadora, Apple Chancery, and Kolibri. The couple were teachers and mentors to many type designers including Carol Twombly.

15. Adobe Type Originals Many of the first fonts from Adobe were digitized versions of font designs purchased or licensed from traditional type foundries. In the mid-1980's Sumner Stone advised Adobe to instigate an in-house type design program, Adobe Originals to produce high quality versions of important historical fonts. Roger Slimbach's Adobe Garamond and Carol Twombly's Trajan, Lithos and Caslon are but a few of the faces that were created under the purview of a distinguished Type Advisory Board. "Our objective was to prove to the book world that digital type could be of high quality," says Carol Twombly, one of the type designers hired by Stone. "Back then, digital type had a poor reputation."

Screen Stars

16. Muriel Cooper Muriel Cooper's first career was as a graphic designer. In 1967 she became the art director for the MIT Press where she produced over 500 books, many of which won awards for design.

17. Design Before the Internet Excerpt from Typotheque Steven Heller, 2003

Ladislav Sutnar

18. Tim Berners-Lee (From his bio) In 1989 he invented the World Wide Web, an internet-based hypermedia initiative for global information sharing while at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory. He wrote the first web client and server in 1990. His specifications of URL's, HTTP and HTML were refined as Web technology spread. A graduate of Oxford University, England, Tim Berners-Lee is the 3COM Founders Professor of Engineering in the School of Engineering, with a joint appointment in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Laboratory for Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence (CSAIL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he also heads the Decentralized Information

"In the 1940's architect Knud Lnberg-Holm was hired to bring order to the pages of the Sweet's Catalog. He redefined the problem, identifying a need for clarity and accessibility, and proposed She started to explore computer to answer it by using navigational design graphics while teaching a course at MIT aids and reductive language-which sounds called Messages and Means which very much like today's approach to looked at graphics in relation to internet wayfinding. technology. Ms. Cooper then helped found the Visible Language Workshop He collaborated with graphic designer at the Media Laboratory where she Ladislav Sutnar who understood that focused on how computers can tabs, icons and symbols could be hot enhance the graphic communication buttons for information retrieval. Sutnar process and, inversely, how used bold graphic elements and bright high-quality graphics can improve primary colors to grab attention and computer information systems. provoke interaction on the part of the user. He developed systems to make What is this new medium? In general cluttered industrial catalogs more useable its outstanding characteristics are that can, possibly will, impact todays web dynamic in real time, interactive, design. incredibly malleable, some capability of learning and adapting to the user, or

And even if they do not, Sutnars work should be known by todays interactive designers: his whole career was built upon the interaction between graphic devices and clear information. While giving a lecture about "What is New in American Typography" to the Type Directors Club of New York in 1950, almost thirty years before the first designed Internet page, Sutnar defined a new design synthesis:... [D]esign is evaluated as a process culminating in an entity which intensifies comprehension. And clients benefited from his unswerving commitment to this idea. He developed quintessential modern systems for a variety of businesses." (Image from Ellen McFadden's super Flicker site)

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to information, or to some other set of relationships. Our goal is to make information into some form of communicationInformation by itself does not have the level of filteringthat design brings to it. MIT Obituary for Muriel Cooper, 1994

Group (DIG). He is co-Director of the new Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI) and is a Professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of Southampton, UK. He directs the World Wide Web Consortium, founded in 1994 Thank you Mr. Berners-Lee.

19. The Impact of the Computer and Digital Type on Graphic Designers
"As Gerald Lang has wisely observed, the computer is not a tool but it is a simulator of tools. One of the things it simulates is a typesetting machine. With the spread of the personal computer, millions of people have found themselves transformed into simulations of typesetters, whether or not they wished to be so." A Short History of the Printed Word, Robert Bringhurst & Warren Chappell, Hartley & Marks, 1999. Once "desktop publishing" was mainstreamed there was quantum shift in the role of the graphic designer. Many design support services closed or converted to the digital technology. 1. Graphic designers were forced to take on the roles of typesetting and pre-press production, formerly not their responsibility. The graphic designer's hand skills were surpassed by the need for digital expertise. 2. As Johanna Drucker has pointed out "The tools of the designer were confused with the skills of the designer. ..The accessibility of production tools undercut the design profession since "anyone" could make a flier or a brochure." 3. Designers were now required to spend thousands of dollars on constantly updating hardware and software. They must continually upgrade their skills --now at the mercy of the industries they helped promote.

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After Modernism

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Joseph Muller-Brockmann 1962

1. The International Style In Switzerland, just after World War II, elements of Futurism, Constructivism and the Bauhaus were distilled into a utopian system of grids, sans serif type and neutrality known as the International Style. The visual system was based upon the belief that the typography should be totally clear allowing no distraction from the content. This visual order had no links to historical traditions and eschewed any references to culture or geography. Its adaptability to any place and application architecture, furniture, product and graphic design allowed it to become a world-wide style, or international style.
Below: Modernism must be on everything!--a wine label by Massimo Vignelli

2. Reactions to Modernism: Pop Art A movement that blurred the lines between art, commerce and popular culture. After the large-scale pop art exhibition at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York in 1962, Pop Art established itself as a serious, recognized form of art. This exhibition became a turning point for Modernism when a series of critics foresaw the end of modernism and the beginning of the postmodern era. Although Pop was treated more as entertainment, it had a serious impact on the period. Leading American artists of the Pop Art movement were Andy Warhol (above), Roy Lichtenstein (below).

1. Punk The punk phenomenon (London, c. 1976) expressed a rejection of prevailing values in ways that extended beyond the music. British punk fashion deliberately outraged propriety with the highly theatrical use of cosmetics and hairstyles, clothing typically adapted or mutilated existing objects for artistic effect: pants and shirts were cut, torn, or wrapped with tape, and written on with marker or defaced with paint; safety pins and razor blades were used as jewelry. Punk included elements of irony, absurdist humor and genuine suspicion of mainstream culture and values.The DIY (Do it Yourself) aesthetic of punk created a thriving underground press.

1. Post Modern Architecture The term Postmodernism designates an international architectural movement that emerged in the 1960's. The movement largely has been a reaction to the orthodoxy, austerity, and formal absolutism of the International Style. The practitioners of postmodern architecture tended to reemphasize elements of metaphor, symbol, and content in their credos and their work. They share an interest in mass, surface colors, and textures and frequently use unorthodox building materials. Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown realized the first post -modern structure in suburban Philadelphia in 1961. (above) They used the vernacular elements of chimney and arched doorway to signify a traditional home environment. "In addition to the immediacy of its unique formal and functional qualities, the house is rich in references to historic architecture. The monumental street facade alludes to Michelangelo's Porta Pia in Rome and the back wall of the Nymphaeum at Palladio and Alessandro Vittoria's Villa Barbaro at Maser. On the other hand, the broken pediment recalls the 'duality' of the facade of Luigi Moretti's apartment house on the Via Parioli in Rome." See quote source

The Corporate Takeover of American Modernism The stylistic influences of Modernism and The International Style on American graphic designers may have originated in the work of the European Futurists, the Constructivists or the designers of the Bauhaus, but the social utopianism of those movements never reached the United States. Ironically this style was used by postwar global capitalists to promote their large multi-national corporations. The abstraction and simplicity of this style worked well as a unifying language of corporate identification across continents. In March 13, 2001, an English panel of judges composed of editors and artists gave their highest honor to the controversial artwork of Jamie Reid (top), calling it the "best record cover ever produced." More... (above) Reed poster, Anarchy in the UK auctioned by Christie's.

New Wave

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3. New Wave Graphic Design 3. New Wave Graphic Design Wolfgang Weingart is a German graphic designer credited as the progenitor of New Wave typography. According to Weingart, "I took 'Swiss Typography' as my starting point, but then I blew it apart, never forcing any style upon my students. I never intended to create a style. It just happened that the students picked up and misinterpreted a so called 'Weingart style' and spread it around. His typographic experiments were strongly grounded, and were based on an intimate understanding of the semantic, syntactic and pragmatic functions of typography. Whereas traditional Swiss typography mainly focused on the syntactic function, Weingart was interested in how far the graphic qualities of typography can be pushed and still retain its meaning. This is when the semantic function of typography comes in: Weingart believes that certain graphic modifications of type can in fact intensify meaning. What's the use of being legible, when nothing inspires you to take notice of it? Excerpt from Keith Tam How well was his progressive idea about typography received at that time? Weingart recalls, "in my presentations in 1972, there was always a group of audience that hated it, one group that loved it, and the rest would all leave during the lecture. It wasn't until the early eighties, when his American students like April Greiman and Dan Friedman (above 1971 poster) brought back to the US a wealth of typographic arsenals from Basel and co-opted it into the mainstream of graphic design. From April Greiman's hybrid imagery" to David Carson's deconstructive page layouts, anarchy reigned supreme in the nineties. Those were the days for graphic design superstars, whose style many a graphic designer adored and imitated. While no one can give a definitive answer as to whether these American graphic designers took what Weingart did and brought it to new heights, they certainly managed to make it a huge commercial success. "They were doing it as a style and it was never my idea to create fashion," denotes Weingart. The teaching at Basel for Weingart is not about trends but a 'stability' that they try to move away from, but never totally. Excerpt from Keith Tam interview with Weingart Dan Friedman (1945-1995) New Wave/Radical Modernism Known for his work at Ansbach and Grossman and Pentagram, Friedman grew to feel that modernism had devolved into a bland, soulless surface treatment. (His Citibank logo of 1975 above.) He invented the term Radical Modernism to distance himself from both the formal constraints of Modernism and the post modern label. Friedman was attempting to reconcile the social idealism of the early 2oth Modernists with the realities of his life in 1980's New York City. "Radical modernism is my reaffirmation of the idealistic roots of our modernity, adjusted to include more of our diverse cultures." In his text, Radical Modernism, Freedman illustrates his work in diverse mediums,- experimental furniture, sculpture, posters, logos, books, installations, typographic lessons, and his apartment. "Friedman argued that design was in crisis and urged designers to see their work in a larger cultural context.. Friedman's philosophy quoted from Eye shortly before his death in 1995. 'In the 1960s I saw graphic design as a noble endeavor, integral to larger planning, architectural and social issues. What I realized in the 1970s, when I was doing major corporate identity projects, is that design had become a preoccupation with what things look like rather than with what they mean. What designers were doing was creating visual identities for other people not unlike the work of fashion stylists, political image consultants or plastic surgeons. We had become experts who suggest how other people can project a visual impression that reflects who they think they are. And we have deceived ourselves into thinking that the modernization service we supply has the same integrity as service to the public good. Modernism forfeited its claim to a moral authority when designers sold it away as corporate style. To read more...

Robert Rauschenberg Rauschenberg influenced painting, sculpture, cinema, music, theater and most certainly graphic design. It is evident that his work, incorporating photographic images and the theme of technology was a major influence on post modern designers. "The human-machine interaction that is so important in Rauschenberg's art as a whole is crucial here. The symbiosis of of the human and the technological." The Print in the Western World,

April Greiman Although initially educated in the Modernist style at Kansas City Art Institute, Greiman was later influenced by Wolfgang Weingart in Switzerland to break from Modernism. She moved to California where she was inspired to use the computer as a means of artistic expression and exploration of new image generation. "It's not just Graphic Design anymore. We don't have a new name for it yet." Ms Greiman synthesized the complex layering style of artists like Raushenberg and the aesthetic of New Wave typography

Emigre
In 1984 Rudy VanderLans and Zuzana Licko, both Europeans relocated in the US, started an independent type foundry and publication Emigre Graphics, in Berkeley, California. Their publication, Emigre magazine was a collection of essays, interview, reviews and font showcases that circulated between 1984 and 2005. You can read a selection of past articles here.

Richard Eckersley To come in 2009

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Linda Hults,1996 (above) Booster from the 'Booster and Seven Studies' Minneapolis Institute of Arts, (1970)

with the new capabilities of the computer to become a visionary pioneer of digital design. (Above) Her 1987 life-sized centerfold for Minneapolis Walker Art Center's Design Quarterly has become an icon of the digital era. Below her US Postage Stamp, 1995

Soviet/American Array III, 1988

Designing Outside the Lines

Design and Social Conscience Tibor Kalman | M & Co.| Please read the entire article on this inspiring social activist designer on the AIGA Medallist web site ..here..(excerpt below) When the clothing company Esprit, which had prided itself as being socially liberal and environmentally friendly, was awarded the 1986 AlGA Design Leadership award, an irate Tibor anonymously distributed leaflets during the awards ceremony at the AlGA National Design Conference in San Francisco protesting the company's exploitation of Asian laborers. Tibor believed that award-winning design was not separate from the entire corporate ethic and argued that many bad companies have great design. In 1989, as co-chair with Milton Glaser of the AlGA's Dangerous Ideas conference in San Antonio, he urged designers to question the effects of their work on the environment and refuse to accept any client's product at face value. He is most known for his work with Benetton Colors Magazine.He used the magazine as a vehicle to explore contemporary social issues including aids, racism, power and sex. The "D" word + Cranbrook

Dared to Design Without a Licence David Carson David Carson did not go to art school but he did earn a degree in Sociology and he was a pretty decent surfer. With a very limited exposure to formal graphic design education, he nevertheless learned enough to pursue experiments with typography. Carson created some unorthodox, interesting and highly controversial work which he showcased in Ray Gun Magazine in 1992. Despite some initial criticism, Carson won over the hearts and minds of manyas evidenced in this quote from his current web site: Typography, a title published by Graphis, lists Carson as a "Master of Typography." I.D. magazine chose Carson for their list of "America's most innovative designers". A feature in newsweek magazine said of Carson "he changed the public face of graphic design"... Emigre devoted an entire issue to Carson, the only American designer to be so honored in the magazine's history. And in April 2004, Creative Review magazine calls David, "the most famous graphic designer on the planet".

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Deconstruction in Literature Jacques Derrida: French Proponent of Deconconstruction in Literature For a semi-comprehensible description go here: Derrida's work focuses on language. He contends that the traditional, or metaphysical way of reading makes a number of false assumptions about the nature of texts. A traditional reader believes that language is capable of expressing ideas without changing them, that in the hierarchy of language writing is secondary to speech, and that the author of a text is the source of its meaning. Derrida's deconstructive style of reading subverts these assumptions and challenges the idea that a text has an unchanging, unified meaning. Western culture has tended to assume that speech is a clear and direct way to communicate. Drawing on psychoanalysis and linguistics, Derrida questions this assumption. As a result, the author's intentions in speaking cannot be unconditionally accepted. This multiplies the number of legitimate interpretations of a text. Deconstruction shows the multiple layers of meaning at work in language. By deconstructing the works of previous scholars, Derrida attempts to show that language is constantly shifting. Although Derrida's thought is sometimes portrayed by critics as destructive of philosophy, deconstruction can be better understood as showing the unavoidable tensions between the ideals of clarity and coherence that govern philosophy and the inevitable shortcomings that accompany its production. More...

Deconstructed Typography The Cranbrook Academy of Art (Michigan), under the direction of Professors Michael and Katherine McCoy, became a center of Post-Modernist discussion from the mid 1970s. What emerged became know as the 'Cranbrook Discourse' widely publicized intersection of post-structuralism and graphic design. Designers at Cranbrook had first confronted literary criticism when they designed a special issue of Visible Language on contemporary French literary aesthetics, published in the summer of 1978. Daniel Libeskind, head of the Cranbrook architecture program, provided the graphic designers with a seminar in literary theory, which prepared them to develop their strategy: to systematically disintegrate the the series of essays by expanding the spaces between lines and words and pushing the footnotes into the space normally reserved for the main text. French Currents of the Letter, which outraged designers committed to the established ideologies of problem-solving and direct communication, remains a controversial landmark in experimental graphic design." From Ellen Lupton Design Writing Research Student Ed Fella, came to Cranbrook after over 20 years as a commercial artist. His hand-crafted aesthetic explored a contrast to immaculately finished computer-aided graphic design. Go see his work. Elliot Earls The current chair of 2D design at Cranbrook moves the conversation forward. "Paul Rand is a pygmy walking in the footsteps of giants. In the essay I discuss the idea that Paul Rand is still the archetype for the vast majority of graphic/info/interactive designers, and that he was a pygmy raised by giants. I postulate that he fundamentally misunderstood the work of men like Kurt Schwitters, and that the institutions of design (schools, museums and magazines) are bastions of neo-conservatism that seek to define design solely in terms of a designer/client relationship and a traditional problem solving methodology...There was a period after World War I where some of the greatest artists of the time (the giants of which I speak) were as important to the history of architecture, painting or photography as they were to the history of design. I hear all of the time that what I do is not design. Well, frankly, I see that as a damning indictment of our times, not of my work." More...

above Elliot Earls Go see Cranbrook today

2000 The Designer | Artist

Stephan Sagmeister 1996

My goal for the rest of my life is to touch someone's heart with design
Austrian Sagmeister's work can make viewers feel a bit uneasy chickens with their heads cut off, words scratched into his own skin and giant cow's tongues. Sagmeister "defines how to get attention in a way that creates an idea." Now located in New York City his small studio, Sagmeister Inc, turns out "all things printed."

I'd like to end the semester with a touching little film about Sagmeister. "Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far" on the Hillman Curtis web site. It is worth the 5 minutes. (PS. There is a Things I Have Learned in My Life web site too.)

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