Volume 16–1.pdf

4 A constructed picture that
neither evolves from nor depicts
an object (non-objective).
5 Non-objective, unconstructed,
sometimes accidental,
painting.
Each of the many art
movements around the turn of
the century and since have
influenced designers as well as
artists to see things and to
express themselves in new ways.
Just how each influenced designers
is discussed in detail in Typographic
Communications Today.
5 Striped, oil with sand on canvas,
1934. Fine-grained painted sand adds
texture to the painting. Here geometric
shapes give way to freer forms in glowing
colors. Rectangular zones contrast with
the overlying curving biomorphic forms
of surrealism. Wassily Kandinsky. The
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,
New York.
6
ypography,
after all,
is primarily con-
cerned with aiding
the communication
of ideas and information.
The art movements
of the late 1800s and early
1900s awakened not only
painters but typographic
designers to the excitement
and visual vitality inherent
in the blank canvas or the
white page. But some of the
most exciting and blatant
works of the futurists and
dadaists caused a counterreaction
among non-futurist,
non-dadaist designers.
Many such thoughtful
graphic communicators
sought to blend the newly
rediscovered power of the
printed message with a disciplined
presentation that
might improve message
readability and comprehension.
The object was to
achieve the best of both
worlds: graphic beauty,
charm, excitement that
would command attention,
and graphic structure that
would contribute message,
clarity and impact.
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6 Piet Mondrian, Composition II. 1929.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
The relationship between Mondrian's
painting and Vilmos Huszar's title page
for De Stijl is obvious.
The key movements,
schools and players in this
blending of visual excitement
andformalism in
painting and in applied and
communication art's were:
■Russian avant garde
artists, including the constructivists
and suprematists
and particularly El
(Lazar Markovich) Lissitzky.
■The Bauhaus, where
all the art and cultural
forces emerging throughout
Europe in thefirst two decades
of the century came
together and developed a
coherent platform for both
fine and applied arts.
■The De Stijl movement
in the Netherlands and particularly
the work and
influence of its founder,
Theo van Doesburg.
■New Objectivity in
Germany and its art of
social protest.
■Art Deco and its
expression of industrial
forms. There was nothing
avant gardeist about art
deco. It was, rather, a reaction
against the radicalist
tendencies, an opportunistic
and conformist trend in art
and design.
MUMMER .
8
7,8 Vilmos Huszar, title pages for De
Stijl. Compare this with Mondrian's
Composition. The logo, constructed from
an open grid of squares, was designed
by van Doesburg. Even the text type
forms neat rectangles.
9
Thefirst major movements
to seek clarity and
order in art and in graphic
communications were by the
De Stijl and Constructivist
artists and designers. It is
significant that such leading
painting pioneers as El
Lissitzky, Alexander Rodchenko,
Filippo Marinetti
and Theo van Doesburg
became typographic, poster,
and book designers. As
early as 1917 they understood
that art had a social
function and could be,
should be, used to serve the
welfare of society.
Piet Zwart, although he
knew and met with van
Doesburg, Piet Mondrian
and others of the De Stijl
group was not a member of
the group. His typographics
were freer, more individualistic,
and most influential.
His was a new blend of readability
and typographic
excitement. He also was one
of the first to regard white
space as a graphic element,
not merely a canvas to be
filled.
In the 1920s, side by side
with the growth of the De
Stijl and constructivist
movements and the work of
Piet Zwart, were several
other art movements that
were to influence graphic
designers. The art deco artists
sought to visually
express modern technology
in their work, much of which
was characterized by angularity,
a reduction of natural
images to basic geometric
forms (as cubes, spheres,
and cones) and the use of
flat tones to capture
machine-like sleekness. In
Poland the Mechano-Faktur
artists practiced functional
typographics. Henryk
Berlewi, who founded the
group in Warsaw in 1924,
had met van Doesburg, El
Lissitzky and others in
Berlin and brought their
sense of typographic design
to Poland. This was also the
period of artfor social protest,
the period of George
Grosz, Otto Dix, and Max
Bechman in Germany,
and of Diego Rivera, Jose
Orozco and David Siqueiros
in Mexico.
33
9 El Lissitzky, pages from For the Voice,
1923. Note the die-cut tabs that index
the poems for easy reference. The
poems were written to be read aloud.
The designer comments: "To make it
easier for the reader to find any particular
poem, I use an alphabetical index.
The book is created with the resources of
the compositor's type-case alone. The
possibility of two-color printing... [has]
been exploited to the full. My pages
stand in much the same relationship to
the poems as an accompanying piano to
a violin':
HEADLINE/TEXT: ITC CENTURY BOLD ITALIC