Volume 16–1.pdf

The New
Typography
Crosses
the Ocean
21
depth of field? - no camera problem since Sinar exists
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22
111 he writings of
Tschichold,
the magazine, Neue
Graphik, the exous
from Europe to
the United States
of many leading European
typography designers, and the
influence of the pocket-size
magazine, PM, introduced
American designers to what
was then the best contemporary
design thinking and
practice.
The roster of European
design talent that came to the
United States in the 1930s and
1940s is a notable "who's who"
of that era. Following is an
impressive, albeit partial,
list. It includes just a few who
crossed the ocean more
recently.
The influx of European
designers to the United States
in the 1930s and 1940s worked
in many ways to change the
face of, and the thinking
behind, designs. At first the
-
1d
21,22 Two advertisements designed by
Karl Gerstner. The type literally expresses,
illustrates, the message. The Sinar lens
features excellent depth of field. Voll
(full) and leer (empty) makes the message
instantly clear and memorable.
23 As he so often did, Alexey Brodovitch
relates the type to the illustration, here
capturing the obliqueness of Man Ray's
model. Note the use of sans serif type in
various weights and sizes.
24 Huge initials are effectively used by
many designers to get attention, to
provide drama a mandatory illustration
may lack, to tie the elements of a piece
together while providing a focal point.
Leo Lionni.
newcomers were commissioned
by a few key people for
particular projects. Then they
secured positions of high visibility
and became teachers and
lecturers, and their influence,
as well as that of their students,
accelerated the spread of a new
kind of typographic design that
rapidly replaced the traditional
graphics of the preceding
decades.
The 1940s, '50s and '60s
were decades when art directors
and graphic designers
were asserting their talents for
evolving graphic statements to
powerfully, and sometimes
subliminally, make statements
formerly reserved for words.
Copy became more concise,
more supportive of a psychologically
aimed illustration or
design, and the art director
and designer moved from a
stool and a drawing board to
the executive-client conference
room, so that he or she would
hear the message-marketing
problem first hand, and make
a more intelligent, more fundamental
contribution to its solution.
The designers whose
25 Few designers matched Cipe Pineles'
blend of vigor and readability and
graphic freshness derived from a keen
understanding and feeling for the message
problem. Formula free, her work
has many faces. Here she works totally
with type in a powerful cover for the
Lincoln Center Journal.
works are illustrated in this
section of Typographic Communications
Thclay were key
figures (along with the activity
of the Art Directors Club of
New York) in establishing the
importance of the art director
and graphic designer in communication
and, as a by-product,
the importance of expertly
handled typographies.
Brief biographies of the
following emigres are included
in Chapter VII of Typographic
Communications Tbday:
Mehemed Fehmy Agha,
JosefAlbers, Walter Allner,
Herbert Bayer, Lucian
Bernhard, Joseph Binder, Marcel
Breuer, Alexey Brodovitch,
Will Burtin,Jean Carlu, A.M.
Cassandre, George Gusti, Walter
Gropius, Gyorgy Kepes,
Albert Kner, Fernand Leger,
Leo Lionni, Herbert Matter,
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Erik
Nitsche, Cipe Pineles, Ladislav
Sutnar.
.44
And More, and More,
and More
There were many more
European designers, architects,
and artists who came to
the United States and to Canada,
and whose presence gave
design west of the Atlantic a
new vitality, a new personality,
or, more accurately, new personalities.
But enough has
been said here to convey and
impress the importance to
design of the emigres of the
1930s and 1940s from across
the ocean. The following is
only a partial listing of others
who came then and later. The
work of some is reviewed elsewhere
in the book.
Marc Chagall, Serge Chermayeff,
Marcel Duchamp,
Fritz Eichenberg, Max Ernst,
Erte (Romain de Tirtof), Steff
Geissbuhler, Albert Gleizes,
Fritz Gottschalk, George
Grosz, Jacques Lipschitz, Piet
Mondrian, Martin Munkacsi,
Amadeo Modigliani, Francis
Picabia, Man Ray, Mies van
der Rohe, Saul Steinberg, Xanti
Schawinsky, Yves Tanguy,
George Tscherny, Massimo
Vignelli, Henry Wolf.
PARIS /935
26 Ad for American Type Founders. Will
Burtin, 1958. From the Graphic Design
Archive, Rochester Institute of Technology,
Rochester, New York.
HEADLINE/INITIAL: ITC ZAPF INTERNATIONAL DEMI
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TEXT: MEDIUM