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Chapter 18 and 19

Chapter 18
Intl. Typographic Style

Visual Characteristics
• Visual Unity achieved through
asymmetrical organization
• Objective photography
• San-serif typography, ragged-right
justification

Social Characteristics
• Design is useful and an important
activity
• Personal expression was not as
important as message
• Achieving clarity and organization is
the ideal

Max Bill
“It is possible to develop art largely on
the basis of mathematical thinking.”
Max Bill, 1949

Semiotics
The general philosophical theory of signs
and symbols.
Three branches of semiotics: 1.
Semantics, 2. Syntactics, 3. Pragmatics

Semantics - Semiotics
The study of the meaning of signs and
symbols.

Syntactics - Semiotics
The study of HOW signs and symbols are
connected and ordered into a structured
whole.

Pragmatic - Semiotics
The study of the relationship between
the signs and symbols and the viewer.

Important Typefaces
Adrian Frutiger
Univers
Helvetica
Herman Zaph
Palatino, Melior, Optima

Intl. Typographic Style
in America
1960s and 1970s
Rudolph DeHarak: continuing quest for
communicative clarity and visual order.
DeHarak designed book covers for
McGraw Hill Pub., Album covers for
Westminster Records

Rudolph DeHarak

Chapter 19

The New York School
Many Immigrants contributed to the 2nd
half of 20th century design in America.
American Design was less formal than
the structured design of Europe.
American was more flexible in the
approach to organization of space.

New York School
Pioneers
• Paul Rand - 1914 - 1996
• Paul Rand of the Weintraub
advertising agency.
• Stafford, Goodman & Theise
Ad
• One in a series of ads for
Stafford, Goodman &
Theise, Inc.

Other New York School
Pioneers
• Bradbury Thompson
• Saul Bass
• Ivan Chermayeff
• Thomas Geismar

Bradbury Thompson
Emerged as one of the
most influential graphic
designers of postwar
America.
Worked for printing
forms in Kansas before
moving to New York.
Very adventurist spririt
that he infused into his
designs.

Saul Bass
• Saul Bass
Movie Poster
• Brought NY
School to Los
Angeles and the
movie industry

Brownjohn, Chermayeff
& Geismar
• Called their firm a
“Design Office” not a
studio.
• Their work
characterized by
communicative
immediacy, strong
sense of form and a
vitality that was
refreshing.

Thomas Geismar
•Thomas H. Geismar, cover
for Common Sense and
Nuclear Warfare, 1958
•In the cover for Common
Sense and Nuclear
Warfare, the atomic blast
becomes a visual
metaphor for the human
brain, graphically echoing
the title.

Cipe Pineles
• Art director and designer
• Made major contributions
to editorial design during
the 1940s and 1950s.
• Best known for cover
designs for Seventeen,
Glamour, Harper’s
Bazaar, Charm, and
Vogue.

Cipe Pineles
• Art director and designer
• Made major contributions to
editorial design during the 1940s
and 1950s.
• Best known for cover designs for
Seventeen, Glamour, Harper’s
Bazaar, Charm, and Vogue.

Henry Wolf
• Simple images convey a
visual idea such as
covers for Esquire,
Harper’s Bazaar.
• Achieved a high
aesthetic level of layout
and photography.

Typography Design
• Herb Lubalin (1918 - 1981) was
hailed as “the typographic
genius of his time”.
• He practiced design not as an
art form but as a means of
giving visual form to a concept
or a message. In his most
innovative work, concept and
visual forms are put into a
oneness called typogram,
meaning a brief, visual
typographic poem.

Avant - Garde
• Avant - Garde magazine was born
amidst the social upheavals of civil
rights, women’s liberation, the sexual
revolution and antiwar protests.
• Art with tightly integrated ligatures
within the type faces.
• One of Lubalin’s most crowning
achievements.
• Layouts have a strong underlying
geometric structure.

George Lois
• Worked for Doyle Dane Bernbach, an advertising agency that opened in
NYC in 1949 and that set a new standard of design excellence and
energy into an otherwise lackluster period of time,
• Designs are deceptively simple and single mindedly direct.
Backgrounds are usually stripped away to enable the content
bearing verbal and pictorial images to interact unhampered, a
technique he learned at Bernbach

George Lois
Lean Cuisine is one of the most recognizable brand today.
Mickey Mantle, Wilt Chamberlain, Don
Meredith (pictured), Johnny Unitas and
many other "grown men" were shown
crying out "I Want My Maypo" in the
famous campaign changing the mindset of
the famous cereal in the 1960's.(photo
courtesy of Sellebrity-Lois 2003)

Conclusion
• The New York School was born from an excitement
about European modernism and fueled by economic
technological expansion.
• It became the dominant force in graphic design from
1940 - 1970
• Many of the original designers designed well into the
1990s.