-Started design career as promotional & editorial designer for magazines Apparel Arts,
Esquire, Ken, Coronet & Glass Packer where his magazine covers broke traditions of
American design
-Rand was influenced by modern movement, particularly works of Klee, Kandinsky and
the cubists
-Influences led Rand to believe that freely invented shapes could have a self contained
life, both symbolic and expressive and as a visual-communications tool
(translating ideas into visual communications)
-Thus, Rand was known for ability to manipulate visual form (shape, color, space, line,
value) & also used contrasting symbolic and visual elements in designs (i.e. Red vs.
green, photos vs. flat color, text vs. white background, etc. )
-After leaving agency, Rand became an independent designer w/increasing emphasis on
trademark & corporate design.
-Was featured in book Thoughts on Design and had over eighty works that influenced
other artists
-Rand believed that cultural role of designer was to upgrade rather than serve least
common denominator of public taste (therefore to keep improving & challenging oneself)
Alvin Lustig
-Designer who incorporated subjective vision and private symbols into graphic design.
-Designer who alternated between architecture, graphic design & interior design
-Design methodology was to search for symbols to capture essence of the contents and
treating form and content as one
-Lustig believed that artist’s pure research into private symbols as the wellspring for the
public symbols created by the designer
-Asked by Joseph Albers to develop a graduate graphic design program at Yale
University
-Unfortunately, Lustig’s eyesight had begun to fail and in a short matter of time he was
completely blind but continued to teach and design until his death more than a year later
after losing eyesight.
*Bradbury Thompson
-One of the most influential graphic designers in postwar America
-Has thorough knowledge of printing & typesetting and used studios for 2 techniques as
his “canvas, easel & studio” & discovered and explored potential of eighteenth- and
nineteenth- century engravings as design resources.
-Used letter-forms and patterns such as half-tone reproductions as design elements or to
create visual patterns and movements.
-Thompson used technique of taking apart four-color process plates and overprinted
them to create new colors.
-Therefore, typography gained expression through scale and color
-Readability, formal harmony & sensitive use of Old Style typefaces marked his work for
periodicals such as Smithsonian & ARTnews, US postage stamps & steady flow of
books
Saul Bass
-Designer who was inspired by Paul Rand’s use of shape & asymmetrical balance but
reduced his designs to a single dominant image
-Bass reduced messages to simple pictographic images and combined freely drawn and
decorative letter-forms with typography and handwriting.
-Bass was responsible for logos, theatre posters, advertising & animated film titles for
films such as The Man with the Golden Arm (kinetic sequence of animated bars and
typography synchronized with jazz music) & for film Exodus (side-note: also did
sequence for Monsters Inc. And other Disney animated films)
The New York Firm of Brownjohn, Chermayeff & Geismar
- A design office instead of an art studio where Robert Brownjohn had studied painting,
design and architecture under architect/teacher Serge Chermayeff
-The three designers (Brownjohn, Chermayeff & Geismar) combined images and
symbols with surreal sense of dislocation to convey essence of subject onto book
jackets & posters
-In 1960, Brownjohn left to England and made sig. Contributions to British graphic
design, especially in dept. Of film titles
-Brownjohn did title design for Goldfinger where 35mm color slides projected upon a
moving human body filmed in real time.
-Meanwhile, Chermayeff & Geismar Associates (renamed) played major role in
development of postwar corporate identity.
Graphic Design Education at Yale University School of Art
-Many leading graphic designers, photographers, print makers
taught in Yale graphic design program
-Faculty has included, Lustig, Norman Ives, Paul Rand, Herbert Matter, Bradbury
Thompson and many others.
Editorial Design Revolution
-During 1940s, only few American magazines were well designed (Fortune-art directors
Burtin & Leo Lionni, Vogue- Alexander Liberman & Harper’s Bazaar- Brodovitch)
-Major art director Cipe Pineles was first female admitted to membership in New York Art
professionals society because of contribution to editorials such as work at Glamour,
Seventeen, Charm & Mademoiselle
-Another major editor was Otto Storch who was influenced by Brodovitch
-Storch was art director for McCalls magazine, Better Living magazine where Storch
unified typography with photography
-Storch ranks among the major innovators of the period b/c of philosophy that idea,
copy, art & typography should be inseparable in editorial design.
-Henry Wolf a Vienna born art director at Esquire and then moved to Harpers Bazaar
and experimented with typography making it large enough to fill up page on one spread
and using smaller text to fill the other
Doyle Dane Bernbach
-Ad agency that took important advantages, superiority, or distinguishing characteristics
of product and created a relationship between those components with visual i.e.
Volkswagon Beetle ad: Think Small
-The new advertising age (inspired by Bernbach agency) was still persuasive but more
honest.
Technique: Phototypography: the setting of type by exposing negatives of alphabet
characters to photographic paper
Herb Lubalin
-Hailed as typographic genius at the time
-Would manually take apart type proofs and experimented with typography while paying
close attention to detail
-Lubalin as well as phototypography pioneer Rondthaler and typographer Aaron Burns,
est. The ITC (International Typeface Corporation) where ITC fonts had large x-heights
and short ascenders and descenders
George Lois
-Art director for Esquire magazine and revitalized magazine’s profits
-believed that design was to be a harmony of elements and had no place on a magazine
cover, but instead cover was to be a statement capable of capturing reader with a
spirited comment on a major article
-Created covers that shocked and provoked audiences b/c of unexpected combinations
of images and photographic montage techniques
-Convinced Muhammad Ali to pose as a famous religious martyr and designed Richard
Nixon cover where make-up is being applied to face
