-
Modernism
America was introduced to modernism at the 1913 Armory Show but it was met by public protest and initially rejected. A small number of American typographers and designers recognized the value of the new ideas, and modernism slowly gained ground in book design, editorial design for fashion and business magazines catering to affluent audiences, and promotional and corporate graphics. By the 1930s, modernist European design had become a significant influence in America. -
Traditional Illustration
During the 1920s and 1930s, graphic design in America was dominated by traditional illustration. -
William Addison Dwiggins
A transitional designer in America. After two decades in advertising, he began designing books for Alfred A. Knopf in 1926 and established Knopf’s reputation for excellence in book design. He experimented with uncommon title page layouts, two-column book formats, and collage-like stenciled ornaments that reflected the influence of cubism. -
Container Corporation of America
A major figure in the development of modern design beginning in the 1930s was a Chicago industrialist named Walter P. Paepcke, who founded the Container Corporation of America in 1926. -
Alexey Brodovitch
He had a passion for white space and open pages. He rethought the approach to editorial design and sought a musical feeling in the flow of text and pictures. Became art director of Harper’s Bazaar in 1934 and remained in this position until 1958. -
Harper’s Bazaar, 1934
Alexey Brodovitch (art director) and Man Ray (photographer). Pages from Harper’s Bazaar, 1934: The figure’s oblique thrust inspired a dynamic typographic page with several sizes and weights of geometric sans serifs. -
The Federal Art Project
The WPA's Federal Art Project enabled actors, musicians, visual artists, and writers to continue their professional careers. Thousands of posters were designed & silk-screen printed for government-sponsored cultural events. The flat color characteristic of silk-screen combined with influences from the Bauhaus, pictorial modernism & constructivism, producing a modernist result that contrasted with the traditional illustration style that dominated American graphic communication during this time. -
Lester Beall
He often combined flat planes of color and elementary signs,
such as arrows with photography. He admired the strong character and form of nineteenth-century American wood types and incorporated them into his work. In his posters for the Rural Electrification Administration, the benefits of electricity are presented through signs understandable to illiterate and semiliterate audiences. -
Mergenthaler Linotype Typefaces
William Addison Dwiggins also designed eighteen typefaces for Mergenthaler Linotype, including the text face Caledonia; Electra, a modern design with reduced thick and thin contrast; and Metro, Linotype’s geometric sans-serif created to compete with Futura and Kabel. -
Joseph Binder
Joseph Binder's 1939 poster for the "New York World’s Fair" signifies America’s embrace of modernism, technology, and global power. Binder's strong cubist beginnings yielded to a stylized realism, and his technique became more refined, in part because he used an airbrush to achieve highly finished forms. -
A. M. Cassandre's cover for Harper’s Bazaar
A. M. Cassandre, cover for Harper’s Bazaar, 1939. A perfume-bottle nose, lipstick mouth, and powder-puff cheek achieve simultaneity. -
Jean Carlu's “America’s answer! Production” poster
Poster for the Office of Emergency Management, 1941. Visual and verbal elements are inseparably interlocked into an intense symbol of productivity and labor. Known as the “America’s answer! Production”. Over 100,000 of these posters were distributed throughout the country and the designer was recognized with a top award by the New York Art Director’s Club Exhibition. -
John Atherton
John Atherton's poster for the U.S. Office of War Information, 1943. The placement of the two-part headline implies a rectangle; this symmetry is animated by the off-center placement of the white cross. -
Ben Shahn's poster for the U.S. Office of War Information
Ben Shahn, poster for the U.S. Office of War Information, 1943. A dire crisis is conveyed using the most direct words and imagery possible. represented political and economic injustice during the
depression. The poster reached a larger audience about Nazi brutality. -
Herbert Matter's advertisement for CCA
Herbert Matter; advertisement for CCA, 1943: unified complex of
images suggest global scope, paperboard boxes, and food for
troops in harsh environmental conditions. -
Catalog Design and Catalog Design Progress
Working closely with Sweet’s research director Knut Lönberg-Holm, Ladislav Sutnar developed a philosophy for structuring information in a logical and consistent manner. In two landmark books, Catalog Design and Catalog Design Progress, they documented and explained their approach. -
"Polio Research"
Herbert Bayer, poster supporting polio research, 1949. The diagonal shaft of the test tube leads the eye from the red and blue headline to the flowing yellow light that is beginning to dawn, linking the elements in the same manner as the thick black bars of Bayer’s Bauhaus work. -
World Geo-Graphic Atlas
An important milestone in the visual presentation of data was the publication in 1953 of the World Geo-Graphic Atlas by the Container Corporation of America. Herbert Bayer, the designer, and editor worked for five years on the 368-page atlas, which contained 120 full-page maps of the world and 1,200 diagrams, graphs, charts, symbols, and other graphic communications about the planet. -
Recruiting poster for the U.S. Navy
Joseph Binder, recruiting poster for the U.S. Navy, c. 1954. Echoes of Cassandra’s steamship posters remain, but the strength expressed is more powerful and forbidding.