Avant-garde graphics from around the globe
Introduction to the book 'Graphic Design for the 21st Century', by Charlotte and Peter Fiell
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]
The emergence of this new discipline during the early years of the 20th century led to the founding of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) in New York in 1914 - the first organization to be specifically set up for the promotion of what was then termed "graphic arts". It was not until the First World War, however, that the importance of graphic design as a tool for propaganda was firmly established, most notably by James Montgomery Flagg (1877-1960), who created the famous "I Want You for US Army" recruiting poster showing Uncle Sam (based on a self-portrait). Following the war's end, the Art Directors Club was founded in New York in 1920 so as to raise the status of advertising - a growing area of the graphic arts that was distrusted by the general public because of the false claims and visual excesses that had become associated with it. The Art Directors Club subsequently staged exhibitions and produced publications that showcased the most creative advertising work, and in so doing helped to establish a greater professionalism within graphic design practice. Reflecting the discipline's move away from the subjectivity of fine art to the objectivity of design, the American typographer William Addison Dwiggins (1880-1956) reputedly first coined the term "graphic design" in 1922.
After the enormous upheavals of the First World War, many people put their faith in new technology and mass-production, which had already given the world an array of technical marvels from telephones and wireless radios to automobiles and aeroplanes. Sweeping artistic tradition away with industrial progress, there was a quasi-religious belief in the benefits of standardisation and an overwhelming desire to strip everything from furniture and lighting to posters and books down to their purest and most elemental form. At the same time new movements in fine art - Futurism, Constructivism and De Stijl - emerged that also had a profound impact on the evolution of graphic design. Strongly influenced by these avant-garde impulses, graphic designers associated with the Bauhaus developed a new rational approach to graphic design, which involved the use of bold geometric forms, lower-case lettering and simplified layouts. Often incorporating photomontages, this new kind of graphic design was not only visually dynamic but also had a communicative clarity. Graphic designers aligned to Modernism rejected individual creative expression in favour of what was described by Jan Tschichold (1902-1974) as "impersonal creativity." At the Bauhaus designers such as Lásló Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946), Herbert Bayer (1900-1985) and Joost Schmidt (1893-1948) sought to codify a set of rational principles for graphic design practice through their endorsement of sans-serif typography, asymmetrical compositions and rectangular fluid grids, a preferencefor photography over illustration, and the promotion of standardized paper sizes.
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]
The emergence of this new discipline during the early years of the 20th century led to the founding of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) in New York in 1914 - the first organization to be specifically set up for the promotion of what was then termed "graphic arts". It was not until the First World War, however, that the importance of graphic design as a tool for propaganda was firmly established, most notably by James Montgomery Flagg (1877-1960), who created the famous "I Want You for US Army" recruiting poster showing Uncle Sam (based on a self-portrait). Following the war's end, the Art Directors Club was founded in New York in 1920 so as to raise the status of advertising - a growing area of the graphic arts that was distrusted by the general public because of the false claims and visual excesses that had become associated with it. The Art Directors Club subsequently staged exhibitions and produced publications that showcased the most creative advertising work, and in so doing helped to establish a greater professionalism within graphic design practice. Reflecting the discipline's move away from the subjectivity of fine art to the objectivity of design, the American typographer William Addison Dwiggins (1880-1956) reputedly first coined the term "graphic design" in 1922.
After the enormous upheavals of the First World War, many people put their faith in new technology and mass-production, which had already given the world an array of technical marvels from telephones and wireless radios to automobiles and aeroplanes. Sweeping artistic tradition away with industrial progress, there was a quasi-religious belief in the benefits of standardisation and an overwhelming desire to strip everything from furniture and lighting to posters and books down to their purest and most elemental form. At the same time new movements in fine art - Futurism, Constructivism and De Stijl - emerged that also had a profound impact on the evolution of graphic design. Strongly influenced by these avant-garde impulses, graphic designers associated with the Bauhaus developed a new rational approach to graphic design, which involved the use of bold geometric forms, lower-case lettering and simplified layouts. Often incorporating photomontages, this new kind of graphic design was not only visually dynamic but also had a communicative clarity. Graphic designers aligned to Modernism rejected individual creative expression in favour of what was described by Jan Tschichold (1902-1974) as "impersonal creativity." At the Bauhaus designers such as Lásló Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946), Herbert Bayer (1900-1985) and Joost Schmidt (1893-1948) sought to codify a set of rational principles for graphic design practice through their endorsement of sans-serif typography, asymmetrical compositions and rectangular fluid grids, a preferencefor photography over illustration, and the promotion of standardized paper sizes.
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]
Graphic Design for the 21st Century
Flexicover, 19.6 x 24.9 cm (7.7 x 9.8 in.), 640 pages
$ 39.99
$ 39.99
Avant-garde graphics from around the globe
Cover design for Novyi LEF magazine. Alexander Rodchenko, c.1928