Avant-garde graphics from around the globe
Introduction to the book 'Graphic Design for the 21st Century', by Charlotte and Peter Fiell
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Prior to and during the Second World War, the Swiss School built on the Bauhaus' developments in order to create a Modern form of graphic design known as the International Graphic Style, which had a strong reductivist aesthetic that incorporated lots of "white space" and "objective photography" (i.e. realistic images). Precise, direct, and clinical, Swiss School graphic design was centred on the Modernist precept that "Form Follows Function."
During the Second World War, graphic designers, especially in Britain and America, produced bold propaganda posters that similarly displayed the formal purity and aesthetic economy of Modernism. Wartime designers such as Abraham Games (1914-1996), F.H.K. Henrion (1914-1990), and Jean Carlu (1900-1997), fused bold images with short yet powerful slogans, such as "Talk Kills," "We're in it together," and "America's Answer! Production," so as to produce a kind of non-narrative visual shorthand that conveyed the given public information message in the most direct manner possible. This type of high-impact visual communication that sought universal perception was later used for commercial purposes.
After the Second World War, graphic designers working in the United States, such as Herbert Matter (1907-1984) and Paul Rand (1914-1996), utilized the European avantgarde approach of dynamically combining typography and imagery in order to produce eye-catching, expressive and at times humorous graphic design work for high profile corporate clients, such as IBM and Knoll International. From the immediate postwar years to the late 1950s, there was a dramatic increase in the use of design as a marketing tool, which led to greater specialisation in design practice. By now, graphic design was recognised as a distinct profession rather than just a branch of a general design vocation. During this period the Swiss School's influence spread internationally through the success of Modern typefaces such as Helvetica designed by Max Miedinger (1910-1980) and Edouard Hoffmann in 1957, and Univers designed by Adrien Frutiger (b.1928) that same year, and also through the launch of the journal "New Graphic Design" in 1959. Large corporations increasingly employed graphic designers to help them differentiate their products in an ever-more competitive marketplace. At this time Modern graphic design became almost completely detached from its social foundations and instead became inextricably linked to the consuming desires of corporate advertising. In 1958 the Canadian-born communications theorist Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) began undertaking an in-depth analysis of contemporary advertising and subsequently concluded, "the Medium is the Massage" (a pun on the term "Mass Age" and an allusion to the media's soft pummelling of culture).
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]
Prior to and during the Second World War, the Swiss School built on the Bauhaus' developments in order to create a Modern form of graphic design known as the International Graphic Style, which had a strong reductivist aesthetic that incorporated lots of "white space" and "objective photography" (i.e. realistic images). Precise, direct, and clinical, Swiss School graphic design was centred on the Modernist precept that "Form Follows Function."
During the Second World War, graphic designers, especially in Britain and America, produced bold propaganda posters that similarly displayed the formal purity and aesthetic economy of Modernism. Wartime designers such as Abraham Games (1914-1996), F.H.K. Henrion (1914-1990), and Jean Carlu (1900-1997), fused bold images with short yet powerful slogans, such as "Talk Kills," "We're in it together," and "America's Answer! Production," so as to produce a kind of non-narrative visual shorthand that conveyed the given public information message in the most direct manner possible. This type of high-impact visual communication that sought universal perception was later used for commercial purposes.
After the Second World War, graphic designers working in the United States, such as Herbert Matter (1907-1984) and Paul Rand (1914-1996), utilized the European avantgarde approach of dynamically combining typography and imagery in order to produce eye-catching, expressive and at times humorous graphic design work for high profile corporate clients, such as IBM and Knoll International. From the immediate postwar years to the late 1950s, there was a dramatic increase in the use of design as a marketing tool, which led to greater specialisation in design practice. By now, graphic design was recognised as a distinct profession rather than just a branch of a general design vocation. During this period the Swiss School's influence spread internationally through the success of Modern typefaces such as Helvetica designed by Max Miedinger (1910-1980) and Edouard Hoffmann in 1957, and Univers designed by Adrien Frutiger (b.1928) that same year, and also through the launch of the journal "New Graphic Design" in 1959. Large corporations increasingly employed graphic designers to help them differentiate their products in an ever-more competitive marketplace. At this time Modern graphic design became almost completely detached from its social foundations and instead became inextricably linked to the consuming desires of corporate advertising. In 1958 the Canadian-born communications theorist Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) began undertaking an in-depth analysis of contemporary advertising and subsequently concluded, "the Medium is the Massage" (a pun on the term "Mass Age" and an allusion to the media's soft pummelling of culture).
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
Photograph by Patric Ward for the Observer magazine showing a hoarding of psychedelic posters, 1967