Chapter 17

Question 1

Armory Show

Answer 1

the 1931 art show in New York City that exposed Americans to modern art for the first time. It generated a storm of protest and provoked public rejection of modern art and design

Question 2

Rural Electrification Administration

Answer 2

A federal agency charged with bringing electricity to the less populated areas of America, which effectively reduced pro-electrification messages to elemental signs in posters by Lester Beall

Question 3

Works Progress Administration

Answer 3

• (WPA)
• Direct relief for the unemployed was replaced by work opportunities, and billions of dollars were infused into the economy as an average of more than two million workers were paid from 15 to 19 dollars per month from 1935 to 1941. Launched in the fall of 1935, the WPA Federal Art Project enabled actors, musicians, visual artists, and writers to continue their professional careers. A poster project was included among the various cultural programs. Sculptures and painters joined unemployed illustrators and graphic designers in the studios. As many designs were by artists, it is not surprising that the project took a strong aesthetic approach to typography, which was used as both a compositional element and a message communicator.

Question 4

Federal Art Project

Answer 4

From 1935 to 1939, when the Federal Art Project was abolished, over 2 million copies of approximately 35,000 poster designs were produced. Most of the designs were silk-screened. Silk-screen printer’s characteristic flat color combined with influences from the Bauhaus, pictorial modernism, and constructivism to produce a modernist result that contrasted with the traditional illustration dominating much of American mass-media graphics of the era. Government-sponsored cultural events, including theatrical performances and art exhibitions, were frequent subjects for the poster project, as were public-service communications about health, crime prevention, housing, and education.

Question 5

Container Corporation of America (CCA)

Answer 5

The nation’s largest producer of packaging materials in the 1930s, led by industrialist Walter P. Paepcke. He was unique among the large industrialists of his generation, for he recognized that design could both serve a pragmatic business purpose and also make a major cultural mark on behalf of the corporation. His interests were inspired by his wife, artist Elizabeth Nitze Paepcke (1902-94), who prompted her husband to hire perhaps the first corporate design director in America: in 1936, Egbert Jacobson was selected as the first director of CCA’s new department of design. CCA’s new visual signature (and its implementation) was based on two ingredients: the vison of the designer and a supportive client. Jacobson had an extensive background as a color expert, and this knowledge was put to use as mill and factory interiors were transformed with bright colors from traditional drab industrial grays and browns. A new trademark was applied to stationary, checks, invoices, vehicles, and signage. A consistent format used sans-serif type and a standard color combination of black and shipping-carton tan.

Question 6

William Addison Dwiggins

Answer 6

• 1880-1956
• After two decades in advertising design, Dwiggins began designing books for Alfred A. Knopf in 1926. He established Knopf’s reputation for excellence in book design, experimenting with uncommon title page arrangements and two-column book formats. His stenciled ornaments (Fig. 17–2) combined the sensibility of the cubist collage with the grace of traditional ornament. His eighteen typeface designs for Mergenthaler Linotype include Caledonia (1938), a graceful text face; Electra (1935), a modern design with reduced thick-to-thin contrast; and Metro (1929), Linotype’s geometric sans serif designed to compete with Futura and Kabel.

Question 7

A. Jacobs

Answer 7

a modernist-era American book designer who infused constructivism into American book design.

Question 8

Merle Armitage

Answer 8

• 1893-1975
• As with Jacobs, a modernist-era American book designer whose typographic expressions ranged from Renaissance-inspired designs to books for avant-garde music and dance that helped define the modernist design aesthetic in America

Question 9

Lester Beall

Answer 9

• 1903-69
• Primarily self-taught, his extensive reading and curious intellect formed the basis for his professional development. In the challenging social and economic environment of the Depression era, he attempted to develop strong, direct, and exciting visual forms. Beall understood Tschichold’s new typography and the Dada movement’s random organization, intuitive placement of elements, and use of chance in the creative process (Fig. 17–4). Often, flat planes of color and elementary signs such as arrows were combined with photography, as Beall sought visual contrast and a high level of information content

Question 10

Georg (George) Salter

Answer 10

• 1897-1967
• barred from freelance employment in Germany because of his Jewish heritage, immigrated to New York in 1934. From 1922 until 1933 he had produced more than 350 book designs for 33 different publishers. Over two-thirds of Salter’s commissions were book jackets, which became his trademark. His sensitivity to literary expression made him the ideal artist to capture a book’s content on its cover; his designs were signature pieces for some of the important works of the twentieth century. A quintessential hybrid modernist, his versatility drew on calligraphy, photomontage, airbrush, watercolor, and pen-and-ink drawings

Question 11

Erte (Romain de Tirtoff)

Answer 11

• 1892-1990
• : a Russian admiral’s son, born in St. Petersburg. After becoming a prominent Paris illustrator and set designer working in the art deco manner, he was signed to an exclusive contract from 1924 until 1937 to design covers and fashion illustrations for Harper’s Bazaarmagazine (Fig. 17–11). Renowned for his fashion designs, set designs, illustrations, and graphics, Erté became a major proponent of the art deco sensibility. His work combined the stylized drawing of synthetic cubism, an exotic decorativeness, and the elegance of high fashion.

Question 12

Mehemed Fehmy Agha

Answer 12

• 1896-1978
• Born in Ukraine to Turkish parents, he was the first art director trained in modern design to guide the graphic destiny of a major American periodical: Condé Nast’s Vogue beginning in 1928, and Vanity Fair and House & Garden soon after. Energetic and uncompromising, he overhauled Condé Nast’s stuffy, dated approach to editorial design by introducing bleed photography; machine-set, sans-serif type; white space; and asymmetrical layouts.

Question 13

Alexey Bridovitch

Answer 13

• 1898-1971
• the art director of Harper’s Bazaar from 1934 until 1958. With an affinity for white space and sharp type on clear, open pages, he rethought the approach to editorial. He sought “a musical feeling” in the flow of text and pictures. The rhythmic environment of open space balancing text was energized by the art and photography he commissioned from major European artists, including Henri Cartier-Bresson, A. M. Cassandre (Fig. 17–14), Salvador Dali (Fig. 17–15), Man Ray (Fig. 17–12), and the Hungarian Martin Munkacsi (1896–1963) (Fig. 17–16). In addition, Brodovitch taught designers how to use photography. His cropping, enlargement, and juxtaposition of images, and his exquisite selection from contact sheets were all accomplished with extraordinary intuitive judgment (Figs. 17–17 through 17–20). He saw contrast as a dominant tool in editorial design and paid close attention to the graphic movement through the editorial pages of each issue.

Question 14

Alexander Liberman

Answer 14

• 1912-99
• Initially a layout designer for Vogue, he succeeded Agha as the magazine’s art director in 1943. Using photographers such as Irving Penn, Cecil Beaton, and Lee Miller, he enlivened Voguewith current images. He was appointed editorial director of all Condé Nast publications in 1961, and remained in that position until his retirement thirty years later

Question 15

Marin Munkacsi

Answer 15

• 1896-1963
• a staff photographer at Harper’s Bazaar.He slapped long-held conventions of editorial photography in the face with his new compositions (Fig. 17–16). Munkacsi was one of a new breed of editorial and advertising photographers who combined the visual dynamic learned from Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray with the fresh approach to photography made possible by the new 35–millimeter Leica “miniature” camera.

Question 16

Joseph Binder

Answer 16

• 1898-1972
• With the use of an airbrush to achieve highly finished forms, his strong cubist beginnings eventually yielded to a stylized realism. The subject matter became dominant, and design qualities were subordinated to pictorial imagery. With his powerful shapes and well-defined subjects, Binder remained a force on the American design scene until the 1960s. His ubiquitous military recruiting posters were among the last manifestations of pictorial modernism and became ingrained in the American consciousness during the 1950s. The geometric and symbolic shapes of pictorial modernism were converted into monolithic masses symbolizing military might and the technological accomplishments of a new era of sophisticated weaponry.

Question 17

Herbert Bayer

Answer 17

• 1900-85
• The posters Bayer produced during and after the war were surprisingly illustrative compared to his constructivist approach during the Dessau Bauhaus period. Sensitive to his new audience and oriented toward communications problem solving, Bayer painted illustrations with a simplified realism, then combined these with the hierarchy of information and strong underlying composition he pioneered at Dessau.

Question 18

Will Burtin

Answer 18

• 1908-71
• Recognized as one of Germany’s outstanding designers, he fled Germany in 1938 after refusing to work for the Nazi regime. His work combined a graphic clarity and directness with a lucid presentation of the subject matter. Burtin’s keen understanding of science is reflected in designs for the Upjohn pharmaceutical company, interpreting such complex subjects as bacteriology (Fig. 17–28). In 1943, Burtin left Upjohn to work on government training manuals, followed by three years as art director of Fortune In 1948, he became a design consultant for Upjohn and other companies, making a major contribution to the visual interpretation of graphic information.

Question 19

Jean Carlu

Answer 19

• 1900-97
• A European design innovator who brought his skills to America, he was commissioned by the U.S. Office of War Information to create one of the finest designs of his career, the famous “America’s answer! Production” poster (Fig. 17–30). Over 100,000 copies were distributed throughout the country, and Carlu was recognized with a top award by the New York Art Director’s Club Exhibition.

Question 20

George Giusti

Answer 20

• 1908-90
• Born to Italian and Swiss parents, Giusti worked in both Italy and Switzerland before coming to New York City in 1938 and opening a design office. He possessed a unique ability to reduce forms and images to a simplified, minimal essence. His images become iconographic and symbolic. Giusti’s freely drawn images included evidence of process in his work; an image painted in transparent dyes has areas of flooded and blotted color, and his three-dimensional illustrations often include the bolts or other fasteners used to assemble the elements.

Question 21

Herbert Matter

Answer 21

• 1907-1976
• European graphic designer who came to America and made significant contributions to design in work for the Container Corporation of America (CCA); magazines including Vogue, Fortune, and Harper’s Bazaar; and for twenty years as a graphic-design and photography consultant to the Knoll Associates furniture design and manufacturing firm.

Question 22

Ladislav Sutnar

Answer 22

• 1897-1976
• came to New York as design director of the Czechoslovakian Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair in 1939, the year Hitler seized his country. Sutnar remained in New York and became a vital force in the evolution of modern design in the United States. He placed an indelible mark on the design of industrial product information while working for Sweet’s Catalog Service, developing a system for structuring information in a logical and consistent manner. In two landmark books, Catalog Designand Catalog Design Progress (Figs. 17–51 and 17–52), he documented and explained his approach to a generation of designers, writers, and clients. Informational design was defined as a synthesis of function, flow, and form.

Question 23

Walter P. Paepcke

Answer 23

• 1896-1960
• A major figure in the development of American modern design beginning in the 1930s, he founded the Container Corporation of America (CCA) in 1926. Paepcke pioneered the manufacture of paperboard and corrugated-fiber containers. Paepcke was unique among the large industrialists of his generation, for he recognized that design could both serve a pragmatic business purpose and become a major cultural thrust on the part of the corporation. Paepcke was an advocate and patron of design. He had maintained a long-standing interest in the Bauhaus, perhaps as a response to the school’s experiments with paper materials and structures. Moved by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s commitment and determination, Paepcke provided much-needed moral and financial support to the Institute of Design.

Question 24

Elizabeth Nitze Paepcke

Answer 24

• 1902-94
• Artist and wife of Walter Paepcke, she was the inspiration for his use and support of design. She prompted her husband to hire perhaps the first corporate design director in America.

Question 25

Egbert Jacobson

Answer 25

• 1890-1966
• the first director of the new department of design at the Container Corporation of America (CCA). Jacobson had an extensive background as a color expert, and this knowledge was put to use as mill and factory interiors were transformed with bright colors from traditional drab industrial grays and browns. A consistent format used sans-serif type and a standard color combination of black and shipping-carton tan for corporate graphics.

Question 26

Charles Coiner

Answer 26

• 1898-1989
• the art director for N. W. Ayer, CCA’s advertising agency and, later, art consultant for the U.S. Office of War Information.

Question 27

John Atherton

Answer 27

• 1900-52
• An illustrator who was the creator of numerous Saturday Evening Postcovers, he penetrated to the heart of the problem of careless talk, gossip, and discussion of troop movements as a source of enemy information

Question 28

Ben Shahn

Answer 28

• 1898-1969
• The social realist whose paintings addressed political and economic injustice during the Depression; he reached a larger audience, however, in posters conveying Nazi brutality (Fig. 17–34). Shahn achieved communicative power with intense graphic forms: the implication of a prison by closing the space with a wall; the hood masking the victim’s identity; the simple, straightforward headline; and the factual urgency of a telegram.