ISSUE ONE
a look inside the early life and career of the monumental designer as she works as an art director
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Table of Contents
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INTRODUCTION
Learn about who Cipe Pineles is and what she has done for the female
and design communities through her extraordinary career.
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The Young Years
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At Conde
An exposition to the hero of female designers everywhere and a picture into where she came from, who she was, and who she became to be.
NAST
Cipe’s foundational moments and skills came from her time under M.F. Agha
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CIPE & Seventeen How Cipe ended up leaving her love for print behind and moving on to new endeavors working on branding projects.
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INTRODU CTION
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The impact of Cipe Pineles in the publishing industry and the modern advancement of women in the workplace is monumental. To say her involvement in the development of editorial design was great would be an understatement- many people and their work can be exceptional at what they do, but the fact of the matter is that it has all been done before. What Pineles has accomplished surpasses the bar most designers have set for greatness- she has created a tectonic shift for not just the people in her discipline, but for women across the board as well. Her achievements in the industry rank her with other leaders of the publication industry throughout time, but when conducting a basic Wikipedia search, the amount of content on her is not even enough to make the page scroll. However, when looking for her male colleagues and peers, we see a substantial amount of information regarding their life and work. This puts into context the struggles that came with being a female creative at the time. It takes a lot to contribute as much as Pineles has, all while juggling the responsibilities that made her as important as she is today:
a designer, a teacher, a mother and above all-
A pioneer.
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Portrait of a young Cipe Pineles, c. 1918, probably in Poland
the
Young Years
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Portrait of Cipe as a student at Pratt.
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SUCH EMINENCE AS HERS IS DEEPLY ROOTED IN HUMBLE BEGINNINGS. Born Ciporah Pineles June 23, 1908 in Vienna, Austria, Pineles lived a young life with Jewish upbringing in Poland with four other siblingstwo sisters and two brothers all under the care of Hillel and Bertha Eichenholtz Pineles. The documentation of her childhood specifically is sparse, but what can be deduced about living in Poland during the first two decades of the of the 21st century was that it was not easy for most of the Polish population- particularly in the Jewish sector as well. Yet even after the Bolshevik raid of 1920, the Pineles family managed to withstand the blow and returned to Vienna shortly after the invasion. This prompted the Pineles family to set their sights to emigrate to the United States. The Pineles’ slowly layered their way into the US, starting with the two brothers Sam and Jack Pineles who took up jobs on a transatlantic liner. In preparation for becoming part of American society, Cipe and Debora her younger sister, learned English by memorizing Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol until they finally came to the states in 1923.
On board of the SS Berengaria, the Pineles’ arrived at Ellis island and moved into an apartment in Brooklyn. Pineles and her younger sister Debora then enrolled at Bay Ridge High School. After her experience with pursuing art, she went on to attend the Pratt Institute of Art, a private, non-profit institution renowned for its architecture, interior and industrial design. While there, she studied in illustration and specialized in watercolor technique with botanical and culinary subjects as her primary focus. During her time at Pratt, Pineles worked as an instructor as a watercolor painter at the Newark Public School of Fine Arts. During her time at the Pratt Instiute, Pineles worked at Green Mansions, a resort and summer camp for adults. It was also particularly known for its flavor of leftism and intellectualism and offered a variety of outdoor activities and culture for its visitors. Starting out as a waitress, Pineles eventually began working for the resort on a freelance basis by creating promotional and branding
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materials. Looking at the Green Mansions materials collectively, Cipe’s taste for botanical watercolor illustrations is fairly apparent. By the time she reached graduation, Pineles was awarded the prestigious Louis Comfort Tiffany foundation fellowship and continued painting for another year. However, once she left the life as a student and delved into the job market, the harsh reality of the struggles that came with being a female in the midst of an economy slowly heading towards one of the most significant downfalls of all time became clear. Looking for work at advertising agencies, Pineles remembers
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“[dropping] off my portfolio at various advertising agencies. But the people who liked my work had assumed by my name that I was a man! When they finally met me, they were disappointed, and I left the interview without a chance for a job.” (Scotford, 27) But with her persistence and strong sense of drive, Pineles landed a position at Contempora Ltd., an association specializing in a wide variety of disciplines from architecture to textile designs. While there, Cipe handled promotional materials, patterns for fashion use and store displays, as well as promotional materials. It would be this job that propels she and her success forward.
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at CONDE NAST
Cipe at her workspace while at Conde Nast during the late 30’s or early 40’s. Image taken by Thomas Golden.
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While attending one of the many work parties Contempora held, Pineles had the chance to meet the husband of one of her coworkers, Condé Nast, the leader of the monumental Condé Nast Publications. Struck by her wit and charm, Nast subsequently offered her a position at his offices under the supervision of Mohammed Fehmy Agha. This job offer led to the most influential period of Pineles’ editorial career as she became Agha’s protégé while working on publications such as Vogue, House & Garden and Vanity Fair. Under Agha’s tutelage, Pineles gained a substantial amount of knowledge pertaining to editorial design and art direction. Agha’s approach to design was a more European modernist take in comparison to most other American magazines at the time- he utilized more serifs and kept things minimal by eliminating decorative dingbats and borders in order to open up more margin and gutter space. But most importantly, he was primarily responsible for synthesizing the elements of type and image in his editorial designs, an important aspect that was heavily influential to Pineles for her entire career. She worked as his assistant, learning the odds and ends of what it takes to be an art director and oversee the creative decisions that make up a magazine. In addition, she served as a talent scout for photographers and other new talent to
bring to Nast publications. During her five years working under Agha, Cipe proved to be a valuable asset at the office and earned more responsibilities and opportunities to establish herself as a designer and a director by working on more editorial spreads and features. In 1938, Pineles was sent to London by the editors of Vogue to work on Vogue London’s coronation issue. It was from there where she embarked on a two year trip across Europe and Russia with an old school friend, Rose Warren, taking somewhat of a hiatus before returning to the states. Upon returning back to the US, she continued working under Agha for another two years until she moved on to working at the art department at a brand new magazine: Glamour. Two years later, she was appointed the art director of the magazine, making this not only the first art director job she had, but also the first time a woman had claimed a position this significant at a major publication.
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“[Agha] spent a lot of time talking with his creative people, going over ideas for them to develop. We talked about problems related to type: pictures and selection of pictures as satisfying an editorial concept or not... I would try a solution two or three times.
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ALL THOSE TRIALS WERE THE LUXURY OF THE JOB.”
While at Nast, Pineles utilized everything she learned as an assistant and a talent scout once she became art director at Glamour. The magazine commonly used brush scripts and stencil lettering in combination with Bondoni typefaces- a less serious look to magazine that was meant to aim towards “the working girl.” During her time as Glamour’s art director, changes mad to the designs were slow yet significant. As time passed, the magazine gained sophistication and more unique characteristics to by more dimension being brought to the layouts through drastic scale in type and image and through the introduction of lighter weights to headlines. As for the magazine’s photography, Pineles brought references to art and design having sets be located in art galleries and museums.
Pineles’ depiction of a regular day in Agha’s office at Vogue. Agha is hidden by all of the female editors and hats and Pineles is by the window at the far right
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January 1946 cover of Overseas Woman front and back covers, illustrated by Pineles and Roy Doty.
It was in 1945 when she flew out to Paris to join her husband William Golden on a project called Overseas Woman, a magazine meant for women at war which started that April. Pineles and her husband worked to improve the look and feel of the magazine; the overall composition was somewhat unruly with its cartoonish illustrations, superfluous frames and decorations and unorganized layouts. And though there were only four issues of Overseas Woman, the pair brought about significant change by toning down the page layouts in order to translate a new sense of sophistication to it. Cipe looked at this hiatus as a time to take a break from her usual schedule back at the offices at Glamour, calling it Les Jours Dores or “The Golden Days.”
Pineles browsing and purchasing botanical prints while at a Parisian market with her husband.
Pineles returned home from France in 1946 and endured a series of hardships in both the office and at home. Her time at the Glamour offices was brief as Agha had been let go and replaced with a director she found very difficult to work with. This occurrence, along with other personal matters at the time, ultimately led to her departure from Glamour. But the change had been bittersweet as she found a new opportunity with Helen Valentine on a new publication that would be Cipe’s next monumental endeavor.
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The magazine was Seventeen, a new development shaped by Valentine’s radical attitude of addressing young women in publications. She complained that “[Teen girls were] treated as swooning, bobby soxers. I think they’re young adults and should be treated as such.” (Scotford, 55) Valentine then assembled her team with Pineles as her art director and Estelle Ellis, a pioneer of statistical research for the purpose of readership, who all eventually drove the magazine to become wildly successful, despite its expectations due to its unorthodox voice and audience.
(From left to right at table) Eleanor Hillbrand, Helen Valentine, Estelle Ellis and Cipe Pineles at the Seventeen fifth anniversary luncheon.
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Pineles contributed to the magazine’s visual direction by applying everything she learned as both Agha’s protege and from her first art director job at Glamour. By utilizing the connections she made in her previous years, she collaborated with a variety of photographers and illustrators that introduced fine and modern art to its young readers. This approach magnified the magazine’s uncondescending attitude towards its young readers and opened them up to a world of creativity and imagination in its pages. She brought the sophistication of the magazine even further by establishing a typographic system to each section of its issues- fiction segments which were more focused on the writing component had a “quieter” layout to them by subtler type and imagery. There was more freedom and variety with the fashion spreads where Cipe allowed for visually-striking photos and larger, more playful headlines. And with Seventeen taking on a new theme with each issue, Pineles
synthesized the content with form just as she learned from her early days working under Agha. Ultimately, the magazine received numerous awards and by the end of her time as art director at Seventeen, Pineles had been awarded an Art Director’s Club Gold Medal and became the first woman to be inducted into the ADC. As Valentine moved on to Charm magazine, she brought her colleagues, Ellis and Pineles to join her in reinventing the magazine. The power trio brought the same amount of assertion as to how Charm should address its readers just as they did while at Seventeen. As “the magazine for women who work,” this was also a more radical concept for a mass-produced publication. The lives of women were changing as the 20th century moved on and Charm acknowledged that women were burdened with two jobs- one in the workplace and one at home and Pineles referred to it as “the first feminist magazine.”
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Her visual approach was more focused on photography than anything else to complement the various profiles of working women in its content and gave a better sense of working women’s lives and their varying environments across the nation. And just as how the social norm changed over time (which gave Charm its significance and success) the methods and process that went into developing the magazine evolved as well. Charm underwent a series of changes from serif to sans serif cover headlines to integrating a more mathematical grid into its layout. And though Pineles’ time at Charm was productive and successful, the fall of 1959 brought on much demise to both her work and home lives.
Charm had lost its message due a change in direction from a new editor-in-chief and eventually folded. Even worse so, Pineles lost her beloved husband William Golden to a sudden heart attack at the age of 48.
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