Fontent

FºNTENT vol. 1 | June 15’

business of graphic arts editorial

The New York School Movement Effects of Modernism in the Graphic Arts A retrospect of the 1959 “Think Small” Ad

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A representation of the message makes the ordinary into extraordinary —Paul Rand

CºNTENT

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New York School Timeline Editor’s Overview —Methodology

Influences

Techniques

Concept of Simultaneity

Typographic Expressionism

Pictographs —Medium

Publication—Editorial Revolution

Advertising—Consumerism

Corporate Identity —Designers

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Paul Rand

Bradbury Thompson

Saul Bass

Herb Lubalin

Doyle, Dane & Bernbach Conclusion

Think Small : A Retrospect

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Advertising isn’t a science.

It’s persuasion.

And persuasion is an art.

—William Bernbach

TIMELINE New York School : Term applied to New York based designers who from the 1940’s onwards developed a distinctly American graphic language, although absorbing the formal vocabulary of European modernism they increasingly reflected the competitive values, cultural and ethnic diversity of the United States of America.

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1940—First issue of Print Magazine 1941—Westvaco Inspirations by Bradbury Thompson 1946—Thoughts on Design by Paul Rand 1949—Doyle Dane Bernbach was founded, Cipe Pineles contributes to editorial Revolution 1950—Joseph Albers and Alvin Eisenmann become directors of Art School at Yale University 1950—Saul Bass’s The Man with the Golden Arm poster revolutionizes graphic design for the film industry.

1953—Gene Federico Woman’s Day advertisement revamps typographic expressionism 1956—IBM logo by Paul Rand, reforms the corporate identity movement 1957—Brownjohn, Chermayeff & Geismar is founded 1959—Communication Arts publication is established in San Francisco | Think Small Volkswagen Ad 1960—Chermayeff & Geismar Associates moves to forefront of the corporate identity movement 1968—Paul Rand’s A.I.G.A. poster design evokes the concept of simultaneity 1970—International Typography Corporation [ ITC ] is founded by Aaron Burns, Herb Lubalin, and Edward Rondthaler

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EDITOR S OVERVIEW

Written by Ossiris Avalos—Chief Editor

In the decades immediately following WWII, the United States witnessed an economic expansion that paralleled the dramatic increase in its status on the world’s stage. With its military triumphant, its industries intact, its cities spared from bombardment, the country was ideally situated to experience an era of prosperity.

The 40’s, 50’s and 60’s would prove to be a boom time for American industries as well as for the graphic designers that served them. The U.S. was a site for the exploration of geometric styles, however, with a few notable exceptions; the majority of American designers never became fanatical in their adoption of the international style of the Swiss, which was leading the industry worldwide. Instead the Americans remained open to an eclectic range of influences.

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New York School : The First Generation 1965 Posters by Louis Danziger

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The first wave of modern design in America and European Avant-garde was imported by talented immigrants seeking to escape the political climate of totalitarianism. The 1940’s saw steps towards an original American approach to modernist design. While borrowing freely from the work of European designers, Americans added new forms and concepts. European design was often theoretical and highly structured; American design was pragmatic, intuitive, and less formal in its approach to organizing space. Just as Paris had been receptive to new ideas and images during the late 19th century and early 20th century, New York City assumed that role after WWII, and this climate attracted individuals of great talent and empowered them to realize their potential.

New York became the epicenter of the mid 1900’s, particularly in the art world. The graphic designer now had a new direction that steered far from the antiwar poster and towards the art of communications and advertising. Semiotics became imperative in the modern designer’s work.

Television revolutionized the audiences; people were now use to seeing images at a faster pace, and hierarchy departed from the center and moved outwards towards the edges of the surface. To work around this new form of attention, designers placed an emphasis on pictographs, type as an image, unconventional playfulness and simplicity.

New York also lead the way for the beginning of corporate design and innovations in information design. With roots in the progressive typography of Jan Tschichold’s work from the 20’s and 30’s, information design placed emphasis on the functional and legible role of graphic design through typography, symbols, maps and photography. It synthesized function and form.

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The German designer Jan Tschichold converted to Modernist design principles in 1923 after visiting the first Weimar Bauhaus exhibition. “The Neue Typographie� (1928) book was a manifesto of modern design, in which he condemned all typefaces but sans-serif (called Grotesque in Germany). He also favored non-centered design (on title pages), and codified many other Modernist design rules.

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METHOD OLOGY: Influences— A through knowledge of the modern movement, particularly the works of Klee, Kandinsky, and the cubists, led the influential American graphic designers to the understanding that freely invented shapes could have a self-contained life, both symbolically and expressive, as a visual forms— communications tool.

The ability to manipulate visual form (shape, color, space, line, value) and skillful analysis of communications content, reducing it to a symbolic essence without making it sterile or dull, allowed American designers to become globally influential.

Simplicity implied a formal element of the International Style and was the use of geometric shapes. In contrast to this, the art movement of Surrealism brought, in the 1940s, a new quality of form to Modernism.

The shape was biomorphic and organic.

To engage the audience successfully and communicate memorably, the designer needed to alter and juxtapose signs and symbols. Novelty in technique and originality of concept were much prized. Designers sought to solve communication problems as well as express their personal views and styles.

Top : “On White” (1928). Paul Klee Middle : “Still life with Chair Canning” (1912). Pablo Picasso Bottom: “Red Balloon” (1922). Wassily Kandinsky

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Paul Rand design cover for Direction Magazine, Summer 1944

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Technique— Modernism has been generally recognized by its simplicity, unbroken lines, the application of pure colors, contrasts in light and shadow and an honesty of materials. In the new language of graphic design, these radical characteristics such as process of values, typography formal visual values, imagery and organization have defined Modernism. Form and content entailed the way space was interpreted (the way in which an image is placed on a sheet of paper), the rest were just variables. The designer’s responsibilities were to interpret, ad, subtract, juxtapose, alter, adjust, associate, intensify and clarify.

The process of values rejected traditional forms and decorative elements.

It sought a solution that was simple and direct. Designers were concerned with the process of work and the use of systematic methods rather that intuitive ones. They were rational and had objective approaches to the solving of a graphic problems. Because organization was crucial a grid or a clearly delineated page was applied and used. This grid became useful when dealing with matters of visual hierarchy and harmony.

In typography the use of san–serif typefaces was dominant. Other characteristics were the demonstration of contrast in typographic material and the base work on pragmatic issues of printing, paper sizes, and standardization. Type was meant to be read, but in graphic design it was meant to be seen. The NYS movement tested the boundaries of readability and legibility based on their principles of concept and hierarchy.

The designers of the New York School understood the value of ordinary, universally understood signs, and symbols as tools for translating ideas into visual communications. To engage the audience successfully and communicate memorably, designers acknowledged the need to alter and juxtapose signs and symbol. A reinterpretation of the message was sometimes necessary to make the ordinary into extraordinary. Sensual vital contrast marked much of the work.

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Concept of Simultaneity— Dual meaning is what makes such images memorable. They amuse as they inform; they persuade as they entertain. A designer was to discover a means of communication between themselves and the spectator. The problem is not simple; its very complexity virtually dictated the solution—that is, the discovery of an image universally comprehensible, one that translates abstract ideas into concrete forms. The formula for originality was the integration of symbols as a visual entity with all other elements, which pointed to a problem performing a specific function, that was consistent with its form. If this formula failed the designer was to start from the top until a solution of superior quality was produced.

When integrating form and content cooperation was most possible when expression was not forced, where in both a certain freedom was left to the imagination. Suggestion becomes greater than statement. The visual statement that sought to express the essence of an idea, and that was based on function, fantasy, and analytical judgment aimed at being unique and memorable. Mnemonics were a strategy often used which entailed rebus, repetition and humor with the intent of creating a receptive frame of mind towards an idea or a product.

Occasionally, purely nonrepresentational images functioned even more effectively without the support of explanatory illustrations—the spectator was thus able to see more than was actually portrayed. Paul Rand’s poster for the American Institute of Graphic Arts (A.I.G.A) became an entertaining puzzle and the futuristic concept of simultaneity was evoked.

He played red against green, organic shape against geometric type, photographic tone against flat color, cut or torn edges against sharp forms, and the textural pattern of type against white. In addition, Rand took risks by exploring unproven ideas.

Paul Rand Poster for IBM Golden Circle announcement. 1981

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Typographic Expressionism— A playful direction taken by New York designers in the 50’s and 60’s involved figurative typography. This took many forms—letterforms became objects; objects became letterforms. Another approach to figurative typography used the visual properties of the words themselves or their organization in the space, to express an idea. Typography was something scratched, torn, bent or vibrated to express a concept or introduce the unexpected to the printed page.

Another typographic trend that began slowly in the 1950’s was a reexamination of 19th century decorative and novelty typefaces that had been rejected for many decades under the influence of the modern movement. Photo-typography was also reintroduced during the New York School movement. This technique was the setting of type by exposing negatives of alphabet characters to photographic paper. This technique first emerged in 1893. Although photo-typography has the potential to replace the rigid quality of metal type with a dynamic new flexibility, for over two decades it was used only as an alternative method of setting type, with some production advantages and some disadvantages. A major advantage of photo-type was a radical reduction in the cost of introducing new type styles. The large scale expansion of photo-type during the 60’s was accompanied by new designs and reissues of old designs.

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Vogue cover May 1941

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Left: Picasso Exhibition Announcement 1957, by George Tscherney.

Client: Albert Landry Galleries.

Right: Robert Brownjohn, Poster for New York Peace Campaign, 1969

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Pictographs— Pictographs or pictograms are pictorial signs that depict a simplified representation of a particular object or activity. Pictographs became essential in corporate identity, for they manifested as logos, word-marks and trademarks. While corporate identity comprises the overall design of packaging, stationery, architecture, and printed collateral, designers have always seen the logo as the heart of the enterprise. A logo needs to distill the identity of a corporation while at the same time remaining flexible in its different applications.

They became animate, inanimate, organic, and geometric. They are letters, monograms, colors, and objects. Ideally they did not illustrate, they indicated; not to represent but suggest, and were stated with brevity and wit. The creation of logos became a science. How far out of focus can an image be and still be recognized? A trademark which was subject to an infinite number of uses, abuses and variations, whether for competitive purposes or for reasons of “self-expression�, could not survive unless it was designed with utmost simplicity and restraint.

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Moma Publication. Cover, 1949

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ME TH OD

Corporate Identity

By the late 1940’s, geometric abstraction had gained cachet because of the way it was suppressed by Hitler and Stalin, who had both embraced representational styles for their propaganda campaigns. To Americans, the realistic illustrations that had been the bedrock of the advertising industry began to look obsolete and also seemed somehow too close to the idealized fantasies promoted by fascist governments during the war.

Because the international style had been so thoroughly depoliticized by its Swiss practitioners, it ironically became the style of choice for large companies and corporations that wanted to promote their products universally, without the specter of nationalism.

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For many scholars, the corporate identity logos that were devised starting the 1950’s represented the apotheosis of the International Style.

Multinational corporations reinvented the “universal” ideology of Utopian Communism as expressed by geometric abstraction in order to convey the authority and stability of dominant capitalist enterprises. This period witnessed the golden age of the corporate logo, when designers such as Paul Rand created some of the most familiar trademarks of the century. This identity movement demonstrated the American reconfiguration of avant-garde art.

A firm that claimed a large role in the booming corporate identity movement of the 1960’s, Brownjohn, Chermayeff & Geismar, was first established in New York in 1957. Building on the reputation established by its work for Chase Manhattan Bank of 1959, the renamed firm of Chermayeff & Geismar took on a number of high-profile clients in the 1960’s and beyond.

Logo marks by Brownjohn Chermayeff Geismar & Associates

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Advertising

By the late 40’s and early 50’s, an increasing consciousness about graphic design and designers was evident because Modernism became more visible on the creative scene. Design became a more dominant force in the corporations and in the advertising business. An important debate occurred between typographic purists and those who believed in excitement and experimentation. The most effective examples of design in the 1950’s were able to mediate these differences, excite their readers and be legible.

In advertisements, copy was shorter, headlines more brief, and text functioned to support the illustration. Photography, both color and blackand-white, was the dominant medium of advertising. Towards the end of the 1950’s at a New York Art Director’s Club conference, keynote speakers stated that designers were not moving away from being just layout men to assuming creative responsibility for the whole job. Many designers opened their own businesses; companies specializing just in graphic design. In corporations, the title “graphic designer” finally meant something. Those who practiced this work could have a sense of formal visual values, understand production and technical information, marketing and communication approaches, budgets, and be able to talk knowledgeably with businessmen and executives. The graphic designers were now welcomed at the conference table, in the boardroom, with marketing people, accountants, copywriters, behaviorists and company presidents. They had moved from the bullpen to the front office.

Volkswagen ad by Doyle Dane Bernbach, 1969

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Right : George Lois. Print ad for Coldene, 1961 Left : George Brownjohn, Ivan Chermayeff and Tom Geismar

Marketing research began in the 1950’s and became a major control on the process of creative advertising. This meant that advertising had to be measured and that new ideas and business decisions must be based on solid statistical data. This approach led to a further divide between the traditional creators of advertising and the more creative, conceptual wing of the business.

Aloof from the dichotomy, the Container Corporation of America continued its innovative advertising campaign “Great Ideas of Western Man” through the early 1950’s. This program bridged the world of art and design and proved the value of an “extendable” design that is so well-conceived that it can endure indefinitely. The art and copy team worked closely together to create synergetic visual-verbal integration.

Ads featured entertaining puns, and world play, an integration of photography, drawing and logo. The images visually reinforced the headline.

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Editorial Revolution

During the 1940’s, only a few American magazines were well designed; Fortune, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. Cipe Pineles, after her position as an assistant at Vogue, made a remarkable contribution to editorial design during the 40’s and 50’s. First she was an art director at Glamour and then at Seventeen, Charm and Mademoiselle. Pineles often commissioned illustrators and painters, resulting in editorial pages that broke with conventional imagery. Pineles became the first woman admitted to membership in the New York Director’s Club, breaking the stronghold of the male-dominated professional design societies.

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Over the course of the 1950’s a revolution in editorial design occurred, spurred in part by the educational design classes that were offered. The seeds for an expansive, design-oriented period of editorial graphics were sown into these classes. Students learned to examine each problem thoroughly, develop a solution from the resulting understanding, and then search for a brilliant visual presentation. The impact on this generation of editorial designers and photographers who came into their own during the 1950’s was phenomenal, and it helped editorial design experience one of its greatest eras. One of the pioneer teachers of this industry was Alexey Brodovitch.

Many predicted the death of the magazine as a communications form during the 1960’s; however, a new smaller-format breed of periodicals emerged and thrived by addressing the interests of specialized audiences. Advertisers who wished to reach these audiences bought space.

The new editorial climate, with more emphasis on content, longer text and less opportunity for lavish visual treatment, demanded a new approach for editorial design. Layout became more controlled, and the use of standard typographic format and grid became the norm.

Right Side : Esquire cover, 1965. George Lois Vogue cover, 1950. Erwin Blumenthal Esquire cover, 1964 George Lois Left Side : Esquire cover, 1968. George Lois Esquire cover, 1960. Henry Wolf Seventeen cover, 1949. Cipe Pineles

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Harper’s Bazaar cover, 1959. Henry Wolf

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DES IGN ERS

PAUL RAND

The graphic designer whose name became equated with corporate identity and the International Style in the U.S. was Paul Rand. This New York designer, worked through the 1940’s at the Weintraub Advertising Agency, designing outstanding campaigns. His covers for Direction magazine afforded the opportunity to explore new approaches in form and content interpretation. These covers showed Rand’s unique understanding of perpetual values, his need to explore symbols and imagery widely and his confident, creative curiosity, which was an important aspect of his approach throughout his career.

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In 1949, the Museum of Modern Art produced an exhibition accompanied by a catalog designed by Rand, called Modern Art in Your Life. In an attempt to contest the idea that abstraction was politically radical and visually obtuse, MoMA sought to redefine modern art as something respectable and safe. One of the ways in which the museum pursued to show that abstract art played a role in mainstream culture was by convincing the American public that abstract art played an important role in mass culture. Along these lines, juxtaposition in the catalog matched abstract fine art with commercial works. This type of comparison was also used to bestow the cachet of a Pablo Picasso or a Joan Miró on the design arts. This cover of the catalog itself demonstrated this strategy, as Rand gestured towards a number of different abstract styles in creating his design. While orthogonals dictate the composition, the smeared areas of color and “faux childlike” drawing of objects contest the ridged structure of the grid. The quirky symbolism of the dinner setting with the plate replaced by an artist’s palette show how well Rand understood the importance of making designs that translated ideas into visual terms, rather than simply decorating a surface. His cover conveys the message that abstract art is as friendly as a meal at home.

Rand’s new focus on corporate logos began with his work as a consultant for IBM. Executives of the company became aware that their sprawling business lacked a consistent style, and decided to pay more attention to its visual identity.

Right: Westinghouse print ad, 1963 Modern Art USA , publication cover, 1956 MoMA publication, Portrait of Picasso, 1957

Paul Rand (1914–1996)

In designing the logo for IBM, Rand used only typography, and relied on a condensed Benton Bold that had a slight Art Deco flair. He also based the new type on 19th century “Egyptian” letters, which featured heavy slab serifs and a medium grotesque face. Rand reconfigured the original logo, adding an outline version in two weights. The resulting pictogram was similar to but much crisper-looking than the older one, with more elegantly proportioned lettering.

Rand’s work for IBM led to several subsequent high profile commissions, including those for Westinghouse, ABC, CBS and UPS. Rand’s use of Universal for ABC’s logo represents perhaps the best example of this unexpected culmination of the International Style in the service of corporate design. Herb Bayer’s typeface was named Universal for a reason: his beliefs that simplified geometric forms could serve as the visual basis for a new style that would unite all people in a Utopian future.

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Right: Directions cover, 1940 Christmas during wartime. The red dots are symbolically ambiguous, becoming holiday decorations; given the christmas gift card— or blood drops; given the barbwire.

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Aspen Design Conference, 1982 The Graphic Art of Paul Rand, 1957 Directions cover, 1939

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Simplicity implies not only an aesthetic ideal, but a meaningful idea, either

of form or content, that can be easily recalled —Paul Rand

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BRADBURY THOMPSON

Bradbury Thompson was a contemporary of Rand but had a very different background and visual sensibility, He began working at West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company (Westvaco), designing and editing its publication “Westvaco Inspirations for Printers”. Thomson has a great creative freedom in this work and was able to develop a style which reflected his great love for graphic and experimental typography.

Thompson used flat, transparent, overlapping process of color, illustrations from antique encyclopedias and very expressive page spreads on topical themes. He opened an issue called “Enlarging upon Printing”, where he would enlarge elements of a page, such as halftone dots, and explore the printed effects. After WWII he became an art director for several magazines.

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SAUL BASS

In California the New Yorker Saul Bass established a business which, in time, took on a very West Coast character. Bass, working the advertising business until 1946, was transferred by Buchanan & Co. to its Los Angeles office. In 1952, he opened his own firm, Saul Bass Associates.

Known for his versatility, Bass’ posters included creating films along with film titles, designing advertising, posters, packaging, print and environmental design.

The Man with a Golden Arm dealt with the gritty, urban theme of drug addiction. Bass’s poster was composed of a geometric grid made up of flat rectangular planes of bold color. The basic grid of the image is not a fixed grid structure, as the slightly irregular shapes roam and seem to wobble within the frame; this device created a slight kinetic force that is not found in Swiss style compositions. It is apparent that many American designers were impressed by the new raw energy of pulp fiction covers, and one can sense that Bass did not want to constrain his images with the grid. The most striking element in the poster is a man’s jagged arm, which dangles in the center of the image. In a contemporary scene, the arm stands as the symbol of the protagonist’s heroin addiction.

(Right) Pages from Westvaco Inspirations 1958. A multiple exposure photograph of a saxophone player is reversed from black circle on the left and overprinted in primary colors on the right.

(Left) Pages from Westvaco Inspirations 1951. This spirited collage explores such possibilities as enlarging halftone dots.

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Bass’s greatest gift was the ability to create a single strong motif that would stick in the viewer’s mind and serve to summarize a whole complex of ideas and feelings. Previously, scene titles had been ignored by the audience, and were often not even projected on to the screen. But because Bass’s jagged arm was so successful at summarizing the themes of drug addiction and degradation that drove the story, it became the essential element of this film.

In 1958, Bass began working with the celebrated director of thrillers, Alfred Hitchcock, for Vertigo. Bass designed a poster that shows a man and a woman’s silhouette captured in a spiraling vortex. The black lettering, which looks as if it were drawn with a trembling hand, is representative of the anxious, agitated state of mind of the protagonist in the film, who faces his fear of heights as well as an unnerving set of circumstances that may be rooted in his psychological affliction. The field of red in the background aggressively jumps out at the viewer, creating a strong contrast with the energy of the vortex that seems to draw the viewer into the poster. In contrast to Bass’s spare style, most posters of the day were cluttered with a mélange of text and image. Both in introducing a high aesthetic standard and in signing his posters, Bass changed the common practices in Hollywood , as the effect of good design on a film’s success became apparent.

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(Right) Saul Bass.

“Anatomy of Murder” 1959, movie poster “The Man with the Golden Arm” 1955 title sequence & movie poster

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HERB LUBALIN Herb Lubalin a total generalist whose achievements including advertising and editorial design, trademarks, typeface design, posters, and packaging, was hailed as the typographic genius of his time. Major thrusts of American graphic design—including the visual/verbal concept orientation of Doyle Dane Bernbach and the trends towards figurative and more structured typography—came together in Lubalin’s work. Space and surface became his primary visual considerations. He abandoned traditional typographic rules and practice and looked at alphabet characters as both visual form and message communication.

Discontented with the ridged limitations of metal type in the 50’s, Lubalin would cut apart his type proofs with a razor blade and reassemble them. In his hands, type was compressed until letter joined into ligatures, and enlarged to unexpected sizes; letterforms were joined, overlapped, and enlarged; capital O’s became receptacles for images.

Words and letters could become images; an image could become a word or a letter. This typographic play engages the reader while requiring their participation.

Lubalin practiced design not as an art-form or craft created in a vacuum but as a means of giving visual form to a concept or a message. In his most innovative work, concept and visual form are yoked into a oneness called typogram, meaning a brief, visual typographic poem. Lubalin’s wit and strong message orientation enabled him to transform words into ideographic typograms about the subject.

(Right) Vertigo, 1958. Movie Poster (Left) Typograms by Herb Lubalin 1956-1957

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Avant Garde magazine masthead Lets Talk about Type. Press release poster, 1968 Print Ad for Sudler and Hennessey, 1965 Herb Lubalin 1919–1981

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DOYLE DANE BERNBACH

This advertising agency took the exclamation mark out of advertising and made it talk intelligently to consumers. The company’s first client was a budget department store badly in need of a fresh image. In contrast to the crowded space and multiple messages of much advertising of the period, Doyle Dane Bernbach used white space effectively to focus on the reader’s attention toward the headline and image on crowded newspaper pages.

For each campaign they developed a strategy surrounding important advantages, distinguishing characteristics, or superior features of the product. In order to break through to consumers bombarded by perpetual commercial messages, the agency sought an imaginative package for this information. Its major contribution was combining words and images in a new way.

Traditionally a copywriter’s headline and body copy were sent to the art director, who made them a layout. In the Doyle Dane Bernbach approach, a synergistic relationship between visual and verbal components was established. Now this advertising agency removed the boundaries separating verbal and visual communications and evolved visual/ verbal syntax: word and image fused into a conceptual expression of an idea so that they became completely, interdependent.

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In the Volkswagen campaign, “strange little cars with beetle shapes” were marketed to a public used to luxury and high horsepower as status symbols. The recognition value of Volkswagen advertising was demonstrated by an ad appearing immediately after the lunar landing, which gained impact from its continuity with earlier ads, “it ugly but it will get you there” was the headline. This approach to advertising led to a new working relationship, as writers and art directors worked as “creative teams”. Because concept was dominant, the design of many Doyle Dane Bernbach advertisements was reduced to the basic elements necessary to convey the message; a large, arresting visual image, a concise headline with bold weight, and body copy that stakes its claim with factual and often entertaining writing instead of puffery and meaningless superlatives. Often the visual organization was simple and symmetrical, for design arrangements were not allowed to distract from the straightforward presentation of an idea. Advertising stereotypes were replaced by real people from America’s pluralistic society.

Doyle Dane Bernbach became a training ground for what was eventually called “the new advertising”. Many writers and art directors who developed there participated in spin-off agencies as the boutique agency, a small shop with emphasis on creativity rather than a on full marketing services, challenged the dominance of the monolithic multi-million dollar agencies during the flowering of advertising creativity in the 1960’s.

Years later Doyle Dane Bernbach evolved into a more traditional large advertising agency due to its pioneering success.

Ned Doyle, Mac Dane and William Bernbach, 1986 Volkswagen 1960’s print ads.

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CONCLUSION The decade of the 1950’s and 1960’ was the golden age of Modernism in American graphic design. Both critics and historians suggest that Modernism ended with the emergence of a post-Modernist style in the mid 1970’s. But art movements do no break off clean; they fray, stretch and come undone, and some strands never part. The reflexes of Modernism’s work allows certain parts to still exist over time but they no longer seem to function as a live organic whole. The Modern achievement will continue to affect culture for decades to come, because it was so large, so imposing, and so irrefutably convincing.

Without knowledge of this unique time in American graphic design, it is impossible to understand fully what happened, to have a context for what is occurring now or to look ahead with confidence.

The Cover : In a retrovenacular way the cover’s illustration is a reference to the Think Small Volkswagen ad. The hierarchical intent is to shift the view from masthead to illustration and thus reinterate the content of the issue with the article titles. It is both an homage to classic advertising and the New York School movement.

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THINKSMALL —A RETROSPECT

In 1960 Volkswagen hired Doyle Dane Bernbach ad agency to create a campaign that would introduce the Beetle to the U.S. market. The agency created an advertising campaign that is still considered the best advertising campaign of the twentieth century by Ad Age (July 15th, 2010), and is top of the 100 campaigns of all time. This campaign did more that just boost sales, it built a lifetime of brand loyalty. The work of the ad agency changed the very nature of advertising, from the way it’s created to what you see as a consumer today. The Think Small ad features a bare background, with only the VW beetle in a view to shift the reader’s focus on the vehicle immediately. The text and the fine print that appeared at the bottom of the page listed the advantages of owning a small car; the conversational, self-deprecating style of the copy was an influential engineered feature. This perspective embraced the Beetle’s form, which was smaller than most of the cars being sold at the time. With simplicity in mind, this unique focus in an automobile advertisement brought wide attention to the Beetle and contradicted the traditional association of car luxury.

Sometimes achieving big things requires the ability to think small. This simple concept was the driving force that propelled the Volkswagen Beetle to become an avatar for American-style freedom, a household brand, and a global icon. The VW bug ads inspired the ad men of Madison Avenue, beguiled Woodstock Nation, and has recently been re-imagined for the hipster generation. Think Small is a remarkable story of an automobile and an idea all packaged into one simple black and white print. This artwork revolutionized the industry and emerged the Beetle into the light of a new era as a symbol of individuality and personal mobility—a triumph not of the will but of the imagination and creativity of the agency.