Graphic design gets the Taschen treatment: a huge book (380 millimetres deep) with 482 pages; 2500 images; beautifully designed and printed; in depth coverage; a second edition to bring it all up to date. The large page size certainly helps, there are several images (mostly posters) 330 millimetres deep.
The seven decades all kick off with a brief introduction spread, in three languages, followed by a time-line spread which has an intriguing collection of historical detail and lots of small images. For example, in 1936 Boulder Dam was completed in Nevada and The Phantom makes his first appearance in newspapers. The remaining pages of the thirties have a wide range of graphic material like posters, magazine and brochure covers, logos, book jackets, record covers, packaging and spreads devoted to designers Jean Carlu, Max Bill, Cassandre, McKnight Kauffer, Herbert Matter, Takashi Kono, Antonio Boggeri, Hisui Sugiura, Herbert Bayer, Lester Beall and others. These designer pages have several examples of their work and it shows the strength of the book's editorial because it's not just American or European designers who are included.
The pages covering 1890 to 1920 throw up some wonderful work from artists like Mucha, the Beggarstaff brothers, Talwin Morris, Ludwig Hohlwein, Lucian Bernhard, Theo van Doesburg. Graphic posters from northern Europe during this period have some interesting typography suggesting a lot of it was hand-lettered to get the close letter spacing. Throughout the book there are plenty of spreads (over sixty) that look at individual subjects like AEG (1907) Russian film posters (1927) Bauhaus (1928) Second world war poster (1940) Swiss typepography (1959).
I thought the selection of material particularly impressive and considering the large number of images there is nothing that would make me say "Why is that included", everything shows interesting graphic problem solving by several hundred designers and artists. Also evident is the slow change, over the decades, from a graphic pictorial style to an acceptance of abstraction and frequently just a typographic solution. Every piece has a date, designer and subject and the back pages have a bibliography and index of three pages each.
I assume the second book will be just as stunning and together they'll offer a remarkable look at the best of commercial graphics from past time.
No comments:
Post a Comment