Those greatest graphic years

A timely and lavishly illustrated book that fills a gap in American graphic design history. The period is mid-century and the authors explore the work of sixty-three designers whose work reflected the ideals of European modernism. This was based on various creative movements but in particular the Bauhaus, from the thirties and Swiss style in the fifties.

The six page illustrated introduction provides a succinct overview with some interesting observations about typography: Akzidenz Grotesk and Helvetica versus the rest. This is followed by a chapter (ninety-four pages) on eighteen emigres, designers who were born and trained in Europe but moved to America. It's probably this group who are the originators of graphic Modernism and their influence on the US born designers that feature in the 'Homegrown' chapter. Some of these foreign born designers are rightly considered part of the countries design heritage, people like Josef Albers, Herbert Bayer, Alexey Brodovitch, Erik Nitsche, Ladislav Sutnar and Massimo Vignelli.

The 205 pages devoted to Homegrown designers interestingly includes some who were not particularly well known but contributed to the Modernist style, for example, John and Mary Condon, Donald and Ann Crews, Charles Goslin, Burton Kramer and Alexander Ross. Most of the names in the chapter are, of course, well known including my favorites Saul Bass, Rudolf de Harak, Lou Dorfsman, Herb Lubalin, John Massey, Reid Miles and Bradbury Thompson, designers, who in fact, influenced my creative output in the decades from 1960.

The design of the book is itself a reflection of Modernism, clean typography and straightforward, elegant page design. Each name starts on the left-hand page with a portrait and a several hundred word essay, the right has work examples and these continue onto the next spread and in some cases another spread, too. There are 765 work examples (in the two designer chapters) all sufficiently big enough to appreciate the design, captions give the date and client and nicely some include background detail about the designer's intentions. The back pages have a comprenhensive bibliography and index.

Anyone who is interested in mid-century graphic design, or who was working creatively through these years, will find this book fascinating and design students should read a copy to understand and appreciate their graphic heritage.

Speeding to that destination

The two hundred posters in this book are probably the pick of the collection from the National Railway Museum in York, England where the two authors worked while compiling the book. Like a lot of US railroad posters the destination was the strong selling point in the early years of the last century and this particularly applies to the output of the four rail companies featured in the book. Eventually, besides the destination, speed and the train (ships as well) were used as a selling point.

I think it's worth saying though that although nearly all these posters have the most beautiful paintings very few of them are what I would call well designed overall. The format was either a painting of a destination placed in a framing devise with the typography below the frame or the art was poster size with the type dropped onto an empty spaces.  Cassandre's famous 1927 Nord Express (page sixty-nine) and Irwin Brown's 1930 poster for the centenary of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (page 102) are what I would consider designed posters: combining the painting, graphic and type as one considered whole.

I found the book enjoyable because of the art, the range of styles is very impressive from the mosaic paintings of Ronald Lampitt, flowers and nature by Audrey Weber to flat graphics from H G Gawthorn. All of the artists are incredibly professional. The authors have done a lot of research into the artists and how the rail companies used their work to sell travel.

As well as lovely posters to look at the book presents them in a very attractive way and frequently with the clever devise of enlarging part of a painting on many of the spreads throughout the book. The back pages have artist's biogs and a short bibliography.
 

Unfortunately not bound to please

The 'book' relates to an exhibition of photobooks at Barcelona's Centre for contemporary culture. The 'book' is actually eight loose sixteen page booklets and a fold-out poster (one has all the titles's credits) in a sealed cardboard box. You have to tear off one side of the box to access the booklets which have their cotton binding showing (it's as if they were printed but instead of binding them into a book they were left as individual sections and put in a box).

I found the contents a rather mixed bag of essays. Worth reading is Moritz Neumuller and Lesley Martin's overview of photobooks from the last few decades. Martin Parr looks at fifty seven books basically as detailed captions under a photo of each title. Markus Schaden and Frederic Lezmi essay has a go at a typographic interpretation of Klein's Life is good & good for you in New York by enlarging various words in an attempt to capture the visual pacing in Klein's title. Gerry Badger makes some good points in his essay on propaganda versus protest books. The other four books I thought somewhat elitist.

Perhaps all these illustrated essays would have more credence if they were actually presented as a proper book rather than unbound and in a sealed box. This unorthodox production is no more than a bit of designer whimsy and rather expensive, too.

Check every detail then CLICK

Ryan Schude and Gregory Crewdson seem to be the masters of tableau photography. The book has 102 photos and most are carefully choreographed situations with people frozen in motion. There are some portraits and eighteen shots with individuals and cars at the back of the book.

Schude, like Cewdson create amazing photographic dramas that pull the eyes into the image and you scan every part of it hoping to capture and maybe interpret correctly just what is going on but I think only Schude really knows. I haven't a clue about some of these images but I love the sheer nerve of the photographer in attempting (and succeeding) to capture lots of folk collectively doing everyday things at the same time for the camera. The front cover is a good example of this, it's called Phoot camp.

One of the nice things about looking at these photos is that repeat viewing throws up something you hadn't noticed before, usually an object, maybe partially obscured and away from the main focal point of the image. The back pages have thumbnails of all the photos with a title, date and location, the titles are mostly one word and don't offer any insight about the content.

The book is a handsome production, printed in Italy by Damiani with a three hundred screen on a silky matt art paper and it can be picked up quite cheaply, too.