2019-11-01 Outside

11.19

Dispatches Media

28 OUTSIDE MAGAZINE

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Massimo Vignelli

By Design
A NEW PHOTO BOOK CHRONICLES
THE HISTORY OF THE NATIONAL
PARK SYSTEM THROUGH ITS
GRAPHIC IDENTITY
BY MAREN LARSEN

IN 2017, photographer and archivist Brian
Kelley found a Grand Canyon National Park
brochure from 1964 on eBay. The geomet-
ric illustration of warm-hued cliffs was un-
like any national park literature he’d seen,
prompting him to keep digging for other sur-
prising designs. In the following months, Kel-
ley amassed 600 maps, pamphlets, and other
informational ephemera from national parks,
monuments, seashores, and battlefields. The
materials date back 100 years and range in
style from romantic Ansel Adams–esque pho-
tography to colorful modernist illustrations.
Design-focused publisher Standards Man-
ual, which previously worked with Kelley on
a photo book of New York City Subway mis-

cellany called New York City Transit Author-

ity: Objects, preserved his new collection in

Parks ($55), out in October. The book chron-

icles how the graphic identity of the National

Park System’s materials—often produced

by anonymous, government-employed art-

ists—has evolved over the years. “It’s a pow-

erful visual audit of design styles throughout

the past 100 years,” says graphic designer and

Standard Manual co-owner Jesse Reed. “It’s

interesting to watch how the interpretations

of a park change over time.”

Artists and conservationists have used

visuals to preserve and protect federal lands

since before the Park Service was founded

in 1916. Parks opens with one of Thomas

Moran’s ethereal paintings of Yellowstone,

which helped convince Congress to make

a decree that set aside those lands “for the

benefit and enjoyment of the people,” creat-

ing our first national park in 1872. The book

then moves chronologically through the

wildly artistic, nonbureaucratic chaos that

ruled Park Service documents for most of the

20th century. It concludes with brochures

designed with the now familiar template im-

plemented in the 1970s: a heavy black border

with white sans serif text above a large, glossy

photograph. This design standard was cre-

ated by renowned Italian modernist Massimo

Vignelli to accommodate a huge postwar up-

swing in visitorship and a corresponding in-

crease in the need for educational materials.

“The ability to communicate with absolute

clarity became the mission of each printed

map and brochure,” Reed says. “Not individ-

ual expression.”

But while these items were increasingly

made for function, the book displays a stun-

ning and diverse collection of design—the

kind you want to frame and hang on your wall.

They show vistas that are timeless, despite

all that has changed around them in the past

century. A 1916 brochure featuring a photo-

graph of Rocky Mountain National Park, the

park I grew up in, looks just like home. I’ve

marveled at those peaks a thousand times; I

swear I’ve stood under that tree.