Design Literacy: Understanding Graphic Design

juxtapositions of realities in the service of polemics—could the magazine continue to convey strong messages. The last issue of ...

across spreads and gatefolds. Juxtaposing unaltered and manipulated images told the story of Stalin’s “glorious” régime and the ...

Direction Paul Rand “He favors Le Corbusier’s underlying philosophy... his avoidance of ornament, his dependence upon masses, pr ...

unhampered by traditions.... He has no stereotyped style because every task is something new and demands its own solution. Conse ...

“You can be a great manipulator of form, but if the solution is not apt, it’s for the birds.” The surprising juxtaposition of vi ...

Dell Mapbacks^69 Paperback cover art was at its high—or low, depending on your point of view—from the 1940 s to early 1950 s whe ...

turned to expressionistic art that used dramatic symbolism to suggest the theme or plot. The leading staff artist, Gerald Gregg, ...

Book Covers^71 Edward Gorey The public knows him for his animated titles for the PBS television series Mystery!and the sets and ...

adorned with prurient covers designed to pander to the voyeuristic reader. Then the style was to cover such literary classics as ...

tacky little drawing of the Globe Theater from the air, which I found someplace and copied for a book on Shakespeare by Mark van ...

Gorey’s interpretation for Kafka’s Amerika, which shows a Goreyesque character—an almost-skeletal silhouette standing on the clo ...

Portfolio^75 Alexey Brodovitch Portfolio, published between 1949 and 1951 , was the model of a twentieth-century graphic and ind ...

Zachary recalled. “But he was no prima donna. He worked in the most fantastic way. For example, I would come in, say, at seven o ...

Industrial Design^77 Alvin Lustig A design icon doesn’t come along every day. To be so considered it must not only transcend its ...

On the editorial side, however, Whitney decided to take a calculated risk by promoting two young Interiorsassociate editors to c ...

successor, Martin Rosensweig, continued to produce covers for a few years afterward that more rigidly adhered to the same formal ...

Holiday Frank Zachary When it began in the 1930 s,Holiday magazine was clean and orderly, but its layout was made with a cookie ...

sophisticated illustration to American magazines,” recalled a colleague. “Other art directors brought powerful or clever images, ...

Vogue Alexander Liberman For Alexander Liberman ( 1912 – 1999 ), the Russian-born art director of Vogueand later editorial direc ...

for an exhibition design in the Paris World’s Fair of 1937 ], and we talked.” At the time Nast was fighting against the clichés ...