unifying vision, dubbed the Meinl style, was celebrated by the leading
design publications, the Studioand Gebrauchsgraphik.
Binder believed that style was a transmission code. He developed
an emblematic hard-edged style that he encouraged others to freely mimic.
“I am here to introduce this style,” he announced at a lecture in New York
City in 1938. “In the short weeks I am [here] I want to furnish an
explanation of exactly what ‘modern commercial art’ means.” But at the
time his mission was difficult. American advertising was governed by
copywriters who preferred the word to the image and distrusted modern
graphic approaches. Binder’s first major assignment for the J. Walter
Thompson advertising agency was a successful, albeit lackluster, series of
billboards for Ballantine’s beer, and many of his early American
assignments were to comp experimental ideas that never saw the light of
day. Undaunted by the reluctance of American business, Binder eventually
secured some profitable accounts.
Among his most well-known commissions, the Air Corps U.S.
Armyposter, which won first prize in a Museum of Modern Art
competition, signaled a new utilization of space. Noteworthy for its
minimal imagery and simple graphic forms, today it is dated only by the
silhouettes of propeller-driven aircraft. A yellow wing set against a grayish
blue sky offsets the red, white, and blue Air Force logo. The entire image is
stylized to ensure memorability. Binder did not self-consciously try to “be
of his time,” a trap that many lesser stylists fall into, but his works are
nevertheless clearly tied to their epoch.
Binder built his design philosophy on the fundamental idea that
“the artist should contribute to the development of the modern style
instead of indulging in realistic representation of past periods and vain
attempts to imitate the works of former times.” He believed that the new
industrial style was descended from painting, but its function was “to
convey the essence of the advertising message in the shortest and most
impressive way....It is the artist’s task to transfer the clear and
constructive shape of the objects as he sees them to the two-dimensional
surface....Realism should be left to photography. The artist must not
compete with the camera.... Therefore the artist must abandon realistic
representation and take up styling.” Modern design was, therefore, not in
competition with technology, but enhanced what the machine could
achieve.
Stylization was chiefly based on geometric forms—which is
necessary for reducing and abstracting any object from a tree to a human
head. “Every form in nature has a very strong and definite construction for
it has ‘grown,’” Binder wrote. “Every plant has gradually and organically
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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