Josef Müller-BrockMann
protégez l’enfant! Public awareness poster
for Swiss Automobile Club, 1953.
In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s graphIc desIgn BecaMe a professIon.
swIss desIgners lIke Josef Müller-BrockMann and karl gerstner
turned revolutIonary avant-garde Ideals Into forMal Method–
ologIes, detachIng desIgn froM a dIsruptIve aesthetIc agenda.
The resulting International Style leapt from Europe to the United States, spreading values
of neutrality, objectivity, and rationality expressed through tightly gridded layouts and
restricted typography. Business and design joined forces as iconic American designers
Paul Rand and Bauhaus immigrant Herbert Bayer used Swiss approaches to construct
powerful corporate identity systems. In the 1960s rebellion broke out. Wolfgang Weingart
pioneered the New Wave of Swiss design. Legibility and clarity gave way to emotion and
intuition. Modern turned to postmodern as the Pop movement took form. In America,
Katherine McCoy led her Cranbrook students from the 1970s to 1990s into the heart of
poststructuralism, turning design into complex discourse to be decoded by the reader.
Powerful modern design tenets were shaken; designers lost faith in the rationality,
objectivity, and universalism of the early century.Section two