Scope^85
Will BurtinBacteriology is about as interesting to
graphic designers as typography is to
bacteriologists. But for graphic designer
Will Burtin ( 1908 – 1972 ), German-born son
of a French chemist, learning to understand
molecular biology, endocrinology, and
bacteriology was like working with a classic
cut of Didot or Bodoni. Making such
complex data accessible to himself and
others was as pleasurable as designing an
elegant page of text. The role of the graphic
designer, he wrote in Print(May 1955 ), was
to increase the average man’s understanding
“between what the reading public knows
and what it should know.”
His professional life was, therefore,
devoted to designing the kind of
information that decorative designers reject as humdrum. Indeed such
technical material might have remained forever ignored by aesthetics,
relegated to dry textbooks, if Burtin had not become the champion of
beautiful functionality. As design consultant for the Upjohn Company—
one of America’s largest producers of pharmaceuticals—from 1948 to 1971 ,
he made functional design as attractive as any book or poster. Burtin
refused to shy away from complexity, rather he interpreted it and then cast
it in an accessible light. This was evident in the layouts and covers he
designed while art editor for Scope, Upjohn’s scientific house organ.
Burtin, who left Hitler’s Germany in 1939 after being ordered to
design posters for the Nazis, adopted Thomas Jefferson’s dictum, “To learn
how to keep learning is the mark of civilized man.” He believed that
designers had to know about more fields than just design, and among the
ones he embraced, science was integral to every area of human activity.
Science, the exploration and prediction of phenomena, is the holy grail of
civilization, and for the sake of clarity scientists reduce time, space, and
thought into abstract symbols. “The designer stands between these
concepts, at the center, because of his unique role as communicator...
interpreter, and inspirer,” Burtin wrote in Graphis# 4 ( 1949 ).