Almanackwas a special publication in the early 1950 s, since most
commercial artists who advertised their services to the trade were doing it
in very straightforward, unimaginative ways. The Push Pin Almanackwas a
paradigm of conceptual acuity.
Six issues of the Almanackwere published before the studio was
started and two after. The printing of three thousand copies and the
typesetting were basically done for free (or at cost) in exchange for
designing and publishing the supplier’s ad in the Almanack. Other
operating expenses were paid for through the sale of small ads sold after
the first issue.
The narrow Almanackformat was, however, creatively limiting.
Wanting more freedom to explore different themes and graphic
approaches, the Almanackwas transformed into the Push Pin Monthly
Graphic, which began as a broadside, printed in black and white on one
sheet (usually newsprint). While the elegant and emblematic logo was
designed by Glaser in a variant of German Fraktur, each studio member
conceived at least one of his own issues, as well as combining their talents
when the theme called for it. Themes were not exclusively design oriented.
There were issues on railroading, dada, and War and Peace. The subjects
reflected the variegated interests of their makers. Chwast remembers
conceiving an issue chronicling his first trip to Italy, which included
photographs and drawings, and Glaser developed an issue on Italian
sculpture. In these issues the Push Pin members further developed their
interest in historical styles in a contemporary context.
The response to the Graphicwent beyond immediate commercial
success. It was historically significant in that it exerted an extraordinary
influence on individual designers, and so the entire field. To this day,
designers who were beginning their careers in the late 1950 s and early 1960 s
recall how excited they were when a new issue arrived in the mail. For Push
Pin included designers with varying talents sharing a distinctive
methodology—a passion for what today would be called mass popular
culture—who had an ability to translate their particular vocabulary of forms
into mass communication (and selling) tools. They did so through a
marriage—long rejected by the modernists—of drawing and typography.
The Push Pin Monthly Graphic(and the subsequentPush Pin Graphic,
renamed because they could never keep to the monthly publishing
schedule) proved that designer/illustrators were not simply pairs of hands
doing the bidding of a client divorced from the total context, but were
creatives capable of developing ideas in totality. And Push Pin’s work was
not simply derivatively decorative, but originally witty.
Beginning as a newsprint tabloid, the Push Pin Graphiceventually
tuis.
(Tuis.)
#1