Going Out^219
Gene FedericoGood graphic design was long an exception to the rule in American
advertising. Beginning at the turn of the century, copywriters were allowed
to rein over designers and nuances of type and image were secondary to the
hard sell of a product or message. Unlike European advertising of the same
period, which was aggressively visual and pictorially innovative, in America
it was virtually inconceivable that an art director would be much more than
a glorified layout man subservient to the needs of the text. This changed in
the 1930 s when the advertising pioneer Earnest Elmo Calkins discovered
that the effective marriage of word and picture could produce startling
results. Prefiguring the “creative team” and creative revolution by more than
three decades, he brought copywriters and designers together, forging a
creative union. By 1939 , when Gene Federico (b. 1918 ), a twenty-one-year
old Pratt Institute graduate with a special interest in typography, entered
the advertising field, a few exceptional designers had already begun to
change the look (and often the content) of mainstream advertising, paving
the way for a distinctly American modern style.