The Area Code (Parenthesis)
Ladislav SutnarIf recognized at all, graphic designers
earn cultural kudos for work that has a
direct impact on society. Yet even under
these circumstances the world is usually
oblivious. Which is why Ladislav Sutnar
( 1897 – 1976 ), a Czech modernist graphic
and product designer who emigrated to
the United States in 1939 and worked in
New York until his death, has not
received even a modicum of credit for a
unique graphic innovation that has had
far-reaching effect. Although it may well
be considered arcane, his invention was
the parentheses around American
telephone area code numbers when the
system was introduced in the early 1960 s.
Sutnar is not credited for the
appearance of the area code because the
concept was so integral to the design of the Bell System’s new calling
apparatus that it was instantly adopted as part of the vernacular. Moreover,
Ma Bell never offered or gave Sutnar credit; for this company, graphic
designers—like the functional graphics they produced—were invisible.
Nonetheless, Sutnar’s other contributions to information architecture, the
commissions that brought him to the Bell System’s attention in the first
place, are milestones not only in graphic design history but of design for
the public good. Sutnar developed logical and hierarchical graphic systems
for a wide range of American businesses that clarified and made accessible
vast amounts of complex, often ponderous information. He took on the
thankless job of transforming routine business data into digestible and
understandable forms.
Before most designers focused on the need for information
organization, Sutnar was in the vanguard, driven by the missionary modern
belief that good design applied to the most quotidian products had a
beneficial, even curative effect on society. In his role as a pioneer of
information design and progenitor of the current trend in information
architecture, Sutnar’s sophisticated data-management programs, which224