had not submitted it in 1919 to Colourmagazine, which regularly featured a
“Poster Page” where unpublished maquettes were reproduced free-of-charge
as an inducement for businessmen and advertising agents to employ
talented poster artists. The poster was seen as one means of helping
England get back on a sound commercial footing after the war.Flightwas
bought by Francis Meynell, a respected English book publisher and printer
who organized a poster campaign for the Labour newspaper, the Daily
Herald. Meynell interpreted that the soaring birds represented hope, and
Kauffer’s novel design somehow suggested renewal after the bloody world
war. The poster was hung everywhere, and soared its maker into the public
eye. Kauffer soon received commissions to design campaigns for major
English wine, clothing, publishing, automobile, and petroleum companies,
most notably Shell Oil and Shell Mex.
Kauffer argued that nonrepresentational and geometrical pattern
designs “can effect a sledge hammer blow if handled by a sensitive designer
possessing a knowledge of the action of color on the average man or
woman.” He believed that the artist’s job was to foster an appreciation of
diverse visual stimuli that transcended the conventional marketing tricks.
Nevertheless, even Kauffer had to lead clients by the hand: “In most cases
it has not been possible to give me full freedom,” he wrote, “and my clients
have gone step by step rather than by leaps, but by this slow process we
have argued and discussed each advance until our opposite points of view
have reached a synthesis, and it is because of this mutual understanding
that I confidently expect England to progress to international distinction,
not because of myself but through the new talent that is making way in
many directions... .” His own productivity is evidence that certain
businessmen appreciated the communicative power of unconventional
form, but even in such a receptive milieu (particularly when compared to
American advertising) there were hostile critics who referred to Kauffer’s
abstract designs as “McKnightmares.”
Despite these occasional barbs, critics realized that Kauffer made
significant inroads in the applied arts, first in the application of cubist form,
and then after 1923 when he realized that vorticism no longer offered viable
commercial possibilities and he entered his so-called jazz style, in which he
created colorful,art moderneinterpretations of traditional form. In 1927 he
took a three-day-a-week job at Crawfords, the largest advertising agency in
England, which lasted two years and marked the end of his jazz style and
the move towards modernist photomontage, influenced by German and
Russian advertising of the time. Kauffer expanded on this revolutionary
vocabulary, and in his own work he replaced diagonal with rectilinear
layouts, crushed his type into parallelograms, used positive/negative
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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