Catalog Design Progress
Ladislav SutnarEven before the advent of
the “information age” there
was information. Masses of
it begging to be organized
into accessible and
retrievable packages. In the
1930 s American industry
made an initial attempt to
introduce strict design
systems to business, but the
Great Depression
demanded that the focus be
on retooling factories and
improving products, which
spawned a new breed of
professional: the industrial designer. In Europe the prototypical industrial
designer had already established himself, and the graphic design arm of the
modern movement was already concerned with access to information as a
function of making the world a better place. The mission to modernize
antiquated aspects of European life led directly to efficient communications
expressed through typographic purity. This revolutionary approach to
design began simultaneously in Germany, Russia, and Holland, and swept
through Eastern Europe as well. Ladislav Sutnar ( 1897 – 1976 ), a graphic,
product, and exhibition designer, led the charge in Czechoslovakia years
before emigrating to the United States.
Sutnar was such an enthusiastic propagandist for industrialization
that he was introduced to Karl Lönberg-Holm, the publicity director of the
Sweet’s Catalog Service, the largest American industrial catalog publisher,
who instantly arranged for Sutnar to become his art director. Löndberg-
Holm quickly became the other half of Sutnar’s brain. Their
collaboration was to information design what Gilbert and Sullivan were to
light opera or Rogers and Hammerstein were to the Broadway musical.
Together they composed and wrote Catalog Design( 1944 ) and Catalog
Design Progress( 1950 ). The former introduced a variety of radical systematic
departures in catalog design, the latter fine-tuned those models to show
how complex information could be organized and, most importantly,318