American Graphic Arts

In The Moderns, we meet the men and women who invented and shaped Midcentury Modern graphic design in America. The book is made up of generously illustrated profiles, many based on interviews, of more than 60 designers whose magazine, book, and record covers; advertisements and package designs; posters; and other projects created the visual aesthetics of postwar modernity. Some were émigrés from Europe; others were homegrown—all were intoxicated by elemental typography, primary colors, photography, and geometric or biomorphic forms. Some are well-known, others are honored in this volume for the first time, and together they comprised a movement that changed our design world.

In this splendidly illustrated book, graphic designer R. Roger Remington and art historian Barbara Hodik profile the careers and contributions of nine men who shaped American graphic design from the 1930s to the 1950s: Mehemed Fehmy Agha, Alexey Brodovitch, Charles Coiner, William Golden, Lester Beall, Will Burtin, Alvin Lustig, Ladislav Sutnar, and Bradbury Thompson. The book explores each designer's milieu, education, personal philosophy of design, body of work, client relations, and problem-solving approaches. The more than 200 illustrations, 55 in color, are drawn from almost every medium of graphic expression, including posters, advertisements, magazines, book jackets, business graphics, and signage. Both authors teach at Rochester Institute of Technology. R. Roger Remington is professor of graphic design and Barbara J. Hodik is professor of art history.

A revered classic of American design delights anew with the freshness and ingenuity of its approach Bradbury Thompson (1911-1995) remains one of the most admired and influential graphic designers of the twentieth century, having trained a generation of design students while on the faculty of the Yale School of Art for more than thirty years. The art director of Mademoiselle and design director of Art News and Art News Annual in the decades after World War II, Thompson was also a distinguished designer of limited-edition books, postage stamps, rationalized alphabets, corporate identification programs, trademarks, and sacred works (most notably the Washburn College Bible). Thompson also designed more than sixty issues of Westvaco Inspirations, a magazine that was published by the Westvaco Corporation and distributed to thousands of printers, designers, and teachers to show the range and versatility of printing papers. Thompson was especially revered for his ability to adapt classic typography for the modern world. Bradbury Thompson: The Art of Graphic Design is a landmark in the history of fine bookmaking. First published by Yale University Press in 1988 and designed by Thompson himself, it was praised by the New York Times as a book in which "art and design are gloriously and daringly mixed." Original texts by the author and other notable designers, critics, and art historians, including J. Carter Brown, Alvin Eisenman, and Steven Heller, explore Thompson's methods and design philosophy, and a newly commissioned afterword by Jessica Helfand attests to the enduring importance of his work. Both a retrospective and a manifesto, the book surveys Thompson's timeless contributions to American graphic design, including his experimental work and his work in magazines, typography, books, simplified alphabets, and contemporary postage stamps. Published for the first time in paperback, this classic text is now available for a new generation of designers and students.

The first-ever book-length history of Arab graphic design PROSE AWARD WINNER, ART HISTORY & CRITICISM Arab graphic design emerged in the early twentieth century out of a need to influence, and give expression to, the far-reaching economic, social, and political changes that were taking place in the Arab world at the time. But graphic design as a formally recognized genre of visual art only came into its own in the region in the twenty-first century and, to date, there has been no published study on the subject to speak of. A History of Arab Graphic Design traces the people and events that were integral to the shaping of a field of graphic design in the Arab world. Examining the work of over eighty key designers from Morocco to Iraq, and covering the period from pre-1900 to the end of the twentieth century, Bahia Shehab and Haytham Nawar chart the development of design in the region, beginning with Islamic art and Arabic calligraphy, and their impact on Arab visual culture, through to the digital revolution and the arrival of the Internet. They look at how cinema, economic prosperity, and political and cultural events gave birth to and shaped the founders of Arab graphic design. Highlighting the work of key designers and stunningly illustrated with over 600 color images, A History of Arab Graphic Design is an invaluable resource tool for graphic designers, one which, it is hoped, will place Arab visual culture and design on the map of a thriving international design discourse.

Winning entries in AIGA's 1995-96 competitions, representing the very best in American graphics work, are honored in this excellent guide, which includes a complete reference list of designers, illustrators, typographers, printers, and others involved in their creation and production.