Copyright © 2014 by Steven Heller
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Published by Allworth Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.
Copublished with the School of Visual Arts
Allworth Press® is a registered trademark of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.
www.allworth.com
Cover and interior design by Anderson Newton Design
Page composition/typography by Anderson Newton Design
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
ISBN: 978-1-62153-404-4
eISBN: 978-1-62153-413-6
Printed in China
DEDICATION
James H. Fraser and William Drenttel
They will be missed so very much.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Foreword by Rick Poynor
Introduction
SECTION 1—PERSUASION
Propaganda and the Art of Lying
Simplicissimus Poster
THOMAS THEODORE HEINE
Neue Jugend
JOHN HEARTFIELD
The Peace Symbol
Black Power/White Power
TOMI UNGERER
End Bad Breath
SEYMOUR CHWAST, DESIGNER
Men with No Lips
ROBBIE CONAL
SECTION 2—MASS MEDIA
Jugend and Simplicissimus
PM and AD
Picture Magazines of the 1930s
Direction
PAUL RAND
Book Covers
EDWARD GOREY
Portfolio
ALEXEY BRODOVITCH
Industrial Design
ALVIN LUSTIG
Holiday
FRANK ZACHARY
Vogue
ALEXANDER LIBERMAN
Scope
WILL BURTIN
Esquire
Eros and Avant Garde
HERB LUBALIN
Push Pin Graphic
SEYMOUR CHWAST, MILTON GLASER, REYNOLD RUFFINS, EDWARD SOREL
Evergreen and Ramparts
KEN DEARDORF AND DUGALD STERMER
East Village Other
Zap Comix
Culture Tabloids
Emigre
RUDY VANDERLANS AND ZUZANA LICKO
RAW
FRANÇOISE MOULY AND ART SPIEGELMAN
Beach Culture
DAVID CARSON
Dell Mapbacks
SECTION 3—TYPE
Blackletter
Bauhaus and the New Typography
Type as Agent of Power
Peignot
A.M. CASSANDRE
Cooper Black
OSWALD COOPER
Homage to Velvet Touch Lettering
Hand Lettering
JOOST SWARTE
Pussy Galore
TEAL TRIGGS, LIZ MCQUISTON, AND SIAN COOK
Template Gothic
BARRY DECK
Manson/Mason
JONATHAN BARNBROOK
Typography for Children
Berthold’s 1924 Hebrew Type Catalogue
SECTION 4—LANGUAGE
Depero: Futurista
FORTUNATO DEPERO
Lorca: Three Tragedies
ALVIN LUSTIG
Merle Armitage’s Books
MERLE ARMITAGE
About U.S.
LESTER BEALL, BROWNJOHN CHERMAYEFF GEISMAR, HERB LUBALIN, GENE FEDERICO
Ha Ha Ha: He Laughs Best Who Laughs Last
LOU DORFSMAN
Going Out
GENE FEDERICO
Man with the Golden Arm
SAUL BASS
The Area Code (Parenthesis)
LADISLAV SUTNAR
Modern Paperback Covers
Bestseller Book Jackets
PAUL BACON
Blues Project
VICTOR MOSCOSO
The Split Fountain
Red
Best of Jazz
PAULA SCHER
The Bald Soprano
ROBERT MASSIN
SECTION 5—IDENTITY
Modern Mark Maker
WILHELM DEFFKE
Flight
E. MCKNIGHT KAUFFER
McGraw-Hill Paperback Covers
RUDOLPH DE HARAK
Dylan
MILTON GLASER
NeXT
PAUL RAND
Dr. Strangelove
PABLO FERRO
Restaurant Florent
M&CO.
The Public Theater Posters
PAUL DAVIS
The Public Theater
PAULA SCHER
SECTION 6—INFORMATION
Catalog Design Progress
LADISLAV SUTNAR
The Medium Is the Massage
QUENTIN FIORE
New York Subway Map
MASSIMO VIGNELLI
New York Subway Map Goes Digital
MASSIMO VIGNELLI AND ASSOCIATES
SECTION 7—ICONOGRAPHY
The Master Race’s Graphic Masterpiece
Clipping Art, One Engraving At a Time
1939/1940 New York World’s Fair
Shooting Targets
Darkie Toothpaste
Jambalaya
STEFAN SAGMEISTER
SECTION 8—STYLE
Mise en Page
The Great Gargantua and Pantagruel
W. A. DWIGGINS
Vanity Fair and Fortune Covers
PAOLO GARRETTO
Artone
SEYMOUR CHWAST
The Lover
LOUISE FILI
The Cult of the Squiggly
French Paper
CHARLES SPENCER ANDERSON
SECTION 9—COMMERCE
Show Cards
Priester Match Poster
LUCIAN BERNHARD
The First Record Album
ALEX STEINWEISS
Cheap Thrills
R. CRUMB AND BOB CATO
Dust Jackets of the 1920s and 1930s
Atoms for Peace
Comic Strip Ads
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
There would be no Design Literacy if not for Tad Crawford, publisher of Allworth Press. His ongoing enthusiasm and support for my work, specifically and design writing and research in general, is simply invaluable. His contributions are not heralded enough.
Thanks to Gail Anderson, designer of this edition, my colleague in books and teaching, who is not only a great interpreter of my raw material, but a stunning author in her own right (write).
Having Rick Poynor write the foreword for this book is the first time since one of my earliest books that I’ve had a voice other than mine introduce a book. I have great admiration and warmth for Mr. Poynor and his work. Thank you.
&nb
sp; James Victore was the original designer for Design Literacy and most of the 30-plus Allworth books I’ve worked on. I am indebted to him for creating graphic identities that continue to give me great pleasure to have and hold.
Appreciation to Thornwell May, our editor at Skyhorse/Allworth, for seeing this revision through the intricate production process.
I owe a great deal to the good offices of David Rhodes, President of the School of Visual Arts, who has long generously supported my projects and Allworth Press. Thanks also to Anthony Rhodes, Executive Vice President of SVA.
I am grateful to many people who have given me inspiration and raw material to work with. In no particular order they are: Paul Rand, Lita Talarico, Mirko Ilic, Seymour Chwast, Paula Scher, Radislav Sutnar, John Walters, Martin Fox, Massimo Vignelli, George Lois, Robbie Conal, Edward Gorey, Stefan Sagmeister, Michael Bierut, Jessica Helfand, Christoph Niemann, Cathy Leff, Marshall Arisman, Tom Bodkin, Deborah Auer, John Macleod, Hans Reichert, Lucas Dietrich, Laurence King, Eric Himmel, Elaine Lustig Cohen, Allan Rapp, and scores of others living and dead.
Most of all, I thank my wife, Louise Fili, for being such a bright and elegant light in my life and Nicolas Heller, our son, who makes me proud every day of my life.
— SH
Foreword
BY RICK POYNOR
For many years, Steven Heller has been the most prolific and committed writer covering the field of graphic design. He may also be its most knowledgeable and wide-ranging author. But even if we qualify that, as a precaution, and just say “one of the most knowledgeable,” there can be no question that he is the most generous when it comes to sharing his vast wealth of knowledge with readers.
I have a running gag with him about which of his scores of books are currently in my “Heller top ten.” Design Literacy went in immediately on its first publication in 1997 and there its successors remain. I regard it as one of his most valuable, satisfying, and enduring publications. Heller supplemented the original edition with Design Literacy (Continued) and then he blended the two together in the second edition of Design Literacy. With this volume, he once again retunes the line-up of essays, and if the book keeps attracting new readers, there is no reason why it shouldn’t continue to evolve. One thing this signals is that Heller is not at all precious. The book, like the man, is restless, curious, a buzzing zone of energy.
For anyone—designer or not—who wants an understanding of what graphic design is, or has been, Design Literacy offers an excellent introduction. Unified histories of the subject tend to be big, worthy, and ponderous. Their fate is often to be dipped into for reference rather than read from end to end. Despite its thematic structure, Design Literacy is a book devised to be absorbed in any order and savored at whim. As with many essay collections, part of the pleasure comes from bouncing serendipitously from one revelation to the next. These short-to medium-length pieces are loaded with information and insight. Heller’s subject is the everyday graphic paraphernalia that surrounds us, and he handles his task with urbanity, wit, and a tender concern I suggest we can only call love.
It’s strange there aren’t more books about graphic design like this, but there really aren’t. Heller proves here that graphic communication can be a readerly subject like any other. Can we become properly “design literate” without a broad working knowledge of the kinds of material he surveys so adeptly? I think that’s unlikely. We can only develop design literacy by informed looking, and this juicy collection reaffirms Heller as one of our most attentive and fluent guides to the territory.
Design Literacy Third Edition
Design Literacy was originally called “Object Lessons: Understanding Graphic Design,” but fortunately I was made to realize that not only was this title too imprecise, it was too cute. Conversely, Design Literacy was like a call to arms, a manifesto of sorts—“I want my DESIGN LITERACY!!!” (apologies to MTV). Since discourse about verbal, visual, and cultural literacy were in the air around the time of publication in 1997, and design literacy was a subset of that, the title tapped into the zeitgeist and continues to have resonance. Arguably, the title just might account for the book’s success.
Design Literacy was conceived as a complement, of sorts, to the landmark A History of Graphic Design by Philip B. Meggs, first published in 1983. As the first graphic design history textbook, Meggs’s book mapped the historical landscape, expanded formal terrain, and built a foundation (and floor plan) for design literacy. It also served as a catalog of potential themes for aspiring design writers and historians, like me, to take further. Yet, at the time, I also thought there was more to the exploration of graphic design’s past and present than simply studying the traditionalist or modernist canon, against which all design had been measured. Meggs did a heroic job of organizing, categorizing, and prioritizing the heretorfore chaotic historical field. Yet admittedly he often just covered the surface. I chose instead to focus attention on individual stories about what I believed were essential artifacts of graphic design—mostly printed paper—probing the makers of such things directly or indirectly for answers as to how and why they were created, rather than only profiling them as makers or masters or pioneers. The first edition of Design Literacy: Understanding Graphic Design was, therefore, a collection of essays on “objects” in a broad sense—some canonical others eclectic.
With an audacious X (symbolizing illiteracy and promising the opposite) on the cover designed by James Victore, Design Literacy was comprised of brand new and rewritten articles, reviews, and essays about graphically designed things—books, magazines, posters, typefaces, etc.—which I had authored for various periodicals over the course of a decade or more. These pieces were supplemented with a few contributions by co-author Karen Pomeroy (a designer and researcher who had assisted me on earlier projects).
This book is a tasting menu, with a smorgasbord of dishes that ultimately nourishes … but may leave some people hungry for more.
My goal for the book was to invest cultural value into graphic design while diminishing the stigma of ephemerality. In the first edition introduction I wrote: “There is now a realization that graphic design is not as ephemeral as the paper it is printed on. Certain advertisements, posters, packages, logos, books, and magazines endure as signposts of artistic, commercial, and technological achievement and speak more about particular epochs or milieus than fine art. Many objects of graphic design are preserved and studied as more than mere historical wallpaper. Curiously, though, the makers of these objects—graphic designers—have tended to undervalue the historical significance of artifacts found in their own backyards. Those who claim visual literacy are often ignorant when it comes to understanding and appreciating the objects that are imprinted with the language of their own practice.”
Some of these essays were based on interviews with the respective makers, some involved primary and secondary research, and still others involved first-hand experience. Ellen Lupton noted in a review of the book, that I was talking more about my own “literacy” and how it evolved than a book about literacy. An astute assertion to be sure since I have long used design history as a tool for self-education. Without having had a formal university education, the research and reporting that has gone into many of my essays is akin to devising my own home-study courses. If this is a flaw, then perhaps it is owing to the fact that many of the essays in Design Literacy are written with the same nerdy fascination I’ve always possessed when presented with astonishing facts that I want to share with others.
Milton Glaser, whom I greatly admire, told me mano a mano that Design Literacy was “all meat and no potatoes.” This blue-plate metaphor implied that my short essays on loosely linked subjects lacked cohesion, which left the reader hanging without more overt connections between objects. In fact, Milton put his finger on what might be called my own learning curve. Although I have become fluent in many of the subjects I write about in the book, I am also constantly learning about the whys and wherefores—how graphic designs res
ponded to all kinds of external cultural, political and economic stimuli. So to continue Milton’s food analogy, this book is a tasting menu, with a smorgasbord of dishes that ultimately nourish … but may leave some people hungry for more.
My formulation for Design Literacy was (and is) similar to how I curated the conference “Modernism & Eclecticism: A History of American Graphic Design,” which I did (with Richard Wilde) annually for the School of Visual Arts (SVA) throughout the ‘90s, and was an armature on which I hung many curiosities. By that I mean, if I wanted to learn more about the history of wood type, I’d invite the expert Rob Roy Kelly to speak on the subject, assuming that others like me would absorb the knowledge and enjoy the show. If I wanted to hear about what it was like to art direct Esquire in its golden years, I’d invite Henry Wolf. His raves and rants would be filtered into future essays on the subject. Rather than a directed theme, M&E was a collection of close encounters. Design Literacy is the outcome of engaged curiosities—rather than a directed history, it is a collection of facts and observations that contribute to our overall knowledge of graphic design, mass communications, and popular perception.