Ch. 18 & 19

Chapter 18, The International Typographic Style, is about the 1950s movement that came out of Switzerland and Germany, also known less formally as Swiss design. These designs were asymmetrical yet very organized on a mathematically-structured grid. Objective design and copywriting did not put exaggerated claims on the design either. These designs also typically used sans-serif typography, set in flush left/ragged right paragraphs. It was seen as progressive design that was socially important. Ernst Keller set the "standard of excellence" for Swiss design, and the Basel School of Design was a major influence in its geometrically-based curriculum. Many widely-used fonts came out of this design time, too, such as Univers (by Frutiger), Helvetica (Hoffman & Miedinger) and Palatino, Melior and Optima (Zapf). The design style caught on quickly, becoming widely used in the 1960s corporate and industrial graphics, specifically by MIT. 

Chapter 19 is about The New York School, the influence of modern art/Swiss design on American design from about the 1940s-1970s. Paul Rand was a major influence, putting his knowledge of the modern movement into major graphic design. He designed many magazine covers, reducing the design to the symbolic essence that he wanted to convey--he used universal, ordinary signs and symbols to translate his visual ideas, and often used juxtaposition of  colors, ideas, or imagery to make a statement. Lustig, another important designer, used symbolic imagery to convey an essence of the contents of a book on its book cover. Yale University School of Art also had a major influence at this time, with Josef Albers as the director of the art school, and Eisenman as the director of the graphic design program. George Lois was a master at this time of completely integrating visual and verbal design, which he executed on many Esquire magazine covers, among other things. 

What I found most interesting in this chapter was that figurative typography was just emerging. Gene Federico was one of the first graphic designers at this time to use letterforms as imagery. Type also finally began to have connotative meaning in compositions as well. 

One question I have is, why did it take so long for typography to be used as connotative expression? Couldn't the Dada or futurism compositions be considered exploration of connotative typography?