Craig
Ward is a Scottish musician. He became known as a member of include
dEUS, Kiss My Jazz, The Love Substitutes and True Bypass. He grew up in
Cumbernauld in Scotland. After graduating as a philosopher took a long
time for Europe as a street musician. He came at the request of Stef
Kamil Carlens to Antwerp on vacation. Shortly afterwards he became a
member of Kiss My Jazz, the group around Rudy Trouvé. It took him so
well that Trouvé introduced him as a substitute after his departure from
dEUS.
In 1995, Craig Ward was in keeping with dEUS. According to some sources, was shot on his way to a job as a teacher in Scotland when Tom Barman called him and asked to come and play with dEUS. Together they recorded the album In a Bar, Under the Sea, and they go on tour in 1996. That same year he took with Rudy Trouvé number Kathleen No. 1 and he played on the Kizz My Jazz abum to Doc's Place, My Evening. Followed a year later (also with Kiss My Jazz) album The Lost Souls Convention, he also was featured on the Gore Slut album These Days Are The Quiet.
In 1999, the studio he dives back in with dEUS and release the album The Ideal Crash. After the
corresponding tour and promotion of this album, Craig made in February 2000 announced that he dEUS verliet.Hij was a half year before got married and had it adapted his lifestyle. He was regarded by Tom Barman as his sounding board and formed a resting place in the group. He was temporarily replaced by Tim Vanhaemel and later definitively Mauro Pawlowski.
Shortly afterwards came the album Meet The Love Substitudes While The House Is On Fire by The Love Substitutes, where he again plays with Trouvé and Pawlowski and Lenaerts active waren.Daarnaast He has been with Monokiri same year the album Surviving On 2006 Dreams and Casual Sex and released at Pox that in 2007 on Your House released. In 2005 he was featured on the dEUS album Pocket Revolution.
On July 31, 2007 they released a split album, which he heard with Rudy Trouvé and Mauro Pawlowski with solo songs. Both the opening track All Is Mask, if the valve Attus ksam Si Lla of the album were taken by Craig Ward. In addition, Ward was at this time engaged in iH8 Camera. This group has already recorded three albums, including a self-titled debut (2007), Volume 1 (2009) and Volume 2 (2011). He also released a self-titled album with A Clean Kitchen Is A Happy Kitchen. For this project he worked among others with Bootsie Butsenzeller, the alter ego of drummer Geert Budts among others who Anarchist Abentunterhaltung.
And he stayed in Berlin a time to albums for bands to producers as The Frames.
Around 2010 he met the Dutch Chantal Acda (known from bands Chacda and Sleeping Dogs) during a flight to Glasgow. They decided to make music together and called it True Bypass project. The collaboration resulted in 2011 in a self-titled album. This album was released on the British label Factory Jesus and characterized by its intimate, stilling songs.
In 2012 he collaborated with Roy Aernouts for his album I Am a Girl. This was also told Tom Pintens. The title track became a YouTube and mediahit. End of October 2012 was released the second album True Bypass.
The lyrics were almost all written by the British author Toby Litt.
In 1995, Craig Ward was in keeping with dEUS. According to some sources, was shot on his way to a job as a teacher in Scotland when Tom Barman called him and asked to come and play with dEUS. Together they recorded the album In a Bar, Under the Sea, and they go on tour in 1996. That same year he took with Rudy Trouvé number Kathleen No. 1 and he played on the Kizz My Jazz abum to Doc's Place, My Evening. Followed a year later (also with Kiss My Jazz) album The Lost Souls Convention, he also was featured on the Gore Slut album These Days Are The Quiet.
In 1999, the studio he dives back in with dEUS and release the album The Ideal Crash. After the
corresponding tour and promotion of this album, Craig made in February 2000 announced that he dEUS verliet.Hij was a half year before got married and had it adapted his lifestyle. He was regarded by Tom Barman as his sounding board and formed a resting place in the group. He was temporarily replaced by Tim Vanhaemel and later definitively Mauro Pawlowski.
Shortly afterwards came the album Meet The Love Substitudes While The House Is On Fire by The Love Substitutes, where he again plays with Trouvé and Pawlowski and Lenaerts active waren.Daarnaast He has been with Monokiri same year the album Surviving On 2006 Dreams and Casual Sex and released at Pox that in 2007 on Your House released. In 2005 he was featured on the dEUS album Pocket Revolution.
On July 31, 2007 they released a split album, which he heard with Rudy Trouvé and Mauro Pawlowski with solo songs. Both the opening track All Is Mask, if the valve Attus ksam Si Lla of the album were taken by Craig Ward. In addition, Ward was at this time engaged in iH8 Camera. This group has already recorded three albums, including a self-titled debut (2007), Volume 1 (2009) and Volume 2 (2011). He also released a self-titled album with A Clean Kitchen Is A Happy Kitchen. For this project he worked among others with Bootsie Butsenzeller, the alter ego of drummer Geert Budts among others who Anarchist Abentunterhaltung.
And he stayed in Berlin a time to albums for bands to producers as The Frames.
Around 2010 he met the Dutch Chantal Acda (known from bands Chacda and Sleeping Dogs) during a flight to Glasgow. They decided to make music together and called it True Bypass project. The collaboration resulted in 2011 in a self-titled album. This album was released on the British label Factory Jesus and characterized by its intimate, stilling songs.
In 2012 he collaborated with Roy Aernouts for his album I Am a Girl. This was also told Tom Pintens. The title track became a YouTube and mediahit. End of October 2012 was released the second album True Bypass.
The lyrics were almost all written by the British author Toby Litt.
David
Carson (born September 8, 1955) is a graphic designer, art director and
surfer was born on September 8, 1955 in Corpus Christi, Texas, USA. He
is best known for his innovative magazine design, and use of
experimental typography. He was the art director for the magazine Ray
Gun, in which he employed much of the typographic and layout style for
which he is known. In particular, his widely imitated aesthetic defined
the so-called "grunge typography" era.
He attended Cocoa Beach High School, was class president for 3 years, and still considers Cocoa Beach,
Florida to be the place he is "most from".
He attended San Diego State University, graduating with "Honors and Distinction" a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology.
Carson's first contact with graphic design was in 1980 at the University of Arizona during a two-week graphics course, taught by Jackson Boelts.
From 1982 to 1987, Carson worked as a teacher in Torrey Pines High School in San Diego, California. During that time, he was also a professional surfer, and reached a 9th in the world ranking. Carson had his own signature model surfboard with Infinity surfboards, and his own signature model fin with rainbow fin co.
He still surfs regularly at his property in Cane Garden Bay.
In 1983, Carson started to experiment with graphic design and found himself immersed in the artistic and bohemian culture of Southern California. He attended the Oregon College of Commercial Art, only for a couple months before accepting an unpaid internship with Action Now magazine, formerly Skateboarder magazine.That year, he went to Switzerland to attend a three-week workshop in graphic design. The teacher of the workshop, Hans-Rudolf Lutz, became his first great influence.
His first art direction
Carson became the art director of Transworld Skateboarding magazine in 1984, and remained there until 1988, helping to give the magazine a distinctive look. By the end of his tenure there he had started to develop his signature style, using "dirty" type and non-mainstream photographic techniques. He was also the art director of a spinoff magazine, Transworld Snowboarding, which began publishing in 1987.
Steve and Debbee Pezman, publishers of Surfer magazine (and later Surfers Journal) tapped Carson to design Beach Culture, a quarterly publication that evolved out of a to-the-trade annual supplement. Though only six quarterly issues were produced, the tabloid-size venue—edited by author Neil Fineman—allowed Carson to make his first significant impact on the world of graphic design and typography—with ideas that were called innovative even by those that were not fond of his work, in which legibility often relied on readers' strict attention. For one feature on a blind surfer, Carson opened with a two-page spread covered in black. After Beach Culture, Carson re designed Surfer magazine and art directed and design it for the next 2 years, before starting Ray gun Magazine for 3 years. Carson then relocated his studio to New York City, where he still works today.
Carson was hired by publisher Marvin Scott Jarrett to design Ray Gun, an alternative music and lifestyle magazine that debuted in 1992.
In one issue, he notoriously used Dingbat, a font containing only symbols, as the font for what he
considered a rather dull interview with Bryan Ferry. (However, the whole text was published in a legible font at the back of the same issue of Ray Gun, complete with a repeat of the asterisk motif).
Ray Gun made Carson well known and attracted new admirers to his work. In this period, he was featured in publications such as The New York Times (May 1994) and Newsweek (1996).
David Carson Design
He attended Cocoa Beach High School, was class president for 3 years, and still considers Cocoa Beach,
Florida to be the place he is "most from".
He attended San Diego State University, graduating with "Honors and Distinction" a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology.
Carson's first contact with graphic design was in 1980 at the University of Arizona during a two-week graphics course, taught by Jackson Boelts.
From 1982 to 1987, Carson worked as a teacher in Torrey Pines High School in San Diego, California. During that time, he was also a professional surfer, and reached a 9th in the world ranking. Carson had his own signature model surfboard with Infinity surfboards, and his own signature model fin with rainbow fin co.
He still surfs regularly at his property in Cane Garden Bay.
In 1983, Carson started to experiment with graphic design and found himself immersed in the artistic and bohemian culture of Southern California. He attended the Oregon College of Commercial Art, only for a couple months before accepting an unpaid internship with Action Now magazine, formerly Skateboarder magazine.That year, he went to Switzerland to attend a three-week workshop in graphic design. The teacher of the workshop, Hans-Rudolf Lutz, became his first great influence.
His first art direction
Carson became the art director of Transworld Skateboarding magazine in 1984, and remained there until 1988, helping to give the magazine a distinctive look. By the end of his tenure there he had started to develop his signature style, using "dirty" type and non-mainstream photographic techniques. He was also the art director of a spinoff magazine, Transworld Snowboarding, which began publishing in 1987.
Steve and Debbee Pezman, publishers of Surfer magazine (and later Surfers Journal) tapped Carson to design Beach Culture, a quarterly publication that evolved out of a to-the-trade annual supplement. Though only six quarterly issues were produced, the tabloid-size venue—edited by author Neil Fineman—allowed Carson to make his first significant impact on the world of graphic design and typography—with ideas that were called innovative even by those that were not fond of his work, in which legibility often relied on readers' strict attention. For one feature on a blind surfer, Carson opened with a two-page spread covered in black. After Beach Culture, Carson re designed Surfer magazine and art directed and design it for the next 2 years, before starting Ray gun Magazine for 3 years. Carson then relocated his studio to New York City, where he still works today.
Carson was hired by publisher Marvin Scott Jarrett to design Ray Gun, an alternative music and lifestyle magazine that debuted in 1992.
In one issue, he notoriously used Dingbat, a font containing only symbols, as the font for what he
considered a rather dull interview with Bryan Ferry. (However, the whole text was published in a legible font at the back of the same issue of Ray Gun, complete with a repeat of the asterisk motif).
Ray Gun made Carson well known and attracted new admirers to his work. In this period, he was featured in publications such as The New York Times (May 1994) and Newsweek (1996).
David Carson Design
In 1995,
Carson left Ray Gun to found his own studio, David Carson Design, in
New York City. He started to attract major clients from all over the
United States. During the next three years (1995–1998), Carson was doing
work for Pepsi Cola, Ray Ban (orbs project), Nike, Microsoft,
Budweiser, Giorgio Armani, NBC, American Airlines and Levi Strauss
Jeans, and later worked for a variety of new clients, including AT&T
Corporation, British Airways, Kodak, Lycra, Packard Bell, Sony, Suzuki,
Toyota, Warner Bros., CNN, Cuervo Gold, Johnson AIDS Foundation, MTV
Global, Prince, Lotus Software, Fox TV, Nissan, quiksilver, Intel,
Mercedes-Benz, MGM Studios and Nine Inch Nails.
He named and designed the first issue of the adventure lifestyle magazine Blue, in 1997. David designed the first issue and the first three covers. Carson's cover design for the first issue was selected as one of the "top 40 magazine covers of all time" by the American Society of Magazine Editors.
In 2000, Carson closed his New York City studio and followed his children to Charleston, South Carolina, where their mother had relocated them. Since then he has lived in San Diego, Seattle, Zurich, and Tortola . Currently he lives and works in NYC.
In 2004, Carson became the freelance Creative Director of the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston. That year, he also designed the special "Exploration" edition of Surfing Magazine and directed a variety of TV commercials, including Lucent Technologies, Budweiser, American Airlines, Xerox, UMPQUA Bank and numerous others.
In 2011 Carson worked as worldwide creative director for Bose Corporation. He also served as Design Director for the 2011 Quiksilver Pro Surfing contest in Biarritz, France, and designed the branding for the 2012 Quiksilver Pro in New York City. He designed a set of three posters for the San Sebastián International Film Festival in Spain and the covers for Huck, Little White Lies, and Monster Children
magazines. He has been featured in over 280 interviews worldwide. The international design magazine CASA called Carson, in a cover story in 2014 "The Most Famous Graphic Designer in the World". Carson was invited to judge the European Design Awards in London (DD+A) in both 2010 and 2011, and was the keynote speaker of the Fuse branding conference in Chicago in 2014 and the international creativity festival in Dubai in 2015.
Since 2010, he has lectured, held workshops and exhibitions across Europe, South America and the United States. In 2015, Carson was commissioned to design the posters and publicity for the Harvard Graduate School of Design, for the 2015–2016 school year, including a set of over 30 poster designs for events and speaker series. In a feature story, Newsweek magazine said of Carson that he "changed the public face of graphic design".
His layouts featured distortions or mixes of 'vernacular' typefaces and fractured imagery, rendering them almost illegible. Indeed, his maxim of the 'end of print' questioned the role of type in the emergent age of digital design, following on from California New Wave and coinciding with experiments at the Cranbrook
Academy of Art.
When Graphic Design USA Magazine (NYC) listed the “most influential graphic designers of the era” David was listed as one of the all time 5 most influential designers, with Milton Glaser, Paul Rand, Saul Bass and Massimo Vignelli.
Carson claims that his work is "subjective, personal and very self indulgent".
Design writer Steven Heller has said, "He significantly influenced a generation to embrace typography as an expressive medium". Design educator and historian Ellen Lupton said after the release of Carson's book Trek, "David Carson continues to be one of the world's most distinctive typographic voices—much imitated, but never matched" (ID Mag.nyc). AIGA (the American Institute of Graphic Arts) called Carson "our biggest star". The magazine Eye produced a graphic chart showing Carson to be the most 'Googled' graphic designer ever. Carson continues to lecture throughout the world.
He named and designed the first issue of the adventure lifestyle magazine Blue, in 1997. David designed the first issue and the first three covers. Carson's cover design for the first issue was selected as one of the "top 40 magazine covers of all time" by the American Society of Magazine Editors.
In 2000, Carson closed his New York City studio and followed his children to Charleston, South Carolina, where their mother had relocated them. Since then he has lived in San Diego, Seattle, Zurich, and Tortola . Currently he lives and works in NYC.
In 2004, Carson became the freelance Creative Director of the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston. That year, he also designed the special "Exploration" edition of Surfing Magazine and directed a variety of TV commercials, including Lucent Technologies, Budweiser, American Airlines, Xerox, UMPQUA Bank and numerous others.
In 2011 Carson worked as worldwide creative director for Bose Corporation. He also served as Design Director for the 2011 Quiksilver Pro Surfing contest in Biarritz, France, and designed the branding for the 2012 Quiksilver Pro in New York City. He designed a set of three posters for the San Sebastián International Film Festival in Spain and the covers for Huck, Little White Lies, and Monster Children
magazines. He has been featured in over 280 interviews worldwide. The international design magazine CASA called Carson, in a cover story in 2014 "The Most Famous Graphic Designer in the World". Carson was invited to judge the European Design Awards in London (DD+A) in both 2010 and 2011, and was the keynote speaker of the Fuse branding conference in Chicago in 2014 and the international creativity festival in Dubai in 2015.
Since 2010, he has lectured, held workshops and exhibitions across Europe, South America and the United States. In 2015, Carson was commissioned to design the posters and publicity for the Harvard Graduate School of Design, for the 2015–2016 school year, including a set of over 30 poster designs for events and speaker series. In a feature story, Newsweek magazine said of Carson that he "changed the public face of graphic design".
His layouts featured distortions or mixes of 'vernacular' typefaces and fractured imagery, rendering them almost illegible. Indeed, his maxim of the 'end of print' questioned the role of type in the emergent age of digital design, following on from California New Wave and coinciding with experiments at the Cranbrook
Academy of Art.
When Graphic Design USA Magazine (NYC) listed the “most influential graphic designers of the era” David was listed as one of the all time 5 most influential designers, with Milton Glaser, Paul Rand, Saul Bass and Massimo Vignelli.
Carson claims that his work is "subjective, personal and very self indulgent".
Design writer Steven Heller has said, "He significantly influenced a generation to embrace typography as an expressive medium". Design educator and historian Ellen Lupton said after the release of Carson's book Trek, "David Carson continues to be one of the world's most distinctive typographic voices—much imitated, but never matched" (ID Mag.nyc). AIGA (the American Institute of Graphic Arts) called Carson "our biggest star". The magazine Eye produced a graphic chart showing Carson to be the most 'Googled' graphic designer ever. Carson continues to lecture throughout the world.
Derek
Birdsall was born on 1st of August 1934 in Wakefield, Yorkshire,
England, he attended The King's School, Pontefract, Wakefield College of
Art and Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. "At Central,
Birdsall came under the influence of Anthony Froshaug, who – alongside
Herbert Spencer and Edward Wright – taught his students the difference
between beautiful lettering and typography proper, with its pre-eminent
concerns of clarity, directness and, above all, textual legibility."
Birdsall failed to earn a diploma, however, and began his career in
design in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Career:
Birdsall's career and fame were built on a variety of designs and commissions. During his long career—among much other work—Birdsall designed Penguin book covers and Pirelli calendars; he art-directed several magazines (including Nova and Mobil Oil's Pegasus; and he designed books for the Yale Center for British Art, the Tate, the V&A and the British Council and redesigned the Book of Common Prayer in 2000. Alongside his practice in design, Birdsall also taught design at the Royal College of Art beginning in 1987. Birdsall was the author of Notes On Book Design, published by Yale University Press in 2004.
Birdsall's career and fame were built on a variety of designs and commissions. During his long career—among much other work—Birdsall designed Penguin book covers and Pirelli calendars; he art-directed several magazines (including Nova and Mobil Oil's Pegasus; and he designed books for the Yale Center for British Art, the Tate, the V&A and the British Council and redesigned the Book of Common Prayer in 2000. Alongside his practice in design, Birdsall also taught design at the Royal College of Art beginning in 1987. Birdsall was the author of Notes On Book Design, published by Yale University Press in 2004.
Personal life:
He
married in 1954 and has three sons and one daughter, including actor
Jesse Birdsall. His daughter Elsa has followed him into the design
industry.
At Central, Birdsall came under the influence of Anthony Froshaug, who – alongside Herbert Spencer and Edward Wright – taught his students the difference between beautiful lettering and typography proper, with its pre-eminent concerns of clarity, directness and, above all, textual legibility. Birdsall recalls how the 1951 Festival of Britain had been “typographically Victorian", but also how through Froshaug and his teaching colleagues, and through magazines like the Swiss printing trade journal SGM, the legacy of Jan Tshichold was beginning to take hold in Britain in asymmetric print designs of modernist simplicity and decorative restraint.
When Birdsall left Central, printers were still the principal source of freelance work, but a few
publishers and advertising agencies were beginning to acquire typographic designers “of modernist
approach. After two years of National Service in the Royal Army Ordinance Corps Printing Unit in Cyprus, Birdsall’s first design job was for the printer Balding & Mansell in 1957: a series of leaflets to go with opera LP records with the text set in standard Garamond and “indulgent" titling for Salome in Legend and Aida in Gothic Shaded. The style owed much to Froshaug’s own typographic sensibility which Birdsall describes as “a sense of poetry; modernism with a delicate touch. While Froshaug loved Gill Sans, for example, he was aware of and deployed the contrapuntal merits of other typefaces. By contrast, some other hardline modernist typography departments supplied only Helvetica to their students.
In 1957 Birdsall was offered a job at the very forward-looking advertising agency Crawfords under the direction of Tom Wolsely, designing the typographic lines on print advertisements. He declined, preferring to remain freelance. This was the beginning of an era of British design that Birdsall describes now as “great and classic, the 1960s and 70s. He began to be aware of American art directors like George Lois and Henry Wolf and to observe vividly how the worlds of advertising and editorial design were constantly outshining each other and upping the ante set by the other.
In 1959 Birdsall formed BDMW with George Daulby, James Mortimer and George Mayhew, simultaneously with the other epoch-defining design agency Fletcher, Forbes & Gill. During the next eight years at BDMW Birdsall acquired a reputation as the “emergency art director, multifariously commissioning and art-directing photography and illustration as well as designing typography and layouts for various magazines. In 1967 he started his own studio, Omnific! He continued to design jackets for Penguin books, including a complete re-style of the Education series in 1970; art-directed Town and Nova magazines for short periods as well as Willy Fleckhaus’s now legendary Twen; designed advertisements and literature for Lotus cars and Mobil Oil in New York; and produced the series of Pirelli calendars – for the first time not featuring tyres –
which are still the work by which he is best known to many. During the same period he was appointed to a lectureship at the London College of Printing and taught at Maidstone College of Art, always playing modern jazz during class as long as it was allowed.
Birdsall began to get fascinated by meeting writers and still admits no greater thrill than getting a
telephone call from an author who wants him to design his book or its jacket. Gradually, from the early 1970s, he became known above all as a book designer. The Penguin covers of the 1960s and 70s close to art-direction – just the type on the Penguin covers of the 1960s and 70s, for example, is brilliantly graphic in itself, with or without illustration. During this period he also became a temporary member of Monty Python as remuneration for designing a landmark book for them. It was followed by two decades of grand and beautiful illustrated books for great world institutions including Yale Center for British Art, Tate, the V&A and the British Council – catalogues of art and architecture and artefacts – with elegant type and illustrative material exquisitely placed and calibrated in scale. He returned briefly to
editorial design and art direction in the late 1980s with dramatic and elegant redesigns for the
Independent and Sunday Telegraph magazines.
Birdsall’s evolution as a virtuoso book designer is the clearest indication of the principle of
transparency that he attaches to design. He is troubled by what he calls the notion of “the designer as It – as an egocentric expressionist (or Author as current discourse has it) – which is unsatisfying in
practice, ephemeral in effect and ultimately even “tragic. The preface to his 2004 book notes on book
design – part reflective treatise, part technical manual – introduces “simply the decent setting of type
and the intelligent layout of pictures based on a rigorous study of content. This is the organising
sensibility of all great graphic designers, who manage to contrive tension and sublimity within the
exercise of reason. His innocuous recommendation is also, curiously enough, shared by avant-garde mentors of today including Rem Koolhaas and John Thackara: the sense that design needs to be re-conceived as the organisation of what already exists, rather than as the deliberate creation of novelty. Birdsall’s designs are not born of mysterious inspiration but “based on simple, discoverable facts about the books themselves.
In 2000 Birdsall’s redesign of the Book of Common Worship was published by the Church of England. It is an awesomely demanding feat of typographic organisation befitting a character who – notwithstanding our popular image of the fiery, irrational creative type – has recently filed all his thoughts and notes since the 1950s on A6 index cards. He has prevailed in a studio at the bottom of his garden, with few assistants and minimal technology, through an era of graphically reductive power-branding and baroque adventures in screen-based design, as a typographer with – above all else – respect for the image that words alone can create.
At Central, Birdsall came under the influence of Anthony Froshaug, who – alongside Herbert Spencer and Edward Wright – taught his students the difference between beautiful lettering and typography proper, with its pre-eminent concerns of clarity, directness and, above all, textual legibility. Birdsall recalls how the 1951 Festival of Britain had been “typographically Victorian", but also how through Froshaug and his teaching colleagues, and through magazines like the Swiss printing trade journal SGM, the legacy of Jan Tshichold was beginning to take hold in Britain in asymmetric print designs of modernist simplicity and decorative restraint.
When Birdsall left Central, printers were still the principal source of freelance work, but a few
publishers and advertising agencies were beginning to acquire typographic designers “of modernist
approach. After two years of National Service in the Royal Army Ordinance Corps Printing Unit in Cyprus, Birdsall’s first design job was for the printer Balding & Mansell in 1957: a series of leaflets to go with opera LP records with the text set in standard Garamond and “indulgent" titling for Salome in Legend and Aida in Gothic Shaded. The style owed much to Froshaug’s own typographic sensibility which Birdsall describes as “a sense of poetry; modernism with a delicate touch. While Froshaug loved Gill Sans, for example, he was aware of and deployed the contrapuntal merits of other typefaces. By contrast, some other hardline modernist typography departments supplied only Helvetica to their students.
In 1957 Birdsall was offered a job at the very forward-looking advertising agency Crawfords under the direction of Tom Wolsely, designing the typographic lines on print advertisements. He declined, preferring to remain freelance. This was the beginning of an era of British design that Birdsall describes now as “great and classic, the 1960s and 70s. He began to be aware of American art directors like George Lois and Henry Wolf and to observe vividly how the worlds of advertising and editorial design were constantly outshining each other and upping the ante set by the other.
In 1959 Birdsall formed BDMW with George Daulby, James Mortimer and George Mayhew, simultaneously with the other epoch-defining design agency Fletcher, Forbes & Gill. During the next eight years at BDMW Birdsall acquired a reputation as the “emergency art director, multifariously commissioning and art-directing photography and illustration as well as designing typography and layouts for various magazines. In 1967 he started his own studio, Omnific! He continued to design jackets for Penguin books, including a complete re-style of the Education series in 1970; art-directed Town and Nova magazines for short periods as well as Willy Fleckhaus’s now legendary Twen; designed advertisements and literature for Lotus cars and Mobil Oil in New York; and produced the series of Pirelli calendars – for the first time not featuring tyres –
which are still the work by which he is best known to many. During the same period he was appointed to a lectureship at the London College of Printing and taught at Maidstone College of Art, always playing modern jazz during class as long as it was allowed.
Birdsall began to get fascinated by meeting writers and still admits no greater thrill than getting a
telephone call from an author who wants him to design his book or its jacket. Gradually, from the early 1970s, he became known above all as a book designer. The Penguin covers of the 1960s and 70s close to art-direction – just the type on the Penguin covers of the 1960s and 70s, for example, is brilliantly graphic in itself, with or without illustration. During this period he also became a temporary member of Monty Python as remuneration for designing a landmark book for them. It was followed by two decades of grand and beautiful illustrated books for great world institutions including Yale Center for British Art, Tate, the V&A and the British Council – catalogues of art and architecture and artefacts – with elegant type and illustrative material exquisitely placed and calibrated in scale. He returned briefly to
editorial design and art direction in the late 1980s with dramatic and elegant redesigns for the
Independent and Sunday Telegraph magazines.
Birdsall’s evolution as a virtuoso book designer is the clearest indication of the principle of
transparency that he attaches to design. He is troubled by what he calls the notion of “the designer as It – as an egocentric expressionist (or Author as current discourse has it) – which is unsatisfying in
practice, ephemeral in effect and ultimately even “tragic. The preface to his 2004 book notes on book
design – part reflective treatise, part technical manual – introduces “simply the decent setting of type
and the intelligent layout of pictures based on a rigorous study of content. This is the organising
sensibility of all great graphic designers, who manage to contrive tension and sublimity within the
exercise of reason. His innocuous recommendation is also, curiously enough, shared by avant-garde mentors of today including Rem Koolhaas and John Thackara: the sense that design needs to be re-conceived as the organisation of what already exists, rather than as the deliberate creation of novelty. Birdsall’s designs are not born of mysterious inspiration but “based on simple, discoverable facts about the books themselves.
In 2000 Birdsall’s redesign of the Book of Common Worship was published by the Church of England. It is an awesomely demanding feat of typographic organisation befitting a character who – notwithstanding our popular image of the fiery, irrational creative type – has recently filed all his thoughts and notes since the 1950s on A6 index cards. He has prevailed in a studio at the bottom of his garden, with few assistants and minimal technology, through an era of graphically reductive power-branding and baroque adventures in screen-based design, as a typographer with – above all else – respect for the image that words alone can create.
Edward
Fella was born on 1938) in Detroit, Michigan, USA. He created the
OutWest type in 1993. His work is held in the collection of the
Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, the Brauer Museum of Art, and the
Museum of Modern Art. He is the recipient of the 2007 AIGA Medal. He is
also the recipient of the Chrysler Award in 1997.Curt Cloninger called
Fella as "the contemporary master of hand-drawn typography."
He learned about commercial art while a student at Cass Technical High School. He received his Master of Fine Arts in design at Cranbrook Academy of Art, which he started when he was 47. He quit his commercial art job to create his own art. He teaches at the California Institute for the Arts. He created the OutWest typeface. He designed it by hand. It has a 15-degree ellipse. His hand design style has been described as "American folk art typography". His style and work has influenced designers like Lorraine Wild, P. Scott Makela, Jeffrey Keedy, Elliott Earls and Barry Deck.
Edward Fella was born in Detroit,MI in 1938. Fella was a born in to a middle-class family and attended Cass Technical High School,a magnet school in Detroit where he studied lettering, illustration, paste-up and other commercial-art techniques. He graduated from Cass tech in 1957 and from then he went into the commercial graphic industry. He worked in the commercial industry for 30 years. After his time as a commercial artist he went to study at the center for creative studies and graduated from there in 1985 and then after that Fella went to Cranbrook academy of art and graduated from there in 1987. After graduating from Cranbrook he began teaching at California Institute of the Arts
Career
Edward Fella started out his career being a commercial artist for 30 years(1957-1987). The most of his works he did during this time was Automotive and health care posters. According to this article, his first job right after he finished high school was an apprentice at Phoenix studio, it was his first job in the commercial space.". His day to day work during his time as a commercial artist was drawing head lines and lay outs which helped refine his style and skills. His illustrations were reflective of the trends of the time, while the typography he used was ironic to commercial art deco type. Fella explored many different types of techniques that helped him through his career in design such as found typography, scribbles, brush writing, typesetting, rubdown letters, public domain clip art, stencils and much more. Fella was given the name « the king of zing » because of his whimsical illustration style he had. During the 60's and 70's Fella felt that his commercial work was not enough for him and started to become very active in Detroit's culture scene. He offered his services to some alternative art institutions. He also became the designer for the Detroit focus gallery. While there he created dozens of event posters and directed the Detroit focus quarterly. These types of assignments gave Fella the push to print the kind of experimental and crazy designs that he was doing in private. Fella used direct a positive photostat machine and made collages with images and type that had readily available. One of Fella's main creative outlet was his after the fact posters. These posters were made to give attended for events, he makes a small amount of poster to give to people that attend the event instead of having to make a bunch of posters for only a small amount of people to see and come to the event. He made these posters for lectures and for appearances he made. Since he made the posters for people that came to the event he had more creative freedom because he did not have to make it appeal to a commercial audience. The posters also helped him to continue expanding his body of work. In 1985 Fella retired from the commercial industry and decided to go back to school and enrolled in Cranbrook Academy of Art.
He learned about commercial art while a student at Cass Technical High School. He received his Master of Fine Arts in design at Cranbrook Academy of Art, which he started when he was 47. He quit his commercial art job to create his own art. He teaches at the California Institute for the Arts. He created the OutWest typeface. He designed it by hand. It has a 15-degree ellipse. His hand design style has been described as "American folk art typography". His style and work has influenced designers like Lorraine Wild, P. Scott Makela, Jeffrey Keedy, Elliott Earls and Barry Deck.
Edward Fella was born in Detroit,MI in 1938. Fella was a born in to a middle-class family and attended Cass Technical High School,a magnet school in Detroit where he studied lettering, illustration, paste-up and other commercial-art techniques. He graduated from Cass tech in 1957 and from then he went into the commercial graphic industry. He worked in the commercial industry for 30 years. After his time as a commercial artist he went to study at the center for creative studies and graduated from there in 1985 and then after that Fella went to Cranbrook academy of art and graduated from there in 1987. After graduating from Cranbrook he began teaching at California Institute of the Arts
Career
Edward Fella started out his career being a commercial artist for 30 years(1957-1987). The most of his works he did during this time was Automotive and health care posters. According to this article, his first job right after he finished high school was an apprentice at Phoenix studio, it was his first job in the commercial space.". His day to day work during his time as a commercial artist was drawing head lines and lay outs which helped refine his style and skills. His illustrations were reflective of the trends of the time, while the typography he used was ironic to commercial art deco type. Fella explored many different types of techniques that helped him through his career in design such as found typography, scribbles, brush writing, typesetting, rubdown letters, public domain clip art, stencils and much more. Fella was given the name « the king of zing » because of his whimsical illustration style he had. During the 60's and 70's Fella felt that his commercial work was not enough for him and started to become very active in Detroit's culture scene. He offered his services to some alternative art institutions. He also became the designer for the Detroit focus gallery. While there he created dozens of event posters and directed the Detroit focus quarterly. These types of assignments gave Fella the push to print the kind of experimental and crazy designs that he was doing in private. Fella used direct a positive photostat machine and made collages with images and type that had readily available. One of Fella's main creative outlet was his after the fact posters. These posters were made to give attended for events, he makes a small amount of poster to give to people that attend the event instead of having to make a bunch of posters for only a small amount of people to see and come to the event. He made these posters for lectures and for appearances he made. Since he made the posters for people that came to the event he had more creative freedom because he did not have to make it appeal to a commercial audience. The posters also helped him to continue expanding his body of work. In 1985 Fella retired from the commercial industry and decided to go back to school and enrolled in Cranbrook Academy of Art.
Later career: While Studying at Cranbrook, Fella had the freedom to continue and concentrate on his artistic exploration and experimental designs. Fella's work developed into a very elaborate pseudo-anarchic designs. This was very different from any thing that was being made at the time. His designs impacted and influenced a new era of designers who wanted to make a claim in the design world because of this Fella gained a huge following by the time he was fifty and became a controversial new designer. Fella was given the title of « Graphic godfather » by Emigre magazine.
Education: Edward Fella had graduated high school then went in to his career as a commercial artist. He attended a public trade school in Detroit called Cass Technical High School where he spent three of his four years studying commercial art. He studied lettering, illustration, and past up and many other commercial techniques. He graduated from Cass Tech in 1957 then went straight in to his first job as an apprentice.
After 30 Years of work in the commercial industry Fella went back to school and in 1985 revived his BFA (Bachelor of fine arts) in design from the College For Creative Studies in Detroit. Then in 1987 received his MFA (Master Of Fine Arts) in design from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. In 1987 Fella was hired to teach at California institute of technology by Lorraine Wild. Fella gave his last lecture at CAL arts on April 15, 2013.
In The 1980s, Fella would go to Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills and he showed his extensive collection of experimental work that he did in his off time while working as a commercial artist. He would present these works to Katherine and Michale McCoy's students. Then Fella found out that Katherine and Michale was creating a design program at Cranbrook so after he retired from doing commercial art he decided to enroll in the program. While in Cranbrook, Fella was able to pursue his exploration of design and helped him refine his craft and combined his new creative work with his 30 years of experience as a commercial artist.
Style:
Edward Fella was known to break every rule in typography and design. He had a style that was unique to him at the time it was slightly base on the theory of deconstruction, but he took that and pushed it even further. He distorted a style of sanserif with his own hand writing with various thicknesses, curves, and tails to each character so that each one is different from the one before. Fella is one of the most extreme example of a typographer who is able to achieve the same creative freedom as the painters and sculptors he promoted in catalogs and posters. When Fella started making hand-hewn typography, he mirrored earlier "words in freedom" produced by Dadaist, Surrealist, and Futurist. Fella has created two typefaces Outwest and Fella parts these typefaces show his eccentric and creative style. These typefaces both had a huge impact for being quirky and different. Outwest type looks like cactus wearing cowboy hats and Fella parts looks like a mix of comic sans and dingbat fonts. He distributes these font through Emigre fonts and even thought these fonts are crazy and over the top they were still adapted to mainstream designs.
Edward Fella was known to break every rule in typography and design. He had a style that was unique to him at the time it was slightly base on the theory of deconstruction, but he took that and pushed it even further. He distorted a style of sanserif with his own hand writing with various thicknesses, curves, and tails to each character so that each one is different from the one before. Fella is one of the most extreme example of a typographer who is able to achieve the same creative freedom as the painters and sculptors he promoted in catalogs and posters. When Fella started making hand-hewn typography, he mirrored earlier "words in freedom" produced by Dadaist, Surrealist, and Futurist. Fella has created two typefaces Outwest and Fella parts these typefaces show his eccentric and creative style. These typefaces both had a huge impact for being quirky and different. Outwest type looks like cactus wearing cowboy hats and Fella parts looks like a mix of comic sans and dingbat fonts. He distributes these font through Emigre fonts and even thought these fonts are crazy and over the top they were still adapted to mainstream designs.
Historical Influence
Throughout his career, Fella has helped and influenced designers with his designs. He started helping
designers when he would visit Cranbrook as a guest critic before he became a student and continued even after he became a student. After graduating, he joined Cal Arts where he taught design and helped influence the new generation of designers. An example of someone he influenced is Jeffery Keedy, Keedy made a typeface called keedysans and has similarity's to Fella's style with inconsistent spacing and the characters were rounded and sometimes sliced. Also Barry Deck, a graduate from cal arts, made a gothic template which was influenced by Fella ; Deck even says that he made it intentionally imperfect to show the imperfect language of an imperfect world. Decks typeface became one of the most impotent typefaces of the decade. Fella made many sketch books and collages that helped inspire many Cranbook students to break the barriers of visual design like Fella did.
Throughout his career, Fella has helped and influenced designers with his designs. He started helping
designers when he would visit Cranbrook as a guest critic before he became a student and continued even after he became a student. After graduating, he joined Cal Arts where he taught design and helped influence the new generation of designers. An example of someone he influenced is Jeffery Keedy, Keedy made a typeface called keedysans and has similarity's to Fella's style with inconsistent spacing and the characters were rounded and sometimes sliced. Also Barry Deck, a graduate from cal arts, made a gothic template which was influenced by Fella ; Deck even says that he made it intentionally imperfect to show the imperfect language of an imperfect world. Decks typeface became one of the most impotent typefaces of the decade. Fella made many sketch books and collages that helped inspire many Cranbook students to break the barriers of visual design like Fella did.
Works:
Fella's work is largely an intervention in how it mixes high art and contemporary culture to produce
unique art. According to Lorraine Wild, a 2006 AIGA medalist:
“Ed's work marks a sea change in graphic design,”. “He introduced ambivalence and ambiguity, the multiple meanings of design as text and subtext, and that graphic designers are really artists.
unique art. According to Lorraine Wild, a 2006 AIGA medalist:
“Ed's work marks a sea change in graphic design,”. “He introduced ambivalence and ambiguity, the multiple meanings of design as text and subtext, and that graphic designers are really artists.
Lazar Markovich Lissitzky, About this sound listen (help·info); November 23 [O.S. November 11] 1890 –
December 30, 1941), known as El Lissitzky , was a Russian artist,
designer, photographer, typographer, polemicist and architect. He was an
important figure of the Russian avant-garde, helping develop suprematism with his mentor, Kazimir Malevich, and designing numerous exhibition displays and propaganda works for the Soviet Union. His work greatly influenced the Bauhaus and constructivist movements, and he experimented with production techniques and stylistic devices that would go on to dominate 20th-century graphic design.
Lissitzky's entire career was laced with the belief that the artist could be an agent for change, later
summarized with his edict, "das zielbewußte Schaffen" (goal-oriented creation). Lissitzky, of Lithuanian Jewish оrigin, began his career illustrating Yiddish children's books in an effort to promote Jewish culture in Russia, a country that was undergoing massive change at the time and that had just repealed its antisemitic laws. When only 15 he started teaching, a duty he would maintain for most of his life. Over the years, he taught in a variety of positions, schools, and artistic media, spreading and exchanging ideas. He took this ethic with him when he worked with Malevich in heading the suprematist art group UNOVIS, when he developed a variant suprematist series of his own, Proun, and further still in 1921, when he took up a job as the Russian cultural ambassador to Weimar Germany, working with and influencing important figures of the Bauhaus and De Stijl movements during his stay. In his remaining years he brought significant innovation and change to typography, exhibition design, photomontage, and book design, producing critically respected works and winning international acclaim for his exhibition design. This continued until his deathbed, where in 1941 he produced one of his last works – a Soviet propaganda poster rallying the people to construct more tanks for the fight against Nazi Germany. In 2014, the heirs of the artist, in collaboration with Van abbemuseum and the leading worldwide scholars, the Lissitzky foundation was established, to preserve the artist's legacy and preparing a catalogue raisonné of the artist oeuvre.
Lissitzky was born on November 23, 1890 in Pochinok, a small Jewish community 50 kilometres (31 mi) southeast of Smolensk, former Russian Empire. During his childhood, he lived and studied in the city of Vitebsk, now part of Belarus, and later spent 10 years in Smolensk living with his grandparents and attending the Smolensk Grammar School, spending summer vacations in Vitebsk. Always expressing an interest and talent in drawing, he started to receive instruction at 13 from Yehuda Pen, a local Jewish artist, and by the time he was 15 was teaching students himself. In 1909, he applied to an art academy in Saint Petersburg, but was rejected. While he passed the entrance exam and was qualified, the law under the Tsarist regime only allowed a limited number of Jewish students to attend Russian schools and universities.
Like many other Jews then living in the Russian Empire, Lissitzky went to study in Germany. He left in 1909 to study architectural engineering at a Technische Hochschule in Darmstadt, Germany. During the summer of 1912, Lissitzky, in his own words, "wandered through Europe", spending time in Paris and covering 1,200 kilometres (750 mi) on foot in Italy, teaching himself about fine art and sketching architecture and landscapes that interested him. His interest in ancient Jewish culture had originated during the contacts with a Paris-based group of Russian Jews led by sculptor Ossip Zadkine, a lifetime friend of Lissitzky since early childhood, who exposed Lissitzky to conflicts between different groups within the diaspora. Also in 1912 some of his pieces were included for the first time in an exhibit by the St. Petersburg Artists Union; a notable first step. He remained in Germany until the outbreak of World War I, when he was forced to return home through Switzerland and the Balkans, along with many of his countrymen, including other expatriate artists born in the former Russian Empire, such as Wassily Kandinsky and Marc Chagall.
Upon his return to Moscow, Lissitzky attended the Polytechnic Institute of Riga, which had been evacuated to Moscow because of the war, and worked for the architectural firms of Boris Velikovsky and Roman Klein.
During this work, he took an active and passionate interest in Jewish culture which, after the downfall of the openly antisemitic Tsarist regime, was experiencing a renaissance. The new Provisional Government repealed a decree that prohibited the printing of Hebrew letters and that barred Jews from citizenship.
Thus Lissitzky soon devoted himself to Jewish art, exhibiting works by local Jewish artists, traveling to Mahilyow to study the traditional architecture and ornaments of old synagogues, and illustrating many Yiddish children's books. These books were Lissitzky's first major foray in book design, a field that he would greatly innovate during his career.
Lissitzky's The Constructor, 1924, London, Victoria & Albert Museum
His first designs appeared in the 1917 book, Sihas hulin: Eyne fun di geshikhten (An Everyday
Conversation), where he incorporated Hebrew letters with a distinctly art nouveau flair. His next book was a visual retelling of the traditional Jewish Passover song Had gadya (One Goat), in which Lissitzky showcased a typographic device that he would often return to in later designs. In the book, he integrated letters ith images through a system that matched the color of the characters in the story with the word referring to them. In the designs for the final page, Lissitzky depicts the mighty "hand of God" slaying the angel of death, who wears the tsar's crown. This representation links the redemption of the Jews with the victory of the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution. An alternative view asserts that the artist was waryof Bolshevik internationalization, leading to destruction of traditional Jewish culture.Visual representations of the hand of God would recur in numerous pieces throughout his entire career, most notably with his 1924 photomontage self-portrait The Constructor, which prominently featured the hand.
Avant-garde
Constructivism
Proun. 1st Kestner Portfolio
In May 1919, upon receiving an invitation from fellow Jewish artist Marc Chagall, Lissitzky returned to Vitebsk to teach graphic arts, printing, and architecture at the newly formed People's Art School – a school that Chagall created after being appointed Commissioner of Artistic Affairs for Vitebsk in 1918. Lissitzky was engaged in designing and printing propaganda posters; later, he preferred to keep quiet about this period, probably because one of main subjects of these posters was the exile Leon Trotsky. The quantity of these posters is sufficient to regard them as a separate genre in the artist's output.
Chagall also invited other Russian artists, most notably the painter and art theoretician Kazimir Malevich and Lissitzky's former teacher, Yehuda Pen. However, it was not until October 1919 when Lissitzky, then on an errand in Moscow, persuaded Malevich to relocate to Vitebsk. The move coincided with the opening of the first art exhibition in Vitebsk directed by Chagall. Malevich would bring with him a wealth of new ideas, most of which inspired Lissitzky but clashed with local public and professionals who favored figurative art and with Chagall himself. After going through impressionism, primitivism, and cubism, Malevich began developing and advocating his ideas on suprematism aggressively. In development since 1915, suprematism
rejected the imitation of natural shapes and focused more on the creation of distinct, geometric forms. He replaced the classic teaching program with his own and disseminated his suprematist theories and
techniques school-wide. Chagall advocated more classical ideals and Lissitzky, still loyal to Chagall,
became torn between two opposing artistic paths. Lissitzky ultimately favoured Malevich's suprematism and broke away from traditional Jewish art. Chagall left the school shortly thereafter.
Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, 1919.
At this point Lissitzky subscribed fully to suprematism and, under the guidance of Malevich, helped
further develop the movement. In 1919–1920 Lissitzky was a head of Architectural department at the
People's Art School where with his students, primarily Lazar Khidekel, he was working on transition from plane to volumetric suprematism.[16] Lissitzky designed On the New System of Art by Malevich, who responded in December 1919: "Lazar Markovich, I salute you on the publication of this little book".
Perhaps the most famous work by Lissitzky from the same period was the 1919 propaganda poster "Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge". Russia was going through a civil war at the time, which was mainly fought between the "Reds" (communists, socialists and revolutionaries) and the "Whites" (monarchists, conservatives, liberals and other socialists who opposed the Bolshevik Revolution). The image of the red wedge shattering the white form, simple as it was, communicated a powerful message that left no doubt in the viewer's mind of its intention. The piece is often seen as alluding to the similar shapes used on military maps and, along with its political symbolism, was one of Lissitzky's first major steps away from Malevich's non-objective suprematism into a style his own. He stated: "The artist constructs a new symbol with his brush. This symbol is not a recognizable form of anything that is already finished, already made, or already existent in the world – it is a symbol of a new world, which is being built upon and which exists by the way of the people."
In January 17, 1920, Malevich and Lissitzky co-founded the short-lived Molposnovis (Young followers of a new art), a proto-suprematist association of students, professors, and other artists. After a brief and stormy dispute between "old" and "young" generations, and two rounds of renaming, the group reemerged as UNOVIS (Exponents of the new art) in February. Under the leadership of Malevich the group worked on a "suprematist ballet", choreographed by Nina Kogan and on the remake of a 1913 futurist opera Victory Over the Sun by Mikhail Matyushin and Aleksei Kruchenykh. Lissitzky and the entire group chose to share credit and responsibility for the works produced within the group, signing most pieces with a black square. This was partly a homage to a similar piece by their leader, Malevich, and a symbolic embrace of the Communist ideal. This would become the de facto seal of UNOVIS that took the place of individual names or initials.
Black squares worn by members as chest badges and cufflinks also resembled the ritual tefillin and thus were no strange symbol in Vitebsk shtetl. The group, which disbanded in 1922, would be pivotal in the dissemination of suprematist ideology in Russia and abroad and launch Lissitzky's status as one of the leading figures in the avant garde.
Incidentally, the earliest appearance of the signature Lissitzky (Russian: Эль Лисицкий) emerged in the handmade UNOVIS Miscellany, issued in two copies in March–April 1920, and containing his manifesto on book art: "the book enters the skull through the eye not the ear therefore the pathways the waves move at much greater speed and with more intensity. if i (sic) can only sing through my mouth with a book i (sic) can show myself in various guises."Proun
A Proun, c.1925. Commenting on Proun in 1921, Lissitzky stated, "We brought the canvas into circles . . . and while we turn, we raise ourselves into the space."
During this period Lissitzky proceeded to develop a suprematist style of his own, a series of abstract,
geometric paintings which he called Proun (pronounced "pro-oon"). The exact meaning of "Proun" was never fully revealed, with some suggesting that it is a contraction of proekt unovisa (designed by UNOVIS) or proekt utverzhdenya novogo (Design for the confirmation of the new). Later, Lissitzky defined them ambiguously as "the station where one changes from painting to architecture."
Proun was essentially Lissitzky's exploration of the visual language of suprematism with spatial elements, utilizing shifting axes and multiple perspectives; both uncommon ideas in suprematism. Suprematism at the time was conducted almost exclusively in flat, 2D forms and shapes, and Lissitzky, with a taste for architecture and other 3D concepts, tried to expand suprematism beyond this. His Proun works (known as Pro-oon) spanned over a half a decade and evolved from straightforward paintings and lithographs into fully three-dimensional installations. They would also lay the foundation for his later experiments in architecture and exhibition design. While the paintings were artistic in their own right, their use as a staging ground for his early architectonic ideas was significant. In these works, the basic elements of architecture – volume, mass, color, space and rhythm – were subjected to a fresh formulation in relation to the new suprematist ideals. Through his Prouns, utopian models for a new and better world were developed. This approach, in which the artist creates art with socially defined purpose, could aptly be summarized with his edict "das zielbewußte Schaffen" – "task oriented creation."
Jewish themes and symbols also sometimes made appearances in his Prounen, usually with Lissitzky using Hebrew letters as part of the typography or visual code. For the cover of the 1922 book Arba'ah Teyashim (Four Billy Goats; cover), he shows an arrangement of Hebrew letters as architectural elements in a dynamic design that mirrors his contemporary Proun typography. This theme was extended into his illustrations for the Shifs-Karta (Passenger Ticket) book.
Return to Germany:
International Congress of Progressive Artists, May 1922, Lissitzky 9th from left
In 1921, roughly concurrent with the demise of UNOVIS, suprematism was beginning to fracture into two ideologically adverse halves, one favoring Utopian, spiritual art and the other a more utilitarian art that served society. Lissitzky was fully aligned with neither and left Vitebsk in 1921. He took a job as a cultural representative of Russia and moved to Berlin where he was to establish contacts between Russian and German artists. There he also took up work as a writer and designer for international magazines and journals while helping to promote the avant-garde through various gallery shows. He started the very short-lived but impressive periodical Veshch-Gegenstand Objekt with Russian-Jewish writer Ilya Ehrenburg.
This was intended to display contemporary Russian art to Western Europe. It was a wide-ranging pan-arts publication, mainly focusing on new suprematist and constructivist works, and was published in German, French and Russian. In the first issue, Lissitzky wrote:
We consider the triumph of the constructive method to be essential for our present. We find it not only in the new economy and in the development of the industry, but also in the psychology of our contemporaries of art. Veshch will champion constructive art, whose mission is not, after all, to embellish life, but to organize it. During his stay Lissitzky also developed his career as a graphic designer with some historically important works such as the books Dlia Golossa (For the Voice), a collection of poems from Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Die Kunstismen (The Artisms) together with Jean Arp. In Berlin he also met and befriended many other artists, most notably Kurt Schwitters, László Moholy-Nagy, and Theo van Doesburg. Together with Schwitters and van Doesburg, Lissitzky presented the idea of an international artistic movement under the guidelines of constructivism while also working with Kurt Schwitters on the issue Nasci (Nature) of the periodical Merz, and continuing to illustrate children's books. The year after the publication of his first Proun series in Moscow in 1921, Schwitters introduced Lissitzky to the Hanover gallery kestnergesellschaft, where he held his first solo exhibition. The second Proun series, printed in Hanover in 1923, was a success, utilizing new printing techniques. Later on, he met Sophie Kuppers, who was the widow of Paul Kuppers, an art director of the kestnergesellschaft at which Lissitzky was showing, and whom he would marry in 1927.
summarized with his edict, "das zielbewußte Schaffen" (goal-oriented creation). Lissitzky, of Lithuanian Jewish оrigin, began his career illustrating Yiddish children's books in an effort to promote Jewish culture in Russia, a country that was undergoing massive change at the time and that had just repealed its antisemitic laws. When only 15 he started teaching, a duty he would maintain for most of his life. Over the years, he taught in a variety of positions, schools, and artistic media, spreading and exchanging ideas. He took this ethic with him when he worked with Malevich in heading the suprematist art group UNOVIS, when he developed a variant suprematist series of his own, Proun, and further still in 1921, when he took up a job as the Russian cultural ambassador to Weimar Germany, working with and influencing important figures of the Bauhaus and De Stijl movements during his stay. In his remaining years he brought significant innovation and change to typography, exhibition design, photomontage, and book design, producing critically respected works and winning international acclaim for his exhibition design. This continued until his deathbed, where in 1941 he produced one of his last works – a Soviet propaganda poster rallying the people to construct more tanks for the fight against Nazi Germany. In 2014, the heirs of the artist, in collaboration with Van abbemuseum and the leading worldwide scholars, the Lissitzky foundation was established, to preserve the artist's legacy and preparing a catalogue raisonné of the artist oeuvre.
Lissitzky was born on November 23, 1890 in Pochinok, a small Jewish community 50 kilometres (31 mi) southeast of Smolensk, former Russian Empire. During his childhood, he lived and studied in the city of Vitebsk, now part of Belarus, and later spent 10 years in Smolensk living with his grandparents and attending the Smolensk Grammar School, spending summer vacations in Vitebsk. Always expressing an interest and talent in drawing, he started to receive instruction at 13 from Yehuda Pen, a local Jewish artist, and by the time he was 15 was teaching students himself. In 1909, he applied to an art academy in Saint Petersburg, but was rejected. While he passed the entrance exam and was qualified, the law under the Tsarist regime only allowed a limited number of Jewish students to attend Russian schools and universities.
Like many other Jews then living in the Russian Empire, Lissitzky went to study in Germany. He left in 1909 to study architectural engineering at a Technische Hochschule in Darmstadt, Germany. During the summer of 1912, Lissitzky, in his own words, "wandered through Europe", spending time in Paris and covering 1,200 kilometres (750 mi) on foot in Italy, teaching himself about fine art and sketching architecture and landscapes that interested him. His interest in ancient Jewish culture had originated during the contacts with a Paris-based group of Russian Jews led by sculptor Ossip Zadkine, a lifetime friend of Lissitzky since early childhood, who exposed Lissitzky to conflicts between different groups within the diaspora. Also in 1912 some of his pieces were included for the first time in an exhibit by the St. Petersburg Artists Union; a notable first step. He remained in Germany until the outbreak of World War I, when he was forced to return home through Switzerland and the Balkans, along with many of his countrymen, including other expatriate artists born in the former Russian Empire, such as Wassily Kandinsky and Marc Chagall.
Upon his return to Moscow, Lissitzky attended the Polytechnic Institute of Riga, which had been evacuated to Moscow because of the war, and worked for the architectural firms of Boris Velikovsky and Roman Klein.
During this work, he took an active and passionate interest in Jewish culture which, after the downfall of the openly antisemitic Tsarist regime, was experiencing a renaissance. The new Provisional Government repealed a decree that prohibited the printing of Hebrew letters and that barred Jews from citizenship.
Thus Lissitzky soon devoted himself to Jewish art, exhibiting works by local Jewish artists, traveling to Mahilyow to study the traditional architecture and ornaments of old synagogues, and illustrating many Yiddish children's books. These books were Lissitzky's first major foray in book design, a field that he would greatly innovate during his career.
Lissitzky's The Constructor, 1924, London, Victoria & Albert Museum
His first designs appeared in the 1917 book, Sihas hulin: Eyne fun di geshikhten (An Everyday
Conversation), where he incorporated Hebrew letters with a distinctly art nouveau flair. His next book was a visual retelling of the traditional Jewish Passover song Had gadya (One Goat), in which Lissitzky showcased a typographic device that he would often return to in later designs. In the book, he integrated letters ith images through a system that matched the color of the characters in the story with the word referring to them. In the designs for the final page, Lissitzky depicts the mighty "hand of God" slaying the angel of death, who wears the tsar's crown. This representation links the redemption of the Jews with the victory of the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution. An alternative view asserts that the artist was waryof Bolshevik internationalization, leading to destruction of traditional Jewish culture.Visual representations of the hand of God would recur in numerous pieces throughout his entire career, most notably with his 1924 photomontage self-portrait The Constructor, which prominently featured the hand.
Avant-garde
Constructivism
Proun. 1st Kestner Portfolio
In May 1919, upon receiving an invitation from fellow Jewish artist Marc Chagall, Lissitzky returned to Vitebsk to teach graphic arts, printing, and architecture at the newly formed People's Art School – a school that Chagall created after being appointed Commissioner of Artistic Affairs for Vitebsk in 1918. Lissitzky was engaged in designing and printing propaganda posters; later, he preferred to keep quiet about this period, probably because one of main subjects of these posters was the exile Leon Trotsky. The quantity of these posters is sufficient to regard them as a separate genre in the artist's output.
Chagall also invited other Russian artists, most notably the painter and art theoretician Kazimir Malevich and Lissitzky's former teacher, Yehuda Pen. However, it was not until October 1919 when Lissitzky, then on an errand in Moscow, persuaded Malevich to relocate to Vitebsk. The move coincided with the opening of the first art exhibition in Vitebsk directed by Chagall. Malevich would bring with him a wealth of new ideas, most of which inspired Lissitzky but clashed with local public and professionals who favored figurative art and with Chagall himself. After going through impressionism, primitivism, and cubism, Malevich began developing and advocating his ideas on suprematism aggressively. In development since 1915, suprematism
rejected the imitation of natural shapes and focused more on the creation of distinct, geometric forms. He replaced the classic teaching program with his own and disseminated his suprematist theories and
techniques school-wide. Chagall advocated more classical ideals and Lissitzky, still loyal to Chagall,
became torn between two opposing artistic paths. Lissitzky ultimately favoured Malevich's suprematism and broke away from traditional Jewish art. Chagall left the school shortly thereafter.
Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, 1919.
At this point Lissitzky subscribed fully to suprematism and, under the guidance of Malevich, helped
further develop the movement. In 1919–1920 Lissitzky was a head of Architectural department at the
People's Art School where with his students, primarily Lazar Khidekel, he was working on transition from plane to volumetric suprematism.[16] Lissitzky designed On the New System of Art by Malevich, who responded in December 1919: "Lazar Markovich, I salute you on the publication of this little book".
Perhaps the most famous work by Lissitzky from the same period was the 1919 propaganda poster "Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge". Russia was going through a civil war at the time, which was mainly fought between the "Reds" (communists, socialists and revolutionaries) and the "Whites" (monarchists, conservatives, liberals and other socialists who opposed the Bolshevik Revolution). The image of the red wedge shattering the white form, simple as it was, communicated a powerful message that left no doubt in the viewer's mind of its intention. The piece is often seen as alluding to the similar shapes used on military maps and, along with its political symbolism, was one of Lissitzky's first major steps away from Malevich's non-objective suprematism into a style his own. He stated: "The artist constructs a new symbol with his brush. This symbol is not a recognizable form of anything that is already finished, already made, or already existent in the world – it is a symbol of a new world, which is being built upon and which exists by the way of the people."
In January 17, 1920, Malevich and Lissitzky co-founded the short-lived Molposnovis (Young followers of a new art), a proto-suprematist association of students, professors, and other artists. After a brief and stormy dispute between "old" and "young" generations, and two rounds of renaming, the group reemerged as UNOVIS (Exponents of the new art) in February. Under the leadership of Malevich the group worked on a "suprematist ballet", choreographed by Nina Kogan and on the remake of a 1913 futurist opera Victory Over the Sun by Mikhail Matyushin and Aleksei Kruchenykh. Lissitzky and the entire group chose to share credit and responsibility for the works produced within the group, signing most pieces with a black square. This was partly a homage to a similar piece by their leader, Malevich, and a symbolic embrace of the Communist ideal. This would become the de facto seal of UNOVIS that took the place of individual names or initials.
Black squares worn by members as chest badges and cufflinks also resembled the ritual tefillin and thus were no strange symbol in Vitebsk shtetl. The group, which disbanded in 1922, would be pivotal in the dissemination of suprematist ideology in Russia and abroad and launch Lissitzky's status as one of the leading figures in the avant garde.
Incidentally, the earliest appearance of the signature Lissitzky (Russian: Эль Лисицкий) emerged in the handmade UNOVIS Miscellany, issued in two copies in March–April 1920, and containing his manifesto on book art: "the book enters the skull through the eye not the ear therefore the pathways the waves move at much greater speed and with more intensity. if i (sic) can only sing through my mouth with a book i (sic) can show myself in various guises."Proun
A Proun, c.1925. Commenting on Proun in 1921, Lissitzky stated, "We brought the canvas into circles . . . and while we turn, we raise ourselves into the space."
During this period Lissitzky proceeded to develop a suprematist style of his own, a series of abstract,
geometric paintings which he called Proun (pronounced "pro-oon"). The exact meaning of "Proun" was never fully revealed, with some suggesting that it is a contraction of proekt unovisa (designed by UNOVIS) or proekt utverzhdenya novogo (Design for the confirmation of the new). Later, Lissitzky defined them ambiguously as "the station where one changes from painting to architecture."
Proun was essentially Lissitzky's exploration of the visual language of suprematism with spatial elements, utilizing shifting axes and multiple perspectives; both uncommon ideas in suprematism. Suprematism at the time was conducted almost exclusively in flat, 2D forms and shapes, and Lissitzky, with a taste for architecture and other 3D concepts, tried to expand suprematism beyond this. His Proun works (known as Pro-oon) spanned over a half a decade and evolved from straightforward paintings and lithographs into fully three-dimensional installations. They would also lay the foundation for his later experiments in architecture and exhibition design. While the paintings were artistic in their own right, their use as a staging ground for his early architectonic ideas was significant. In these works, the basic elements of architecture – volume, mass, color, space and rhythm – were subjected to a fresh formulation in relation to the new suprematist ideals. Through his Prouns, utopian models for a new and better world were developed. This approach, in which the artist creates art with socially defined purpose, could aptly be summarized with his edict "das zielbewußte Schaffen" – "task oriented creation."
Jewish themes and symbols also sometimes made appearances in his Prounen, usually with Lissitzky using Hebrew letters as part of the typography or visual code. For the cover of the 1922 book Arba'ah Teyashim (Four Billy Goats; cover), he shows an arrangement of Hebrew letters as architectural elements in a dynamic design that mirrors his contemporary Proun typography. This theme was extended into his illustrations for the Shifs-Karta (Passenger Ticket) book.
Return to Germany:
International Congress of Progressive Artists, May 1922, Lissitzky 9th from left
In 1921, roughly concurrent with the demise of UNOVIS, suprematism was beginning to fracture into two ideologically adverse halves, one favoring Utopian, spiritual art and the other a more utilitarian art that served society. Lissitzky was fully aligned with neither and left Vitebsk in 1921. He took a job as a cultural representative of Russia and moved to Berlin where he was to establish contacts between Russian and German artists. There he also took up work as a writer and designer for international magazines and journals while helping to promote the avant-garde through various gallery shows. He started the very short-lived but impressive periodical Veshch-Gegenstand Objekt with Russian-Jewish writer Ilya Ehrenburg.
This was intended to display contemporary Russian art to Western Europe. It was a wide-ranging pan-arts publication, mainly focusing on new suprematist and constructivist works, and was published in German, French and Russian. In the first issue, Lissitzky wrote:
We consider the triumph of the constructive method to be essential for our present. We find it not only in the new economy and in the development of the industry, but also in the psychology of our contemporaries of art. Veshch will champion constructive art, whose mission is not, after all, to embellish life, but to organize it. During his stay Lissitzky also developed his career as a graphic designer with some historically important works such as the books Dlia Golossa (For the Voice), a collection of poems from Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Die Kunstismen (The Artisms) together with Jean Arp. In Berlin he also met and befriended many other artists, most notably Kurt Schwitters, László Moholy-Nagy, and Theo van Doesburg. Together with Schwitters and van Doesburg, Lissitzky presented the idea of an international artistic movement under the guidelines of constructivism while also working with Kurt Schwitters on the issue Nasci (Nature) of the periodical Merz, and continuing to illustrate children's books. The year after the publication of his first Proun series in Moscow in 1921, Schwitters introduced Lissitzky to the Hanover gallery kestnergesellschaft, where he held his first solo exhibition. The second Proun series, printed in Hanover in 1923, was a success, utilizing new printing techniques. Later on, he met Sophie Kuppers, who was the widow of Paul Kuppers, an art director of the kestnergesellschaft at which Lissitzky was showing, and whom he would marry in 1927.
Horizontal skyscrapers:In
1923–1925, Lissitzky proposed and developed the idea of horizontal
skyscrapers (Wolkenbügel, "cloud-irons"). A series of eight such
structures was intended to mark the major intersections of the Boulevard
Ring in Moscow. Each Wolkenbügel was a flat three-story, 180-meter-wide
L-shaped slab raised 50 meters above street level. It rested on three
pylons (10×16×50 meters each), placed on three different street corners.
One pylon extended underground, doubling as the staircase into a
proposed subway station; two others provided shelter for ground-level
tram stations.
Lissitzky argued that as long as humans cannot fly, moving horizontally is natural and moving vertically is not. Thus, where there is not sufficient land for construction, a new plane created in the air at medium altitude should be preferred to an American-style tower. These buildings, according to Lissitzky, also provided superior insulation and ventilation for their inhabitants.
The print shop designed by El Lissitzky, showing the least damaged south end of the building
Lissitzky, aware of severe mismatch between his ideas and the existing urban landscape, experimented with different configurations of the horizontal surface and height-to-width ratios so that the structure appeared balanced visually ("spatial balance is in the contrast of vertical and horizontal tensions").The raised platform was shaped in a way that each of its four facets looked distinctly different. Each tower faced the Kremlin with the same facet, providing a pointing arrow to pedestrians on the streets. All eight buildings were planned identically, so Lissitzky proposed color-coding them for easier orientation.
An illustration of the concept appeared on the front cover of Adolf Behne's book Der Moderne Zweckbau, and articles on it written by Lissitzky appeared in the Moscow-based architectural review ASNOVA News (journal of ASNOVA, the Association of New Architects) and in the German art journal Das Kunstblatt.
After two years of intensive work Lissitzky was taken ill with acute pneumonia in October 1923. A few weeks later he was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis; in February 1924 he relocated to a Swiss sanatorium near Locarno. He kept very busy during his stay, working on advertisement designs for Pelikan Industries (who in turn paid for his treatment), translating articles written by Malevich into German, and experimenting heavily in typographic design and photography. In 1925, after the Swiss government denied his request to renew his visa, Lissitzky returned to Moscow and began teaching interior design, metalwork, and architecture at VKhUTEMAS (State Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops), a post he would keep until 1930. He all but stopped his Proun works and became increasingly active in architecture and propaganda designs.
In June 1926, Lissitzky left the country again, this time for a brief stay in Germany and the Netherlands.
There he designed an exhibition room for the Internationale Kunstausstellung art show in Dresden and the Raum Konstruktive Kunst (Room for constructivist art) and Abstraktes Kabinett shows in Hanover, and perfected the 1925 Wolkenbügel concept in collaboration with Mart Stam. In his autobiography (written in June 1941, and later edited and released by his wife), Lissitzky wrote, "1926. My most important work as an artist begins: the creation of exhibitions."
Back in the USSR, Lissitzky designed displays for the official Soviet pavilions at the international
exhibitions of the period, up to the 1939 New York World's Fair. One of his most notable exhibits was the All-Union Polygraphic Exhibit in Moscow in August–October 1927, where Lissitzky headed the design team for "photography and photomechanics" (i.e. photomontage) artists and the installation crew. His work was perceived as radically new, especially when juxtaposed with the classicist designs of Vladimir Favorsky (head of the book art section of the same exhibition) and of the foreign exhibits.
In the beginning of 1928, Lissitzky visited Cologne in preparation for the 1928 Pressa Show scheduled for April–May 1928. The state delegated Lissitzky to supervise the Soviet program; instead of building their own pavilion, the Soviets rented the existing central pavilion, the largest building on the fairground. To make full use of it, the Soviet program designed by Lissitsky revolved around the theme of a film show, with nearly continuous presentation of the new feature films, propagandist newsreels and early animation, on multiple screens inside the pavilion and on the open-air screens. His work was praised for near absence of paper exhibits; "everything moves, rotates, everything is energized". Lissitzky also designed and managed on site less demanding exhibitions like the 1930 Hygiene show in Dresden.
Along with pavilion design, Lissitzky began experimenting with print media again. His work with book and periodical design was perhaps some of his most accomplished and influential. He launched radical innovations in typography and photomontage, two fields in which he was particularly adept. He even designed a photomontage birth announcement in 1930 for his recently born son, Jen. The image itself is seen as being another personal endorsement of the Soviet Union, as it superimposed an image of the infant Jen over a factory chimney, linking Jen's future with his country's industrial progress. Around this time, Lissitzky's interest in book design escalated. In his remaining years, some of his most challenging and innovative works in this field would develop. In discussing his vision of the book, he wrote:
In contrast to the old monumental art [the book] itself goes to the people, and does not stand like a
cathedral in one place waiting for someone to approach . . . [The book is the] monument of the future.
He perceived books as permanent objects that were invested with power. This power was unique in that it could transmit ideas to people of different times, cultures, and interests, and do so in ways other art forms could not. This ambition laced all of his work, particularly in his later years. Lissitzky was devoted to the idea of creating art with power and purpose, art that could invoke change.
Later years. In 1937, Lissitzky served as the lead decorator for the upcoming All-Union Agricultural Exhibition,
reporting to the master planner Vyacheslav Oltarzhevsky but largely independent and highly critical of him. The project was plagued by delays and political interventions. By the end of 1937 the "apparent simplicity" of Lissitzky's artwork aroused the concerns of the political supervisors, and Lissitzky responded: "The simpler the shape, the finer precision and quality of execution required... yet until now [the working crews] are instructed by the foremen (Oltarzhevsky and Korostashevsky), not the authors" (i.e. Vladimir Shchuko, author of the Central Pavilion, and Lissitzky himself). His artwork, as described in 1937 proposals, completely departed from the modernist art of the 1920s in favor of socialist realism.
The iconic statue of Stalin in front of the central pavilion was proposed by Lissitzky personally: "this
will give the square its head and its face". In June 1938, he was only one of seventeen professionals and managers responsible for the Central Pavilion; in October 1938, he shared the responsibility for its Main Hall decoration with Vladimir.
Akhmetyev. He simultaneously worked on the decoration of the Soviet pavilion for the 1939 New York World's Fair; the June 1938 commission considered Lissitzky's work along with nineteen other proposals and eventually rejected it. Lissitzky's work on the USSR im Bau (USSR in construction) magazine took his experimentation and innovation with book design to an extreme. In issue #2 he included multiple fold-out pages, presented in concert with other folded pages that together produced design combinations and a narrative structure that was completely original. Each issue focused on a particular issue of the time – a new dam being built, constitutional reforms, Red Army progress and so on. In 1941, his tuberculosis worsened, but he continued to produce works, one of his last being a propaganda poster for Russia's efforts in World War II, titled "Davaite pobolshe tankov!" (Give us more tanks!) He died on December 30, 1941, in Moscow.
Lissitzky argued that as long as humans cannot fly, moving horizontally is natural and moving vertically is not. Thus, where there is not sufficient land for construction, a new plane created in the air at medium altitude should be preferred to an American-style tower. These buildings, according to Lissitzky, also provided superior insulation and ventilation for their inhabitants.
The print shop designed by El Lissitzky, showing the least damaged south end of the building
Lissitzky, aware of severe mismatch between his ideas and the existing urban landscape, experimented with different configurations of the horizontal surface and height-to-width ratios so that the structure appeared balanced visually ("spatial balance is in the contrast of vertical and horizontal tensions").The raised platform was shaped in a way that each of its four facets looked distinctly different. Each tower faced the Kremlin with the same facet, providing a pointing arrow to pedestrians on the streets. All eight buildings were planned identically, so Lissitzky proposed color-coding them for easier orientation.
An illustration of the concept appeared on the front cover of Adolf Behne's book Der Moderne Zweckbau, and articles on it written by Lissitzky appeared in the Moscow-based architectural review ASNOVA News (journal of ASNOVA, the Association of New Architects) and in the German art journal Das Kunstblatt.
After two years of intensive work Lissitzky was taken ill with acute pneumonia in October 1923. A few weeks later he was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis; in February 1924 he relocated to a Swiss sanatorium near Locarno. He kept very busy during his stay, working on advertisement designs for Pelikan Industries (who in turn paid for his treatment), translating articles written by Malevich into German, and experimenting heavily in typographic design and photography. In 1925, after the Swiss government denied his request to renew his visa, Lissitzky returned to Moscow and began teaching interior design, metalwork, and architecture at VKhUTEMAS (State Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops), a post he would keep until 1930. He all but stopped his Proun works and became increasingly active in architecture and propaganda designs.
In June 1926, Lissitzky left the country again, this time for a brief stay in Germany and the Netherlands.
There he designed an exhibition room for the Internationale Kunstausstellung art show in Dresden and the Raum Konstruktive Kunst (Room for constructivist art) and Abstraktes Kabinett shows in Hanover, and perfected the 1925 Wolkenbügel concept in collaboration with Mart Stam. In his autobiography (written in June 1941, and later edited and released by his wife), Lissitzky wrote, "1926. My most important work as an artist begins: the creation of exhibitions."
Back in the USSR, Lissitzky designed displays for the official Soviet pavilions at the international
exhibitions of the period, up to the 1939 New York World's Fair. One of his most notable exhibits was the All-Union Polygraphic Exhibit in Moscow in August–October 1927, where Lissitzky headed the design team for "photography and photomechanics" (i.e. photomontage) artists and the installation crew. His work was perceived as radically new, especially when juxtaposed with the classicist designs of Vladimir Favorsky (head of the book art section of the same exhibition) and of the foreign exhibits.
In the beginning of 1928, Lissitzky visited Cologne in preparation for the 1928 Pressa Show scheduled for April–May 1928. The state delegated Lissitzky to supervise the Soviet program; instead of building their own pavilion, the Soviets rented the existing central pavilion, the largest building on the fairground. To make full use of it, the Soviet program designed by Lissitsky revolved around the theme of a film show, with nearly continuous presentation of the new feature films, propagandist newsreels and early animation, on multiple screens inside the pavilion and on the open-air screens. His work was praised for near absence of paper exhibits; "everything moves, rotates, everything is energized". Lissitzky also designed and managed on site less demanding exhibitions like the 1930 Hygiene show in Dresden.
Along with pavilion design, Lissitzky began experimenting with print media again. His work with book and periodical design was perhaps some of his most accomplished and influential. He launched radical innovations in typography and photomontage, two fields in which he was particularly adept. He even designed a photomontage birth announcement in 1930 for his recently born son, Jen. The image itself is seen as being another personal endorsement of the Soviet Union, as it superimposed an image of the infant Jen over a factory chimney, linking Jen's future with his country's industrial progress. Around this time, Lissitzky's interest in book design escalated. In his remaining years, some of his most challenging and innovative works in this field would develop. In discussing his vision of the book, he wrote:
In contrast to the old monumental art [the book] itself goes to the people, and does not stand like a
cathedral in one place waiting for someone to approach . . . [The book is the] monument of the future.
He perceived books as permanent objects that were invested with power. This power was unique in that it could transmit ideas to people of different times, cultures, and interests, and do so in ways other art forms could not. This ambition laced all of his work, particularly in his later years. Lissitzky was devoted to the idea of creating art with power and purpose, art that could invoke change.
Later years. In 1937, Lissitzky served as the lead decorator for the upcoming All-Union Agricultural Exhibition,
reporting to the master planner Vyacheslav Oltarzhevsky but largely independent and highly critical of him. The project was plagued by delays and political interventions. By the end of 1937 the "apparent simplicity" of Lissitzky's artwork aroused the concerns of the political supervisors, and Lissitzky responded: "The simpler the shape, the finer precision and quality of execution required... yet until now [the working crews] are instructed by the foremen (Oltarzhevsky and Korostashevsky), not the authors" (i.e. Vladimir Shchuko, author of the Central Pavilion, and Lissitzky himself). His artwork, as described in 1937 proposals, completely departed from the modernist art of the 1920s in favor of socialist realism.
The iconic statue of Stalin in front of the central pavilion was proposed by Lissitzky personally: "this
will give the square its head and its face". In June 1938, he was only one of seventeen professionals and managers responsible for the Central Pavilion; in October 1938, he shared the responsibility for its Main Hall decoration with Vladimir.
Akhmetyev. He simultaneously worked on the decoration of the Soviet pavilion for the 1939 New York World's Fair; the June 1938 commission considered Lissitzky's work along with nineteen other proposals and eventually rejected it. Lissitzky's work on the USSR im Bau (USSR in construction) magazine took his experimentation and innovation with book design to an extreme. In issue #2 he included multiple fold-out pages, presented in concert with other folded pages that together produced design combinations and a narrative structure that was completely original. Each issue focused on a particular issue of the time – a new dam being built, constitutional reforms, Red Army progress and so on. In 1941, his tuberculosis worsened, but he continued to produce works, one of his last being a propaganda poster for Russia's efforts in World War II, titled "Davaite pobolshe tankov!" (Give us more tanks!) He died on December 30, 1941, in Moscow.
Ellen Lupton was born on 1963 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. She is a graphic designer, writer,
curator, and educator and well known for her fascination and study within typography, Lupton decided to expand her love for design and took on the graphic design world. Lupton is the curator of contemporary design at Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City and is the director of the Graphic Design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore. In 1981, Lupton started out as an art major at Cooper Union College. During the 1980s, design, in particular digital design, wasn't as popular as it is today. To Lupton, the visual art of writing was an inspiration to a self-professed art girl who came from a family of English teachers. When Lupton graduated from college, she was offered a position at the Cooper Union Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography, which preserves design history. By accepting this position, she was able to take her love of typography, writing, and design and combine them all together. While working at the Herb Lubalin Study Center, Lupton was also able to put her creations on display for the public to see. These exhibitions provided another arena in which objects, images and text functioned as both the method of communication and the subject of inquiry.
In 1997, Lupton was invited to become the digital design director of the Master of Fine Arts program at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Lupton enjoyed being back in her hometown of Baltimore. Here, Lupton was able to become a do it yourself curator and build a reputation within the writing field. With this experience, Lupton was able to further her knowledge in exhibitions. Each exhibition that she has worked on has been accompanied by a sturdy and ambitious public interest.
Lupton also began writing many hands on books about the design world. In 1996, Lupton co-wrote a book with the Cooper- Hewitt Museum entitled Mixed Message: graphic design in contemporary culture. This book focused on the revolutionary changes that graphic design went through in the early 1980s to the late 1990s. It also spoke about how the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in particular was able to focus on the changes and accept them within the design world. Lupton also went on to write
Design Writing Research: writing on graphic design,
Skin: Surface, Substance and Design,
D.I.Y.: Design it Yourself,
Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students,
and many more books regarding design. Lupton has described typefaces as "the air we breathe, the water we drink and the pot we smoke."
Type and the Bauhaus
curator, and educator and well known for her fascination and study within typography, Lupton decided to expand her love for design and took on the graphic design world. Lupton is the curator of contemporary design at Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City and is the director of the Graphic Design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore. In 1981, Lupton started out as an art major at Cooper Union College. During the 1980s, design, in particular digital design, wasn't as popular as it is today. To Lupton, the visual art of writing was an inspiration to a self-professed art girl who came from a family of English teachers. When Lupton graduated from college, she was offered a position at the Cooper Union Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography, which preserves design history. By accepting this position, she was able to take her love of typography, writing, and design and combine them all together. While working at the Herb Lubalin Study Center, Lupton was also able to put her creations on display for the public to see. These exhibitions provided another arena in which objects, images and text functioned as both the method of communication and the subject of inquiry.
In 1997, Lupton was invited to become the digital design director of the Master of Fine Arts program at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Lupton enjoyed being back in her hometown of Baltimore. Here, Lupton was able to become a do it yourself curator and build a reputation within the writing field. With this experience, Lupton was able to further her knowledge in exhibitions. Each exhibition that she has worked on has been accompanied by a sturdy and ambitious public interest.
Lupton also began writing many hands on books about the design world. In 1996, Lupton co-wrote a book with the Cooper- Hewitt Museum entitled Mixed Message: graphic design in contemporary culture. This book focused on the revolutionary changes that graphic design went through in the early 1980s to the late 1990s. It also spoke about how the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in particular was able to focus on the changes and accept them within the design world. Lupton also went on to write
Design Writing Research: writing on graphic design,
Skin: Surface, Substance and Design,
D.I.Y.: Design it Yourself,
Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students,
and many more books regarding design. Lupton has described typefaces as "the air we breathe, the water we drink and the pot we smoke."
Type and the Bauhaus
Lupton primarily bases her designs on typography and implements type on a communicative level. Not only is lettering used to describe everyday things to us, or to help us communicate, but it is also there to be a creative tool for writers, artists, illustrators, and graphic designers. Regardless of the type of design some texts may have, text is everywhere. It is a medium and a message to the senders and receivers.
In order to create new typefaces and new designs in regards to type, it is important to date back to when type became an organized framework. Lupton bases much of her creation of type on The Bauhaus design techniques. In the 1920s, the Bauhaus was opened to explore to as a universal, perceptually based on language of vision. As Lupton states in her book Graphic Design: the new basics the Bauhaus and other schools analyzed form in terms of basic geometric elements. Many designers, including Lupton herself, followed much of what the Bauhaus taught. Some the designers also got involved in the postmodern rejection of universal communication and interaction. Postmodernism late became a dominant ideology in the 1980s and 1990s. Regardless of what the Bauhaus says about the technical side of signing typography, it is truly the designers tasks to produce a work that the general art world could appreciate and understand. Lupton has proven this time and time again with her works on helping the public to understand how simple the design world can be; her D.I.Y book.
D.I.Y. method
After Lupton graduated from college in 1985, her drive for changing the commercial art world took a change for the best. Lupton graduated with a degree in typography and later sought to follow within the field of design. “Graphic design was a revelation to me,” says Lupton. “Design really wasn't in the mainstream back then. It was esoteric. It was the thing you did if you were very 'neat,' which I wasn't.”. With the booming interest in self-help books, Lupton co wrote the book titled D.I.Y.: Design It Yourself with graduate students from MICA. This book showed ordinary people, a new way of designing their own, unique works. From designing blog pages to creating your own book cover, Lupton breaks down the simplicity of the design world. "People don't just eat food anymore, they present it; they don't look at pictures, they take them; they don't buy T-shirts, they sell them.
In the D.I.Y.: Design It Yourself book, Lupton links design with capitalism and the Marxist Theory. In a Capitalist society, producers of goods are able to create their own unique materials and have them shared with the public for a profit. D.I.Y designers are able to rid the wave of capitalism while seeking out new counter-currents that carry their own imprint. D.I.Y is just like creating your own brand of T-shirts and selling them worldwide; your designing something based on your idea of art or fashion in this case.
In order to create new typefaces and new designs in regards to type, it is important to date back to when type became an organized framework. Lupton bases much of her creation of type on The Bauhaus design techniques. In the 1920s, the Bauhaus was opened to explore to as a universal, perceptually based on language of vision. As Lupton states in her book Graphic Design: the new basics the Bauhaus and other schools analyzed form in terms of basic geometric elements. Many designers, including Lupton herself, followed much of what the Bauhaus taught. Some the designers also got involved in the postmodern rejection of universal communication and interaction. Postmodernism late became a dominant ideology in the 1980s and 1990s. Regardless of what the Bauhaus says about the technical side of signing typography, it is truly the designers tasks to produce a work that the general art world could appreciate and understand. Lupton has proven this time and time again with her works on helping the public to understand how simple the design world can be; her D.I.Y book.
D.I.Y. method
After Lupton graduated from college in 1985, her drive for changing the commercial art world took a change for the best. Lupton graduated with a degree in typography and later sought to follow within the field of design. “Graphic design was a revelation to me,” says Lupton. “Design really wasn't in the mainstream back then. It was esoteric. It was the thing you did if you were very 'neat,' which I wasn't.”. With the booming interest in self-help books, Lupton co wrote the book titled D.I.Y.: Design It Yourself with graduate students from MICA. This book showed ordinary people, a new way of designing their own, unique works. From designing blog pages to creating your own book cover, Lupton breaks down the simplicity of the design world. "People don't just eat food anymore, they present it; they don't look at pictures, they take them; they don't buy T-shirts, they sell them.
In the D.I.Y.: Design It Yourself book, Lupton links design with capitalism and the Marxist Theory. In a Capitalist society, producers of goods are able to create their own unique materials and have them shared with the public for a profit. D.I.Y designers are able to rid the wave of capitalism while seeking out new counter-currents that carry their own imprint. D.I.Y is just like creating your own brand of T-shirts and selling them worldwide; your designing something based on your idea of art or fashion in this case.
Personal life:
Lupton is married to J. Abbott Miller, a partner in the New York office of the international design firm Pentagram. They live in Baltimore with their children and dogs Jack and Kevin, who are both chihuahua-jack-russell mixes.
Lupton also collaborates design work with her twin sister Julia Lupton. Although Julia Lupton graduated with a PhD in Renaissance Studies, they were able to write a few books together; Design Your Life: The Pleasures and Perils of Everyday Things and D.I.Y kids. D.I.Y kids is a spin-off of Ellen Lupton's book D.I.Y: Design it Yourself. Although the different versions are directed towards different age groups,
Ellen and Julia were able to create a do-it-yourself book for children to which the parents could become more involved with arts and crafts. From using recycled goods to creating your own cartoon characters, the Lupton sisters cover the hands on aspects of being a kid.
Exhibitions by Lupton
Graphic Design: Now in Production, October 22, 2011 – January 22, 2012 [10]
This major international exhibition explores how graphic design has broadened its reach dramatically over the past decade, expanding from a specialized profession to a widely deployed tool.
Living World, May 2009-January 2010.
This was done in regards to the Nature Conservancy. Many different designers created their exhibition products from using materials from ten endangered landscapes.
Skin Show, May–September, 2002.
Brought artificial life into modern designed furniture, fashion, architecture, and media. The exhibit
mainly showed many different shapes and forms of household furniture.
Mixing Messages, Fall, 1996/Winter 1997.
This focused on cultural and technological changes within history in regards to typefaces
Letterhead Show, Spring 1996.
Showed original letterheads and ephemera by Herbert Bayer, László Moholy-Nagy, and Le Corbusier
Elaine L. Cohen, February 7 – May 23, 1995.
This exhibit focused on the groundbreaking designing books that were released by female design artists during the 1950s through the 60's
Mechanical Brides: Women and Machines from Home to Office, August 17, 1993 to January 2, 1994.
Mechanical Brides was an exhibition centered on what was thought to be important feminine machines throughout the twentieth century. The exhibit included washing machines, a telephone, an electric iron, and a typewriter. Along with this exhibit, Lupton also designed the cover for the book Mechanical Brides: women and machines from home to office
Books Graphic Design: The New Basics, Revised and Second Edition (Co-authored by Jennifer Cole Phillips),
Princeton Architectural Press, 2015 (ISBN 978-1616893323)
Beautiful Users, Princeton Architectural Press, 2014. (ISBN 978-1616892913)
Type On Screen (Design Briefs), Princeton Architectural Press, 2014. (ISBN 978-1616891701)
Graphic Design Thinking (Design Briefs), Princeton Architectural Press, 2011. (ISBN 978-1568989792) Thinking with Type, 2nd revised and expanded edition: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers,
Editors, & Students, Princeton Architectural Press, 2010. (ISBN 978-1568989693)
Indie Publishing, Princeton Architectural Press. (ISBN 978-1-56898-760-6)
Design Writing Research, Phaidon Press. (ISBN 978-0-7148-3851-9)
D.I.Y.: Design It Yourself, Princeton Architectural Press, 2006. (ISBN 978-1-56898-552-7)
Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students, Princeton
Architectural Press, 2004. (ISBN 978-1-56898-448-3)
Skin: Surface, Substance, Design, Princeton Architectural Press, 2002. (ISBN 978-1-56898-711-8)
Graphic Design: The New Basics (Co-authored by Jennifer Cole Phillips), Princeton Architectural Press, 2008 (ISBN 978-1-56898-770-5)
D.I.Y.: Kids (Co-authored by Julia Lupton), Princeton Architectural Press, 2007. (ISBN 978-1-56898-707-1)
Inside Design Now", Princeton Architectural Press, 2003. (ISBN 978-1-56898-395-0)
Mixing Messages, Princeton Architectural Press, 1996. (ISBN 978-1-56898-099-7)
The ABC's of Bauhaus, the Bauhaus and Design Theory, Princeton Architectural Press, 1991. (ISBN 978-1-878271-42-6)
Lupton is married to J. Abbott Miller, a partner in the New York office of the international design firm Pentagram. They live in Baltimore with their children and dogs Jack and Kevin, who are both chihuahua-jack-russell mixes.
Lupton also collaborates design work with her twin sister Julia Lupton. Although Julia Lupton graduated with a PhD in Renaissance Studies, they were able to write a few books together; Design Your Life: The Pleasures and Perils of Everyday Things and D.I.Y kids. D.I.Y kids is a spin-off of Ellen Lupton's book D.I.Y: Design it Yourself. Although the different versions are directed towards different age groups,
Ellen and Julia were able to create a do-it-yourself book for children to which the parents could become more involved with arts and crafts. From using recycled goods to creating your own cartoon characters, the Lupton sisters cover the hands on aspects of being a kid.
Exhibitions by Lupton
Graphic Design: Now in Production, October 22, 2011 – January 22, 2012 [10]
This major international exhibition explores how graphic design has broadened its reach dramatically over the past decade, expanding from a specialized profession to a widely deployed tool.
Living World, May 2009-January 2010.
This was done in regards to the Nature Conservancy. Many different designers created their exhibition products from using materials from ten endangered landscapes.
Skin Show, May–September, 2002.
Brought artificial life into modern designed furniture, fashion, architecture, and media. The exhibit
mainly showed many different shapes and forms of household furniture.
Mixing Messages, Fall, 1996/Winter 1997.
This focused on cultural and technological changes within history in regards to typefaces
Letterhead Show, Spring 1996.
Showed original letterheads and ephemera by Herbert Bayer, László Moholy-Nagy, and Le Corbusier
Elaine L. Cohen, February 7 – May 23, 1995.
This exhibit focused on the groundbreaking designing books that were released by female design artists during the 1950s through the 60's
Mechanical Brides: Women and Machines from Home to Office, August 17, 1993 to January 2, 1994.
Mechanical Brides was an exhibition centered on what was thought to be important feminine machines throughout the twentieth century. The exhibit included washing machines, a telephone, an electric iron, and a typewriter. Along with this exhibit, Lupton also designed the cover for the book Mechanical Brides: women and machines from home to office
Books Graphic Design: The New Basics, Revised and Second Edition (Co-authored by Jennifer Cole Phillips),
Princeton Architectural Press, 2015 (ISBN 978-1616893323)
Beautiful Users, Princeton Architectural Press, 2014. (ISBN 978-1616892913)
Type On Screen (Design Briefs), Princeton Architectural Press, 2014. (ISBN 978-1616891701)
Graphic Design Thinking (Design Briefs), Princeton Architectural Press, 2011. (ISBN 978-1568989792) Thinking with Type, 2nd revised and expanded edition: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers,
Editors, & Students, Princeton Architectural Press, 2010. (ISBN 978-1568989693)
Indie Publishing, Princeton Architectural Press. (ISBN 978-1-56898-760-6)
Design Writing Research, Phaidon Press. (ISBN 978-0-7148-3851-9)
D.I.Y.: Design It Yourself, Princeton Architectural Press, 2006. (ISBN 978-1-56898-552-7)
Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students, Princeton
Architectural Press, 2004. (ISBN 978-1-56898-448-3)
Skin: Surface, Substance, Design, Princeton Architectural Press, 2002. (ISBN 978-1-56898-711-8)
Graphic Design: The New Basics (Co-authored by Jennifer Cole Phillips), Princeton Architectural Press, 2008 (ISBN 978-1-56898-770-5)
D.I.Y.: Kids (Co-authored by Julia Lupton), Princeton Architectural Press, 2007. (ISBN 978-1-56898-707-1)
Inside Design Now", Princeton Architectural Press, 2003. (ISBN 978-1-56898-395-0)
Mixing Messages, Princeton Architectural Press, 1996. (ISBN 978-1-56898-099-7)
The ABC's of Bauhaus, the Bauhaus and Design Theory, Princeton Architectural Press, 1991. (ISBN 978-1-878271-42-6)
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