Swiss Modern

Modernism was not welcome in America in the beginning. The posters in America were more focused on traditional illustrations, and so the new rigid structure and sticking to a grid were not very welcome. By 1928/29 though, new typefaces were available in America such as Futura and Kabel.

William Addison Dwiggins was one of the first few American Graphic Designers to use Jan Tschihold’s typography and grid. He was also the first person to coin the term, “Graphic Designer”. He spent a lot of his time experimenting and playing around with page arrangement and layouts. In his design we see an odd combination of ornaments of the time combined with cubist designs. He designed 18 fonts, most popular of which are Electra and Metro.

In the 1930s there was a mass immigration of the European graphic designers to America, some of which who were George Salter, Erté, Dr. Mehmed Felumy Agka, Alexey Brodovitch, and Alexander Lieberman.

George Salter’s trademark was the book jacket. He had the very special talent to capture a book’s contents on its cover. As a medium he used calligraphy, photomontage, panoramic watercolours, airbrush scenes, & pen and ink drawings.

Fang and Claw

Absalom Absalom – 1936

A modernist who was most important in his style was Josef Muller Brockmann. His career as a graphic designer started “by accident”. He did not like to write a lot so he put illustrations in his compositions, and he was encouraged by his teacher to pursue studies in the artistic sectors. He learned a lot of techniques at the Zurich Gewerbeschule, including silkscreening and letterpress. In his design, he used the grid as his illustration, meaning he did not include any illustrations but merely placed the text in a pleasing way along the page.  Sometimes it was not even text. He also incorporates many a shifted axes in his designs.

One of the most influential designers for me was Massimo Vignelli. He applied the principles he was taught from his predecessors, but he kept a certain austerity in his designs, demanding humility from the receptor. “The designer's ultimate objective is not the pursuit of beauty, self-expression or wealth, but rather the forensic application of the guiding principles of design to every project, large or small.“

http://guity-novin.blogspot.com/2011/07/chapter-42-swiss-grade-style-and-dutch.html

http://www.historygraphicdesign.com/the-age-of-information/the-international-typographic-style/805-ernst-keller

http://www.creativebloq.com/graphic-design/massimo-vignelli-61411897