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November 30, 2013
Smiling faces
An assortment of Seventeen magazine advertisements from the ’50s and ’60s.
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November 24, 2013
Love and joy about letters
Love and Joy About Letters is a testament to Ben Shahn’s love affair with letters: the beauty of the letter forms, the liberating influence hand-lettering, and how the incorporation of letters added meaning to his art.
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November 20, 2013
Working drawings
Milton Glaser’s sketch for the Working drawings and other visible things on paper not necessarily meant to be viewed as art poster became a part of the artwork.
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November 20, 2013
Flashpoints and flash cards
The AIGA Journal for December 1969 featured the association’s annual review of textbooks and teaching aids. The latter ranged from sets of workbooks to a crate-size tool chest with several drawers of Platonic solids. Dangerous Parallel, pictured, was a Korean war simulation.
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November 12, 2013
Wondering where we’ve been?
The show revisits exhibitions of several decades, curated by the likes of David Bourdon, Douglas Crimp, Lucy Lippard, Phyllis Tuchman, and David Whitney (with posters designed by Milton Glaser, Cris Gianakos, Doug Johnson, B. Martin Pedersen, and many others). Not to forget student exhibitions that took place in SVA’s galleries in Tribeca and SoHo, documentation of performances by Steve Reich and Laurie Anderson, screenings and talks, and (my favorite) lots of little odds and ends—loan forms, hardware store receipts, doodles—gathered together in binders that reproduce the archival files for each show. Come say hi: the reception is next Thursday, November 21, 6-8pm.
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November 12, 2013
To see a fine lady upon a white horse
A 1961 exhibition of the work of the SVA Department of Illustration is a who’s who of the practitioners of the new expressive and painterly illustration of the time.
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November 10, 2013
The Mead Library of Ideas
In the 1970s, the Mead Library of Ideas held exhibitions showcasing the best contemporary graphic design; they commissioned announcement posters from designers including Tony Palladino, Chermayeff & Geismar, and Seymour Chwast.
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November 04, 2013
Make a date
Some contemporary work from the Troxlers and Do-hyung Kim.
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November 03, 2013
Illustrator Jerome Martin
While going through the books myself, I was particularly taken with the three covers done by an illustrator I’d never heard of, Jerome Martin.
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November 02, 2013
Squigglyman Meets Captain Cross-Hatch
Squigglyman and Captain Cross-Hatch will be back right after they foil Dr. Ugg, who is about to detonate his diabolical Gloomsday Device.
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October 29, 2013
Heinz Edelmann for Klett-Cotta
Heinz Edelmann worked extensively with the Klett-Cotta press over the course of his career: we’ve collected some of his best jackets.
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October 28, 2013
A brief tour of Milton Glaser’s typography
Glaser’s typefaces combine Push Pin-era Deco motifs with conventions adapted from hand-painted signs, but share a tendency to imbue generic letterforms with geometric dimension.
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October 25, 2013
What am I doing here?
I was initially drawn to this book because it reminded me of the Chas Addams and Ed Arno collections from my dad’s bookshelf. There are stylistic similarities to the classic New Yorker cartoons, but Abner Dean’s work dispenses with their gloss to espouse a much bleaker reality.
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October 21, 2013
Colorvision!
In what essentially looks like a lost issue of the Push Pin Graphic, Colorvision (“an entirely new concept of color in clothing!”) describes the magic of a Blendescent.
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October 18, 2013
Up in smoke
Cigarette companies were always big into advertising (perhaps because their products were largely indistinguishable), but after their marketing practices became widely seen as particularly nefarious their presence in the field faded.
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October 15, 2013
Exploding coffee table
While we’re on the subject of the Memphis Group, better take cover; that table’s gonna blow.
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October 12, 2013
Chairs by Chwast
In the mid-80s Seymour Chwast was approached by Georg Kovacs, Inc. to experiment with furniture in the Pushpin style.
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October 11, 2013
Collage
The publication featured the work of SVA’s incredible illustration faculty in the early 1960s.
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October 07, 2013
First Look, part 3: George Tscherny
We’re continuing to receive great stuff from George Tscherny, and here’s the latest.
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October 06, 2013
A Grand Union
In the mid-1970s, Milton Glaser was approached by Sir James Goldsmith to take on a dramatic redesign of the supermarket chain Grand Union.
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