Blog Page 17 of 5 | SVA Archives

December 05, 2012

Once over lightly

Some thoughts on designers and children’s books on the occasion of a scan of original art from Tony Palladino’s unpublished The Crocodile With A Glass Stomach.

November 27, 2012

Something Soft

Another foray by Milton Glaser into the realm of expressive typography.

November 21, 2012

Odd bird

Looks like a regular ocellated fellow, with one significant difference. Cross-reference for flowers sprouting from heads: Utopia Records, and this poster for Push Pin Graphic. (Typeface is Glaser Stencil, which appeared on other Poppy productions as well.)

November 06, 2012

Red letter days

Slightly more legible version of the snapshot available on our Flickr.

October 18, 2012

Fifty-seven varieties of Heinz

Heinz Edelmann, like his contemporary Milton Glaser, had an incredible range of graphic styles, both in his mode of illustration and layout. This 1982 poster for the Westdeutscher Rundfunk broadcaster’s series Reden muß man miteinander (roughly—correct me if I’m wrong—“We need to talk”) enlists an exceptional array of devices recalling the work of Seymour Chwast: there are similarities in the pattern, abstracted period stylization, and a floating quality to the shapes and forms, though imbued here with Edelmann’s more spastic bursts of emphasis. For comparison, see this Chwastian cat or this notable cover of Pushpin Graphic. Click through for the full poster.

July 03, 2012

Happy 4th from Tony Palladino

This hinged flag sculpture was originally designed for a cover of Second Coming magazine, but Palladino revisited the idea at intervals. One main conceit is that, on the reverse side, the Italian flag is painted, emphasizing his Italian-American roots. Click through for full magazine cover.

May 18, 2012

Chwast does cigs

Another obscure, undated bit of imagery from the Pushpin slide library. Seymour Chwast’s contribution to the legacy of Roth-Händle cigarettes, probably for Frankfurter Allgemein Zeitung. He’s in good company: Robert Motherwell did a collage of the same, and, more pertinent certainly, many famous posters for the brand were designed by the great early twentieth-century designer Herbert Leupin. Note: despite the preponderance of smoking-related imagery we’ve been posting lately, Container List does not condone the practice, which doesn’t make you look cool unless you’re already Humphrey Bogart. Kids, it’s just NOT archival.

April 27, 2012

Some more tearing

Promotion by George Tscherny for Strathmore paper, 1958. Torn-paper motifs seemed to have been very much the thing for that year (when Tony Palladino contributed this one). Click through for the full image.

April 11, 2012

Edward Gorey at SVA

From our cache of early SVA course announcements comes this sweet one in dust jacket form for Advanced Children’s Book Illustration taught by Edward Lear disciple and legend himself, Edward Gorey. Too bad Gorey didn’t get to write (I presume) the copy, too.

March 13, 2012

Saturday’s Generation

Are you a member of Saturday’s Generation?

February 17, 2012

The Chermayeff Century

And when you have Sam Chermayeff, age 9, delivering the opening remarks to the Aspen Design Conference I think you’re firmly in Wes Anderson territory. More at 032c’s site.

February 15, 2012

Phil Hays for SVA

This is a detail from possibly my all-time favorite SVA poster (click through for the whole image). It was illustrated by Phil Hays in the 1960s while he was chairman of SVA’s illustration department. Hays’ later work, especially his portraits of musicians and Hollywood stars, was markedly more hyperrealistic and decadent than this simple three-pane poster of a woman sitting in a chair, smoking. At first it seems something of a strange ad pitch, yet the subject is serene and satisfied and the work is masterly, somehow making the argument for SVA in its inherent quality.

January 13, 2012

Brushes with history

Another example of paintbrushes (standing in for the artist) combined with another object (here, amid or as the hammers on a typewriter) follows the one we featured last week. The poster this detail is from originally was made to promote a panel discussion between the artists Alice Aycock, Alex Katz, and Lucio Pozzi with critics Lawrence Alloway, Hilton Kramer and moderator Donald Kuspit on the relationship between the artist and critic.

December 14, 2011

Little black bag

The subtly provocative design is credited to Frank Kirk, which is not a name I’ve seen on any other SVA publications.

November 21, 2011

Back in business

The Glaser/SVA Archives staff of two is pleased to announced that our renovation is complete! We have even more room now for researchers and class visits, so drop us a line if you’d like stop by. Most importantly, our collections are back from storage so we’ll return to featuring great stuff from the designers and illustrators in the Archives on Container List.

September 06, 2011

Bob + Joan

Bob Dylan’s brief relationship with Joan Baez was exhaustively documented, but we get interested when that affair highlighted the work of Push Pin Studios. In 1964, Dylan and Baez were photographed at Newark Airport in front of Seymour Chwast’s poster for Booth’s Gin: an incongruous, but not surprising, image of two icons flanking a countercultural message from a corporate advertiser.

August 17, 2011

Apply today

Another great example of SVA’s forms from the early George Tscherny identity system. Its almost stuffily balanced width is softened a tiny bit by the lowercase “application.” Love the setting of the serif type and the letter-spaced gothic below. We need to get a vitrine for this whole system (see also: 1 and 2).

July 26, 2011

This won’t hurt a bit

The Archives will be closing to visitors this week in order to prepare for our extreme makeover. When our renovated space re-opens in early September we’ll have much more storage and visitor space. Stay tuned for news of discoveries of pirate treasure maps in the walls, dinosaur bones under the floorboards, and paleolithic cave paintings behind the flat files. Email inquiries are still welcome during the renovation period; our collections will be in storage but we’ll do our best to help.

June 10, 2011

Seymour Chwast keeps it cool

Here in New York we’re struggling through a heatwave. Perhaps a good course of action for those lucky enough to reside in air-conditioned high-rise Soho lofts is to keep it cool by lounging about with bright furniture, like the sporty cat in this illustration by Seymour Chwast (undated, but probably for the Frankfurter Allgemein Zeitung).