Blog Page 19 of 4 | SVA Archives

February 09, 2010

Missed connections

You were the cute bearded guy on the F train this morning. I was the somewhat pallid but classically beautiful girl. I thought we were a good match but it was as though we were pulled apart by powerful ropes. Want to have coffee sometime?

October 02, 2009

Chermayeff and Geismar’s letterhead on Silver Lining

One of our favorite design ephemera blogs, Silver Lining, recently asked us to participate in their Top 5 feature, where they invite fellow bloggers pick out five things for them to showcase as a series. Beth and I dug through boxes MG1 1A-4B and chose our favorite stationery and envelopes by letterhead wizards Chermayeff & Geismar.

Chermayeff and Geismar’s letterhead on Silver Lining

September 24, 2009

Chermayeff & Geismar for Pan Am

We have written on Tscherny’s artwork and modular displays for Pan Am. And now we’ve also uploaded more of C&G’s posters in the series (in our Flickr).

September 18, 2009

Another pitch from Palladino

About a decade before Tony devised his ‘guerilla marketing’ self-promotion campaign, the designer took a similarly witty but somewhat more traditional approach. Four versions of this card were printed, each in three colors on heavy stock, and sent to publishers without any additional pitch. Set simply with his address and isolating a single area of specialization, they relied on a single strong image to convey their point.

August 14, 2009

The Pancake King

In 1971, Phyllis La Farge and Seymour Chwast collaborated on the children’s book The Pancake King, which described the rapid ascent of a young master of the griddle pan. It spoke of the joy of breakfast, the perils of fame, the importance of family and of maple syrup. More spreads from The Pancake King are viewable on Flickr (thanks to Norman Hathaway), and show Chwast’s dexterous use of scale and bleed between spreads, and tidily-set Bodoni. The book was included in AIGA’s Fifty Books of the Year.

August 07, 2009

Twen at the Visual Arts Gallery

Milton Glaser designed this poster for an exhibition at the Visual Arts Gallery in late 1965, organized by then Visual Arts Gallery director Shirley Glaser. Twen, a West German magazine for “people in their twenties: from 15 to 30,” was wildly influential in design circles worldwide—with a grid system composed of twelve small modules combined in an internally regular but widely varying page layouts, and liberal full-bleed spreads photographed by Art Kane, Will McBride, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon and others (and illustrations by Heinz Edelmann). It introduced many design students to Willy Fleckhaus, the magazine’s art director and sometime editor, who became famous for his virtuosic combination of close-set typography and tightly-cropped images. The rigid geometry of this poster, though not usually associated with Glaser, was a mode he employed often for SVA exhibition posters (more can be seen here and here). Though the graphic austerity is a contrast to his earlier work, the underlying expression of concepts through tactile visual representation is, I think, unmistakable Glaser.

July 28, 2009

Toys of the 1940s

(Esquire casually omits Ray Eames’ credit on the DCM.)

July 10, 2009

Seymour Chwast for McDonald’s

In 1979, McDonald’s hired Seymour Chwast to contribute one version of the packaging for the introduction of their new product, the Happy Meal. The promotion cost one dollar, and comprised a hamburger or cheeseburger, twelve-ounce soft drink, a small order of french fries, and a McDonaldland Cookie Sampler (not pictured). Along with their comestibles, the first customers could look forward to discovering either a McDoodler stencil, puzzle book, a McWrist wallet, an ID bracelet or McDonaldland character erasers.

June 26, 2009

The Push Pin corporate identity

This label, stuck authoritatively on the back of a mounted board as a bit of corporate identity — complete with the overrule, grotesk “Group Incorporated,” and high-contrast logotype — exploits its context to achieve a kind of reflexive wit, a kind of acknowledgment of what is being put over, that gives it a unifying effect (it is at once more than, and no more than, a “bit of corporate identity”). This is achieved with an unusually unaffected air — a combination that I think has always characterized Chwast’s work.

June 22, 2009

Script pattern by Ivan Chermayeff

Ivan Chermayeff designed this poster for AIGA’s “Color” exhibition in 1974, which collected work by artists, photographers and designers. Tightly flowing script creates a pattern made out of textual gibberish, where exaggerated descenders are punctuated at intervals with large blobs of ink. Click through for the whole image, with Chermayeff’s colorful signature.

June 11, 2009

Lincoln Center book cover

Lincoln Center’s groundbreaking ceremony took place in on May 14, 1959, so this book cover designed by Chermayeff & Geismar must have been created some time in the early 1960s. According to the text, Lincoln Center would make New York City “… the international capital of the performing arts, just as the United Nations makes it a capital for world affairs.”

June 01, 2009

Dada, explained

Here’s an ironic instructional piece from early Push Pin Studios member John Alcorn. A highly accomplished designer and illustrator, Alcorn also designed the opening titles for several Fellini films. Click here for the full image.

May 26, 2009

Guerrilla marketing

Palladino made a point of choosing business associates who would get the joke, and would recognize his initials, T.P. He also says he wouldn’t dare pull a stunt like this today.

May 11, 2009

What good design was

More Tony Palladino at the Museum of Modern Art: “Tube Floor Lamp,” part of the museum’s permanent collection since 1968, is currently on view in the exhibition What Was Good Design? alongside objects by Charles and Ray Eames, Hans Wegner, Arne Jacobsen and Bruno Munari.

May 07, 2009

The object transformed

In the introduction to the exhibition’s catalogue (designed by Massimo Vignelli), Constantine describes the objects as “apparitions of everyday reality, complete with overtones of grim absurdity,” and suggests “for the 20th century they may be the most appropriate kind of still life.” Admission was $1.25.

May 05, 2009

Mom always said…

The best translation I can come up with is “Only so!” which could be completely wrong. In any case, surely the image in this poster from the World Health Organization speaks for itself.

April 21, 2009

Inside Dylan’s brain

In a graphic for the May 2008 issue of Vanity Fair, Andrew Nimmo and Beth Bartholomew tabulated the topics of Bob Dylan’s XM Radio Show, Theme Time Radio Hour. (And they gracefully reference the source of their riff, the famous poster by Milton Glaser.)

April 07, 2009

Tony Palladino’s Guide to Life

Here’s a 1957 poster by Tony Palladino. Substitute ’09 for ’57 and it still works. Click here for the full image.

April 03, 2009

P22 Type Foundry, Toy Box extras

The P22 Type Foundry, based in Buffalo, New York, packaged a typeface called Toy Box (originally named Child’s Play) with a set of extra glyphs including a collection of animal line-drawings based on children’s drawings. Commissioned by the London Transport Museum for a children’s exhibition in 1996, it was digitized by P22 founder Richard Kegler, with Michael Want, Mariah Kegler, Kevin Kegler, and Jennifer Kirwin-Want. Steven Heller included it in his book as an example of vernacular type.