SVA Archives

Henry Wolf Collection: Box 18, Folder 22

August 28, 2013

Atomic-age publication design

In 1962, a consortium of printers celebrated the two-hundreth iteration of their promotional magazine Comment by commissioning spreads from celebrated designers and compiling them in four-color pages on 80-lb. stock (“for the information and interest of business executives by the four nationally located printing companies shown on the back cover”). Tony Finck put it together, with contributions by Leo Lionni, Saul Bass, Arthur Paul, Will Burtin, Tom Heck, Lester Beall, Henry Wolf and Harry Diamond. It also included articles by Dr. M. F. Agha and Edward Hutchings, Jr.

Grid of colorful images; one is a photograph of designer Saul Bass

A profile of Saul Bass, featuring annual reports for Firstamerica Corp and Hunt’s Food’s & Industries.

A time-lapse photo of a uranium atom model (in white against black background) showing trails of electrons forming spheres around the nucleus (overlayed blue and red columns)

A time-lapse photo of a uranium atom model showing trails of electrons forming spheres around the nucleus (from the Union Carbide Corporation’s “Atom in Action” exhibition, designed by Will Burtin).

Magazine profile of designer Henry Wolf

A detail from the profile of Henry Wolf, including the cover and a page from the first issue of “Show” (1962). Full page on Flickr.

Line-drawings of headquarters of “the four nationally located printing companies.” Black and yellow against white background

The reverse cover, with line-drawings of “the four nationally located printing companies.”

Special thanks to Wallace Library at the Rochester Institute of Technology, which also has Comment 200 in their Lester Beall Collection. They identified the date of the publication, which was not printed in the original, and which I hadn’t been able to find when I originally inventoried the Wolf Collection. Some larger versions of these images are also available on our Flickr account.