Finamore Marie Heller Steven American Institute of Graphic - Design Culture: An Anthology of Writing from the AIGA Journal of Graphic Design

Copyright 1997, 2012 by The American Institute of Graphic Arts

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This book is dedicated to

CAROLINE HIGHTOWER

executive director of the AIGA from 1977 to 1994,
without whom there would be no AIGA Journal.

Richard Gref, Executive Director, American Institute of Graphic

T he American Institute of Graphic Arts is dedicated to advancing excellence in graphic design as a discipline, profession, and cultural force. The AIGA provides leadership in the exchange of ideas and information, the encouragement of critical analysis and research, and the advancement of education and ethical practice.

This anthology is an important contribution to our role in educating, enlightening, and informing current and future generations of designers. It serves to extend the reach of an eclectic range of critical writings on the trends and issues of graphic design, previously available only to AIGA members and a few individual subscribers. It validates the decision of Caroline Hightower to revive the Journal and Steven Hellers editorial leadership, without whose indefatigable quest for yet another angle on design this anthology would have been considerably thinner.

Design Culture demonstrates the AIGAs commitment to being a thoughtful and provocative design advocate on behalf of its ten thousand members, the design community as a whole, design educators and students, and a much broader audience interested in visual communication and popular culture.

W e would like to thank everyone who has contributed articles and illustrations to the AIGA Journal over the years, as well as the various supporters who donated services and materials.

The Journal has been the result of a fruitful collaboration of the above-mentioned contributors as well as editors, managing editors, art directors, designers, and typographers. At different times, the following (in order of appearance) have been invaluable to its smooth operation:

EDITORS

Wylie Davis (19821983)

Rose DeNeve (19831985)

Steven Heller (1985present)

MANAGING EDITORS

Shelley Bance (19821985)

Marilyn Recht (1986)

Ruth Toda (19871990)

Philip F. Clark (19901993)

Marie Finamore (1993present)

ART DIRECTORS

Elton Robinson

Kit Hinrichs

Susan Limoncelli

Lisa Naftolin

Laurel Shoemaker

Michael Ian Kaye

DESIGNERS

Margaret Wollenhaupt

Lisa Bernich

Terri Driscoll

Callie Johnson

Susie Leversee

Julie Riefler

Jaye Zimet

Dimity Jones

Brett Gerstenblatt

E. J. Smith

Leslie Goldman

TYPOGRAPHERS

Susan Schechter

Ira Ungar

Rick Binger

Karen Krimmel

Boro Typographers

Jennifer Lawson

Alexis Siroc

Tammi Colichio

Tobias Frere-Jones

GUEST CO-EDITORS

Richard Saul Wurman

Nathan Gluck

Michael Bierut

Paula Scher

Randy Hipke

Rick Poynor

Samuel Antupit

Jessica Helfand

Ellen Lupton

DK Holland

Michael Rock

Sylvia Harris

Matthew Carter

Juanita Dugdale

William Drenttel

Steven Heller, Editor, AIGA Journal of Graphic Design

F ifteen years ago, the AIGA Journal of Graphic Design was an eight-page tabloid. Today, it is a seventy-two-page magazine. Although you might assume that this alone is a major accomplishment, in 1948 the first issue of the bimonthly AIGA Journal (the words graphic design were not yet included in the title) was a magazineand a fairly good one, too. Throughout the 1950s the format continued, and in 1966 it was expanded to include catalogs of the AIGA annual competitions. In the early 1970s, it foldedthe casualty of economic crisisand lay dormant until 1982, at which time the AIGA published a newsletter that gradually evolved into the Journal.

The revivified Journal had a lot of living up to do. The Journal of the forties and fifties offered the AIGAs one thousand or so members broad-based reportage and critical coverage of the graphic arts. It included essays by such luminaries as Herbert Bayer, Alvin Lustig, Paul Rand, Leo Lionni, Alexey Brodovitch, and Fritz Eichenberg (who was also one of the early editors). In unflattering contrast, the editorial content of the eighties Journal was initially at the press release level. Nevertheless, this was also a period of considerable change for the AIGA. In the institutes tidal shift from a small, exclusive club to a large professional organization with nationwide chapters, the AIGA Journal could not afford to be merely a parochial newsletter. Somehow, it had to become a forum for design issues.

The notion of graphic design criticism had been discussed for some time as a panacea for the graphic design fields netherworld status between art and commerce. For the editor of the AIGA Journal, the somewhat nebulous term pointed toward a new direction. In 1986, the Journal switched from its exclusive AIGA orientation to more incisive analysis, reportage, and criticism of the field as a whole. Borrowing an op-ed page model, the Journal became an outlet for numerous viewpoints solicited from design practitioners, academics, and journalists as well as nondesigners, among them social critics and popular historians. Within a short time, the Journal was transformed from an AIGA house organ into an AIGA-sponsored distillery of ideas.

In the 1970s, most professional (or trade) magazines had become instruments for promoting designers and their work. Since Graphic Design USA, the omnibus launched in 1980 that includes each years award-winning work, satisfied the memberships need for colorful reproductions of successful design, the AIGA could afford to allow the