sustainable architecture:magazine

A Russian born photographer, designer and instructor who is most famous for his art direction of Harper’s Bazzar from 1938 to 1958.

He did not simply arrange photographs, illustrations and type on the page, he took an active role in conceiving and commissioning all forms of graphic art and he specialized in discovering and showcasing young and unknown talent.

In 1950, Brodovitch created a large sophisticated, elegant magazine called Portfolio. Its been two decates now since its creation but it is still an excellent example of graphics. That experiment, even as short lived as it was, was the chance for Brodovitch to show his editorial and visual ideas. As for the magazine it self it had failed unfortunately after few issues. Designers and artists find however the magazine as a source of inspiration of visual ideas.

In the golden days of 1928, before the vast economic crash that shook the US and the rest of the world, magazine publishing was considerably under pressured comparing to today. Many publishing companies kept the name and style of the founder as it was happening in the past. During that period the leading magazines were Vogue and Vanity Fair, both owened by Conde Nast publications and in a smaller degree House and Gardens enjoyed a special prestige. To concentrate more on Conde Nast, which is the firm I will mainly show interest during my research, when its art editor Heyworth Campbell left his position, Conde Nast looked for a substitute. That search had lead to a major and fundamental change in modern publication design and the role of the art director in editorial planning and organisation had changed. After lots of travelling Conde Nast found the person he was looking for to take the lead of the art director. Who that person was? Mehement Fehmy Agha, a Russian-Turkish artist. He was already working in the french edition of Vogue so he wasn’t new to the magazine. Agha had a rich cosmopolitan background and a strong artistic, photographic and typographic knowledge. The same source adds that even though Vanity Fair and Vogue was the most sophisticated leaders among their field, during the late 1920s had struggled in matters of visual concept and design. Although its writing and content was amusing, clever and unique, visually was not interesting and challenging.

What Agha had done in the American publishing industry, he suggested that the art director should have a big role in all aspects of publication.

His design work:

As a photographer, Agha introduced to magazines well-known and capable photograpers whose work would influence next generations. He created new forms of fashion art and added sparkling and glamourus touches to the world of fachion magazines.

NOTES

Graphic Design was invented to sell the fruits of mass production to growing consumer societies in Europe and North America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Technology provided the means of graphic design’s participation in the vast economic, political, technological and social changes of that era.

The early modern revolutionary artists of Futurism, Dada, Constructivism and De Stijl, turned their attention to text and visual communications as well as the more traditional areas of fine art, rejecting the traditional divisions between the fine arts, applied arts and crafts.

The Bauhaus unified art, craft and design in a coherent philosophy and sense of identity. Several Modernists executed some of the first serious “professional” graphic design, applying their early experiments to the pragmatic communication needs of manufacturing clients.

Typography became an expressive visual language as well as a verbal one.

Seeing and reading are two modes through traditionally we think of receiving messages.

IMAGE+TEXT=2 CARRIERS OF THOSE MESSAGES

Typically, “seeing” is a visual process connected with images, the landscape, a painting etc

Reading is connected with the verbal process of decoding text’s written language signs-letters. However, to do this one must know the code, must know how to read the message. Must learn to read the language of the message in other words.

In addition there are two more other links possible between seeing and reading and image and text. The early Modernists discovered that text can be seen as well as read, as the Futurist’s experimental poetry proved. IMAGES CAN BE READ.

The role of designer was defined as a highly skilled interpreter of messages.

The European Modernists, those that migrated in the US from Europe, the so called “Emigres” had a massive impact on a number of young American designers. These men developed new approaches to composition, photography and text/image relationships. Many of these discoveries formed the basic of the “big idea” method of conceptualizing design solutions which placed a premium on the flash of intuition and the individual designer’s creativity- the famous Ah ha! method.

“Big idea” became a unique American visual communications expression-associated with the New York school of advertising in the 1950s and 1960s.

“Swiss” graphic design is the ideal corporate style. What was originally very difficult to sell to business clients is very difficult to avoid today. “Swiss” was found to be more suitable for the corporations’ demand. It was the perfect style for an annual report. On the contrary, the “big idea” was more suitable for advertising persuasive goals.

In addition, “Swiss” used to rely more on representational photography and minimalistic typography, while the “big idea” was far more image-oriented, employing illustration and symbolic photography.

As classical “Swiss” discipline was earning supporters, Robert Venturi shook the American cultural scene with his 1965 polemical treatise Complexity and Construction in Architecture. We all known who Venturi is, an arhitect who applied semiotic analysis to historical and vernacular style. For him, buildings were signs that had to be read by their audience.