- World War II left much of Europe
and large parts of Asia in ruin.
The continental United States was untouched.
During the war, the U.S. industrial machine
expanded dramatically following the Great Depression.
These factors made America the world's
dominant economic and military power.
In addition, millions of troops were demobilized
and absorbed back into the economy.
Now, with wartime restrictions on purchasing
removed the consumer market exploded.
Many graphic designers were among these demobilized troops.
They had seen the world and were not willing to return
to traditional or expected solutions.
They viewed the world as a new frontier
and wanted to explore new ways of communicating.
The ideas of modernism integrated into mainstream design.
Now the public wanted fresh, new clean and simple solutions
for graphic design, architecture and products.
Rather than religiously adopting the strict Bauhaus methods
of modernism, designers such as Paul Rand,
Lester Beall, Saul Bass, Louis Danziger and Alvin Lustig,
used the Bauhaus concepts as a stylistic approach.
Simplicity and the less is more approach was employed.
But exuberant colors and forms replaced the
clinical perfection of disciplined modernism.
This was also a time of great ideas and confidence.
Walter Paepcke an executive at the
Container Corporation of America helped form
the American Bauhaus in Chicago.
He founded the International Design Conference in Aspen
and was responsible for promoting graphic designers
with the Container Corporation advertising.
Rather than showing a product, in this case cardboard boxes,
Paepcke invited designers to use
"Great Ideas of Western Man" for advertising content.
The solution by Paul Rand uses the Uncle Sam hat
as a fused metaphor of a flowerpot to convey
the flowering of liberty and democracy.
The loose illustration style conveys energy
and a personal connection to the subject.
Post-war America was a place where science, industry
and the American spirit of invention
had saved the world and would make a new one.
American corporations were trusted leaders,
technology was idolized and the atom was our friend.
Alvin Lustig's cover for ID magazine connects three
very different items within the common shape of a circle.
The primary colors are derived from the De Stijl movement
while the photo montage comes from
Bauhaus experimental photography.
Iconography and symbols replaced
text-driven messages, organic shapes replaced
the hard-edged forms of the warriors.
Herbert Bayer used fluid shapes as abstract talk bubbles.
Herbert Matter, another European who immigrated
to the United States in the 1930s, encased images
of new furniture from Knoll in Biomorphic shapes.
The negative space here is as critical as the positive shape.
Many wartime production methods
evolved into consumer products.
Tupperware, molded plywood, nylons and a host of other
products entered the marketplace.
Alvin Lustig's ad for new line of chairs
focuses on the organic shape of the
molded plywood rather than just the chair.
Color palettes move from the drab tones of camouflage
to vibrant and optimistic colors.
Pastel and bright colors were favored.
Printing technology was less accurate than today
and the simpler tones like a solid magenta reproduced better
than a subtle and complex color.
Graphic design emerged as a profession in the 1950s.
Before the war, graphic designers were considered
commercial artists or art directors.
AIGA, the American Institute of Graphic Arts,
was founded in 1914 by typographers and printers.
In the 1950s the organization changed with leaders
who are now called graphic designers.