Unit 5 Contextual Issues

1. Designers you should know…..
Unit 5: Contextual Influences
in Art and Design

3. Task 1
• Choose and research a graphic design from
the following list…..
• Research must come from at least 5 different
sources
• Sources must be quoted
• A bibliography must be included

4. Task 2
• Your research will be presented as a double
page spread article
• Time history of Graphic Design
• And presentation

5. Paul Rand
• Born in Brooklyn in 1914, Rand attended art
school in New York City at both Pratt Institute and
Parsons School of Design. Despite this formal
training Rand found these institutes not
stimulating and ultimately taught himself design,
studying the works of A.M. Cassandre and Lazlo
Moholy-Nagy through European magazines.
Although, Rand began his career designing covers
for Direction magazine, his most notable
contributions to the field of Graphic Design have
been his corporate work for companies like IBM,
ABC, UPS and Westinghouse.

7. Eddie Opara
• Born in London in 1972, Eddie Opara studied graphic design
at the London College of Printing and Yale University. He
worked at ATG, Imaginary Forces and 2x4 before founding
his own firm, The Map Office in 2005. Opara has created
work for the Studio Museum in Harlem, Jazz at Lincoln
Center, the Queens Museum of Art, JWT, Prada, Vitra, the
Corcoran Group, Morgan Stanley, New York
University, UCLA, and Princeton Architectural Press, among
others. In 2010 Opara joined Pentagram’s New York office,
bringing his designers from The Map Office with him. At
Pentagram, Opara has continued to bring his impressive
mix of interactive, print and web skills to projects for The
Museum Tower, CFDA, Oprah Winfrey, The Andy Warhol
Foundation and SCAD Museum of Art.

9. Stefan Sagmeister
• Born in Austria, Sagmeister moved to NYC in
1987 to attend Pratt on a Fulbright
scholarship. His work mixes sexuality with
humor and always tries to push the envelop of
indecency. Sagmeister’s most notable work is
a poster he designed for AIGA in 1999. The
designer employed one of his assistants to
carve the text of the event into his skin using
an x-acto knife, he then photographed the end
result.

11. Chip Kidd
• Chip Kidd is a writer and designer working in
New York City. He primarily designs book
jackets, working for Alfred A. Knopf since
1986. Kidd also designs for Pantheon, a
subsidiary of Knopf, as an editor of books of
comics. In 1997, Kidd received the
International Center of Photography’s award
for “Use of Photography in Graphic Design”
and in 1998, he was made a member of the
Alliance Graphique Internationale

13. Paula Scher
• In the 1970s and 80s Paula Scher begun her
career as Art Director for CBS records, where she
designed posters, ads and over 150 album covers
a year. In 1991 Scher joined Pentagram as
Partner, developing identities, packaging and
signage for a variety of major clients including
The New York Times Magazine, Bloomberg,
Target, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Madison Square
Park, Tiffany & Co., Citibank and The Public
Theater. In 1998 she was inducted into the Art
Directors Hall of Fame and in 2000 she won the
Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design.

15. Michael Bierut
• Despite Michael Bierut’s iconic status and his over 30 years of success, he
is still the humble, gracious, mid-westerner who began studying design at
the University of Cincinnati's College of Design, Architecture, Art and
Planning. Bierut’s pedigree starts early, with his first internship with AIGA
medalist Chris Pullman. After school, Bierut landed his first job, and an
enviable one at that, at the prestigious Vignelli Associates design firm,
where he would eventually become VP of Design. He worked on clients
such as Benetton and United Airlines.
• After 10 years at Vigenlli, Bieurt moved on to another world-wide industry
giant, Pentagram. Bierut doesn’t just create eye-catching work (Including
clients like Saks Fifth Avenue, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Yale School of
Architecture, Princeton University, Guitar Hero, The New York Jets), but he
is also an advocate for design: writing books on design, as a co-founder of
Design Observer and as a teacher/lecturer all over the world. Bierut’s
down to earth take on design and its place in our lives is what continues to
make him accessible and his work fresh and on-point.

17. David Carson
• The original “grunge” designer, David Carson is
most widely known for his anti-swiss (read:
hap-hazard) style, placing type and images
anywhere on the page – over pictures, over
itself, even up-side-down. His work is certainly
reactionary to the modernist ethos, but his
magazines, specifically Ray Gun, have become
iconic and are still praised for their originally.

19. Jacqueline Casey
• Jacqueline Casey did more in her position as a designer
at MIT than most people do in a lifetime. She began
working at MIT in 1955, brought on board through the
suggestion of her friend and former classmate Muriel
Cooper, and remained at the Institute until her death in
1992. Casey helped pioneer the institute’s Office of
Design Services and acted as director for the office
from 1972 until 1989. Her posters for MIT are iconic;
they’re elegant and energetic, clean and creative.
Casey had a real talent for depicting concepts through
simple forms and type. Her posters are still an
inspiration to designers.

21. Ruth Ansel
• Even though Ruth Ansel worked as Art
Director for the New York Times Magazine in
the 1970s and Art Director for House and
Garden, Vanity Fair and Vogue in the 1980s,
those prestigious titles were only part of her
creative output during her career. Ansel also
created film titles for numerous books and
directed fashion ad campaigns for Versace,
Club Monaco and Karl Lagerfield.

23. Massimo Vignelli
• “If you can design one thing, you can design
everything.”
• Massimo Vignelli lives by his famous mantra. He is a
packaging designer, a furniture designer, a graphic
designer and so much more. Vignelli has designed the
identity for American Airlines, and signage for the NYC
Subway System and the DC Metro system. In 1971
Vignelli opened Vignelli Associates with his with and
partner, Lella. Together they crated work for companies
like Knoll, Benetton, Heller, IBM, Bloomingdales, Xerox,
and the Guggenheim among others.

25. Herbert Matter
• A Swiss native, Herbert Matter moved to Paris to pursue his
academic goals. He assisted A.M. Cassandre and Le Corbusier. It was
in this roll he crafted his intense, yet precise style. In 1932 Matter
was expelled from France for having improper papers and returned
to Switzerland, taking up work as a poster designer for the Swiss
Tourist Office where he created some of his most notable work.
Matter travelled to the U.S. by exchanging his work for passage with
a Swiss ballet troupe. After the tour ended Matter stayed in NYC,
pursuing a career with Alexey Brodovitch (who happened to be a
fan of Matter’s travel posters). Matter designed for the Container
Corporation of America and Knoll, and later went on to teach at
Yale. He also experienced a successful career a photographer,
shooting for Harper's Bazaar and Saks Fifth Avenue.

27. Alvin Lustig
• Alvin Lustig contributions to book design, magazines,
interiors and textiles have had a long-term influence on
contemporary design practice. A Denver native Lustig’s
family moved to LA when he was just a boy, it was here he
met “an enlightened teacher” who introduced him to
Modern art, sculpture, and French poster design. He
started off as a printer and typographer, and after a few
years focused solely on design, designing books for New
Directions. In 1944 he moved to NYC top further pursue his
career. Here he worked for Look Magazine until 1946.
Lustig was a true Modernist designer. He was a kin to the
Bauhaus school of thought, that designers should pursue a
holistic approach to their work and design every aspect of a
project, and applied it to every aspect of his career.

29. Lillian Bassman
• Lilliam Bassman was a contemporary of Cipe
Pineles, working as a protégé of Alexey
Brodocitch while at Harper’s Bazaar. When the
magazine launched their young girls magazine,
Junior Bazaar, Bassman was appointed Art
Director in conjunction with v – at his request. In
addition to her talents as a designer, Bassman
also had a successful photography career, being
sought after for her commercial portraits of
models in lingerie, cosmetics and fabric.

31. Cipe Pineles
• Cipe Pineles began her designer career assisting M.F. Agha at Vogue
(a direct rival of Alexey Brodovitch) and Vanity Fair. After years of
preparing and learning from a master, Pineles finally rose to the
position Agha was preparing her for, Art Director of Glamour
magazine. She worked hard to develop the magazine – employing
the best talent of the day including another creative on our list,
Herbert Matter, despite her publisher's lack of support for the
magazine. After Glamour, Pineles took over the reigns at Seventeen,
finding founder and editor Helen Valentines’s mission to educate
teen girls a kin to her own, she pushed the magazine to greatness
by utilizing the best artists available to them. Pineles’s drive and
motivation were not overlooked in her make-run world of design,
she was the first woman to be asked to join the Art Director’s Club
and was later inducted to their Hall of Fame.

33. Milton Glaser
• There’s no doubt that you’ve seen Milton Glaser’s
work. He founded New York Magazine with Clay Felker
and created the I <3 NY logo that every tourist
annoyingly proudly wears. Born in 1929, Glaser
attended the Cooper Union and was a Fulbright
scholar, traveling to the Academy of Fine Arts in
Bologna, Italy to study. In 1954 he co-founded Push-Pin
Studios with Reynold Ruffins, Seymore Chawst and
Edward Sorel, In 1963 Glaser and Felker founded New
York Magazine and in 1983 he and Walter Bernard
formed WBMG; a publication design firm with clientele
like LA Times, Boston Globe, Time, AdWeek and Brill’s
Content.

35. Bradbury Thompson
• A native of Topeka, Kansas, Bradbury Thompson
left the Great Plains for the big city life of NYC, as
you do when you're a creative. He worked for 60
years in NYC, for companies like Rogers, Kellog
and Stillson, the magazine Mademoiselle and the
West and Co. Paper Corporation and also taught
at Yale. Thompson's work is distinguished by his
talent for color, composition and understanding
of the power of letter forms. His close
relationship with the printing process is evident
by his use of color overlays, which gives his work
a refreshing energy.

37. Alexey Brodovitch
• Born in Russia in 1898, Alexey Brodovitch moved to the
United States in 1930. In 1934 he began working for
Harper's Bazaar, under the inspiring editor, Carmel Snow.
He spent nearly 25 years at the woman’s fashion magazine,
ultimately influencing the profession for future generations.
Brodovitch’s work at Harper's Bazaar was more in-depth
and all encompassing than what previous art director’s had
done; He not only arranged photos, illustrations and text on
the page, but he conceived and commissioned all graphic
art - including helping start the careers of photographers
Richard Avedon and Irving Penn. His role at the magazine is
now the model that contemporary profession of Art
Direction is based on.

39. George Lois
• George Lois is a prolific advertiser and Art
Director. You’ll recognize his work for MTV,
remember a little “I want my MTV” campaign?
He also helped create VH1, Lean Cuisine and
launch Tommy Hilfiger. Lois’s work also
includes campaigns for Jiffy Lube, USA Today
and ESPN. But, his art direction for Esquire
magazine, where he oversaw numerous
covers, is probably his best-known work.

41. Herb Lubalin
• Herb Lubalin is arguably the grandfather of typography
(although he disputed this classification, opting for the
term "typographics" – creating graphics through the
use of type). Lubalin worked as an Art Director for most
of his career (designing for Eros, Fact, Avant Guarde
and U&Lc) he was named Art Director of the Year in
1962 by the National Society of Art Directors. But,
despite this, Lubalin's typography has always been the
crowning glory of his portfolio – influencing the way
people saw letter forms and words, by adding
movement and transforming text into pictures and
meaningful messages.

43. Saul Bass
• A native New Yorker, Saul Bass moved to LA in his
mid-twenties to pursue a career in Graphic
Design. Bass is a jack of all design traits, dabbling
in both print design and movie animation. You
may be familiar with Bass’s work if you’ve ever
flown United or Continental, supported United
Way or the Girl Scouts, or have seen the title
sequences for Psycho, Anatomy of a Murder,
Spartacus or The Man with the Golden Arm, a
trend Bass spearheaded.