JAZZ NEW YORK
THE FIRST ANNUAL NEW YORK JAZZ FESTIVAL
Robert Brownjohn [Designer]
Don Friedman and Ken Joffe [Promoters], Robert Brownjohn [Designer]: [THE FIRST ANNUAL] NEW YORK JAZZ FESTIVAL. New York: K & J Heyman and A & S Markelson, December 1956. First edition. Slim quarto. Thick stapled wrappers. Unpaginated. Illustrated articles and trade advertisements. “December 1956 50 cents” paper label attached to upper cover [as issued]. Blank white square label attached to front wrapper near spine [again, as issued]. Spine worn with light wear overall. A very good or better copy.
8.5 x 11 magazine promoting the First Annual New York Jazz Festival, with text contributions from Don Friedman, Ken Joffe Gary Lewis, William Brown, Paul Sampson, Jerry Berger Tommy Wolf, and Nat Hentoff. Photo portfolios by Chuck Lilly, Carole Galletly, Ken Heyman, and a full-page image by Lee Friedlander. Full page graphic compositions by Robert Brownjohn, Ivan Chermayeff, Jacques Willaumez, Robert Parent, and Tom Palumbo. Exceptional graphic design throughout including full-page word compositions and elaborate typography by jazz aficionado and heroin addict Robert Brownjohn.
The New York Jazz Festival debuted on Randall's Island on August 24 and 25, 1956. The lineup included Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Dave Brubeck, Gerry Mulligan, Joe Williams, Erroll Garner, Gene Krupa, Coleman Hawkins.
Robert Brownjohn (1925 – 1970) showed early artistic promise and in 1944 earned a place at the Institute of Design in Chicago, formerly known as the New Bauhaus by founder László Moholy-Nagy. Brownjohn became a protégé of Moholy-Nagy and much of the structural quality in Brownjohn's graphic design can be traced to his important influence. Upon graduation, Brownjohn initially worked as an architectural planner in Chicago before returning to the Institute of Design to teach.
Architectural Forum noted that he “may have been the most talented student ever to have graduated from Chicago's Institute of Design.” He personified the idea his teacher Laszlo Moholy-Nagy expressed in Vision in Motion, that art and life can be integrated: “The true artist is the grindstone of the sense; he sharpens his eye, mind and feeling; he interprets ideas and concepts through his own media.”
In 1950, Brownjohn moved to New York in order to pursue his graphic design career. Working freelance, he completed projects for a wide variety of clients including Columbia Records. Brownjohn's effusive personality and fondness for jazz music allowed friendships with Miles Davis and Charlie Parker, among others, to blossom as he became a part of the social scene in the city. Brownjohn also became addicted to heroin during this period. He was never to conquer this affliction and it contributed to his untimely death at the age of 44.
In 1957 Brownjohn opened Brownjohn, Chermayeff & Geismar (with Ivan Chermayeff and Tom Geismar) in New York City. The following year he designed the “Streetscape” display for the American pavilion at the World Exhibition in Brussels. The end of 1959 also saw the end of BCG. Brownjohn's drug use had escalated and he moved to London with his family in order, he hoped, to take advantage of the UK's more liberal attitude to drug use.
In 1960 Brownjohn left BCG to become the design director for McCann-Erickson Ltd. in London. While there, he designed the title sequences for numerous films, including the James Bond films Goldfinger and From Russia with Love. Brownjohn later returned to New York to teach at the Pratt Institute and the Cooper Union.
In his short but intense working life, Brownjohn left helped to redefine graphic design, to move it from a formal to a conceptual art. His projects exemplify every aspect of his relationship to design, including his emphasis on content over form and his preferences with ordinary and personal images. His spirit of invention and designs for living in the machine age were balanced with references to the aesthetic models that Moholy-Nagy admired.