HOW TO SHOW TELEPHONE NUMBERS ON LETTERHEADS
Ladislav Sutnar
Ladislav Sutnar [Designer]: HOW TO SHOW TELEPHONE NUMBERS ON LETTERHEADS. New York: Bell System, n. d. [1964]. Slim quarto. Saddle stitched thick printed wrappers. 16 pp. 14 examples of letterhead design. Staples marking the center spread, otherwise a fine, fresh copy. Not in Janakova: rare.
8.5 x 11 Bell System publication showing 14 different letterhead designs with tips on typesetting and placing the new 10-digit area-code phone number. The letterhead examples are printed in a variety of 2-color combinations and all dissplay Sutnar's clean functional typography and immaculate placement and proportions. A rare and important document in the history of Information Design.
According to Steven Heller (in Critique, 1999): ". . . Ladislav Sutnar was a progenitor of the current practice of information graphics, the lighter of a torch that is carried today by Edward Tufte and Richard Saul Wurman, among others. For a wide range of American businesses, Sutnar developed graphic systems that clarified vast amounts of complex information, transforming business data into digestible units. He was the man responsible for putting the parentheses around American telephone area-code numbers when they were first introduced."
"Although Sutnar and Lonberg-Holm didn't coin the term 'information design,' Designing Information codified the tenets of clarity and accessibility like no book before it. 'The treatment of the subject came about through our realization of the need to clarify design in everyday terms, and to demonstrate that design has practical values that go far beyond mere decoration,' K. Holm said. Thus, in their hands, 'the basic elements of design-size, blank space, color, line, etc.-become tools for selectivity, simplifying the visual task' of the user. Designing Information (which was planned as a huge volume, but published in an abridged form) set out to define design as a tool for achieving the 'faster flow of information,' through principles of flow and unity. "
Sutnar and Lonberg-Holm took great pains to demonstrate the process of visualizing information by including scores of charts and graphs that addressed the needs of customers, employees, stockholders, and the general public. They believed that giving efficient form to information requires more than just pictorial illustration ('Ease of seeing means more than easy to look at,' wrote K. Holm). Their crystalline charts became the foundation on which comprehension could be built. In fact, in one simple chart the whole of Designing Information is efficiently summarized as 'Transmitting: speed, accessibility; Seeing: visual selectivity, visual continuity; Comprehending: visual extension, universality.'
Perhaps Sutnar's most significant innovation in the design of the book itself was his use of full-spread designs. Indeed, he was one of the earliest designers to treat spreads as units rather than as separate pages. Even a casual review of Sutnar's designs for everything from catalogs to brochures during his American period (with the logical exception of covers) shows that he used across-the-spread designs regularly. Using all the space at his disposal, he was able to inject excitement into even the most routine material without impinging upon comprehension: his signature navigational devices guided users firmly from one level of information to the next. At the same time, Sutnar was not an 'invisible' designer. While his basic structures were decidedly rational, the choices he made in juxtaposition, scale, and color were rooted in sophisticated principles of abstract design, bringing sensitive composition, visual charm, and emotional drama to his workaday subjects. He developed a distinctive vocabulary, or style, notable for arrows, fever lines, black bullets, and other repeated devices."
Ladislav Sutnar (1897 – 1976) was one of the most ardent advocates of pure visual education in his designs and writings. Sutnar left Czechoslovakia after the Nazi occupation to design the Czechoslovak Pavilion in the World's Fair in New York in 1939 . He never returned to his homeland. After one desperate year of looking for a job in New York, in 1941 Ladislav Sutnar met Knud Lönberg-Holm,the Danish-born architect who was director of Research at Sweet's Catalog Service. Holm hired Sutnar as art director. Sweet's Catalog Service was the producer of trade, construction,and hardware catalogs that were distributed to businesses and architects throughout the United States. Sutnar and Holm radically transformed the organization and presentation of technical and commercial information.
Sutnar said "If a graphic design is to elicit greater intensity of perception and comprehension of contents,the designer should be aware of the following principles: 1) optical interest,which arouses attention and forces the eye to action; 2) visual simplicity of image and structure allowing quick reading and comprehension of the contents; and 3) visual continuity, which allows the clear understanding of the sequence of elements."