CHANGE OF PACE
CONTEMPORARY FURNITURE 1925 – 1975
Noel Martin [Designer]
Noel Martin [Designer]: CHANGE OF PACE – CONTEMPORARY FURNITURE 1925 – 1975 [poster title]. Cincinnati: Cincinnati Art Museum, [1975]. Original edition. Poster mailer. Offset lithograph in two color recto and one color verso on a wove sheet. Unmarked proof sheet, thus never machine folded in quarters for mailing. Edges with a couple of timy pushes, but a fine example of this poster, with possible singularity in this unfolded, unmailed condition.
20 x 24-inch (51 x 61 cm) poster designed by Noel Martin and unused as a mailing promotion for the exhibition of the same name at the Cincinnati Art Museum in 1975. This poster is an uncirculated mailer that was never folded, stamped or mailed. Thus the heavily inked sheet is unmarred, preserving Martin’s uniquely Midwestern style utilizing a stark Warholian high-contrast rough haftone on a wonderfully textured, flat colored plane.
Noel Martin (American, 1922 – 2009) was a renown self-taught typographer and designer who studied drawing, painting, and printmaking at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. He later became an instructor there and was the long-time designer for the Cincinnati Art Museum, as well as a prolific free-lance designer. Martin was celebrated for modernizing museum graphics and industrial trade catalogs. In 1953, he was featured in MoMA's landmark design exhibition, Four American Designers, along with Herbert Bayer, Leo Lionni, and Ben Shahn. His spiral-bound self-promotional piece, Identity Programs, presents some of his iconic minimalist logos.
From Steven Heller's New York Times Obituary [February 27, 2009]: " With the ubiquitous branding and expert merchandizing of museums today, it is easy to forget that graphic design was once a low priority for them. In 1947, when Mr. Martin became the Cincinnati Art Museum's first graphic designer, most museum publications were staid and musty.
"Mr. Martin maintained that contemporary typographic design, as practiced by the European Modernists, would enhance these documents and make art, particularly abstract art, more accessible and more appealing to younger museumgoers. He introduced a distinct blend of classical and modern typography to the museum's exhibition catalogs.
"Allon Schoener, a freelance museum curator and friend, said that Mr. Martin, first at the Cincinnati Art Museum and later at the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, "created a style which has been emulated by most other American museums during the last 40 years."
Noel Martin was born on April 19, 1922, in Syracuse, Ohio. When he was a child, his family moved to Cincinnati, where he spent the remainder of his life. He studied painting, drawing and print- making at the Art Academy of Cincinnati in 1939-1941 and 1945-1947, between which he married his wife, Coletta, and served in the military. During World War II he served in a camouflage unit in the Army Air Force, where he made catalogs and brochures. While making educational film strips for the Army in New York he was exposed to modern art for the first time, which later influenced his work. He trained himself in the art of typography and graphic design. He became a designer for the Cincinnati Art Museum in 1947 and in 1949 began offering his services as a free-lance designer and art director to a variety of firms.
In 1951 he began teaching design and commercial art at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and worked there until 1957. In 1953 he was one of four designers featured in the Four American Designers exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, by which time he'd already become nationally known. He received the Art Director's Medal in Philadelphia in 1957.
In 1958 he redesigned The New Republic from cover to cover. Martin (1959) said, "Good typography for magazines is generally typography which is free of animation and the necessary tricks of advertising, and is functional1." He used typeface Palatino and uncluttered the cover, making sure to leave white space throughout the publication. In 1959, he wrote several articles on the relationship between modern art and graphic design.
He continued designing for the Cincinnati Art Museum throughout his life. He designed numerous booklets, books, calendars, catalogs, corporate logos, flyers, magazines, newsletters, stationary and posters throughout the following decades. Some of the firms and institutions he designed for on a free-lance basis include Champion Paper Company, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Federated Department Stores, General Electric, LeBlond Ltd., Standard Oil Company, The United Fine Arts Fund, University of Cincinnati, and Xomox Corporation. He also designed corporate logos for institutions, such as Advance Mortgage Corporation, the Contemporary Arts Center, and Black Clawson, most of which were minimalist in nature.
He was featured in various editions of Who's Who in America, Who's Who in Graphic Art and Who's Who in Advertising. He was featured in numerous exhibits locally, nationally, and internationally. He wrote several articles and gave numerous lectures throughout his career. He dies of leukemia on February 23, 2009.