SCOPE
Spring 1956
Will Burtin [Art Director]
Will Burtin [Art Director]: SCOPE. Kalamazoo, MI: The Upjohn Company, Volume IV, No. 9, Spring 1956. Original edition. Slim quarto. Photo illustrated stapled wrappers. 20 pp. Illustrated articles with elaborate graphic design throughout. Wrappers uniformly rubbed, but a very good copy.
8.75 x 11 stapled Upjohn house organ with 20 pages of elaborate graphic design and art direction, including a full-page color time lapse photograph by Lee Friedlander.
For Burtin’s AIGA Medal Recognition biography Margaret Andersen wrote ”[Burtin] left Fortune in 1949 to start his own design studio, working with a principal client, The Upjohn Company (a pharmaceutical manufacturing firm based in Kalamazoo, Michigan). Through their partnership, Burtin not only defined the new concept of corporate brand identity, but he also produced arguably his most innovative work as art director for the company’s biomedical magazine, Scope, and its educational exhibitions.
Will Burtin (Germany, 1909 – 1972) studied typography and design at the Cologne Werkschule, then practiced design in Germany before emigrating to the US in 1938. He worked for the US Army Air Force designing graphics and exhibitions before becoming Art Director of Fortune magazine in 1945. His work for Fortune was marked by innovative solutions to presenting complex information in graphically understandable ways. In 1949 he established his own firm. Among his clients were the Upjohn Company, Union Carbide, Eastman Kodak and The Smithsonian Institution. Burtin's great genius was in his ability to visualize complex scientific and technological information. He created several award winning exhibitions including the 1958 model of a human blood cell. Burtin believed that through his work he could become the "communicator, link, interpreter and inspirer" who is able to make scientific knowledge comprehensible.
Burtin developed a design philosphy called Integration, in which the designer conveyed information with visual communication that is based on four principal realities:
- the reality of man as measure and measurer
- the reality of light, color, texture
- the reality of space, motion, time
- the reality of science
Using this approach to design problems was essentially the birth of what later became known as multimedia. By integrating all four realities into a design solution, Burtin could solve seemingly insoluble puzzles.
The mid to late 40s saw Burtin expand his role in professional organizations, serving as Director of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA). In 1948, Burtin's Integration: The New Discipline in Design exhibit opened at the Composing Room in New York City.
In the introduction to the exhibition, designer Serge Chermayeff stated: "This new art of 'visualization,' of giving visual form in two or three dimensions to a message, is the product of a new kind of artist functionary evolved by our complex society. This artist possesses the inclusive equipment of liberal knowledge, scientific and technical experience, and artisticability . . . Among the small band of pioneers who have developed this new language by bringing patient research and brilliant inventiveness to their task is Will Burtin."
Most noteworthy, Burtin served for 22 years as both Upjohn's design consultant and art director of its in-house publication, Scope. His work on Scope continued his use of graphics and imagery in communicating complicated journal text. He worked to create a unique corporate identity for Upjohn, a new concept at the time. For Upjohn, Burtin produced some of the most celebrated exhibits of his career: the Cell, the Brain, and Inflammation: Defense of Life. These immensely popular walk-in exhibits provided a clear, visual interpretation of abstract scientific processes.