VISUAL ASPECTS OF SCIENCE
Will Burtin
Will Burtin: VISUAL ASPECTS OF SCIENCE. Dortmund, Western Germany: Kodak, IBM, Upjohn and Union Carbide, n. d. [1962]. First edition. Slim square quarto. Stapled, printed embossed wrappers. 20 pp. Printed vellum, coated and uncoated sheets. Elaborate graphic design throughout by Will Burtin. Wrappers lightly rubbed, otherwise a nearly fine, fresh copy Rare.
9.75 x 9.75 saddle-stitched exhibition catalog cooperatively published by Kodak, Union Carbide, The Upjohn Company and IBM Corporation. Photographs by Ezra Stoller, with typesetting, reporduction and printing by Fritz Busche, Dortmund, Western Germany. Interlaced printed vellum sheets throughout the printed textblock achieved a multi-dimensional feel that can only be experienced in the first person.
This spectacular booklet written and designed by Burtin skillfully combines aspects of his Upjohn projects The Cell, The Brain, and The Chromosome into a holistic perspective for understanding the rapidly expanding field of microbiology, circa 1962.
Will Burtin (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 principal client with whom he was associated from 1949-1971 was the Upjohn Company. Burtin served as Art Director of Upjohn’s publication Scope, to assist doctors in understanding medical, scientific and pharmaceutical information for over 15 years. Among the many projects Burtin executed for Upjohn were three famous walk-in exhibits: The Cell, The Brain, and The Chromosome, models of which are included in the Collection at RIT. The Cell, completed in 1958, was developed by request from Upjohn, as Burtin says, “to recommend a visual method of explaining new knowledge about organic structure to the professional and general public…One of the first conclusions reached was that the entire structure should be built in a size large enough to enable the viewer to walk inside it, so that he would get a most intimate and dramatic close-up view of all the relationships between various parts of the cell and the whole.” The 24-foot three-dimensional model was built with consultation from leading American scientists including Dr. Porter and Dr. Moses of the Rockefeller Institute, Dr. Hamilton of the Sloan-Kettering Institute, and many other scientists throughout the country. The Cell was an immediate success, traveling throughout several U.S. cities, including San Francisco, Kalamazoo, New York City, and Chicago. The exhibit also traveled to England. With over 2 million people visiting the exhibit, it was reviewed in Newsweek and Life as well as numerous other publications in the design field.
The success of The Cell generated many similar projects for Upjohn, most notably The Brain. As Roger Remington, RIT Professor of Design, writes in Nine Pioneers in American Graphic Design, “Burtin defined the design problem as a search for an audiovisual mode of demonstrating the sequence by which the main product of the brain, a thought, evolves. He consulted with structural engineers, physicians, physicists, chemists, and others to ensure accuracy in the presentation while preserving simplicity and clarity of communication. At an early stage of development it became obvious that to be understandable, the form of the exhibit should not be based on the anatomy of the organ but rather on the thinking process itself….The Brain, completed in 1960, was a precursor of what was to become popular as the “light show” or multimedia event. Through projected image, sequence, lights and color – among the components of the exhibit were 45,000 lights and 40 miles of wire – Burtin conveyed the working of the mind in a way never approached before.”
Burtin wrote in 1964, “In retrospect, the most profound experience of working ‘The Brain,’ was the idea that the problem of how we think about thinking had become a design problem as well. In tracing the logic by which awareness of reality and dream is established, I felt often as if I were looking into the reasoning of creation itself.” Due to its immense popularity, a second Brain exhibit was created for travel in Europe where it was displayed in Turin. It then became part of a traveling exhibit of Will Burtin’s work entitled Visual Aspects of Science which went to the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, then to the Royal College of Art, London and to the Palais de la Découverte, Paris.
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."