VISUAL TRANSFORMATION
CREATIVE TENDENCIES IN GRAPHIC DESIGN, FINE ART, TECHNOLOGY, AND INFORMATION TECHNIQUES
Walter Diethelm with Dr. Marion Diethelm
Zürich: ABC Verlag, 1982. First edition. Text in German, French, and English. Square quarto. Glazed printed boards. Black backstrip. Printed dust jacket. Orange endpapers. 182 pp. Fully illustrated with color and black and white examples. Glossy white jacket lightly worn along top edge with spine crown worn. Textblock faintly thumbed, so a nearly fine copy in a nearly fine dust jacket.
10.25 x 10 hardcover book with 182 pages with over 300 color and black and white illustrations. From the introduction “On Visual Transformation”: “Life means change, conversion, and transformation. Visualization makes it possible to grasp the idea of transformation. The extent and speed of change in a man-made environment are to be seen in urban development and also in the developed landscape ever more subjected to the needs of traffic, building, and industrialization. Visualization transforms the natural living-space into a kind of artificial super-structure, which can, perhaps, also be artistically designed.”
Contents
- On Visual Transformation
- Structures of Formation
- Present-day Tendencies of Style in Design
- Sight, Overview, Insight
Index of names features Felix Bader, Theo Ballmer, Max Bense, Josef Beuys, Igildo Biesele, Max Bill, Werner Blaser, Ken Carbone, Christo, Tom Eckersley, Buckminster Fuller, Eugen Gomringer, Gottschalk + Ash, Takenobu Igarishi, Burton Kramer, Karl Martens, Helmut Schmid, Leslie Smolan, Anton Stankowski, Rosmarie Tissi, Fred Troller, Unimark, Robert Venturi, Massimo Vignelli, Harry Weese, Jean Widmer, Richard Saul Wurman, and many more.
Walter J. Diethelm [Zürich, 1913– 1986] was a type designer credited with Diethelm Antiqua (or Diethelm Roman) (Haas, 1948-1950; Linotype, 1957: a stocky text typeface), Sculptura (1957), Arrow (1966, VGC, a Peignotian or lapidary face), Abacus, Aktiv, Capitol, and Gloriette.
The Swiss International Style derived from the idea that "abstract structure is the vehicle for communication," according to alumnus Kenneth Hiebert. "It relies on an analysis that rigorously questions and accounts for all parts of a message. The act of searching for an appropriate structure forces the designer to make the most basic inquiry about a message, to isolate its primary essence from considerations of surface style."
Hiebert wrote "The Swiss school is concerned that design be more than a frivolous cluttering of the environment." Sounds good to me.