DIRECTION
Volume 4, Number 3: March 1941
Paul Rand [Cover Designer], M. Tjader Harris [Editor]
Paul Rand [Cover Designer], M. Tjader Harris [Editor]: DIRECTION. Darien, CT: Volume 4, Number 3, March 1941. Original Edition. Slim Quarto. Stapled printed wrappers. 24 pp. Illustrated articles and advertisements. Wrappers lightly worn and loosening from the stapled binding. Classic collage cover design by Paul Rand. A very good copy.
8.25 x 10.75 saddle-stitched magazine book with 24 pages of fiction, social commentary and art. DIRECTION was the laboratory where Rand tested many of this developing theories of modern design and typography. Because he worked without compensation (except for a few Corbusier lithographs...) Rand was allowed a tremendous amount of aesthetic leeway in designing the DIRECTION magazine covers. With little money budgeted for typesetting, Rand used his own handwriting for the cover copy, and the rest is history.
Paul Rand's DIRECTION covers have been reprinted in every major graphic design anthology and have achieved iconic stature in their own right. This DIRECTION cover stands as a true icon of American Modernism -- it has reproduced in countless anthologies, including László Moholy-Nagy's VISION IN MOTION (Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1947: page 309) and Gyorgy Kepes' LANGUAGE OF VISION (Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1944: page 71). I believe this cover was one of Rand's personal favorites since it always seemed to show up in his self-edited compendiums such as Yusaku Kamekura's PAUL RAND (Tokyo: Ginza Graphic Gallery, 1992).
In VISION IN MOTION, author Laszlo Moholy-Nagy described this cover: "The rigid use of the traditional horizontal and vertical typography has now been discarded in favor of an oblique composition mixed with drawings, photographs, facsimile handwriting, derived from the collage and photomontage, easily reproduced by the photo-engraving techniques." That sums it up quite nicely.
The theme for this issue of DIRECTION is Art in Industry and includes these sections:
- POSTERS: work by Howard Willard, A. M. Cassandre, E. McKnight Kauffer, Herbert Bayer, Will Burtin, Lester Beall, Jean Carlu, Alexey Brodovitch and Gustav Jensen. Includes short biographies of the designers.
- BOOKS: work by Robert Jospehy and E. McKnight Kauffer. etc.
- TYPOGRAPHY: work by Paul Rand, Harry Burke, Don May, Herbert bayer, Ladislav Sutnar, etc.
- PRODUCT DESIGN: work by John Vassos, Alvar Aalto, László Moholy-Nagy, Gustav Jensen, Davis Pratt, etc.
The Art in Industry special issue was coordinated by Percy Seitlin. Seitlin was a writer and co-editor of PM and AD magazines. He served on the staff of the Composing Room from 1933 to 1943 and helped to organize and run the AD Gallery and then Gallery 303. He was director of advertising and publicity at Aetna Steel Products Corp., head of product publicity for Celanese Corporation of America, did PR for the Museum of Modern Art's exhibit on Marcel Breuer, wrote poetry, short stories, advertising copy and articles on the graphic arts and typography for several publications. His books include New York: People and Places.
Edited by William Gropper, et al, including contributing editors Richard Wright, Kenneth Burke and Edwin Seaver. A dynamic, frequently visually striking, consistently left of center journal of literature and the arts, drawing on the foundations left by the WPA for much of its brilliance. A substantial roster of contributors appeared through its tenure, including Theodore Dreiser, John Dos Passos, Le Corbusier, Erskine Caldwell, Kenneth Rexroth, Richard Wright, Kees, Larsson, Abel, Kemp, Anderson, Herbst, Scott, Brown, Art Young, Halper, Komroff, Macleod, Margaret Bourke White, Burke, di Donato, Woody Guthrie, Seldes, Lorentz, Hughes, Maltz, Chaplin, Sandburg, R. Lowry, Ellison, Morris, et al. A major 20th century American periodical which is increasingly difficult to acquire in decent condition.
Marguerite Tjader (1901 – 1986) was born in New York City, the daughter of Richard Tjader, a big game hunter, explorer, and evangelist, and Margaret (Thorne) Tjader, daughter of the financier Samuel Thorne. She attended Bryn Mawr College and Columbia University, where she received the A.B. degree in 1925. Her marriage to Overton Harris ended in divorce in 1933. Their son, Hilary (1929-1999), became a documentary filmmaker, receiving an Oscar in 1962 for his direction of 'Seaward the great ships'. From 1937 until 1945 Mrs. Harris edited 'Direction', the left-wing journal of the arts she founded with the support of Theodore Dreiser. She had met Dreiser at a dinner party in 1928 and their intimate relationship continued off and on until 1944 when he finally married Helen Patges Richardson, his companion of almost 30 years. In 1944 Mrs. Harris and her son moved to Los Angeles where she became one in a long succession of Dreiser editorial assistants. In addition to typing and editing drafts of his work she acted as a sort of 'spiritual advisor' to Dreiser while he completed his penultimate novel 'The bulwark', published posthumously in 1946. Marguerite Tjader Harris is probably the model for the title character of 'Lucia', one of the fictional sketches in Dreiser's 'A gallery of women', published in 1929. During the 1930's, presumably after the dissolution of her marriage, Mrs. Harris, who had been raised a Baptist, converted to Roman Catholicism. In the 1950's she helped Mother Elisabeth Hesselblad establish the U.S. foundation of of the Order of the Most Holy Saviour of Saint Bridget (Bridgettines) by donating Vikingsborg, her family's summer home in Darien, Conn., to the order. She died on April 7, 1986 in East Windsor, Conn.
If the word legend has any meaning in the graphic arts and if the term legendary can be applied with accuracy to the career of any designer, it can certainly be applied to Paul Rand (1914-1996). By 1947, the legend was already firmly in place. By then Paul had completed his first career as a designer of media promotion at Esquire-Coronet --and as an outstanding cover designer for Apparel Arts and Directions. He was well along on a second career as an advertising designer at the William Weintraub agency which he had joined as art director at its founding. THOUGHTS ON DESIGN (with reproductions of almost one hundred of his designs and some of the best words yet written on graphic design) had just published -- an event that cemented his international reputation and identified him as a designer of influence from Zurich to Tokyo.
A chronology of Rand's design experience has paralleled the development of the modern design movement. Paul Rand’s first career in media promotion and cover design ran from 1937 to 1941, his second career in advertising design ran from 1941 to 1954, and his third career in corporate identification began in 1954. Paralleling these three careers there has been a consuming interest in design education and Paul Rand's fourth career as an educator started at Cooper Union in 1942. He taught at Pratt Institute in 1946 and in 1956 he accepted a post at Yale University's graduate school of design where he held the title of Professor of Graphic Design.
In 1937 Rand launched his first career at Esquire. Although he was only occasionally involved in the editorial layout of that magazine, he designed material on its behalf and turned out a spectacular series of covers for Apparel Arts, a quarterly published in conjunction with Esquire. In spite of a schedule that paid no heed to regular working hours or minimum wage scales, he managed in these crucial years to find time to design an impressive array of covers for other magazines, particularly Directions. From 1938 on his work was a regular feature of the exhibitions of the Art Directors Club.
Most contemporary designers are aware of Paul Rand's successful and compelling contributions to advertising design. What is not well known is the significant role he played in setting the pattern for future approaches to the advertising concept. Rand was probably the first of a long and distinguished line of art directors to work with and appreciate the unique talent of William Bernbach. Rand described his first meeting with Bernbach as "akin to Columbus discovering America," and went on to say, "This was my first encounter with a copywriter who understood visual ideas and who didn't come in with a yellow copy pad and a preconceived notion of what the layout should look like."
Rand spent fourteen years in advertising where he demonstrated the importance of the art director in advertising and helped break the isolation that once surrounded the art department. The final thought from THOUGHTS ON DESIGN is worth repeating: "Even if it is true that commonplace advertising and exhibitions of bad taste are indicative of the mental capacity of the man in the street, the opposing argument is equally valid. Bromidic advertising catering to that bad taste merely perpetuates that mediocrity and denies him one of the most easily accessible means of aesthetic development."
In 1954 when Paul Rand decided Madison Avenue was no longer a two-way street and he resigned from the Weintraub agency, he was cited as one of the ten best art directors by the Museum of Modern Art. The rest is design history.
László Moholy-Nagy, a pioneer typographer, photographer, and designer of the modern movement and a master at the Bauhaus in Weimar, may have come closest to defining the Rand style when he said Paul was "an idealist and a realist using the language of the poet and the businessman. He thinks in terms of need and function. He is able to analyze his problems, but his fantasy is boundless."