Eye no. 19
Volume 5, Winter 1995
Rick Poynor [Editor]
London: Wordsearch Ltd., Volume 5, Number 19, Winter 1995. Quarto. Letterpress scored photo illustrated wrappers. 88 pp. Articles and advertisements printed on multiple paper stocks. Essays illustrated with full color examples throughout, with design and typography of the highest order. Cover artwork: Matthew Carter's new font for the Walker Art Centre. Light wear overall, but a nearly fine copy.
9.25 x 11.75-inch quarterly Design journal with 88 pages of fully illustrated content. “Eye is the world’s most beautiful and collectable graphic design journal, published quarterly for professional designers, students and anyone interested in critical, informed writing about graphic design and visual culture.”
Contents:
- Opinion, Agenda
- Editorial: Rick Poynor
- The new typographer muttering in your ear: Kevin Fenton
- Critical path, Design education, Graphic design
- Mysterious absence at the cutting edge: Liz Farrelly. “Britain has many design stars and most of them are men. Yet very few young women want to be seen as feminists. That’s starting to change.”
- Features
- Reputations: Josef Müller-Brockmann: Yvonne Schwemer-Scheddin. “I would advise young people to look at everything they encounter in a critical light … Then I would urge them at all times to be self-critical.” Seven pages and 19 reproductions.
- Otto Neurath: Robin Kinross.” Otto Neurath’s 1936 book was the fullest exposition of his vision as an international visual language.” Two pages and nine vintage reproductions.
- Enigma variations: Max Bruinsma. “Studio Dumbar uses its posters for the Zeebelt Theatre in the Hague for anarchic type experiments.” Ten pages and 20 color reproductions.
- Branding as mythology: Will Novosedlik. “Branding experts draw on centuries of myth-making to imbue products with emotional symbolism.” Eight pages and many black and white images.
- Type play for kids: Steven Heller. “It has taken decades for expressive typography to win acceptance in the world of the children's book.”Ten pages and 45 color reproductions.
- Signs of trouble: Julia Thrift. “British designer David Crow uses his personal projects to question the authority of the graphic image.” Eight pages and 27 color images.
- Permanent innovation: Richard Hollis. “With his ‘livre objets’ for the French book clubs, Pierre Faucheux invented a new genre.” Eight pages and 45 images.
- The space between the letters: Moira Cullen. “Matthew Carter's new identity for the Walker Art Centre is a typeface family with 'snap-on' serifs.” Eight pages and 23 examples.
Includes work by Kurt Schwitters, El Lissitzky, Piet Zwart, Margaret Wise Brown, Tony Fraioli, Bruno Munari, Ann and Paul Rand, William jay Smith, Julia Gorton, Maira Kalman, and many others.
“As with most graphic designers that can be classified as part of the Swiss International Style, Joseph Müller-Brockmann (Switzerland 1914 – 1996) was influenced by the ideas of several different design and art movements including Constructivism, De Stijl, Suprematism and the Bauhaus. He is perhaps the most well-known Swiss designer and his name is probably the most easily recognized when talking about the period. He was born and raised in Switzerland and by the age of 43 he became a teacher at the Zurich school of arts and crafts.
Excerpted from Yvonne Schwemer-Scheddin's "A Conversation with Josef Müller-Brockmann," Eye, Winter, 1995: Josef Müller-Brockmann . . . "began his career as an apprentice to the designer and advertising consultant Walter Diggelman before, in 1936, establishing his own Zurich studio specialising in graphics, exhibition design and photography. By the 1950s he was established as the leading practitioner and theorist of the Swiss Style, which sought a universal graphic expression through a grid-based design purged of extraneous illustration and subjective feeling . . . . Müller-Brockmann was founder and, from 1958 to 1965, co-editor of the trilingual journal Neue Grafik (New Graphic Design) which spread the principles of Swiss design internationally. He was professor of graphic design at the Kunstgewerbeschule, Zurich from 1957 to 1960 and the Hochschule fur Gestaltung, Ulm from 1963. From 1967 he was European design consultant for IBM."
A visual program for displaying facts and quantitative information, the ISOTYPE system was born from research and theories of Otto Neurath (1882 – 1945) a Viennese philosopher, economist and social scientist. During the 1920's Neurath was a leading figure in a circle of Viennese intellectuals known as the Logical Positivists. In 1925 Neurath, while head of a housing museum, initiated The Social and Economic Museum of Vienna. The museum's purpose was to educate the general public about post-war housing by creating displays of social information. The new venue afforded him an opportunity to showcase his intellectual and educational ideals using his symbol-based language — an alternative to written language. By the early 1930's Neurath headed a team of 25 employees divided into four groups: Data Collectors: Comprised of historians, statisticians and economists. Transformers: Visual editors and liaisons between the data collectors and the graphic artists. Graphic Artists: Illustrators who drew the symbols and artwork. Technical Assistants: Assisted in paste-up, coloring and photography. While working at the museum Neurath began his collaboration with Marie Reidemeister, who would later become his wife. Reidemeister was educated as a physicist, mathematician and also had attended art school. She and fellow senior transformer Friedrich Bauermeister, organized the information into comprehensible formats, in a role that would be described today as a graphic designer. Visual education was always the prime motive behind ISOTYPE. It was not intended to replace verbal language, rather it was a “helping language” accompanied by verbal elements. Neurath was deeply convinced that his "world language without words" would not only enhance education but facilitate international understanding.
Studio Dumbar is a highly influential Dutch graphic design agency whose work has helped shape, not only Dutch, but international design for over four decades. Studio Dumbar was founded in the Hague by Gert Dumbar in 1977. In 2003, the studio moved to Rotterdam, as Michel de Boer took over the creative direction, after Gert Dumbar’s retirement.
Studio Dumbar describes itself as “an international branding agency specialised in visual identity and communication design” meaning that it creates every visible expression of a brand or organisation — offline and online. Its international scope is reflected in its team, with an average of seven nationalities in Rotterdam.
Dumbar studied painting and graphic design at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in the Hague. He earned his postgraduate degree in graphic design at the Royal College of Art in London. He founded his own firm, Studio Dumbar, in 1977, creating many iconic corporate identity systems for clients such as the Dutch Postal and Telecom Services, Dutch Railways, Dutch Police, the Danish Post and Czech Telecom.