THE VISUAL CRAFT OF WILLIAM GOLDEN
Cipe Pineles Golden
Cipe Pineles Golden; Kurt Weihs; Robert Strunsky; Will Burtin [introduction]; Frank Stanton [Preface]: THE VISUAL CRAFT OF WILLIAM GOLDEN. New York: George Braziller, Inc. 1962. First edition. Oblong quarto. Red cloth stamped in gold. Photo illustrated dust jacket. Decorated endpapers. 156 pp. 123 black and white illustrations. Jacket lightly rubbed, with a couple of small edge chips. Former owner signature to front free endpaper. Rarely found in collectible condition —a very good or better copy in a very good or better dust jacket.
9 x 11.5 hardcover book with 156 pages and 123 black and white illustrations reproductions of Golden's cutting-edge work as design director for CBS, including books, ads, brochures and other printed pieces. The book was designed by Cipe Pineles Golden and Kurt Weihs with Will Burton serving as Art Director.
During Golden's 18-year tenure as Art Director for CBS, he was responsible for some of the most original designs ever used in the communications industry. This book is the only monograph devoted to this pioneer of American Graphic Design. Highly recommended.
- Biography
- Preface: Frank Stanton
- The Passionate Eye: Will Burton
- Type is to Read: presented at the Type Directors Club, New York, 1959.
- Visual Environment of Advertising
- Bill by Ben Shahn
- Patron-Art Director: Feliks Topolski
- A tribute to Willaim Golden: John Cowden
- My Eye
This volume includes work by the following Graphic Artists: Ben Shahn, Ben Rose, Leo Lionni, Paul Strand, Arnold Newman and many others.
William Golden (1911 - 1959) is considered to be one of the pioneers of American graphic design. He is best known for his work at Columbia Broadcasting System, starting in the CBS Radio promotion department (before broadcast television existed) and culminating in his tenure as creative director of advertising and sales promotion for CBS Television Network. Golden gained a reputation of excellence by always striving for a perfect, simple solution to the problem at hand, producing an original and distinguished design to convey the message.
In 1937, Golden joined the promotion department at CBS, where he worked for three years before being promoted to art director. Golden's design program went beyond the promotion of CBS as a radio network, producing advertisements that helped to define radio as a news medium. His ads emphasized the ability of radio to bring historic events to its audience in a way no other medium could at that time. Golden took a leave of absence in 1941 to join the Office of War Information in Washington, D.C. In 1943, he entered the U.S. Army as a private, and served in Europe as art director of army training manuals. He was discharged from the military in 1946 with the rank of captain.
Golden returned to CBS as television was growing to become the dominant medium of communication in America. The time was ripe to define a visual style that would identify CBS to its viewers, and William Golden was the chief architect of the CBS identity. His efforts led CBS to a level of visual elegance that reflected the extraordinary taste and intelligence of the corporate leadership and, ultimately, the viewers of CBS. Toward this end, Golden employed the Didot typeface to use as the main type style for CBS promotional materials. Since the typeface was not extensively available in the United States at that time, CBS staff designers George Lois and Kurt Weihs were assigned the task of "Americanizing" the font, redrawing every character in the font from an enlargement that Golden provided to them.
Golden helped to shape corporate decisions, constantly pushing the executives to spend more on advertising the shows that demonstrated CBS's respect for good theater, good music, and good news analysis — programs that highlighted CBS's reputation as a responsible company. Although he was offered the position of vice president in charge of advertising and sales promotion at CBS, Golden chose to remain the creative director of advertising and sales promotion, preferring to keep firm control of the creative aspects of the CBS image rather than moving into a more administrative role.
Golden's work ethic set an entirely new standard for American design, as he developed, directed, and sustained the visual program at CBS. During his tenure as creative director for advertising and sales promotion, all of the ads, promotional materials, and other corporate design projects were of a consistently high aesthetic quality, despite Golden's own belief that the business and marketing objectives were always of highest importance, and aesthetic quality was secondary to these objectives. At the height of his career, Golden's life ended abruptly at the age of 48; he died of a heart attack on October 23, 1959.
Talented, assertive, with charm enhanced by her lingering Austrian accent, Cipe Pineles (1908 – 1991) became the first independent woman American graphic designer. As art director of Glamour, Seventeen, Charm, and Mademoiselle for over twenty years, she collaborated with hundreds of artists, illustrators, photographers, and editors. She mentored her assistants and later formally taught a generation of designers at Parsons. As an art director, she provided an encouraging, enthusiastic, and collaborative model: as a professional woman in a predominantly male field, she was a model for the next generation of women in design. A friend and colleague to legions of creative people across the globe, Cipe Pineles was always ready with good food and lively conversation as well as advice, a letter of support, a contact, or a commission.
In 1926, she enrolled at Pratt in Brooklyn, where she studied fine art. Even in her early paintings, her love of food appears—images of bread and chocolate rendered in watercolor. But her career began in the commercial realm and continued to anchor itself primarily in print media and client work, even as she privately kept books full of ingredients and recipes. She managed to bring both her own food-related work and that of others into her art direction for magazines such as Seventeen, Charm, Glamour, Vogue, and Vanity Fair. A painting she created of potatoes, which bordered a spread on the simple starch in Seventeen Magazine, won an award from the Art Directors' Club in 1948.
Cipe was a pioneer, not only because she was a woman in a typically male profession, but because she had a vision for innovation and wasn't afraid to make it real. She was the first art director at a magazine to commit to assigning fine artists for editorial illustration—a previously unusual practice—and it was under her direction that such celebrated names as Andy Warhol and Ben Shahn began creating spot illustrations to accompany stories (Warhol, in fact, illustrated many food stories and cookbooks in his day).
Pineles worked at Conde Nast for many years, and simultaneously taught in the design department at Parsons. She continued to teach well into her later years, and was celebrated many times over for the projects she spearheaded with her class, creating books of recipes and narratives about food, from the Parsons Bread Book—a collection of tales about New York bakeries; to Cheap Eats, which featured both art and recipes from famous creatives of that era.
Cipe was part of a community of wildly talented designers, art directors, editors, and artists; and she is often remembered for the wonderful parties she'd throw for all her friends and acquaintances. She was more likely to serve food informed by the culinary trends of New York at that time than to prepare the traditional Jewish foods of her youth, but it is clear from the sketchbook that launched this project, Cipe had a permanent, well-warmed place in her heart for the food her mother cooked. From the title of the book, one might guess that it was these foods she considered her greatest comfort—something she could turn to when she was alone to find joy and inspiration.