THE GRAPHIC ARTIST AND HIS DESIGN PROBLEMS
GESTALTUNGSPROBLEME DES GRAFIKERS
LES PROBLEMES D'UN ARTISTE GRAPHIQUE
Josef Müller-Brockmann
Josef Müller-Brockmann: THE GRAPHIC ARTIST AND HIS DESIGN PROBLEMS / GESTALTUNGSPROBLEME DES GRAFIKERS / LES PROBLEMES D'UN ARTISTE GRAPHIQUE. New York: Hastings House, 1961. First edition [published simultaneously by Arthur Niggli]. Oblong 4to. Text in German, English and French. White cloth stamped in black. Printed dust jacket. White cloth lightly sunned. Dust jacket with four chips to edges and slight edgewear. Interior unmarked and very clean. A very good copy. Rare in the first edition.
10.5 x 9 scarce hardcover book with 186 pages and 710 illustrations, 45 in color. The closest thing to sitting at the feet of graphic master Josef Muller-Brockmann. The book's three sections deal with the path "from illustrative to objective graphic art," "the basic considerations determining the attitude of the graphic designer to his work" and the system of training developed for the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts [thankfully, this system doesn't include buying a software package].
- Foreword
- The Graphic Artist & His Task
- From Illustrative to Objective Graphic Art
- Typography in Advertising
- Photography in Advertising
- The Drawing in Advertising
- Color in Advertising
- The Device and the Word Mark in Advertising
- Copy in Advertising
- Uniformity in Advertising
- Form Appropriate to the Advertising Message
- The Graphic Artist as Exhibition Designer
- Cultural Publicity
- Concert Posters for the Tonhalle Gesellschaft Zurich
- Photographic Experiments
- A Training System for the Graphic Designer
Excerpted from Yvonne Schwemer-Scheddin's "A Conversation with Josef Muller-Brockmann," Eye, Winter, 1995: Josef Muller-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."