DESIGN AND PAPER NO. 34
Erik Nitsche Imagician
P. K. Thomajan [Editor] and Erik Nitsche [Designer]
P. K. Thomajan [Editor] and Erik Nitsche [Designer]: DESIGN AND PAPER NO. 34. New York: Marquardt & Company Fine Papers, c. 1951. Slim 16mo. Thick saddle-stitched printed wrappers [Cumberland Gloss cover stock]. 24 pp. Elaborate graphic design throughout. Mild stress to wrapper binding edges, otherwise a nearly fine copy.
4.75 x 7.75 softcover booklet with 24 pages devoted to the incomparable work of Erik Nitsche including his groundbreaking newspaper ads for Ohrbach's, his poster work for Fox and the NYSA, and his record covers for Decca. To this day, Nitsche's Bauhaus-inspired work is fresh and communicative – and heartbreaking. How far we've fallen.
“Who is this guy doing the Bauhaus in New York?” - László Moholy-Nagy
“Eric Nitsche (1908 –1998) may not be as well known today as his contemporaries, Lester Beall, Paul Rand, or Saul Bass, but he is their equal. Almost 90 years old, this Swiss born graphic designer is arguably one of the last surviving Modern design pioneers. Although he never claimed to be either a progenitor or follower of any dogma, philosophy, or style other than his own intuition, the work that earned him induction last year into the New York Art Director’s Club Hall of Fame, including the total identity for General Dynamics Corporation from 1955 to 1965 and the series of scientific, music, and world history illustrated books, which he designed and packaged during the 1960s and 1970s, fits squarely into the Modernist tradition.
“Yet Nitsche’s approach was not a cookie-cutter Modern formula that so many designers blindly followed at that time. It was a personal fusion of early influences (classical and otherwise) and contemporary aesthetics based on fast pacing and dramatic juxtapositions. Rather than adherence to Modernist orthodoxy, Nitsche insists that the methodology that most closely resembles a Modern manner, clean, systematic, and ordered, developed because of his restlessness at doing mostly illustrative work during the early part of his career.
“Although he might not own up to the fact that he had played a formidable role in the Modernist legacy, Nitsche does not deny that he was as good - certainly as prolific, if not more so - than any other designer of his age. He also speculates that had it not been for his asocial tendencies ("I preferred to do the work, not talk about it") and a few poor business decisions along the way (he says he turned down a job at IBM that later went to Paul Rand), he might be as well known today as any of the other acknowledged pioneers. In fact, he worked for many of the same clients, including Orbachs, Bloomingdale’s, Decca Records, RCA Records, Filene’s, 20th Century Fox, The Museum of Modern Art, Container Corporation of America, the New York Transit Authority, Revlon, and more. Judging from the sheer volume of work bearing his signature or type credit, there are few others who can make this claim.
“Both his General Dynamics work and book packages had a profound influence on younger designers during the 1960s and 70s. Seymour Chwast, co-founder of Push Pin Studios, compares his tattered, well-thumbed copy of Dynamic America, the ambitious corporate history that Nitsche edited and designed between 1957 and 1960, to Herbert Bayer’s landmark Geo-Graphic Atlas for its innovation in the area of information graphics. And Walter Bernard, principal of WBMG, routinely shows slides of Dynamic America in lectures describing his early influences. Bernard also credits the book’s exceptional cinematic pacing as having radically changed the way that he achieved kinetic flow in his own books when he was a designer for American Heritage in the early 1960s.
“Nitsche’s books, annual reports, and other sequential printed material rely on meticulous attention to the details of page composition, the elegance of simple type presentation, and the expressive juxtaposition of historical and contemporary artifacts on a page. His method exerted an impact on a portion of the field that had become too reliant on rigid Modern formulas, which in turn limited variety and fluidity. Yet this reluctant Modernist was so absorbed with creating and producing his own wares that he had little time to reflect on what he was actually doing to change the attitudes of other designers. Even today he is surprised to hear that his work made an impression.” — Steven Heller
The first six of Marquardt’s DESIGN AND PAPER series of promotional booklets were portfolios showcasing a variety of artists. From Number Seven on, each issue was devoted to an individual artist. The DESIGN AND PAPER series published original booklets designed by Ladislav Sutnar, Saul Steinberg, Raymond Loewy, E. McKnight Kauffer, Erik Nitsche, George Krikorian, Georges Wilmet, Ugo Mochi, Walter Westerveldt, Clarence John Laughlin, and others. Since the booklets promoted Marquardt papers, the design and printing of each issue met the highest production standards of the day.
From “The House Organ: Design and Paper” by P. K. Thomajan from Print Vol. 5, No. 3, 1947: “The idea for this typographic gem started with Edward Alonzo Miller, then associated with The Marchbanks Press. He suggested to Oswald F. Marquardt exactly 10 years ago, the project of issuing an attractive quarterly presenting fine artwork on fine papers, thereby inspiring the increased usage of the latter. Mr. Marquardt promptly O.K.’d the idea and ever since has been O.K.’ing more and more ambitious issues.”
“The early issues were devoted to impressive assemblages of trademarks, title pages, woodcuts, specimens of hand lettering and distinctive typefaces by prominent designers. These were printed on varying shades of antique papers, wire-stitched and thread-tied for that extra touch.”
“Distribution is directed principally to printers , art directors, trade press, and important executives. In addition, many copies go to non-customers, such as instructors of journalism and the graphic arts, who use copies as noteworthy specimens for classroom discussion.”