INDUSTRIAL DESIGN
October 1963
Robert Malone [Editor]
Robert Malone [Editor]: INDUSTRIAL DESIGN 10. New York: Whitney Publications, Inc., Volume 10, Number 10, October 1963. Original Edition. Side-stitched perfect bound wrappers. 102 pp. Illustrated articles and advertisements. Multiple paper stocks. Elaborate graphic design throughout. Wrappers worn and soiled with two closed tears to front panel, but a good or better copy.
9 x 12 magazine with 102 pages of editorial content. The publishers stated goal for this magazine: "A bi-monthly review of form and technique in designing for industry. Published for active industrial designers and the design executives throughout industry who are concerned with product design, development and marketing."
Contents include:
- Alcoa Student Design Merit Awards
- Design and the Space Industry
- The Role of the Designer: Malcolm J. Brookes
- Shapes In Space
- Space Technology and the Consumer
- Showing Metabolic Movement: Will Burtin Upjohn Exhibition: Four pages and 6 black and white photographs.
- Design At Wescon: 5th Annual Industrial Design Awards of the West Coast Electronics Industry
- ICSID At The Louvre: Formes Industrialles
- Portfolio
- Developing The Product 1: Particle Counter. Laboratory Geiger Counter By Raymond Loewy/William Snaith, Inc.
- Statement: The New Men
- Packaging: Six For The Road. Six Packs!
- Statement: The New Men
- Packaging: Toys That Sell Themselves.
- Calendar
Will Burtin (Germany, 1909 – 1972) studied typography and design at the Cologne Werkschule, then practiced design in Germany before emigrating to the US in 1938. He worked for the US Army Air Force designing graphics and exhibitions before becoming Art Director of Fortune magazine in 1945. His work for Fortune was marked by innovative solutions to presenting complex information in graphically understandable ways. In 1949 he established his own firm. Among his clients were the Upjohn Company, Union Carbide, Eastman Kodak and The Smithsonian Institution. Burtin's great genius was in his ability to visualize complex scientific and technological information. He created several award winning exhibitions including the 1958 model of a human blood cell. Burtin believed that through his work he could become the "communicator, link, interpreter and inspirer" who is able to make scientific knowledge comprehensible.
Burtin developed a design philosphy called Integration, in which the designer conveyed information with visual communication that is based on four principal realities:
- the reality of man as measure and measurer
- the reality of light, color, texture
- the reality of space, motion, time
- the reality of science
Using this approach to design problems was essentially the birth of what later became known as multimedia. By integrating all four realities into a design solution, Burtin could solve seemingly insoluble puzzles.
The mid to late 40s saw Burtin expand his role in professional organizations, serving as Director of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA). In 1948, Burtin's Integration: The New Discipline in Design exhibit opened at the Composing Room in New York City.
In the introduction to the exhibition, designer Serge Chermayeff stated: "This new art of 'visualization,' of giving visual form in two or three dimensions to a message, is the product of a new kind of artist functionary evolved by our complex society. This artist possesses the inclusive equipment of liberal knowledge, scientific and technical experience, and artisticability . . . Among the small band of pioneers who have developed this new language by bringing patient research and brilliant inventiveness to their task is Will Burtin."
Most noteworthy, Burtin served for 22 years as both Upjohn's design consultant and art director of its in-house publication, Scope. His work on Scope continued his use of graphics and imagery in communicating complicated journal text. He worked to create a unique corporate identity for Upjohn, a new concept at the time. For Upjohn, Burtin produced some of the most celebrated exhibits of his career: the Cell, the Brain, and Inflammation: Defense of Life. These immensely popular walk-in exhibits provided a clear, visual interpretation of abstract scientific processes.
Here is former ID editor Ralph Caplan's recounting the magazines birth: "Fifty years ago, the publisher Charlie Whitney ran into Henry Dreyfuss. 'Henry,' he said, 'I'm about to publish a magazine for industrial designers.' 'Wonderful,' Henry replied. 'There are 14 of us.' Caplan remembered, "I.D. was not begun as a magazine for industrial designers, but as a magazine for anyone who had a stake in design and cared about it. This allowed a great deal of editorial latitude."
In DESIGN LITERACY (Second Edition, Allworth Press), Steven Heller wrote an essay describing the historical significance of Industrial Design magazine: “Industrial Design was the brainchild of publisher Charles Whitney, who also published the successful Interiors. In 1953 he was convinced by his friend and advisor George Nelson that the time was right to introduce a specialized periodical devoted to practitioners of this burgeoning field. Interiors was already featuring its own industrial design column that had evolved into a discrete section, which Whitney realized had commercial potential as a spinoff. Interiors was also so beautifully designed that Industrial Design could have no less the visual panache of a coffee table book/magazine, replete with foldouts and slipsheets, not unlike the legendary design magazine Portfolio, published between 1949 and 1951. To accomplish this an eminent art director was sought. This was the age of great magazine art directors -- including Alexey Brodovitch, Alexander Liberman, Otto Storch, Cipe Pineles, and Alan Hurlburt -- and Whitney fervently believed that a magazine's design would be the deciding factor in its success. Hence Lustig was entrusted with considerable authority to design the magazine as he saw fit.”
“On the editorial side, however, Whitney decided to take a calculated risk by promoting two young Interiors associate editors to co-editors of Industrial Design. Jane Fisk (now Jane Thompson of the architectural firm Thompson & Wood in Cambridge) and Deborah Allen may have been inexperienced in the field of industrial design but nevertheless had a clear plan to introduce a distinctly journalistic sensibility into professional publishing that emphasized criticism and analysis rather than the puff pieces common to the genre. As it turned out, this became a point of philosophical contention between the designer and editors.”
“If they had a choice the editors would have preferred an art director who, as Thompson explained, "would have been in the trenches with us," a team player with journalistic instincts rather than a distant presence with a formalist sensibility. Because Lustig designed the initial dummy and subsequent two issues in his own studio and returned with the completed layouts to the editorial offices he had made certain assumptions about the presentation of content that were often inconsistent with the editors' vision. "We did not want the words to be gray space, we wanted them to have meaning," recalled Thompson about wanting more spontaneous design responses to the material. But instead of being journalistically intuitive, Lustig imposed his formal preconceptions, and designed the magazine as he would a book.”
“Blocks of text type were indeed used as gray matter to frame an abundance of precisely silhouetted photographs. But if there was a problem it was more in the editors' minds than Lustig's design. While it was not as journalistically paced as say, a Life magazine, it was respectfully, indeed elegantly neutral allowing, for a wide range of material to be presented without interference. Moreover, it was what Whitney wanted, so the editors reconciled themselves to building the magazine's editorial reputation through informative features written by authors not previously associated with trade publishing.”
“Thompson nevertheless hated the first cover with its tight grid and silhouetted photographs. Instead she wanted to disrupt the design purity with a few well composed coverlines. She further favored a conceptual method of intersecting photography, resulting in an editorial idea, not a pure design. Lustig thought coverlines would sully the design and intersecting ideas would be too contrived. Years later, Thompson grudgingly admitted that maybe Lustig's judgment was wiser: "He wanted to make a strong simple statement, which he believed (perhaps erroneously since Industrial Design did not have to compete on the newsstand) had to stand up against the covers of the elegant fashion magazines." Lustig's design set the standard for future covers, and his successor, Martin Rosensweig, continued to produce covers for a few years afterward that more rigidly adhered to the same formal practices.”
“Despite these creative tensions, the early issues of Industrial Design reveal a shift in the nature of professional publishing from a trade to cultural orientation that was in no small way underscored by Lustig's classically modern design.”