The expanding scope of the Annual Report / Kimberly-Clark / 1962

John Massey (right) Chicago born in 1931, was strongly influenced by the Swiss School of design. This might well have started when he was an assistant to Armin Hoffmann and Josef Mullerr-Brockmann at the Aspen Design Conference in 1953. In 1957 Ralph Ekerstrom asked him to join the Container Corporation of America as a designer working with the head of design Herbert Bayer. Massey probably did his best work at the CCA when he became the Director of Design in 1961. He designed their Great Ideas book in 1976 (you can some pages from this in the October 2011 archive).

   This Kimberly-Clark paper sampler has a sort of Swiss feel to it: slightly austere; simple straightforward graphics; bold presentation; text set in Standard Medium. The size is eleven by eight and a half inches with cover fold-outs front and back, first and last pages uses a light weight bond with a blue graphic. The book is a good example of a Swiss/American design mix.



Renault Dauphine ads / 1960

I came across these ads recently in a folder marked TYPOGRAPHY. In 1960 I think I was rather impressed with the way they borrowed from posters and playbills decades earlier when printers used as many fonts as possible to catch the eye. Though these ads look like visual chaos I think the typography is quite cleverly organized and the use of color helps. The closeness of the letters suggests it was all photo set by the Photo-Lettering Inc in New York. Edson Newquist (left) of the Needham, Louis & Brorby agency art directed the campaign.  Judging by the reverse of each ad I seem to have saved them from the Saturday Evening Post or Holiday magazine..

 

I always though that ad campaigns hadn't really taken off until Mad Magazine had their say.

This masterpiece was on the back cover of the January 1960 issue.









Watching words mo v e / 1962

This little book is now half a century old and I’m surprised it’s still in reasonable condition. I bought a copy of Typographica in 1962 and the book was attached to the magazine by some cord. Five and a half by four and a half inches, printed on an ordinary bond (the show-through is free) in black and using Standard Medium in lots of fun ways.

    The idea started in 1959 with New York designers Ivan Chermayeff and Tom Geismar compiling a notebook of words that could express their meaning graphically by making small changes to the letters. The book was created using repros of lead set type and probably set by The Composing Room. I always thought it was a clever idea that didn’t need color or lots of typefaces though if the producton was a more ambitious various printing techniques could have been uses: die-cuts, folding, embossing, thermo-glazing, tints of black et cetera.
    Look through the pages and if it grabs you scroll down to the bottom to see how you can get your copy of a recent reprint.

http://www.amazon.com/Watching-Words-Move-Ivan-Chermayeff/dp/0811852148/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1328371111&sr=1-1