Tag: American design

Sharing Storied Designer Seymour Chwast with the Digital Generation

Seymour Chwast is a well-known name in American graphic design history, but how many people have seen the breadth of his over long (six decades and counting) career?

At the recently launched Seymour Chwast Archive, anyone around the world can now scroll and click into Chwast’s witty and provocative oeuvre in the comfort of their pajamas. From a 1940s illustrated book featuring protesting farm animals to a 2011 woodcut portrait of The Notorious B.I.G for Fader magazine, this digital-only archive features some 300 posters, books, identities, and paintings by Chwast, once described by former colleague Milton Glaser as a “brilliant typographer, terrific designer, unique illustrator” all rolled into one.

➜ Read the rest at AIGA’s Eye on Design

You Can Touch Me: Visiting the Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography

A mock-up of an advertisement Lubalin designed for U&lc magazine

It’s a dream playground for lovers of graphic design: rare periodicals like Massimo Vignelli’s brand manual for the New York City subway, drawers of catalogues and brochures that Lou Dorfsman art directed for CBS, and close to everything—from logo sketches to magazines like U&lc—that Herb Lubalin designed in his lifetime.

What’s even better than seeing these design classics in real life? At the Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography, you get to touch them all. Located at the basement of The Cooper Union’s newest shiny stainless steel complex is this archive of some of the most significant pieces of mid-century graphic design from the United States and Europe.

➜ Read the rest at AIGA’s Eye on Design

Quietly Beautiful Work by the Illustrator Who Drew The Four Seasons Logo

Various covers of exhibition catalogues Antonucci designed for then Museum of Contemporary Crafts between 1965 to 1972. Courtesy American Craft Council

The Four Seasons Restaurant in New York is celebrated by many as a temple of modern design. Housed in a restrained interior designed by architect Philip Johnson are the elegant furniture of his collaborator Mies van der Rohe, elemental tableware by architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable and her industrial designer husband Garth, artist Richard Lippold’s abstract ceiling sculpture, and the shimmering aluminum curtains of textile artist Marie Nichols.

But much less talked about is the landmark restaurant’s logo, a design of the late Emil Antonucci—a mid-century American illustrator who has been forgotten with time.

➜ Read the rest at AIGA’s Eye on Design