On Mar 18, 2009, at 11:06 AM, Chris Miller wrote:
Trivializing ? Yes -- but I'm sure that effect was intended by a top
team of
marketing consultants -- to make the museum feel more accessible and
a more
likely destination for family entertainment.
Is there something wrong, or perhaps deficient, with making a museum
"more accessible" for "entertainment"?
BTW -- prior to 1950, it does not seem like art museums (at least
the one here
in Chicago) paid much attention to catalog design.
The designer you first mentioned, Noel Martin, is credited with
bringing a focus on graphic design to museum catalogs, generally. BTW,
the term "graphic design" was coined by W.A.Dwiggins in 1922. WAD, as
he referred to himself, began studied art but began working in
advertising. He moved on to book and type design, and is considered
one of the major design figures of the first half of the 20th century.
URLs:
Martin
http://noelmartin.home.att.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noel_Martin
Dwiggins
http://www.adcglobal.org/archive/hof/1979/?id=264
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Addison_Dwiggins
http://giam.typepad.com/100_years_of_illustration/wa_dwiggins_18801956/
http://www.linotype.com/373/williamadwiggins.html
Here's one from 1929 -- compared with some graphics created by some
Chicago
artists for their own art club in the same year. (so it's not as if
local
talent were not available)
Both, btw, are hand-drawn. The museum cover is clearly hand-penned
calligraphy (transferred to a plate for printing). The letter style is
based on Roman inscriptional capitals (the most famous contemporary
face is Trajanus, derived from the inscriptions on Trajan's Column).
Such inscriptional letterforms were widely developed in the 19th c,
and the typestyle in this cover shows its provenance. Observe that the
letters from one line to another are of different proportional widths
(note the ligature for TH in TWENTY-FOURTH). In the 20s, there were no
digital fonts that could be easily altered, nor were there
photographic techniques for condensing or reshaping a given font. All
type was either hand-drawn, as this, or set in type.
This cover is not so bad, but it's just uninspired. It follows a
lot of design conventions from the 19th C and before, such as putting
the title type at the top of the page and enclosing the whole in a
decorative border that is part certificate design with some affinities
to William Morris and the Arts and Crafts style (Morris was a type
designer, btw).
The Palette and Chisel placard (it looks like a hand-drawn
original, not a printed reproduction) borrows strongly from the Art
Deco/Art Moderne/Bauhaus style then beginning to flower. The large
main title type is clearly in that style, but the smaller text is
written in basically a calligraphy style derived from chancery hand.
http://www.chicagocompactdiscs.com/pictures/1929%20catalogs.jpg
Kind of stiff and clunky, isn't it ?
Vague antecedent (the problem when your careless about language). Does
"it" refer to the P&C placard, the immediately preceding noun? or to
the museum book cover (which I think is what you had in mind)?
No special sense for letters as marks on a page - it might as well
have been an announcement for a wedding -- or better yet -- a
funeral.
Do you have to sound so damn churlish? Geez. Even if someone is
inclined to agree with your point, you certainly don't make it a thing
to brag about. To be fair, the museum cover does show a sense for
letters "as marks on a page" (a cliche formulation), because, well ...
it was made as hand-drawn letters.
And yet -- there's something charming about the museum's lack of
concern for their own graphic image -- as if all that mattered was
the quality of the art they were displaying. (and sadly, even though
catalog design would improve later in the century, the museum
stopped having an "Annual Exhibition of American Art")
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Michael Brady
[email protected]
