VISUAL COMMUNICATION HISTORY BLOG

The first Christmas catalogue Edward Bawden (1903 - 1989) created for Fortnum's was in 1955. The 1958 catalogue is an extended pun on the word 'cat', and is full of witty and playful drawings. Cats were a passion of his, as they strut, dance, and grin their way through these remarkable pages. Part of his enduring appeal is his combination of modernism and tradition. He always believed that a good piece of design was as valuable as …

April Greiman is widely recognized as one of the first designers to embrace computer technology as a design tool. According to design historian Steven Heller, “April Greiman was a bridge between the modern and postmodern, the analog and the digital.” “She is a pivotal proponent of the ‘new typography’ and new wave that defined late twentieth-century graphic design.” Her art combines her Swiss design training with West Coast postmodernism. Gre…

More can be seen here > > > The entire collection of the Queensland Library on Flickr is a treasure trove. There is some graphic design, but the bulk of it is memorabilia and photographs, so nice that it is certainly worth a visit > > > . Located in Brisbane, Australia, the State Library of Queensland’s mission is to collect, preserve and make accessible the state’s documentary heritage. The State Library holds approximately 1.…

The pictures are from my own collection. They are scans from a book that I bought for the university years ago when I was putting together material for the history of visual communication course. Not exactly legal, I know, but I am very glad I had the foresight to do it anyway, since when I made a search for Brad Thompson's work online just now I was astonished by how slim the pickings were. Definitely one of the greatest graphic designers…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tingatinga_(painting)

https://www.moma.org/search/?q=armin+hofmann

Book with letterpress and offset lithography, in black and red, on cream wove paper, stapled along spine https://www.kodomo.go.jp/gallery/modernism/09_for2/index_e.html

Founded in 1992, Ray Gun was the only magazine wherein a die-hard culture seeker could find information on alternative music and the street-inspired style that really mattered. Punk rock had torn pop music to shreds and created a hunger for an original lifestyle beyond mainstream culture, and Ray Gun was its graphic chronicler: across its pages blasted a visual feast made up of era-defining artists such as Sonic Youth or Iggy Pop, music-inspire…

A 1957 children’s book illustrated by legendary designer Paul Rand, and written by his then-wife Ann. Read more here: https://www.paulrand.design/writing/books/sparkle-and-spin.html

In 1923, a flurry of colorful postcards heralded the first major Bauhaus school exhibition. Both students and established artists including Paul Klee, László Moholy-Nagy, Wassily Kandinsky, and Herbert Bayer offered snapshots of the German modernist aesthetic that would majorly influence art and design for the rest of the 20th century. https://hyperallergic.com/221572/the-exuberant-postcard-art-of-the-first-bauhaus-exhibition/

... is a shiny, well-fed tome that gathers the best cat-coddling articles, essays, short stories, poems, cartoons, covers, and other feats of literature and art from the New Yorker archives. Spanning nearly nine decades, the collection featuring contributions from such celebrated minds as John Updike, Margaret Atwood, James Thurber, Susan Orlean, and even the patron saint of “the other side,” famed dog-lover E. B. White. https://www.brainpicking…

See a collection of spreads from the typographic journal, complied from various issues of the year 1968, on Sébastien Hayez's Flickr stream here >>>