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  • Essay / Editorial Modernism in American Advertising

    The title of the essay I chose is “Discussing and Evaluating the Innovations of American Modernists Working in Either Editorial Advertising or Corporate Identity.” With this editorial essay, I want to focus primarily on the origins of modernism and how it affected early modernism in American advertising. It is impossible to capture the entire history of modernism in American advertising. I think the beginning of this movement when it hits America is the most interesting and important part of the transition from traditionalism to modernism. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay In this chapter, Steven compares advertising to graphic design and shows how their stories are completely different, but work together. Heller writes how the term advertising “makes graphic designers cringe.” Advertising is a tool of capitalism, a scam for unwitting consumers. He states that “graphic design is an aesthetic and philosophical pursuit and communicates ideas”. William Dwiggins coined the term graphic designer. He said that advertising means every conceivable printed means of selling anything. “I understand why graphic designers don't like to be associated with advertising, the goal of advertising is to sell, money is the goal. In relation to graphic design, the main goal is to produce works that meet their aesthetic needs. Sometimes the works of advertisers and graphic designers intersect, leading many commercial artists to serve advertising in one way or another. Graphic designers often “collaborate” with companies to create a unique piece for an advertising project. Arthur Hawkins Jr describes how American advertising designs were influenced. “As competitive pressure stripped away the innocence of advertising art directors, they became tougher and tougher. They were influenced by Gebrauchsgraphik and were paved with futura. This is the beginning of the European influence in my essay, this German magazine and the Bauhaus greatly influenced American advertising design. European design and advertising culture is completely different and more experimental than American advertising. For example, Jean Carlu's posters were geometric and balanced with colors and characters, pushing the boundaries of poster design. American advertising has always been dominated by hard-to-sell copy, and the shift from words to art and design didn't happen overnight. If advertising is a function, then graphics is a form. This is a point made by Dwiggins in Layout in Advertising. It clearly explains the chain of advertising and graphic design, advertising is not the end point, but neither are graphic design and sales. I think it's important to understand the origins of modernism before I look at American modernism. Modernism was first the “mechanical paradise”. These new technological innovations have brought an aesthetic of lightness. The Eiffel Tower is a great example, it represented the triumph of the modern present over the traditional past. From this statement alone I understand where modernism began. America was a reflection of the rest of the world; it did not have its own identity, hence a huge influence of European culture which I will talk about later in the essay. Some people started by almost boycotting European typographic traditions, whichAmericans copy European typography too literally. Americans should promote their own typographic traditions and not be influenced by European culture. I understand both why this statement was made, but also how it should be toned down. American advertising was doing nothing in terms of revolutionary design, the influence of European design quickly took American advertising to a level inaccessible to others. Modernism emerged after the 1900s as a radical rejection of traditional Victorian era values. Modernist art needed to abandon the old visual language and create new goals that represented a more influential future. Hans Hofsman once said. “The ability to simplify means eliminating the unnecessary so that the necessary can speak.” This idea of ​​simplifying by removing embellishments reflected a new type of functionalism. The modernist movement aimed above all to simplify, this is one of the main points which had the most impact on American advertising. Instead of stuffing advertisements with information that overshadows the senses, it may be more effective to tone it down. My idea of ​​modernism comes mainly from European culture. Parisian designers were influenced by Cubist artists Picasso and Braque who proposed new ways of seeing reality in their art. This concerns Harper's Bazaar, the year Alexy Brodivicth retired from his position as art director of Harper's Bazaar was the year Hollywood produced "Funny Face", a similar film based on Harper's Bazaar. The premise of the film is to “dress the women of the world and educate them in the ideology of progress.” It is important to emphasize that many forms of aesthetic modernization were prevalent at the time Harper's Bazaar embraced European modernism. "Modernism often referred to the stylized forms derived from modern art; its primary focus was the interpretation of chaotic reality." Alexy Brodovich, who became an artistic director, changed the entire culture of graphics and advertising. Harper's Bazaar is the perfect example of the influence of European culture on American design. Alexy's unique layouts and typographic choices changed the future of Bazaar. “Alexy Brodovitch left Paris for Philadelphia where he became artistic director of Harper's Bazaar. » It was there that he pioneered a completely new approach to magazine design based on the idea of ​​contrast and page flow. He systematically uses experimental themes such as surrealism, juxtaposition, repetition and silhouette. It was immigrants like Alexy and Dr. Mehemed Fehmy Agha who set a new pace in magazine design and changed the status of the designer. By hiring Alexy, Carmel Snow, Bazaar's editor-in-chief, advanced the aesthetic ideals of a "European-based modernist movement through Bazaar's editorial, typographical, and photographic forms." Bazaar's popularity was identified in Funny Face when European fashion was highlighted. Alexy was accustomed to leading the European avant-garde, welcoming the transformations Snow envisioned for her magazine. I think because Alexy was a stranger to American advertising culture his knowledge of European design gave him an advantage, no other American advertisements were created in the European modernist style, they were all very similar and the Magazine layouts started to all look the same. Alexy has had a huge impact on Bazaar. For example, before his arrival, words and images were not closely related and text was determined by a grid of symmetrical proportions reminiscent of the traditional conception ofbooks. In contrast, the first page contained a photo of an elongated model with text angled in a distortion of the traditional typographic grid. Asymmetrical typography was Alexy's style summed up. Lorraine Wild argues that "modernism's influence on American graphic designers may have originated in the work of European futurists, constructivists, or Bauhaus designers, but the social utopianism of aesthetics that accompanied early modernism did not never reached the United States. The truth is that modernism was fraught with contradictions from the start, but this is what gave it its breadth. Modernism was presented as a bridge between art and commerce and a tool for retooling the American economy. It wasn't until the 1930s that American designers began to notice modernism and its impact on the American public. The traditionalist style was beginning to tire, and American artists were beginning to turn toward modernism. Many moved to New York, a hub of modernism among artists. Paul Rand was from New York and it was at the New York library that he came across the German graphic design journal Gebrauchsgraphik. It was there that he noticed the works of Herbert Bayer. This new vocabulary and exposure allowed Rand to become art director of Esquire magazine. After seeing examples of Bauhaus work in an issue of a commercial art magazine, Paul Rand was one of the few to appreciate the method and embrace modernism not as a novelty but as a viable solution. alternative. Rand was inspired by Bauhaus and European design, he embraced modernism and found a balance between modern art and rational design. He incorporated aspects of modern theory and cubism into his advertising work. This move by Rand was bold and worth the risk in terms of current success. He synthesized avant-garde theories and pushed the boundaries of commercial advertising. Paul Rand pushed modernism, wanting more graphic designers to use it in their work, but also wanting advertising designers to appreciate its market influence and benefits. Design can critically engage the mechanisms of representation, exposing and revising its ideological biases. grammar of communication by discovering structures and patterns within the material supports of visual and verbal writing. Herb Lubalin's "Some American Advertisers Are Color Blind" ad, which targeted race in advertising, was represented by the art direction of the image rather than typographic elements. The image creates a theatrical atmosphere around the announcement rather than the documented text. Advertisers began to follow a pattern when it came to covering race: "A witness in the form of a mask is a recurring theme." It is easier to address important and sensitive issues through images than to actually document them in print. This type of advertising in America is similar to that of the "art poster" that arrived in America in the 1890s. The genre originated in France, where posters for books and cultural events incorporated styles such as art new and post-impressionism. Readers collected the posters or magazines and displayed them, making them more interested in artistic value than advertising value. These artistic posters helped establish graphic design as a respected profession by bringing American illustrators into contact with the European avant-garde, encouraging them to develop a distinctive artistic style and compete in the international art community. Both Herb and Lou brought a.