Soul Bass was born in New York City, on 8 May 1920. He studied under Howard Trafton at Art Student League and Georgy Keeps at Brooklyn College. In The late 1940′s, Soul Bass moved to Los Angeles from New York City. Bassl worked for the Blaine-Thomson agency. By 1955, clients were looking for him instead of the agency. He asked for a modest raise but the answer was disappointed. Saul Bass decided to have his own business and Saul Bass & Associates established.

His clients were attracted by Saul Bass uniqueness. He was man of vision and sometimes daring. His concept and execution were applicable to wide range of different problems. Saul philosophy in design was ” I believe it is useful work. It is can solve communication problems, it can enhance our environment, it can enliven our imagination. Sometimes it can even provide an insight into our lives.” Take a look as well Soul Bass video: On Making Money Vs Quality work.

At the age of 23, he became full time poster artist, designing for cultural events only. He was commissioned by Dutch National Ballet, Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, Holland Festival, Amsterdam Organ Society. His poster is in the collection of Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

His posters are varied. It’s very hard to explain his style but the organic shape of his posters were influenced by Jan Bons, the illustrations are simplified from Dick Elffers’s work, the playful of Herbert Leupin and the iconic image of Raymond Savignac can been seen in some of his poster. These are some examples.

If you like to have some of the poster Nihof & lee sales some of the poster. I got some images from wyberzeerdruk’s company, they printed some of the posters. Thank you to the affichemuseum to provide a lot of Dutch’s posters.

What’s cooking? Famous designers on food. We always wonder what are the designers favorite typefaces, book designs or even designers favorite food. Well What’s cooking? Famous designers on food just published by Bradbourne Publishing Ltd. answers just that. The content of the Baseline cookbook is about famous designers and their relationship to food and cooking. It features background stories, memories, recipes illustrations, photographs pictures and even recipes in the book. It just an example of great publishing by Bradbourne Publishing. I do also enjoy the Baseline facebook page. It shows eclectic selected international historical graphic design examples and interesting news in contemporary visual communication.

Champion Paper’s Identity

Advance Mortgage Corporation’s Identity

Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center’s Identity

Black Clowson’s Identity

Ohio Arts Council’s Identity

Industrial Bulletin Cover

Catalog Cover (Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati), Calendar, Annual Report

Noel Martin for Container Corporation of America Found at Container List

Steven Heller Collection: Identity Programs by Noel Martin – Identity for Xomox Corporation

In 1951, He established his own consultant agency, Henrion Design Associates, focusing in corporate identity, poster exhibitions, packaging, magazine and book design. One of his most notable work was KLM (Dutch airline). He was collaborating with W.Brinkgreve of KLM. The logo still looks fresh and new after more than 60 years. It would be very difficult for any designer to redesign this logo. The only thing that changed for this logo was the color. Now, they only use light blue for the logo.

His social posters are very strong and direct, it impacts everyone who sees it and his commercial poster, its very fun, friendly and colorful. A very talented designer indeed. His posters won 5 major awards at the international poster exhibition in Vienna.

Henrion and Alan Perkins designed Design Co-ordination and the Corporate Image in 1966. It compiled with many different big company logos such as KLM, IBM, Olivetti, Pirelli and many more. He became a president of AGI and Master of Faculty of RDI in 1972-1973. He designed the AGI annals in 1989, showing AGI’s member work and the story of the people behind it. He also designed Top Graphic Design and Design Coordination and Corporate Image.

He initiated the collection edition of books on design to the publisher Gustavo Gili in 1975. They published wide range of subject such as architecture, art, aesthetics, cinema, design, visual communications and many others. Since 1979, the collection was distributed throughout the world. (Spanish Edition)

In 1988, Yves Zimmermann and Ana Alavedra established Zimmermann Associates in Barcelona Spain with speciality of corporate identity, editorial design and packaging.

Yves Zimmermann designed Typographische Monatsblätter’s cover for several issue in 1958

Magazine covers for TM Typographische Monotsblatter. The controversial covers (only the first one was actually used) are an attempt to create the words new by designing them new, by printing words as they are spoken, not as they are usually written.

“Humans should be free to create and transmit their own expression in writing. They should look at the old signs in a new way” Yves Zimmermann

(Typography Today pg 64)

“To us the task of graphic design consists in understanding thoroughly a client’s problem related to visual communication and offering him the best possible solution to that problem.”

Zimmermann Associate.

Rudolf de Harak studied commercial art at the New York School of Industrial Arts . After he graduated, he was drafted into the infantry for World War II. After the war, he apprenticeship at a small advertising agency and won an award from the Los Angeles Art Directors Club. After he won the award, he dedicated his life into graphic design. In the late 40′s, he went to Will Burtin and Gyorgy Kepes’s lecture that influence the spirit modernism into his design.

To understand his style of designing I have to pick up Harak’s quote “I consider design to be an art and the designer to be an artist.” For him there is no difference between art and design but in fact he combine them to make his art work became a great art and an impeccable design. Throughout his work I could see the formalism of the grid system and the abstractness of the art. Combination between geometric and organic shapes make his work looks formal but very humanist. They gave warmest to his deign. I do really love the AIGA poster (functional graphics, see below). A very warm color with nice technical drawings with beautiful Akzidentz Grotesk placed on the left corner and “AIGA” lay vertically. Absolutely magnificent!

I also posted his wonderful book design in title Poster by Members of the Alliance Graphique Internationale 1960-1985 and his 87th anniversary.

Source Rudolf de Harak image: AIGA

René Burri was born on the 9th of April 1933 in Zurich, Switzerland. He started his education at the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts under Hans Finsler who gifted Burri his first Leica camera. The strict formalist of Finsler’s style still influence Burri’s work. He also learned typography course under typographer Alfred Willimann for three-year-long course. In 1955, He worked with Magnum agency,a first prime agency for photojournalist worldwide founded by Robert Capa, David Seymour, Henri Cartier Bresson, George Rodger and William Vandivert. In 1959, Burri became a full member.

Burri has took many influence people in their field such as Winston Churchill, Le Corbusier, Picasso and many others. The most prominent was Che Guevara puffing on cigar where the images has been reproduced on countless t-shirts, postcards, books and many more. “people think I became millionaire with that photo-but I didn’t get a thing from everyone who used it on matches, T-shirts and wine bottles.”

The first time I encountered Burri’s Picture was through the eye of Werner Jeker. The great poster of Burri’s pictures and Jeker’s exquisite typography made me wonder. That the beginning I explores of Burri’s pictures. In 2010, I got a change to call him to contribute to NEWWORK MAGAZINE Issue 6. The first call, he asked me to call him back again an hour later and when the second time I reach him, He asked me if the phone call is expensive and he would call me back. He is such a gentle and considerate person. I am so excited and suddenly I asked how could he let someone cropping his images and adding another pictures to his pictures. Because most of photographers would be very mad if someone just even cropping a bit of their pictures. He said calmly its okay, it’s graphic designer’s job. I think It might be good if every photographer learned typography so we could see more great posters. I just hope that Burri’s would have a good health and wish I could met him in person someday. Salute to Rene Burri.

Source: Magnum Photos, the Branders

I have always wondered how Tschichold would get the inspirations. Luckily, I got some pictures from Roland Stieger where Jost Hochuli and Stieger visited Tschichold’s home library. I would thank Lilo Tschichold to allow me post these pictures as well. I just feel like jumping and joining them to the outstanding library.

In 1947, Himmel started his first fashion shootings for Harper’s Bazaar under the patronage of Bassman and also worked for Vogue. In 1950, he started his own project including series on circus, boxer and ballet. He experimented with grain structure in his negative and prints. From 1947 to 1969, he worked for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar and his works were included in Edward Steichen’s “Family of Man” exhibition. In 1969, Himmel gave up working as a photographer and more than 25 years he worked as a psychotherapist.