Graphic Design and Architecture, A 20th Century History: A Guide to Type, Image, Symbol, and Visual Storytelling in the Modern World

by Richard Poulin

Overview

This innovative volume is the first to provide the design student, practitioner, and educator with an invaluable comprehensive reference of visual and narrative material that illustrates and evaluates the unique and important history surrounding graphic design and architecture. Graphic Design and Architecture, A 20th Century History closely examines the relationship between typography, image, symbolism, and the built environment by exploring principal themes, major technological developments, important manufacturers, and pioneering designers over the last 100 years. It is a complete resource that belongs on every designer’s bookshelf.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781592537792
Publisher:	Rockport Publishers
Publication date:	11/01/2012
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	8.80(w) x 10.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Richard Poulin is cofounder, design director, and a principal of Poulin + Morris Inc. (http://www.poulinmorris.com), an internationally recognized, multidisciplinary design consultancy located in New York City. His work has been recognized by major design organizations, competitions, and publications including the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), Communication Arts, Graphis, Library of Congress, Type Director Club, and the New York Art Directors Club. Richard is a Fellow of the Society for Environmental Graphic Design, the organization's highest honor, and is a past President and board member of the New York Chapter of AIGA.

Read an Excerpt

First Church of Christ Scientist
Graphic Tile Panels
The Hague, Netherlands

Piet Zwart (1885–1977), Designer
The Hague, Netherlands

1926

Piet Zwart (1885–1977), a Dutch craftsman, draftsman, architect, photographer, and pioneer of modern typography, was born in Zaandijk, north of Amsterdam. From 1902 to 1907, he attended Amsterdam’s  School of Arts and Crafts, where he became interested in architecture. His early work involved designing textiles, furniture, and interiors in a style that showed his affinity for the de Stijl art movement. Zwart was influenced by many of the modern, avant-garde movements, as well as Jan Tschichold’s (1902–1974) Die Neue Typographie (The New Typography, 1928). He was also one of the first modernist  designers in Holland to apply the principles of de Stijl and constructivism to graphic design in the built environment during the 1920s. From 1921 to 1927, Zwart worked for H. P. Berlage, the most influential  Dutch architect of the era. Hendrik Pieter (H. P.) Berlage (1856– 1934) was the architect for the First Church of Christ Scientist complex in The Hague. This modernist complex is composed of a church, assembly hall, residence, and school with its interiors designed by Berlage, in collaboration with Zwart. One primary example of this collaboration is located above the entrance to the complex in a series of metallic gold-on-blue ceramic tiles containing bold, square, sans-serif “fat-face” letterforms designed by Zwart to visually integrate with the rectangular architectural form of the church. Throughout the  auditorium, typographic inspirational quotations are located on walls and ceilings articulated in a similar graphic manner by Zwart, reinforcing a strong visual integrity to the graphic and architectural identities of the buildings.

Zwart synthesized two distinct and contradictory points of view—the constructivist movement’s visual playfulness and de Stijl’s formal functionality. With the First Church of Christ Scientist, as well as with his  entire body of work, this typotekt, as he called himself, created a unified language that has prevailed for the last eighty years and to this day strongly influences contemporary graphic designers.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Forward by James Stewart Polshek, FAIA

Forward by Deborah Sussman, HAIA, FSEGO

Pre-20th-Century Influences

The Modern Age 1900-1950

Chapter One: The Impact of Invention
1878-1933

Chapter Two: Art and Technology, a New Unity
1901-1928

Chapter Three: Style and the Mass Market
1924 - 1947

Chapter Four: Between the Wars
1932 - 1945

The Post-War World
1950 - 2000

Chapter Five: Populuxe: The American Influence
1948 - 1961

Chapter Six: Modernism and the International Style
1950 - 1979

Chapter Seven: Postmodernism and Beyond
1966 - 1995

The Beginning of the 21st Century

Glossary

Bibliography

Image Resources

Contributors

Index

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Editorial Reviews

Mandatory reading for every graphic designer and architect, as well as all those that aspire to these two professions, and most importantly for all who are concerned with the humanizing possibilities inherent in the visual arts.” - James Stewart Polshek, Fellow, American Institute of Architects

“This book is a gift to all current and future practitioners of, users of, and participants in environmental graphic design and explores and uncovers a history that was not examined or compiled until Richard Poulin delved into it.” -Deborah Sussman, Honorary Fellow, American Institute of Architects; Fellow, Society for Environmental Graphic Design

From the Publisher