William Morris

1. Snakeshead, 1876. 

2. Brer Rabbit, 1882

3. Tree of Life tapestry

William Morris was a real heavy hitter. He wrote poetry, prose,  tranlated medieval texts, did embroidery, textile design (and emphasized hand-craftsmanship), and later on, was into calligraphy and illuminated manuscript. 

I'm a huge sucker for good textile/tapestry/wallpaper designs (I think my next post will be on CFA Voysey), and Morris is the real deal. I like that he thought hand-craftsmanship was important. All the stuff you see is hand block-printed. In today's terms, it'd be the difference between say, a mass-produced, off-set litho of some image, and a lovingly printed silk screen print. They may be the same image, but one will breathe, and the other won't. 

And the designs themselves set themselves apart from the mass-appeal Victorian wallpaper I'm generally familiar with. The focus on direct observation from nature combined with a patient, dilligent hand really make for striking decorative art. 

Hannah Hoch

1. Cut with the Dada Kitchen knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany, 1919, collage 

2. The Beautiful Girl, 1919, collage

3. Grotesque, 1963, Collage

Hoch was one of the only female members of the Dada movement, working with collage/photomontage as her medium. As with the Dadaists, she used a lot of absurd collaged images collaged together to promote various ideas, like anti-war, feminism, and racial discrimination. 

Her eye for collage is of the highest order, and her use of absurd imagery really emphasizes the absurdity of war, or the subdued, faceless role of women in Germany at the time.  The first two images are pretty busy, and lead you around the page quite a bit, giving you lots of information to take in, making the images real knockouts visually. The third she manages to give the same visual punch but with much less information. Same drama, but she is much more succinct. 

Lucian Berhard

These pics didn't come with any information, but the Manoli cigarettes are, of course, from 1914.

Berhard is famous not only for his overall simplistic, heavily graphic (bold outlines around everything) style, but created the Plakastil style, which just advertised the object. He utilizes color contrast, line and form to give the shapes dimensionality. As advertising goes, this is about as simple as it gets, but it is extremely graceful.

Herbert Bayer

Bayer's 1925 experimental universal typeface and polychrome warm and cool, 1970

Herbert Bayer is mostly known as a typographer, graphic designer, and architect. He started out in the Bauhaus school and worked for Vogue in Berlin. After Hitler came to power, he left for NY, where he prospered in the Graphic Design field. He finished out his career in Aspen, Colorado, designing for Walter Paepcke. There he made skiing look glamorous, and designed the Aspen Institute. As a typographer, he created an all lowercase set that is simple, effective, and aesthetically pleasing. I chose the polychrome warm and cool for the obvious skill with color theory. The idea is easy -- juxtapose cool and warm colors, but the grid makes it more complicated, as each square has to relate to all the ones around it.

Herbert Spencer

'Consider Her Ways and Others' (1961) by John Wyndham; 1965 Penguin Books edition. Cover design by Herbert Spencer.

'Who?' (1958) by Algis Budrys; 1964 Penguin edition.

As far as a description of Spencer, his obituary written by Rick Poynor is fantastic:

This guy's got a lot of fantastic graphic design work, a lot of which looks like it was made recently, which says a lot about his influence today. These covers though, strike me because they are exceedingly simple, peculiar, and macabre, particularly the one of the left. The one on the right these days looks like a dime a dozen, but it is executed well. I wish I knew for sure what the novels were about, but I get a sense that these images were meant to evoke a sense of mystery and curiosity that would draw one to these books. I know if I saw them in a store I would pick them up.

Peter Behrens

1. Peter Behrens Ad for AEG metallic filament lightbulb. Colour lithograph. 67 x 52 cm.
2. Ceiling of the Peter Behrens Verwaltungsgebäude central hall


Behrens started out moving around the bohemian circles of Munich, working in the Jugendstil (Art Nouveau) style, until he met up with Grand-duke Ernst-Ludwig of Hesse who invited him to be a part of Darmstadt Artist Colony, where Behrens conceptualized and built his own house. This took his work in a much more austere, geometric but still elegant style.

The first image is probably the most effective and at the same time most beautiful way to advertise a lightbulb I've seen or could imagine. Simple in the layout, with an elegant focal point. He influenced architectural reforms in Germany, and looking at that ceiling, I can see why. Both the ceiling and the lightbulb ad strike a serious balance between simple and complex geometric designs that complement eachother perfectly.

James Montgomery Flagg

James Montgomery Flagg is best known for the uber-iconic WWI/II poster of Uncle Sam "Wanting YOU" to enlist in the army. That was enough to send him into the stratosphere of fame, but he had built his reputation on solid, prolific illustrating work for books, magazines, political and humorous cartoons, and wartime propaganda posters. His was a household name, and he got to hobnob with celebrities, politicians, the upper eschelon, until movies started to make America's imagery for him. Then came his decline.

I wasn't so much drawn to all that due to overexposure of his work, but i came across his pen and ink work. I'm a pen and ink guy, and I like the scratchy, sketchy look his work. The images I chose look very period, almost if Norman Rockwell had a sketchy pen and ink style, or I'm also reminded of old Dennis the Menace comic strips. Lastly I'm a big fan of using tons of linework to describe both texture and form -- specifically all the surfaces of the clothes and jackets the people are wearing.