— Swiss Legacy

Archive
Swiss Heritage

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Spain: a country that calls so many famed artists – Picasso, Dali, Goya, Miro, to name only four – its own. Yet, the reputation of its graphic designers has never been fully recognized by the international design community, until now. Pioneers of Spanish Graphic Design establishes, once and for all, the legacy of 15 groundbreaking Spanish graphic designers working between 1939-1975. While that historical era was one of economic and political isolation in Spain these designers elevated the daily grind of commercial graphic design work to the level of true inspiration, altering the visual culture of post-war Spain.

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Showcasing the work of Josep Artigas, Alexandre Circi Pellicer, Amand Domenech, Elias & Santamarina, Jordi Fornas, Fermin Garbayo, Daniel Gil, Richard Giralt Mircale, Ernest Moradell, Antoni Morillas, Joan Pedragosa, Josep Pla-Narbona, Manolo Prieto, Julian Santamarina, Tomas Vellve, every chapter in Pioneers is adorned with the work of these designers – posters, book covers, album sleeves, logotypes and packaging – as well as commissioned appreciations of their work penned by contemporary Spanish designers and writers.

Compiled by Emilio Gil, who contacted the designers, their families and sorted through mountains of archives, Pioneers fills in a historical gap that speaks volumes about how these designers influenced Spanish, and international, visual cultures.

Page Count: 344
Size: 8 x 10 inches
Format: Casebound with dustjacket poster
Price: $58

Buy it here

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Fantastic photo set by Arne Sänger of the Good Design, Good Business – Geigy Exhibition.

More pictures here

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Typografische Monatsblätter is a Swiss business magazine, dealing with questions of printing and typography. Its frequency was monthly formerly (hence the name!) and it is still in print up to date – now on a bimonthly basis.

“Typografische Monatsblätter” were founded 1933. Since 1952 they are published together with “Schweizer Grafische Mitteilungen” and “Revue Suisse de l’Imprimerie”. TM discusses questions of the developping printing technology, also – and for designers all over the world even more interesting: Swiss designers and especially Swiss type designers were regularly writing in this magazine. The famous type-criticisms of Max Caflisch were released here, Jan Tschichold or Adrian Frutiger were repeatedly writing for TM. Best known Swiss designers were contributing for decades: Wolfgang Weingart, Jost Hochuli, Helmut Schmidt, Hans Rudolf Lutz, Emil Ruder – just to name a few.

(via do it for the fame)

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Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Tuesday, January 27, 2009—Sunday, July 12, 2009
Gallery 368
Free Exhibition

This year marks the 20th annual Modernism exhibition presented at Wells Fargo Center in downtown Minneapolis. To commemorate the anniversary, Wells Fargo Minnesota has donated a series of 20 Swiss posters — emblematic of the Swiss International Style dating from 1950 to 1985 — to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

A haven for artists fleeing two world wars, neutral Switzerland formulated a distinct advertising style with special emphasis on the poster format. Swiss artists had been exposed earlier to the movements and styles flourishing elsewhere in Europe (de Stijl, Bauhaus and Constructivism), yet it was not until the late twenties that the Swiss poster exemplified a universally recognized signature style.

Many factors contributed to making Swiss graphics internationally preeminent. Among these were a technically advanced and highly skilled printing industry that continued to develop while the rest of Europe was devastated by war, and a strong tradition of graphics dating back to the beginning of the 20th century, which had been nurtured further by extensive contact with the German Bauhaus.

The active encouragement of poster design by the Swiss government at national and local levels and the institution of an annual competition to promote it were significant, as were such important journals as Graphis (founded in 1944) and Neue Grafik (New Graphic Design, founded in 1958). Replete with articles summarizing the major tenets of the Swiss Style, it was responsible for establishing Switzerland’s reputation as the epicenter of modernist typography. Moreover, the schools of applied arts in Basel and Zurich became internationally important education centers for graphic design.

Swiss designers developed a number of new typefaces in the 1950s, the most popular and celebrated being Helvetica, a refined version of Akzidenz Grotesk, a 19th-century sans-serif typeface. Helvetica’s widespread use became integral to the clarity and easy legibility of the Swiss graphic style. In fact, sans-serif type was the most emblematic component of the International Typographic Style. In 1954, Adrian Foutiger designed Univers, a mathe-matically constructed and visually programmed font with 21 variations.

Among the younger Swiss designers who emerged in the 1950s through the ’70s as important innovators were: Armin Hofmann, Tino Steinemann, Carl B. Graf, Jorg Hamburger, Fritz Gottschalk, Hans Rudolf Bosshard and Siegried Odermatt, all represented in the 20 posters donated to the MIA and seen in this current exhibition.

(via Swiss Miss)

Here is the Adrian Frutigers acceptance speech for the European Design Hall of Fame.