Recalling Rarities

Design and Style, a collaboration between Seymour Chwast, Steven Heller and Mohawk Paper, was a twice yearly paper promotion that introduced the art and design of historical styles, and helped trigger, along with Philip Meggs' A History of Graphic Design textbook, the graphic design history "movement."  A very limited run was printed, owing to the huge expense in producing dozens of paper and printing special effects - diecuts, short sheets, gatefolds, tip-ins, debossings, pop-ups and more. Seven issues were produced on Jugendstil, Streamline, French Deco, Futurism, Surrealism, Bauhaus and DeStijl, each with an interpretative cover by Chwast. An eighth issue was edited, written and designed on Japanese Pop (the missing dummy for went missing) but never printed. Design and Style became the basis for our book Graphic Style. Each interpretation is beautiful. Take a look at the full set:

Beautiful Cliches

Stock, clip or cliche art was (and is) a small big business in the graphic arts field. Even Paul Rand initially worked for a stock picture company, scratching out scratch board drawings of objects and vignettes. All the top type foundries offered them, and some graphic arts companies specialized in them. There wasn't any one country that had a monopoly, but some of the most visually interesting were produced in Germany for advertising and editorial use. The ones here are from Die Gebrauchs-Vignette in neuem Gewande! (Advertising Vignettes in New Garb!) catalog of the Schriftgiesserei Brüder Butter in Dresden from 1922.

Heavy with Goodness

We see them everywhere, point of purchase display is a huge marketing industry. Some are clever, others not - rather most are not. The idea is to get consumers at the counter to buy on impulse. Just showing the product is a no-brainer, but add a little comedy and the world is the seller's oyster, so to speak. These made for Richardson's "Maid of Honor" Fruits and Syrups (c.1948) are aimed at those with sweet teeth at the soda counter. The characters are as sweetly as their confections. So whether young or old this soda jerk and his little customer are designed to whet the appetite of trigger happy taste-buds. And what about the slogan . . . "Heavy With Goodness," eh?