By the time the phrase "graphic design" first appeared in print in 1922, design professionals in America had already created a discipline combining visual art with mass communication. In this book, Ellen Mazur Thomson examines for the first time the early development of the graphic design profession. It has been thought that graphic design emerged as a profession only when European modernism arrived in America in the 1930s, yet Thomson shows that the practice of graphic design began much earlier. Shortly after the Civil War, when the mechanization of printing and reproduction technology transformed mass communication, new design practices emerged. Thomson investigates the development of these practices from 1870 to 1920, a time when designers came to recognize common interests and create for themselves a professional identity. What did the earliest designers do, and how did they learn to do it? What did they call themselves? How did they organize them-selves and their work? Drawing on an array of original period documents, the author explores design activities in the printing, type founding, advertising, and publishing industries, setting the early history of graphic design in the context of American social history.

In The Moderns, we meet the men and women who invented and shaped Midcentury Modern graphic design in America. The book is made up of generously illustrated profiles, many based on interviews, of more than 60 designers whose magazine, book, and record covers; advertisements and package designs; posters; and other projects created the visual aesthetics of postwar modernity. Some were émigrés from Europe; others were homegrown—all were intoxicated by elemental typography, primary colors, photography, and geometric or biomorphic forms. Some are well-known, others are honored in this volume for the first time, and together they comprised a movement that changed our design world.

Graphic designers will enrich their understanding of American type design and type designers with this unique and extensive reference. The fascinating history of type in America is chronicled through the typefaces and biographies of sixty-two of the most influential type designers, including Linn Boyd Benton, Morris Fuller Benton, and Darius Wells, and through the description and history of nine American type foundries. Complete with samples of 334 different typefaces, and 700 black-and-white illustrations, this eye-popping reference reveals the expansive contribution America has made to the world of type design.

The first major monograph on the legendary American typographer and graphic designer Herb Lubalin.

Presents an account of a key period in American graphic design as it manifested itself in various media, covering major historical influences and significant works.

A revered classic of American design delights anew with the freshness and ingenuity of its approach Bradbury Thompson (1911-1995) remains one of the most admired and influential graphic designers of the twentieth century, having trained a generation of design students while on the faculty of the Yale School of Art for more than thirty years. The art director of Mademoiselle and design director of Art News and Art News Annual in the decades after World War II, Thompson was also a distinguished designer of limited-edition books, postage stamps, rationalized alphabets, corporate identification programs, trademarks, and sacred works (most notably the Washburn College Bible). Thompson also designed more than sixty issues of Westvaco Inspirations, a magazine that was published by the Westvaco Corporation and distributed to thousands of printers, designers, and teachers to show the range and versatility of printing papers. Thompson was especially revered for his ability to adapt classic typography for the modern world. Bradbury Thompson: The Art of Graphic Design is a landmark in the history of fine bookmaking. First published by Yale University Press in 1988 and designed by Thompson himself, it was praised by the New York Times as a book in which "art and design are gloriously and daringly mixed." Original texts by the author and other notable designers, critics, and art historians, including J. Carter Brown, Alvin Eisenman, and Steven Heller, explore Thompson's methods and design philosophy, and a newly commissioned afterword by Jessica Helfand attests to the enduring importance of his work. Both a retrospective and a manifesto, the book surveys Thompson's timeless contributions to American graphic design, including his experimental work and his work in magazines, typography, books, simplified alphabets, and contemporary postage stamps. Published for the first time in paperback, this classic text is now available for a new generation of designers and students.