Topic > Editorial Modernism in American Advertising

The title of the essay I chose is "Discuss and evaluate the innovations of American modernists working in advertising editorial or corporate identity." With this editorial essay I want to focus primarily on the origins of modernism and how it influenced the onset of modernism in American advertising. It is not possible to capture the entire history of modernism in American advertising, I think the beginning of this movement when it comes to America is the most interesting and important part of the transition from traditionalism to modernism. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayIn this chapter Steven compares advertising with graphic design and shows how completely different the story is but working together. Heller writes that the term advertising is “cringe to graphic designers.” Advertising is a tool of capitalism, a scam for unwitting consumers. He states how “graphic design is an aesthetic and philosophical research and communicates ideas”. William Dwiggins coined the term graphic designer. He stated that advertising means every printed medium imaginable to sell anything. "I understand why graphic designers don't like to be associated with advertising, the purpose of advertising is to sell, money is the main objective. Compared to graphic design the main objective is to produce works that satisfy their aesthetic needs. Sometimes the works of advertisers and graphic designers intersect, with the result that many commercial artists have committed themselves to the service of advertising in one way or another Graphic designers often “collaborate” with companies creating a unique piece for an advertising project Arthur Hawkins Jr describes how American advertising designs have been influenced. “As competitive pressure drove innocence out of advertising, artistic directors became increasingly harsh and harsh. They were influenced by the Gebrauchsgraphik and were paved with the Futura.” , this German magazine together with the Bauhaus greatly influenced American advertising design. The European culture towards design and advertising is completely different and more experimental than that of American advertising. For example, Jean Carlu's posters were geometric and balanced with colors and fonts, pushing the boundaries of poster design. American advertising has traditionally been dominated by print copy, and the shift in emphasis from words to art and design didn't happen overnight. If advertising is a function, then graphic design is a form. This is a point made by Dwiggins in Layout in Advertising. It makes the chain between advertising and graphic design clear, advertising is not the end point but neither is graphic design, sales is the end point. I think it is important to understand the origins of modernism before I look at American modernism. Modernism initially began as the “mechanical paradise”. These new technological innovations brought an aesthetic of lightness. A prime example of this is the Eiffel Tower, which represented the triumph of the modern present over the traditional past. Precisely from this statement I understand where modernism began. America mirrored the rest of the world, it had no identity of its own, hence a huge influence from European culture which I will talk about later in the essay. Some have started by almost boycotting European typographic traditions, which Americans are copying too literally from European typography. Americans should promote their own typographic traditions and not be influenced by European culture. I understand bothwhy this statement was made but also how it should be discounted. American advertising was doing nothing in terms of innovative design, the influence of European design promptly moved American advertising to a level unattainable for others. Modernism emerged after 1900 as a radical rejection of the traditional values ​​of the Victorian era. Modernist art had to abandon the old visual language and create new lenses that represented a more influential future. Hans Hofsman once said. “The ability to simplify means eliminating the superfluous so that the necessary can speak”. This idea of ​​simplifying by removing embellishments reflected a new kind of functionalism. The Modernism movement was focused on simplification, this is one of the main points that influenced American advertising the most. Instead of filling advertising with information that overwhelms the senses, toning it down can be more effective. My idea of ​​modernism comes mainly from European culture. Paris designers were influenced by Cubist artists Picasso and Braque who provided new ways of seeing reality in their art. This refers to Harper's Bazaar, the year Alexy Brodivicth retired from the art direction of Harper's Bazaar was the year Hollywood produced “Funny Face”, a film similarly based on Harper's Bazaar. The film's premise is to "dress the women of the world and educate them in the ideology of progress." Importantly, many forms of aesthetic modernization were prevalent at the time Harper's Bazaar adopted European modernism. “Modernism often referred to the stylized forms derived from modern art, its primary purpose being the interpretation of chaotic reality.” Alexy Brodovich, becoming artistic director, changed the entire culture of graphic design and advertising. Harper's Bazaar is the perfect example of European culture influencing American design, Alexy's unique layouts and typographic choices changed the future of Bazaar. "Alexy Brodovitch moved from Paris to Philadelphia where he became art director of Harper's Bazaar." This is where he birthed a completely new approach to magazine design based on the idea of ​​contrast and page flow. He consistently used experimental themes such as surrealism, juxtaposition, repetition and silhouette. It was immigrants like Alexy and Dr. Mehemed Fehmy Agha who established a new pace in magazine design and changed the status of designers. In hiring Alexy, Carmel Snow, Bazaar's publisher, advanced the aesthetic ideals of a "European-based modernist movement through Bazaar's editorial, typographic, and photographic forms." Bazaar's popularity was identified in Funny Face when European fashion was highlighted. Alexy was used to directing the European avant-garde by welcoming the transformations that Snow imagined for his magazine. I think that because Alexy was an outsider to American advertising culture, his knowledge of European design gave him an advantage, no other American advertising was created in the manner of the European modernist style, they were all very similar and the magazine layouts began to look like all similar. Alexy had a huge impact on Bazaar. For example, before his arrival, words and images were not closely linked, and text was determined by a grid of symmetrical proportions reminiscent of traditional book design. Instead, the front page featured a photo of an elongated model with the text slanted in a distortion of the traditional typographic grid. Asymmetrical typography was Alexy's style summed up. Lorraine Wild argues that “the influence of modernism on American graphic designers may have originated inwork of European futurists or constructivists or Bauhaus designers, but the social utopianism of the aesthetic that accompanied early modernism never reached the United States. The truth is that modernism was fraught with contradictions from the beginning, but that is precisely what gave it breadth. Modernism was introduced as a bridge between art and commerce and as a tool to reorganize the American economy. It wasn't until the 1930s that American designers began to notice modernism and its impact on the American public. The traditionalist style was growing tired, and American artists began to turn to modernism. Many moved to New York, the hub of modernism among artists. Paul Rand was originally from New York and it was in the New York library that he came across the German graphic design magazine Gebrauchsgraphik. This is where he noticed the works of Herbert Bayer. This new vocabulary and visibility led Rand to become art director of esquire magazine. After seeing examples of Bauhaus work in the issue of a commercial art magazine, Paul Rand was one of the few to appreciate the method and to embrace modernism not as a novelty but as a viable path. alternative. Rand was inspired by the Bauhaus and European design, embraced modernism, and found a balance between modern art and rational design. He incorporated aspects of modern theory and Cubism into his advertising work. This move by Rand was bold and worth the risk in terms of current success. He synthesized cutting-edge theories and expanded the boundaries of commercial advertising. Paul Rand pushed modernism, wanting more graphic designers to use it in their work, but also for advertising designers to appreciate its influence on the market and its benefits. Design can critically engage the mechanisms of representation, exposing and revising its ideological biases. grammar of communication by discovering structures and patterns within the material means of visual and verbal writing. Herb Lubalin's "Some American Advertisers Are Colorblind" ad, which targeted race in advertising, was depicted through the art direction of the image rather than any typographical elements. The image creates a theatrical atmosphere around the ad compared to the documented text. Advertisers began to follow a pattern when it came to addressing race: "A witness as a mask was a recurring theme." It's easier to address important and sensitive issues through images than to actually document them through characters. This type of advertising in America is similar to the "art poster" that came to America in the 1890s, the genre originated in France, where posters for books and cultural events incorporated styles such as art nouveau and post-impressionism. Readers collected posters or magazines and displayed them, which made them more interested in artistic value than advertising value. These artistic posters helped establish graphic design as a respected profession by bringing American illustrators into contact with the European Avante Garde by encouraging them to develop a distinctive artistic style and compete in the international art community. Both Herb and Lou brought a new version of advertising to America, they used collage and photomontage, these techniques were influenced by the likes of Dada, constructivists and Bauhaus designers. This type of new advertising was effective, readers were subjected to stronger layout designs in terms of image and text placement. The CCA commissioned designs from European modernists such as AM Cassandre and Herbert Bayer. Some of the images featured photomontages and were considered aesthetically radical at the time..