Under the direction of Tibor Kalman, M&Co. embraced the ready-made aesthetic of dictionaries, instruction manuals, and generic highway signs. Kalman viewed these unpretentious objects of daily life--produced outside the design profession--as examples of direct communication that could be appropriated for more sophisticated uses and injected into the context of contemporary design with a sense of irony. M&Co. turned the matter-of-fact vernacular of commercial printing into a clever, word-based approach to typography. Many younger designers, including Alexander Isley, Bethany Johns, Marlene McCarty, and Emily Oberman, passed through the M&Co. office during the 1980s, where they created concrete visual forms to embody Kalman's polemics. [back] © Copyright 1996 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum

Lunch, Brunch, Supper Postcard, c. 1985, offset lithograph Designers: Tibor Kalman (b. 1949) and Alexander Isley (b. 1961) Firm: M&Co. Photographer: Neil Seilkirk Publisher: Restaurant Florent, New York Collection Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Gift of Tibor Kalman