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Lubalin exploited the potentials of phototypesetting by employing tight letter spacing and densely overlapping forms, gestures prohibited by the older metal technology. Lubalin abandoned standards of legibility and classical proportions in favor of exaggerating the distinctive features of letterforms‹rounder o's, sharper serifs, clever ligatures, and thin strokes reduced to minimal slivers. Working with designer and lettering artist Tom Carnase in New York, Lubalin created voluptuous interpretations of Victorian ornament and Pop revisions of modernist geometry.
Their typeface Avant Garde, which drew inspiration from such modernist masterpieces as Paul Renner's Futura (1928), incorporates numerous composite characters and letters drawn with contorted angles. Designed by Carnase and inspired by Lubalin's logo for Avant Garde magazine, the typeface rejected modernism's search for reduction and efficiency in favor of a profusion of humorously idiosyncratic forms. The typefaces designed by Lubalin's contemporary Ed Benguiat also celebrated eclecticism and ornament, exploiting phototypesetting's capacity to reproduce illustrative, decorative forms. Calling his approach "typographic expressionism," Lubalin defined his work as part of a uniquely American response to European modernism. Looking back in 1979 at the achievements of his generation, Lubalin contrasted the "conglomerate styles" that were typical of American design with the purism and abstraction favored in Europe--especially Switzerland--after World War II: "Typographic expressionism is for a mass audience. The more intellectual Bauhaus style and the formalized Swiss approach to design had no appeal and did not relate to the rank-and-file American. This work had its validity in the business community and in such special interest groups as the medical profession, and it still does. Americans...possess the most colorful language in the world, borrowing expressions and incorporating words primarily from the Jewish and Black vernacular...Precise intellectual design is not our bag: ideation is." Popular rather than scholarly, Lubalin's approach was widely imitated, shaping the mainstream of graphic design during the span of his career. The Push Pin Studio, founded in 1954, also reveled in the mixing of historical and vernacular idioms. Based in New York, the studio became an international force in graphic design in the 1960s and 1970s; the group's impact remains profound today. Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast, the studio's most celebrated founding members, are skilled typographers as well as illustrators and designers. The "Push Pin style" has yielded images that are personal yet highly controlled, characterized by bright colors, strong outlines, and plump, exaggerated forms. Herb Lubalin and the Push Pin artists opened up a path in American design that has continued to evolve.
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Harlem on My Mind
Avant Garde
Americana Alphabets
Peugeot |
