we’ve been around for a while now too THE STUDIO HAS been thriving since 1992. I mean I have begun a series on great art directors of the...

a love of craft Acanthus wallpaper, 1875 by William Morris. THE MAN WHO did so much to inspire members of the literary circle called The Inklings, of which JRR...

what we think of as modern art today began in 1860, then careered onwards through the next century Aristide Bruant, 1892 by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Vincent van Gogh, Paul...

the Soviet avant garde CONTEMPORARY DESIGNERS ARE often unaware of constructivism and its impact on contemporary graphic design, probably due to Josef Stalin’s efficiency in eliminating all evidence...

I'VE WRITTEN ABOUT constructivism in a previous post, and the Russian avant garde designer El Lissitzky (see “El Lissitzky: revolutionary pioneer”). After him another Russian, Alexey Brodovitch, influenced...

AFTER WORLD WAR I, an eclectic popular style appeared in France characterized by ornamental and decorative craft motifs, and Machine Age* materials, but waned after World War...

Dubonnet poster by Cassandre, one of a series.www.cassandre-france.com CASSANDRE WAS THE pseudonym of Adolphe Jean-Marie Mouron, born in Ukraine of French parents at the turn of the twentieth...

Composition No 10, 1939-1942, Piet Mondrian. DE STIJL MEANS “the style” in Dutch, an appropriate moniker for the art movement that established the style of twentieth-century design. Its origins...

WILLIAM MORRIS HAD initiated the craft approach to design in the nineteenth century, but looked backwards romantically to a pre-industrial age. The tremendous violence and chaos at...

No Way Out, 1950 movie poster by Paul Rand. PIET MONDRIAN AND De Stijl freed contemporary design of its former restrictions, despite the criticism of rigidity it sometimes...

THE 1970s DECADE is called the “pivot of change” in the twenty-first century, particularly with reference to economic upheaval (so what else is new?), as well as...

what makes a good designer? SAUL BASS ONCE said, “If it’s simple simple, it’s boring. We try for the idea that is so simple that it will make...

For Käte, 1947 by Kurt Schwitters, Dada proto-Pop. The Mies van der Rohe building Barcelona Pavilion cited in an earlier blog about the Bauhaus (see “the Bauhaus and the international style”)...