Erik Nitsche is a graphic designer whose successful career spanned everything from corporate identity to packaging design. He left a mark during his sixty year career as a designer and had a distinct style when it came to design. He said himself that he “was a Swiss in the graphic arts.” He walked into well-known places and got work immediately (Heller.) Nitsche held this heritage responsible for getting him where he was. Even though he may not be as well known as other designers, like Saul Bass and Paul Rand, he is said to be their equal (Heller.) Overall, Nitsche was an art director, graphic design, photographer, package designer, and illustrator who was known for his posters, advertisements, logos, magazine covers, book designs, and more. …show more content…
Nitsche’s life began in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he was born on September 7th, 1908. He came from a family who was very focused on art and he grew to love it as well. Nitsche’s father and grandfather were both very impressive photographers. However, Nitsche did not pursue the family business of photography like they did, instead he was inspired to become a graphic designer. This inspiration came from a very close family friend, Paul Klee, who happened to be a teacher at the Bauhaus school (Iconofgraphics.) Instead of studying under Klee at the Bauhaus school, at the age of 18 Nitsche attended the College Classique in Lausanne. Nitsche was attracted to some aspects of Bauhaus, but since he grew up in Switzerland, he said he “always had a sense of order” (Heller.) This sense of order is what made him so successful during his education, and later on during his career. Not long after being at the College Classique in Lausanne, he attended Kunstgewerbeschule in Munich, the School of Arts and Crafts. While attending this school he studied under the famous German typographer F. H. Ehmcke (Heller.) In the early 1930’s, he graduated from Kunstgewerbeschule and began his long, successful career. He started this career in Cologne, Germany, where he worked with his former professor, Ehmcke. Ehmcke handled the design and publicity of Pressa, which was a six-month international exhibition on the modern press (Gomez-Palacio, Bryony, and Armin Vi, 2009.) Nitsche helped Ehmcke design The International Press Exhibit. From there, Nitsche traveled to Paris, France where he worked at a printing house called Draeger Freres. Then soon after, he was offered a job from Maximilien Vox, a typographer, advertising designer, and writer for the Arts & Metiers Graphiques magazine (Heller.). While he was in Paris he did freelance work for both French and German magazines and created illustrations for them. Nitsche came to realize the troubles heading towards Europe, and like many others, decided that it was time for him to leave France. He headed for the United States in 1934 where his design career flourished from then on. Nitsche relocated to Los Angeles in 1934 where his friend, Frederick Hollander, got him a job designing sets for a musical. Nitsche did not last long in Hollywood though because he did not enjoy living in a place obsessed with attitude and class, so two years later he packed up and moved to New York City (Gomez-Palacio, Bryony, and Armin Vi, 2009.) While in New York, he started doing editorial illustrations for magazines. He worked on editorials, fashion illustration, studio photography, and layout design for Harper’s Bazaar, and Town and Country magazines. He also created the covers for Fortune, Vanity Fair, Stage, Arts & Decoration, and House Beautiful (Heller.) His designs for these covers were either very decorative or comical. Nitsche’s style may not have been consistent or even identifiable, but he made up for it with the large amount of work he was constantly producing. In 1938, he became an Art Director at Saks Fifth Avenue. More job opportunities had opened up and he was doing more and more freelance jobs by the minute. Many companies wanted to hire him as a designer and photographer, such as leading drug companies, Ciba, Squbb, and Hoffman-Laroche (The New York Times.) In the Early 1940’s, Nitsche was asked to become the art director for Air Tech and Air News magazine.
This magazine was filled with charts and graphs covering information like aerodynamics and even hydraulic systems (Iconofgraphics.) With this opportunity, he had complete control over the format and illustrations in the magazine. His passion for precision made this something Nitsche was very good at and enjoyed. Many people would cringe at the idea of designing charts about aerodynamics, but Nitsche loved it. He was tired of the fashion industry and designing meaningful data was the perfect task for him. Even though he loved this opportunity, Nitsche left Air Tech and Air News a few years later. Nitsche’s success continued and he became the Art Director for many more companies. In 1947, he became art director at Dorland International, which was also located in New York. Then in 1948, only one year later, he was art director of Mademoiselle magazine. While working for the Mademoiselle magazine he loved printing and the entire process of it. He ended up using the split fountain, a printing technique, in some of the issues. The technique was actually designed to create a rainbow effect by using two colors. One color was at the top of the ink pan, while the other was at the bottom. As the cylinders rotated the colors blended together resulting in mixed gradations (Heller.) Nitsche introduced this printing technique to the company, but it could easily damage the machinery in …show more content…
the 1940’s. He was only at Mademoiselle for a few issues before he moved on. Nitsche produced a lot of work and he also did advertising campaigns for 20th Century Fox for films like No Way Out, Fourteen Hours, and All About Eve. He even designed campaigns for Universal Pictures for films like Imposters and The Egg and I (Heller.) Nitsche seemed to jump from job to job and could not remain at one place for very long. He even called himself a ‘nomad’ (Iconofgraphics.) Since he could not stay put, he felt he needed another change, and in the early 1950’s he moved to Ridgefield, Connecticut. While in Connecticut, he got a studio there and took more freelance clients and began working for The Gotham Agency, an agency focused on advertising. This agency is where he got the General Dynamics account. The corporation was the biggest and most important design opportunity he had in his career. This large company turned Nitsche into a very effective corporate designer. Nitsche was responsible for turning the company’s image around by building their identity from scratch (Johnson.) The company did not want want to be seen as a developer of weapons, but instead as a “purveyor of peace” (Iconofgraphics.) Nitsche completely turned their image around and came up with six lithographic posters for them. He used colorful geometric forms to create these posters that shaped the identity of General Dynamics. These posters were just the start. Between 1955 and 1960 he created an entire corporate identity for General Dynamics, including advertisements, posters, brochures, annual reports, and an entire 420 page book called Dynamic America, that documented the company’s history (Iconofgraphics.) Nitsche devoted ten years to General Dynamics and remarkably completed every design task for the company. For example, the book, Dynamic America, was designed solely by him with the utmost care. Nitsche took four years to complete it and designed the book like it was a story board. After he hit the peek of his career, he moved to Geneva, Switzerland where he founded Erik Nitsche International (ENI) in 1960.
At ENI he had more success while creating things like pictorial history books and more. His pictorial books were said to be created so the pictures drove the text (Heller.) He created volumes like the histories of transportation, aviation, photography, astronomy, and chemistry. He also created a twenty volume set that helped visualize the history of music. After this experience, Nitsche had even more traveling to do. In the 1970’s, he left Switzerland and went back to Connecticut to work on children's books such as The Upside Down Box, Mr. Peewinkle’s Mailbox, among others. Then in the early 1980’s he went to Munich, Germany again where he designed record sleeves for clients and then postage stamps for the West German Ministry of Communications
(Heller.) In 1996, Nitsche returned to Connecticut after learning that he was diagnosed with a possibly fatal illness. No matter how much strength he had lost, Nitsche still spent his last years working. He still had plans to create children’s books, flashcards, and toy collections as well. When he was not designing he put the energy he had left into creating large models of sculptural toys that he called Polichinelles. Erik Nitsche passed away November 14th, 1998 at the age of 90. Nitsche was not as well known as many famous designers from his time, but he was just as talented. He moved around quite a bit and stayed away from the spotlight and he always wanted his work to speak for itself. Nitsche pushed himself and had a huge drive to keep on working and creating no matter what.
When Arthur I Keller was just seven years old, he began attending the National Academy of Design, where he would begin his training to starting his career as an artist. In 1905, Bret Harte’s novel, Her Letter, His Response, and Her Last Letter was illustrated by Keller. In 1909, Emerson Hough’s work, 54-40 or Fight was also illustrated by Keller.
Carle had a happy childhood in America. However, he moved to Germany with his parents when he was six years old and attended the prestigious art school Akademie der Bildenden Künste. In 1952 he moved back to New York to return to the happy place where he grew up. He was then recruited as a graphic designer by The New York Times before he was enrolled as a mail clerk in the Korean War. Once he returned, he worked as the art director for an advertising agency (“Eric Carle”).
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Theo van Doesburg was a famous Dutch painter, theorist, architect, and designer. He was the founder of Dj Stijl movement which means The Style in English. He also started to publish a magazine by the name of Dj Stijl from the year of 1917. It was an avant-garde magazine. Famous painters, designers, and architects like Piet Mondrian, Bart van der Leck, Gerrit Rietveld, and J.J.P. Oud joined this movement with Doesburg. This famous personality devoted his life to the understanding of art from the rational, essential, and universal aspects. The Will to Style is a lecture given by Doesburg and it tries to critically analyze the features of the new style which he advocated for.
He was labeled a terrible graphic designer in the nineties. His agonized typography drove a clique of critics to indict him of not being serious and of destroying the origins and foundation of communication design. Now, the work and techniques of David Carson dominates design, advertising, the Web, and even motion pictures.
Maurits Cornelius Escher was born on June 17th, 1898 in Leeuwarden, Netherlands, the son of a civil engineer. A terrible student in high school, young Escher spent much of his free time drawing and sketching. His early interest in art, along with the wishes of his father, influenced his decision to attend the School of Architecture and Decorative Arts in Haarlem. At age 21, however, M.C. dropped out after two years of study to pursue independent work in the arts.
Massimo Vignelli was an Italian designer who worked in a varying range of areas such as package design, advertising, industrial, interior, architectural design and the list goes on. Vignelli was also the co-founder of Vignelli Associates, which he started with his wife Lella some years after coming to America. Vignelli’s wide area of work and expertise has all helped contribute to make him a designer of interest. He has had works that have been published all around the world and throughout many museums as well.
Graphic designer and typographer Stefan Sagmeister has always had a unique way of viewing the world, therefore has created designs that are both inventive and controversial. He is an Austrian designer, who works in New York but draws his design inspiration while traveling all over the world. While a sense of humor consistently appears in his designs as a frequent motif, Sagmeister is nonetheless very serious about his work. He has created projects in the most diverse and extreme of ways as a form of expression. This report will analyse three of Stefan’s most influential designs, including the motives and messages behind each piece.
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Frost, Robert. "Design" Literature: A Pocket Anthology. Ed. R.S. Gwynn. 5th ed. New York: 2012 593. Print.
Who is Erik Erikson? In 1902, near Frankfort, Germany, Erick Erikson was born to Danish parents. During Erikson’s early years of life he found an interested in art and began to study in Europe. After a year, Erickson decided to return home to Germany, where he got accepted into art school and went towards with his passion. Many years passed and with Erikson’s degree, he started to teach art to children from different countries for abundant amount of years. Soon thereafter, he being to look at the intersection of each individual’s life and wanted to know more of historical moments created from people. From Erickson’s early finding and the variety of different interest he had during his life of his previous works. He was able to influence his own
During my whole life and experience I have been interested in the Art, Creativity, and I have been traveling around Graphics Designing. When I go out to centres, supermarkets, the high streets around Kingston anywhere in London, Germany and other parts of Europe which I have seen. I have seen lots of Graphics designs in advertising, Billboards companies for example in electronical products or any type of product the graphics advertising companies running around the world, just because of that I was inspired in the graphics designing and I was influence by the subject.